Salesforce, which is the leading CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions provider in the world, has now entered into a strategic partnership with China’s largest Internet and AI company, Alibaba. This partnership was initiated by Salesforce for the purpose of expanding its inroads into the China software market.
As per Statista, customers based in Asia account for 9.7% of the total revenue of Salesforce for the FY 2019 as compared to 19.2% and 71.1% of the revenue that is being contributed by customers in Europe and the Americas, respectively. Establishing a foothold in China will prove to be highly useful to Salesforce in broadening its Asia customer base.
Since the time of its inception in 1999, Salesforce has expanded at a very rapid pace and has now broadened its service offerings into new areas and industries along with new editions, features, and platform capabilities.
Salesforce in a statement said, “More and more of our multinational customers are asking us to support them wherever they do business around the world. That’s why today, Salesforce announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba.”
Entering the China market is not an easy task. This is because foreign companies are allowed to do business in China only when they collaborate with a local service provider for processing and storing data of Chinese users.
The Salesforce Alibaba partnership will facilitate all Salesforce customers located in the Greater China area to get exclusive access to a locally-hosted version of Salesforce that is being offered by Alibaba cloud. Such a collaboration with the biggest cloud service provider in China will help Salesforce in getting a better understanding of the local business rules and regulations that are prevailing in the Chinese software market.
Moreover, Salesforce will now gain access to client-acquisition channels in China. With Alibaba’s cloud computing dominance and expertise that has come into the picture, Salesforce can now store its China-based data on Alibaba Cloud.
“Alibaba’s advanced, secure infrastructure and knowledge of these markets will empower our global customers with a solution that meets local business needs. We look forward to developing this partnership with Alibaba as we continue to drive success for companies around the world.“, says Salesforce.
Salesforce will be the only cloud CRM solution that will have a presence in Alibaba’s vast portfolio of products and services. Alibaba will also be the exclusive provider of Salesforce CRM solutions to customers in China. These Salesforce solutions will be made available to customers located in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau.
Alibaba can now increase its standing in the cloud computing services market in China by offering an enterprise CRM product suite in the form of Salesforce. This will also enable the Chinese conglomerate to stay one step ahead of local cloud competitors like Tencent, that has been growing at a rapid pace since its inception.
Pratyush Kumar
