After months of speculation about a possible deal, Salesforce has agreed to buy Vlocity for $1.33 billion as it seeks to build its industry-specific CRM software business.
Vlocity’s solutions for industries including communications and media, energy and utilities, health, insurance, and financial services have been built on and in partnership with Salesforce.com’s Force platform. Its more than 150 customers include Sky Italia, New York Life, and Humana.
In announcing the acquisition on Tuesday, Salesforce said it was “important for our customers to have products that speak the language of their industries.”
“Vlocity’s feature set will continue to enhance and complement Salesforce’s industry capabilities and product knowledge, open up new industry capabilities built on the Salesforce platform, and provide customers with even more tools and expert guidance to digitally transform,” the company said in a news release.
Salesforce, a leading provider of horizontal CRM solutions, has been expanding industry-specific offerings such as its Financial Services Cloud and Health Cloud.
“Salesforce has been beefing up their abilities to provide industry-specific solutions by cultivating strategic [independent software vendor] partnerships with companies like Vlocity and Veeva,” Brent Leary, principal analyst at CRM Essentials, told TechCrunch.
“But this move signals the importance of making these industry capabilities even more a part of the platform offerings.”
San Francisco-based Vlocity was founded in 2014 by the co-founders of Veeva Systems. In its most recent funding round, it raised about $163 million on a valuation of around $1 billion.
“Salesforce believes that by focusing on verticals, it will be able to double its revenue within a couple of years,” Silicon Valley entrepreneur consultant Sramana Mitra wrote recently on her blog. “Vlocity’s acquisition by Salesforce will give Salesforce just that — access to industry revenues through deeper inroads into key verticals.”
Salesforce also announced Tuesday that co-CEO Keith Block is stepping down, leaving Marc Benioff to serve as chair and CEO of the company. In Tuesday’s down market, its shares fell 2.5% to $181.27.
