How Salesforce’s $15.7B Tableau grab will impact you

Salesforce (SF) has just announced its acquisition of data visualization software champion Tableau. Both firms have been at the vanguard of disruption in their markets, with Salesforce making SaaS work and Tableau rethinking the way company data should be presented and consumed by different business stakeholders. Ultimately the exciting prospects about this merger are less about relative technologies, or economies of scale, or customer synergies, or integration opportunities or, indeed, any of the usual things we talk about post acquisition. The excitement here is as much about the bringing together of the two creative teams responsible for carving out software categories themselves.

Here is what we are looking out for in the coming months, to see how this deal is shaping up and whether the excitement can be justified given the hefty price tag.

1. CRM Data + Tableau = Better analyses or continued data silos? Let’s face facts. Companies are gathering data across multiple systems today, and for the most part are not able to get the insights they need out of them. Let alone the promise of shaping future business direction or decision making even at the tactical level, let alone strategic. The good news is that analytics platforms like Tableau make that job easier, and systems like Salesforce are improving data quality. Tableau can already integrate well with Salesforce, but it is far from seamless. So, there are two opportunities for SF to radically improve its clients’ successes:

• Not every Salesforce client is going to sign up for Einstein Analytics, but they might be a Tableau client. The company could improve the standard reporting and visualization capability built natively into Salesforce to improve the platform itself.
• It still takes some significant data prowess to extract and visualize SF data in Tableau, creating another opportunity for better integration between the two firms for a better user experience.

2. BI and analytics, round three. Salesforce has struggled for many years to launch a compelling BI and analytics layer onto its platform. From EdgeSpring in 2013 that turned to Wave Analytics, to Einstein Analytics in 2016, Tableau will now be the third generation of SF’s data-driven CRM tools. The options for clients thus far were to either make do with the relatively weaker functionalities around BI and visualization or shell out for Tableau/Qlikview/Power BI integration, or better yet, charge full force into new territories with the AI features that Einstein started to bring in. Look for Salesforce’s Einstein team to join hands with Tableau to make both of those experiences richer for SF’s clients. Ultimately narrowing the strategic output gap between itself and the big suite giants SAP and Oracle. If Salesforce builds loose couplings and connectors between Einstein and Tableau, it will be a win-win in terms of:

• Stretching analytics to ML and DNN predictive models plus semi and unstructured and hybrid data handling
• For Einstein, it will be much better visualization and interpretability of the models and patterns – a usual pain point of AI.

3. Salesforce shouldn’t waste this opportunity to solidify services alliances. Most large SIs have strategic partnerships with Salesforce to complement their business. For example, Accenture has a 16,000 people strong Salesforce implementation practice, and last year even launched a new Innovation Center for Salesforce in its San Francisco office. Similarly, Accenture also has a software alliance with Tableau for BI services delivery on the platform. This acquisition could be a great opportunity for Salesforce to synergize its channel relationships and services alliances along with Tableau for SIs like Accenture. As a very practical example, bring Tableau to the innovation center and help clients interact better with their customer data, and down the road, create a differentiated positioning on CRM technologies for SIs to advise clients. SF could also use its partners collaboratively, using their valuable practitioner input to shape their joint product map to address major enterprise pain points in working with the two platforms. Given the strength of SF alliances this should also broaden the service provider base for Tableau.

4. Smaller startups giving Tableau a run for their money will likely meet a similar fate, with Salesforce’s competitors possibly picking up the heat. Tableau faces its toughest competition today from Power BI that has Microsoft’s backing and enterprise reach. While they might not be up for grabs, watch for Tableau’s smaller competitors to get gobbled up as the BI and analytics market rages on and becomes even more critical for various enterprise tech products and systems. Think Domo, ThoughtSpot, or even open source tools like Grafana that are making their way to enterprise clients. Yes, SAP and Oracle could be some of the buyers, but baking in easy-to-use analytical tools is a plus for virtually any enterprise tech company to get ahead. Provided they use their acquired assets correctly, bringing us to our next point…

5. Strategic intentions will dictate the level of collaboration between Salesforce and Tableau. Tableau was a target for Oracle and SAP for many years. Salesforce’s final pull of the trigger could well be a defensive play to keep it out of its competitor’s hands. But now that it has Tableau in its corner, Salesforce’s strategic direction must take into account the product future that it has signed up for with its acquisitions. As a category leader, Tableau carries significant responsibilities on its shoulder to pave the way forward in a rapidly growing market. While SF has announced that Tableau will be operating independently in coming years, watch for whether the CRM leader’s strategy itself gets shaped by its data-driven buy. SF has already struggled with integrating previously acquired technologies, and Tableau could be another one thrown in the mix.

6. Salesforce sales are driven as much from the bottom up as the top down. Salesforce has become the de-facto standard for CRM systems with many salespeople and this familiarity with the system has helped drive sales from the bottom up. An integrated Tableau could have a two-fold impact – driving this same loyalty within a broader range of users – the consumers of data from the systems. Plus, it can help drive this same fanatism to a wider group of Tableau users. Having embedded analytics can help drive the SF platform into a stronger competitive position against the likes of Oracle and SAP.

The Bottom-line: Ultimately, how these factors play out will determine whether this acquisition was just a tick-in-the-box for diversifying enterprise technology products beyond CRM for Salesforce, or a true strategic collaboration to help enterprise customers get closer with their customers through better data analysis.

Even if SF and Tableau get everything right, and the visualization capabilities of Tableau really do help clients better understand customer data, it is the steps after that that matter. Generating actions from insights and feeding those into workflows and customer conversations is where the magic happens to drive better customer experiences. This is where service providers come in, and why their moves from this acquisition are equally important to this discussion. HFS sees some promise in Salesforce and Tableau coming together, not least with how it can create synergies for the scores of alliance partners that work with both Tableau and SF. If in the long run this means less custom work and better integration, that is a win for enterprise customers to start, given that both companies have such a wide global customer base already with significant potential overlap. In the most optimistic scenario, this could create a new standard for customer analytics – but we’ll have to wait and watch for how SF and the market proceeds on our outlined areas. But part of the excitement is the unknown – what can two organizations that have already created entire categories of software do together – what will the creative synergies unlock in addition to the obvious?