Salesforce Co-CEO Marc Benioff At Dreamforce 2022: We’re Larger Than SAP

SAP “had a great quarter this quarter, $7.5 billion. We had a larger quarter – $7.7 billion,” Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff said during Dreamforce 2022.

Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff used his keynote at the sales and marketing software vendor’s annual Dreamforce event to declare his company No. 1 in its field and assert that his company pulled in more revenue – by some measures – than enterprise software giant SAP.

“Now listen, I have a lot of esteem for SAP,” Benioff (pictured) told an in-person audience in San Francisco, where Salesforce is based. “A lot of esteem for SAP. Amazing company. … They had a great quarter this quarter, $7.5 billion. We had a larger quarter – $7.7 billion. That means Salesforce is now the world’s largest enterprise apps company. Amazing.”

He continued: “World’s largest enterprise apps company … and we continue to deliver growth all the way to $31 billion this year. And we did it with our values and philanthropy and innovation and culture.”

What Did Marc Benioff Say At Salesforce Dreamforce 2022?

Along with the 40,000 people in attendance in person for Dreamforce this week, the event drew 150,000 viewers online, according to Salesforce.

Benioff previously made his SAP boast in August during the company’s most recent quarterly earnings call. Salesforce reported $7.72 billion in revenue for the fiscal 2023 second quarter (ended July 31).

On July 21, SAP reported about $7.2 billion (7.5 billion euros) in revenue for its fiscal 2022 second quarter (ending June 30).

Scott Russell, the Germany-based company’s executive board member for customer success, said in a statement that the company still saw plenty of success with digital transformation during the quarter.

“As a technology pioneer, SAP has helped our customers innovate as they digitally transform in the cloud, laying the foundation for the opportunities customers and competitors are taking advantage of today,” Russell said to CRN. “SAP’s customers generate 87 percent of total global commerce ($46 trillion). Our cloud revenue jumped 34 percent in Q2 2022 – making it SAP’s largest revenue stream for the first time ever and marking a major turning point in our cloud journey.”

In a recent interview with CRN, Chris Heineken, CEO of Bozeman, Mont.-based Salesforce partner Atrium said customer demand for data analytics and artificial intelligence is helping to fuel business growth.

Atrium was also among a handful of Salesforce partners recently named as bringing the first industry-focused Slack services to market during the conference – alongside consulting giants Accenture, PwC, Capgemini, Deloitte and KPMG.

“Our business has doubled this year, and the year before as well,” Heineken said. “Productivity [is] definitely in fashion. Revenue predictability, definitely in fashion. How do I take these investments – and when we’re talking about analytics and data and then putting AI [artificial intelligence] to work and modernizing some of these platforms, and investments in Salesforce, what we’re really talking about is productivity.”

Although Benioff focused a large portion of his keynote on Salesforce’s public good initiatives, he also remarked on the growth of the company that’s important to partners. Here’s what you need to know.

Benioff Calls Salesforce No. 1

At Salesforce, our vision has been crystal clear from the time that Parker [Harris, Salesforce co-founder and chief technology officer] and I started the company. We want to connect with your customers in a whole new way.

We want to help you to connect with your customers in a whole new way. We want to build this incredible Customer 360. And you’re going to see this amazing new version of it today. We have never been more excited to show you what has happened in the last two years with Customer 360. … And as we think about our intention. … our vision, where we’re going, we also think about our values. What’s important to us? Trust, customer success, innovation, quality, sustainability. And I hope that you’ll see Salesforce be highly aligned with these values, not only through this conference, but as who we are as a company and how we act and how we behave and how we move forward with our vision.

Now, I’ll tell you that together as a community, we’ve achieved a lot of incredible things. … Of course, we’ve created an incredible business. Look at Salesforce, No. 1 CRM. That’s amazing. Congratulations for everything you’ve done to create this amazing business. But not only did you create a successful business. You also made sure that customers were successful. This is our highest value. That we did it with customers in mind. And we achieve this high level of customer success.

Beating SAP

Oh, there’s one other thing that happened this quarter. Now listen, I have a lot of esteem for SAP. A lot of esteem for SAP. Amazing company. Started 50 years ago. 1972. Incredible company, team, products.

They had a great quarter this quarter, $7.5 billion. We had a larger quarter – $7.7 billion. That means Salesforce is now the world’s largest enterprise apps company. Amazing.

World’s largest enterprise apps company … and we continue to deliver growth all the way to $31 billion this year. And we did it with our values and philanthropy and innovation and culture.

Growing The Ecosystem

It’s not just a new day here at Dreamforce and a new day for business. But it’s a new day for all of you, for our trailblazers. We see that as we go around the world – 9.3 million new Salesforce jobs, $1.6 trillion Salesforce economy and our ecosystem. Isn’t that awesome?

And you can see it here with all these folks who are creating all this incredible value for their companies and the world.

And you can see how it is expanding in partners and services and support and the AppExchange and this incredible community of 17 million trailblazers, 2,100 community groups.

The Slack Acquisition

It’s a new day for work. And we need incredible new products and incredible new technology to make all this happen. We heard about Trailhead – that’s an incredible new product. We are bringing to all of our companies to train all of our associates and our colleagues on this technology and all these core values.

But there’s one more thing. While we were all away over the last two years, we bought another amazing company. Another amazing company that has so much in common with Salesforce and was actually right next door. We looked out our window every day and there they were. We saw them in our park. We went out to coffee with them. We went out to lunch with them.

They said, ‘Wow, this is an amazing, new, incredible product – Slack.’

And we love Slack. And it became an imperative for us to build these incredible trusted relationships to empower efficiency. And as Bret [Taylor, Salesforce co-CEO] said, we need new ways to work. We need new ways to work because we’re in the office but we’re also at home. We’re on the road. We’re in many places.