Salesforce bets on return to-workplace solutions market with Work.com

Salesforce’s new suite of return to work solutions, provided on its platform Work.com, is one of the company’s largest bets amid the Covid-19 pandemic. 

The San Francisco, California based software-as-a-solution (SaaS) provider, better known for its customer relationship management solutions (CRM) reported a revenue jump of 29% year on year at $5.15 billion in Q2 of the financial year 2021.

The quarter also saw Work.com gaining traction, with CEO Marc Benioff calling it one of the most successful products that the company has ever built. 

“Another incredible victory in the quarter has really been Work.com. I don't think there's a product that we've ever built faster, but it's never been more successful, more rapidly,” Benioff said during the earnings call.

The software suite, made generally available on June 1, has several components including a command centre, emergency response management suite, shift scheduling solutions and access to Salesforce’s skilling platform, myTrailhead, among others. 

“As organisations begin the process of reopening, business leaders and decision makers will need new ways of planning, managing, and monitoring workforce readiness, facilities preparedness, and emergency management response,” Sunil Jose, senior vice president at Salesforce India told TechCircle. 

The website work.com, has been around since its launch in 2012 as a social performance management platform tool to monitor performance and teamwork. Although the website was closed down in 2015, Salesforce seems to have revived the domain with a much bigger responsibility today.

According to the company, the platform was built using agile development methodologies in a few months. 

“This is the power of having a flexible, agile platform. Within weeks we are able to create new apps and workflows that allow customers to move safely and quickly navigate through these unprecedented times,” added Jose.

Before work.com, Salesforce had launched Salesforce Care as its first solution to help its customers counter the crisis. Salesforce Care consisted of a suite of solutions free for 90 days which was designed to help businesses stabilise during the initial phase of the pandemic. 

“With Work.com, technologies such as myTrailhead will help the workforce address training and re-skilling imperative by equipping people with tools that the increasingly digitally transforming economy demands,” Jose said. 

Several information technology (IT) players have rolled out their versions for work from home solutions aimed at mitigating pandemic specific challenges. 

In late March technology firm IBM announced that it will offer cloud cybersecurity solutions to help firms manage WFH while Google and Microsoft also tweaked existing solutions to help companies maintain business continuity during the crisis. 

When asked whether Salesforce will adopt a hybrid home-office work model for the future, Jose said that over 18% of the Salesforce employees have always been working remotely.  Currently, Salesforce’s employees are allowed to work from home till July 2021.

“Going forward, workplaces will become more flexible with employees taking a hybrid approach that’s more intentional when they do eventually come into the office. At Salesforce, we’re leading with the philosophy of work from anywhere,” Jose told TechCircle.

According to media reports, Salesforce is cutting around 1,000 jobs despite its stellar earnings report. 

"We’re reallocating resources to position the company for continued growth. This includes continuing to hire and redirecting some employees to fuel our strategic areas, and eliminating some positions that no longer map to our business priorities,” the company said in an emailed response to queries from TechCircle.