Salesforce Not Credible: It's Not Your Goto-Market It's Your Product
Salesforce has a great CRM. Much better than JD Edwards that it replaced 25 years ago. Service Cloud is quite solid. The rest is meh at best—warmed-over acquisitions which were never that great.
Except for Commerce. Commerce used to be great for a lot of people. Until it wasn't.
What issues are Salesforce Commerce customers facing?
Survey the top Salesforce Commerce customers' websites and what will you find?
Stagnation. Lack of movement. Sure there are some replatforming, but the ones that are not, you would think they would be innovating.
They aren't. Some of it is people—if you chose Demandware 15 years ago, probably the people who chose the platform have left long ago, just like the platform.
In its place is an agency just taking orders.
What's needed to reboot Salesforce Commerce?
A credible Commerce product and technology leader.
A credible Commerce product vision. Not AI. I repeat, not AI.
A trusted Commerce roadmap.
...That they actually work on.
Why are existing Salesforce customers removing it from their consideration sets?
Among customers I speak with, even existing Salesforce customers are removing it from their consideration sets.
It's that bad, folks. And the latest AI glow-ups are not helping. It just reinforces the desperation.
Does AI make up for Salesforce's past issues?
The AI news looks good for the bosses, but not for the market. Does it make up for the last 7 years of talented employees exiting and lack of delivery? We'll make it up to you.
Trust us. Who will make it up? Literally who. All the new features can easily be obtained on any platform, by relatively inexpensive vendors. Nothing requires the Salesforce Commerce Cloud platform.
Good luck with that.
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