Salesforce Tackles Talent Management With Rypple Integration, Debuts Site.com As A Simple CMS
Back in December, Salesforce announced the acquisition of social performance platform Rypple, and revealed that it will be entering the human capital management (a.k.a. employee and talent management software) …
Context & Ripple Effects
Salesforce has been extending its cloud suite beyond core sales functions: it added social-service features through Service Cloud's Chatter and social-network integrations and introduced tools for building business applications through a visual process manager. Rypple adds an HR-facing workflow to that expansion.
Site.com also builds on Salesforce's earlier web-hosting and Sites efforts, including its free Sites offering to encourage cloud adoption. The paired launches put employee-management and web-publishing tools alongside Salesforce's established cloud platform.
First-order effects
- Salesforce gains a talent-management product through Rypple's integration, giving HR teams a new Salesforce-supported application category.
- Site.com gives web teams a simplified CMS option within Salesforce's product portfolio.
Second-order effects
- Salesforce can approach more functions inside existing customer organizations—HR and web publishing teams—rather than limiting its sales conversation to CRM and service users.
- Rypple's integration makes its performance-management capability part of Salesforce's broader suite, raising the value of shared platform adoption for customers using multiple Salesforce tools.
Third-order effects
- If Salesforce continues pairing internally developed platform tools with acquired applications, enterprise software competition shifts toward suites that span more employee and customer-facing workflows.
- The move points to cloud vendors using adjacent applications to deepen account reach, with workflow breadth becoming a complement to standalone product features.
The trend: Enterprise cloud platforms are broadening from single business functions into connected suites for employee, customer-service, application-building, and publishing work.