NEWS
NEWS
NEWS
Salesforce confirms $360M acquisition of quote-to-cash startup SteelBrick
Salesforce.com, Inc. has confirmed speculation that first emerged last week, saying it’s entered into an agreement to acquire a startup that’s already backed by its venture capital arm. SteelBrick Inc. is the startup in question, and Salesforce will pay $360 million to take control of it.
“We have witnessed how Salesforce has pioneered the shift to enterprise cloud computing and set the standard for customer success in the industry,” said an enthusiastic SteelBrick CEO Godard Abel in a statement. “Many of our team members have already enjoyed growing their careers in the vibrant Salesforce ecosystem as customers and partners for many years, and we’re excited to join Salesforce.”
The $360 million price tag is significantly cheaper than the $600 million that was quoted in initial reports on the rumor. Salesforce said the deal should be completed by April 30, 2016, the end of its fiscal first quarter, if everything goes to plan.
Salesforce’s interest in SteelBrick dates back to February 2015 when it took part in an $18 million series b funding round led by Shasta Ventures. In total, SteelBrick has raised $29.5 million prior to its acquisition.
SteelBrick made its name thanks to a software suite called Quote-to-Cash that offers a number of sell-side applications, including Configure Price Quote, analytics and billing features. The software is designed for enterprises to help them accurately price deals that have many aspects to them and can become quite complex. Essentially, the software simplifies the sales process by automatically putting together the right product offering and financial terms of the contract, while also taking care of paperwork like contracts and invoicing.
The Quote-to-Cash market is growing fast, with Gartner Inc. recently saying it will be worth $41 billion a year by 2018, which is enough to explain Salesforce’s interest.
SteelBrick’s technology should help to bolster one of Salesforce’s most prevalent use cases – that of managing sales from end-to-end. The company currently servers more than 200 companies, including tech giants such as Cloudera Inc., Nutanix Inc., and HootSuite. SteelBrick’s software already runs natively on Salesforce’s platform, with its Quotes & Orders app currently the most popular third-party offering, according to Salesforce’s AppExchange popularity rank.
Image credit: StartupStockPhotos via pixabay.com
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