There is no escape from the data analytics tsunami, not even for the world’s top customer relationship management (CRM) firm.  Salesforce.com has long offered subscribers access to partner-developed services for uncovering and visualizing insights through its AppExchange marketplace, and provides native reporting capabilities that were recently extended to its application development platform. But in the grand scheme of things, the cloud powerhouse hasn’t gone much beyond dipping its toes in the data ocean.

That is, until last week, when it finally took the inevitable deep dive into the world of information-driven decision making with the acquisition of RelateIQ for $390 million. That’s a considerable premium over the $245 million valuation the Wall Street Journal pegged the startup at in March following a $40 million capital infusion led by Redpoint Ventures.

The three-year-old RelateIQ operates out of Palo Alto and offers a “relationship intelligence” platform that promises to do what previous generation alternatives such as Salesforce.com can’t through a tasteful mix of automation and analytics.

The software connects to the user’s email and calendar system, be it an on-premise Exchange deployment, Office 365 or Gmail, and automatically pulls lead data into a  unified environment where contacts are linked to the relevant social media accounts. From there, the completed customer profiles can be synced up to a shared address book that the startup says provides visibility into all of their previous interactions, regardless which salesperson handled the given engagement and when, while ensuring that the prospect never receives the same promotion twice.

That centralization also acts to save users precious hours of digging for specific snippets of information, RelateIQ points out on its website. The platform utilizes machine learning to cut even more time out of the lead management process by prioritizing meetings based on the deduced importance of the customers and prospects in the queue.  Rounding out the package are a pair of mobile clients, a Chrome extension and an API that allows users to make data available to and from third party applications such as email marketing systems and help desk tools.

The acqusition is significant for Salesforce.com not only because it eliminates what could have become a major future threat (denying rivals such as Oracle a potentially key growth opportunity with the same blow) but also because RealteIQ brings much-needed analytics technology and techbical know-how to the table.

“My take is that RelateIQ realized it couldn’t win the big CRM battle so it needed to sell,” said John Furrier, founder of SiliconANGLE. “This is a strong, bold play for Salesforce.com, which recognizes that data intelligence and data science are a big part of the future.”

Furrier noted that emerging firms like Mintigo, Lattice Engines, Inc., Infer, Inc., and the SiliconANGLE Labs spin off CrowdChat, which combine marketing automation with predictive analytics, are growing rapidly because of their ability to focus sales efforts on the most promising customers. Even LinkedIn is pressuring Salesforce in the data science arena, he said.

The startup will operate as an independent subsidiary rather than being dissolved into the CRM’s giant corporate structure after  the deal goes through later this quarter, but its platform will no doubt gradually be seemed into latter’s core lineup as it comes under more pressure to make data bigger part of its product roadmap.

photo credit: abarbier66 via photopin cc