In a not-so-subtle dig at Salesforce.com Inc., a group of more than 200 companies hailing mostly from the startup ecosystem today took out a full-page Wall Street Journal ad to decry incumbent customer relationship management systems. 

The coalition, headlined by customer data processing unicorn Segment Inc., calls itself the Platform of Independents. The Journal ad features a letter from Segment Chief Executive Officer Peter Reinhardt declaring that “traditional CRM suits are no longer the best way to deliver a great customer experience.”

Reinhardt directs his main criticism at the challenges involved in exporting CRM records to outside services. “Your company’s data should be available in your preferred, best-in-class business applications, not just the ones your CRM suite has chosen for you,” Reinhardt elaborated on his point in an accompanying post on Segment’s blog. “Sure, it’s technically possible to migrate your data away from legacy CRM systems, but with great complexity and switching costs.”

Though no names were named, it’s a fairly clear reference to CRM market leader Salesforce and to a lesser extent Oracle. Both have built suites of business applications around their customer data platforms to automate tasks such as managing marketing campaigns. Salesforce in particular offers strong integrations between its CRM and its other products that provide the ability to easily move data between services, while integrating with third-party applications can be more complex because it requires separate connectors.

It’s unclear whether today’s ad will have any effect on how the 200-plus signatories approach their relationships with Salesforce. Segment, for instance, provides an integration for Salesforce’s CRM, as do co-signatories Outreach Inc., Amplitude Inc. and others. 

The idea behind the declaration might be to kindle a discussion among Salesforce’s customers about third-party integrations. If more large enterprise clients start asking for better interoperability with outside applications, that might lead the cloud giant to add features that make exporting CRM data easier.

The 200-plus companies that signed the declaration also pledged to follow a set of three principles related to data mobility.

Together, we pledge to build:

A world of choice, where businesses are free to build a technology stack with the tools that they need, not just the one their CRM suite has chosen for them.

A world of flexibility, where data can be used across every department to exceed customer expectations, not just in sales and marketing.

A world of opportunity, where every business can have the technology and ability to be customer-first.

Photo: Salesforce