Salesforce is investing over $2.5 billion in its UK business to accelerate growth

Salesforce is planning to invest more than $2.5 billion over the next five years to fuel the growth of its UK business. The global leader in CRM made the announcement ahead of participating in Prime Minister May’s Tech Investment Roundtable hosted at 10 Downing Street.

As part of the announcement, Salesforce also said that its committed to giving back in the UK. The nonprofit arm of the company, Salesforce.org has also donated more than $1.5 million in grants to the UK community, with a focus on workforce development and STEM education programmes, including Apps for Good, STEMettes and School 21. Most recently, Salesforce.org has supported The Duke of York Inspiring Digital Enterprise Awards (iDEA) with strategic grants to develop and expand its digital learning platform, helping young people of all ages with free online learning that is designed to boost current and future employability. Since launching in 2017, the platform has had more than 60,000 learners who have completed around 360,000 digital badges across 40 countries, including the UK.

Salesforce.org leverages Salesforce’s technology, people and resources to give back to communities around the world. In the UK, Salesforce employees are committing to volunteer 50,000 hours in their local communities in 2018. To date, UK employees have volunteered more than 166,000 hours working on local projects, including STEMettes, School 21 and Apps for Good. More than 2,900 British nonprofits, including Homeless Link, Great Ormond Street Hospital and Unseen, use Salesforce for free or at a discounted rate.

Salesforce is experiencing rapid growth in the UK. Salesforce is the #1 Customer Experience and Customer Relationship Management market share leader worldwide and the #1 Customer Experience and Customer Relationship Management in the UK based on 2017 total software revenue, according to Gartner1. As part of this investment, Salesforce plans to increase headcount, data centre capacity and office space to support its rapidly growing customer base in the country.

“The UK is Salesforce’s largest market in Europe and our commitment to driving growth, innovation and customer success in the region has never been stronger,” said Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce. “With this significant investment, we are well positioned to pursue the incredible opportunity for Salesforce, our customers and partners in the British market.”

Prime Minister Theresa May said: “Salesforce offers a wonderful example of the benefits a successful technology company can bring to the UK economy, and I welcome their continued investment which will create interesting and high-skilled jobs for our workforce. The UK is already home to some of the world’s most innovative technology companies, and we will continue to drive investment in the sector through our modern Industrial Strategy.”

In addition to being the #1 Customer Experience and Customer Relationship Management provider in the UK, Salesforce is also the fastest growing among the three largest enterprise software vendors2 in the region according to Gartner Inc.’s May 2018 Market Share: Enterprise Application Software, Worldwide, 2017 market share report, based on 2017 total software revenue.

Leading British companies of all sizes including Addison Lee, Aston Martin, British Airways, Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), Funding Circle, The Nottingham and Rated People use Salesforce to power their digital transformations and connect with their customers in a whole new way across sales, service, marketing, commerce and more.

“Salesforce has been a trusted partner for the digital transformation of our Contact Centre, which helped accelerate productivity and engagement across our teams,” said Tony Ackroyd, Director of Operations & Customer Services, DVLA. “With Salesforce, we are able to deliver a leading experience to millions of drivers and vehicle owners across the UK and drive ongoing innovation across our customer service teams.”

Today’s news follows other recent Salesforce UK investment announcements. Last month the company opened its first European Salesforce Innovation Centre in Salesforce Tower London. The Salesforce Innovation Centre offers an immersive environment where companies can understand how to drive the digital transformation required to connect with customers in new and intelligent ways by leveraging cloud, social, mobile, AI and connected products with IoT.

With the opening of the new space, Salesforce is now operating across nine floors in Salesforce Tower London, with plans to open a new ‘Ohana Floor’ by the end of 2019. The Ohana Floor will offer a unique hospitality and networking space for employees and customers to foster collaboration and will be available to nonprofits on weeknights and weekends to host their own community events.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “London is a global leader for technology innovation. Salesforce’s continued investment and growth in London demonstrates the strength of our city’s tech sector and its attractiveness to major international tech businesses. It also shows that London is very much open to international talent and investment.”

Salesforce also recently announced plans to expand its data centre capacity with a second UK data centre in 2019. The company’s increased office space and infrastructure capacity will further support the company’s rapidly growing base of customers in the region.

In April, Salesforce was named the #3 Great Place to Work in the UK, the company’s fourth year on the list. Salesforce has also been named one of the best places to work by Glassdoor UK in 2018, highlighting the company’s focus on its employees, values and culture.

Salesforce continues to foster British innovation through Salesforce Ventures’ $100 million EMEA Fund. In the UK, Salesforce Ventures has invested in several companies driving technology innovation including Onfido, DigitalGenius, Qubit and NewVoiceMedia. Salesforce Accelerate – a four-month accelerator programme designed to provide learning and support for startups and accelerate their time-to-market with the Salesforce AppExchange – is also taking place this summer, coming to EMEA for the first time.

Salesforce and its ecosystem of customers and partners in the UK is expected to generate more than $65 billion of net new business revenues by 2022. It’s also expected to create more than 329,000 direct and indirect jobs in the same timeframe, according to research by IDC3. Additionally, Salesforce Trailblazers in the UK have earned more than 250,000 badges on Trailhead – the company’s free, gamified online learning platform – acquiring the skills needed to succeed in today’s technology-driven economy and be a part of Salesforce’s flourishing ecosystem.