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I hardly even understand what Salesforce does. I thought it was a sales lead/CRM software. I didn't even know it has an ecommerce function, and I've been surpri

I hardly even understand what Salesforce does. I thought it was a sales lead/CRM software. I didn't even know it has an ecommerce function, and I've been surprised to see it pop up in non-sales spaces (ex. the CFPB complaint system). Shopify is like the easiest software in the world to set up, looks really good and professional right out of the box, and has tons of integrations. It's rapidly taking over other product areas (ex the Shop Pay wallet across different Shopify tenants) but super easy to understand. It can be set up and used by a one-person non-technical business, but you also see it in larger stores with considerable revenue. I don't see how anyone would ever wind up doing Salesforce unless they are large enough to do the whole RFP/bids thing that needs some kind of specialist to write and compete for.

jeromegv 2y ago
> I hardly even understand what Salesforce does. I thought it was a sales lead/CRM software. I didn't even know it has an ecommerce function Salesforce Commerce is an entirely different stack than Saleforce CRM. It's essentially DemandWare that was rebranded. It is the same parent company but think of it as a separate software entirely. > and I've been surprised to see it pop up in non-sales spaces (ex. the CFPB complaint system). Look at the billions Salesforce makes every year, they are in a lot of industries you might not have thought of.
rpncreator 2y ago
> I didn't even know it has an ecommerce function It has at least two (2) ecommerce functions (more if you count B2B Classic / CloudCraze) 1. Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2C - 2016 Demandware acquisition, somewhere in the spectrum of PaaS to SaaS, separate offering compared to the rest of the Salesforce platform. Customizations are done in ISML (JSP/JSTL/JSF-like) and an ECMAScript-like language in modern implementations (not going to cover SiteGenesis, Pipelines, and SiteGenesis Controllers for you old folks here). APIs are provided by the legacy OCAPI layer, and SCAPI layer, which has a thin Mulesoft API layer on top 2. Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B/D2C - Salesforce-native platform (e.g. native Salesforce objects). Customizations done via Lightning (front-end) and Apex (Java-like language). More-or-less fully integrated into the Salesforce platform. More or less fully SaaS. Demandware (and subsequently, SFCC) was one of the first ecommerce platforms to pioneer licensing a commerce platform based on revenue sharing (given the SaaS-like model), as opposed to legacy self-hosted platforms (ATG, Hybris, IBM WebSphere) which initially focused on licensing per seats or CPU.
xp84 2y ago
I only understand Salesforce in that they purchase any successful company they can, and take what seems like 30 minutes of effort for each acquisition to integrate it with the rest of their businesses in a sensible, synergistic way. The original Salesforce, people now call SFDC (Salesforce Dot Com) which as you know is a CRM but more broadly speaking, a database backend & a GUI, with a construction kit to let ~customers~ Salesforce Consultants model and build simple tooling for business processes of any kind. They have snapped up various companies like ExactTarget (bulk email), Demandware (aka SFCC, probably what's being discussed here), Heroku, and Slack. I assume the main synergy is just of the business kind. You can include Slack in a big overall Salesforce "deal" and have one big (steak dinners and alcohol-style) contract negotiation. And honestly even though I teased above about the lack of integration or consistency (it took like 10 years for one to be able to even log into ET with Salesforce creds), I'm glad that they don't really do anything to their acquisitions to integrate them, since I have no desire to have any integration between say, Slack, and our bulk emailing platform, and anything like that would surely make Slack worse.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  To be fair, they bought Quip four years before Slack, so they haven't all been winners.
- tootie 2y ago
  My org decided rather suddenly to adopt Salesforce Marketing Cloud which sounded like a plausible decision until I found out it was ExactTarget and looked pretty much the same as it did in 2004 and also doesn't really integrate with Salesforce CRM in any useful way.
- ianhawes 2y ago
  Is the steak dinner and alcohol-fueled (and I'll throw in golf) contract negotiation real? I keep hearing about it on HN comments but my experience with enterprise sales has been almost the complete opposite. Lots of meetings on Zoom and occasionally a drink at industry events.
  - billbrown 2y ago
skipants 2y ago
Mirroring what you're saying: I've worked with a company who has a "Salesforce Product Manager". A whole person dedicated to managing their Salesforce integration. I haven't used it myself, but seeing that role exists makes Salesforce sound both complicated and expensive.
lesuorac 2y ago
IIUC, the big advantage of Salesforce is that it forces you to be in a singular ecosystem and that it's a re-org for data instead of people.

jeromegv 2y ago

> I hardly even understand what Salesforce does. I thought it was a sales lead/CRM software. I didn't even know it has an ecommerce function Salesforce Commerce is an entirely different stack than Saleforce CRM. It's essentially DemandWare that was rebranded. It is the same parent company but think of it as a separate software entirely. > and I've been surprised to see it pop up in non-sales spaces (ex. the CFPB complaint system). Look at the billions Salesforce makes every year, they are in a lot of industries you might not have thought of.

rpncreator 2y ago

> I didn't even know it has an ecommerce function It has at least two (2) ecommerce functions (more if you count B2B Classic / CloudCraze) 1. Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2C - 2016 Demandware acquisition, somewhere in the spectrum of PaaS to SaaS, separate offering compared to the rest of the Salesforce platform. Customizations are done in ISML (JSP/JSTL/JSF-like) and an ECMAScript-like language in modern implementations (not going to cover SiteGenesis, Pipelines, and SiteGenesis Controllers for you old folks here). APIs are provided by the legacy OCAPI layer, and SCAPI layer, which has a thin Mulesoft API layer on top 2. Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B/D2C - Salesforce-native platform (e.g. native Salesforce objects). Customizations done via Lightning (front-end) and Apex (Java-like language). More-or-less fully integrated into the Salesforce platform. More or less fully SaaS. Demandware (and subsequently, SFCC) was one of the first ecommerce platforms to pioneer licensing a commerce platform based on revenue sharing (given the SaaS-like model), as opposed to legacy self-hosted platforms (ATG, Hybris, IBM WebSphere) which initially focused on licensing per seats or CPU.

xp84 2y ago

I only understand Salesforce in that they purchase any successful company they can, and take what seems like 30 minutes of effort for each acquisition to integrate it with the rest of their businesses in a sensible, synergistic way. The original Salesforce, people now call SFDC (Salesforce Dot Com) which as you know is a CRM but more broadly speaking, a database backend & a GUI, with a construction kit to let ~customers~ Salesforce Consultants model and build simple tooling for business processes of any kind. They have snapped up various companies like ExactTarget (bulk email), Demandware (aka SFCC, probably what's being discussed here), Heroku, and Slack. I assume the main synergy is just of the business kind. You can include Slack in a big overall Salesforce "deal" and have one big (steak dinners and alcohol-style) contract negotiation. And honestly even though I teased above about the lack of integration or consistency (it took like 10 years for one to be able to even log into ET with Salesforce creds), I'm glad that they don't really do anything to their acquisitions to integrate them, since I have no desire to have any integration between say, Slack, and our bulk emailing platform, and anything like that would surely make Slack worse.

ethbr1 2y ago
To be fair, they bought Quip four years before Slack, so they haven't all been winners.
tootie 2y ago
My org decided rather suddenly to adopt Salesforce Marketing Cloud which sounded like a plausible decision until I found out it was ExactTarget and looked pretty much the same as it did in 2004 and also doesn't really integrate with Salesforce CRM in any useful way.
ianhawes 2y ago
Is the steak dinner and alcohol-fueled (and I'll throw in golf) contract negotiation real? I keep hearing about it on HN comments but my experience with enterprise sales has been almost the complete opposite. Lots of meetings on Zoom and occasionally a drink at industry events.
- billbrown 2y ago

skipants 2y ago

Mirroring what you're saying: I've worked with a company who has a "Salesforce Product Manager". A whole person dedicated to managing their Salesforce integration. I haven't used it myself, but seeing that role exists makes Salesforce sound both complicated and expensive.

lesuorac 2y ago

IIUC, the big advantage of Salesforce is that it forces you to be in a singular ecosystem and that it's a re-org for data instead of people.