Salesforce.Com Inc at Canaccord Genuity eCommerce Sustainable Advantage Forum Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Maybe just to level set everybody, can you talk a little bit about your background? You've been in the MarTech space for a long, long time. Maybe how that brought you to Salesforce and kind of what your role is at the firm today?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes. That's awesome. I mean you're the main man to talk to with all the hot trends happening at Salesforce, so that's great. Given, obviously, the focus of today is e-comm, we're going to focus the conversation there, but I do have some questions I can maybe cross into some of the other clouds. But let's start with kind of like the last year and what's happened in the pandemic. I mean it's just been such a transformative period in commerce. And it feels like everybody made the move to online if they weren't there already. Maybe just talk about kind of the biggest challenges that you saw in your customer base and kind of how Salesforce was able to help those folks solve their needs?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes. It's super interesting, right? I mean, Salesforce is so big and does so much that we don't always get the shine of light on some of the interesting stuff that you guys are doing. I remember Demandware going down the road of like order management, when you guys acquired them, it's interesting to hear the timing of it and how that impacted kind of your opportunities in the pandemic. One thing I wanted to hit on, look, we've obviously seen like the record GMV in the space. I think you guys reported 74% GMV growth in Q4. So volume and value of transactions is super strong. I'm curious about what you saw from a new business perspective, right? Because we also heard of traditional brick-and-mortar customers kind of moving online for the first time out of necessity essentially. Maybe just talk about kind of the demand drivers for Salesforce over the last year or so?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes, perfect. Let's put a finer point on the GMV part of the equation, right? Because I think your business model is a little bit different than others in the space. We kind of see this like instant gratification jump in growth for a company like a Shopify or the like. Maybe just talk about kind of how that GMV might flow through the P&L for Salesforce?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes. So it's fair to think...

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes. But it's fair to assume that some of the strength that we've seen in terms of volumes have yet to translate into your financials for Salesforce.

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes. Makes perfect sense. All right. So enterprise deployments in the space are generally pretty sticky, right? It's like open heart surgery to kind of replatform your e-commerce system. That said, I think there's a perception among investors that Demandware maybe getting a little bit old around the edges, right? That it's a bit more IT resource intensive versus some of the maybe newer tools to the space. How would you respond to that? And then maybe you could talk about kind of where Salesforce has invested in the platform and where those efforts are focused?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes, yes. That's helpful. As we think about like delivering an omnichannel experience, we get a lot of questions around marketplaces, social, mobile. Maybe just talk about kind of how Salesforce helps its merchants across each of those 3 channels and kind of how you bring it all together?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes. So we had -- we did a session with BigCommerce earlier, and they were talking about headless as well. It seems to be a big thing. Any way to like frame where we're at in terms of headless penetration? Like what are you seeing? I'm curious because you guys obviously have more of an enterprise customer base, kind of what you guys are seeing as a barometer for the market?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes. Yes. And actually, maybe that's a decent segue into a question around like how much of the commerce experience is powered kind of directly by Salesforce versus how much are you relying on marketplace partners? And I guess that kind of gets into the question of open architecture versus vertically integrated stack and philosophically, kind of how you view the market?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes, makes perfect sense. Two more questions I want to get to. Just how tightly is Commerce Cloud integrated to the rest of the Salesforce stack right now? And I'm thinking about and you alluded to some of this with the integration with Service Cloud, et cetera, with the order management product, but like as you manage a customer journey across marketing, service, commerce, like what are you able to do from a data perspective? And how should we think about like Einstein and AI kind of influencing your e-commerce efforts?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes. Yes, makes sense. Last question from me, and it's the same one we've been asking kind of all of our presenters today just to get kind of a good full scope perspective, and it's along the lines of kind of expect the unexpected. Like what's a prediction that you have about the e-commerce space over the next 2 to 3 years that may surprise folks?

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : You would be both.

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : Yes. Yes. I hope you're right. I can tell my wife, I'm an influencer in the 2021. Adam, thank you so much for doing this. You've got a lot in your plate and exciting stuff at Salesforce, so it's great to have this conversation with you and really appreciate your participation.

Question: David E. Hynes - Canaccord Genuity Corp., Research Division - Analyst : All right. We'll talk soon. Take care.