Why Power Platform might succeed after all
A trip down memory lane to bet on the right horse
I was going to title this as “Why Microsoft needs to have a Mark Benioff (CEO of Salsforce) in their Power Platform team to succeed in the CRM space”.
But changed it.
Why?
Salesforce has unrealistic P/E(price to earnings): There was an interview from SugarCRM CEO from a while ago which came to my mind.
He pointed out that his platform was earlier in the CRM space than salesforce but lost out to Salesforce as Marc Benioff (CEO of Salesforce) could raise a lot of money from investors and he couldn't. SugarCRM CEO later sold the company after unsuccessfully trying to pivot from open source model to a paid one (another day’s topic but a bad decision in my opinion). That's what made me look at Salesforce. But it wasn't pretty. It's trading at a p/e (price to earnings) ratio of 100. Compared to 36 for Microsoft. 25 for google. Anyone who is following stock market will say 100 p/e is mostly for vaporware. So will I. The logic is because the shareholders are betting on the vision, not the product they make. Microsoft with a healthy P/E means the investors have realistic expectations. Salesforce is at a disadvantage here as they will show enormous continuous growth to keep the investors happy. They recently cut 10% of their workforce. And tried to rehire many of those fired. They are unstable. Microsoft is pretty stable.
Frictionless entry: Another big one is how easy it is to get started with the power platform compared to salesforce. I signed up to salesforce again. The experience is not good. Microsoft is much easier. Salesforce reps call you when you sign up with them and they hang up once you tell them you are a small company. Microsoft do not call you but that makes them better from a user onboarding perspective as they have made the platform automated onboarding quite easy.
The AI lead:
OpenAI and Microsoft's partnerships also give Microsoft a big lead on the AI stage. I don't need to explain myself on this I feel.
Experience with Small and Medium sized businesses:
MS experience with Azure AD and Small and Medium Sized businesses along with Enterprise customers. I liked when they introduced new SKUs (F1) and have stayed competitive with their baseline pricing, which is even better value than google suite, both on pricing and on features. Salesforce does not have any such footprints to begin with.
Integrations: Microsoft already makes windows and teams and other suites of apps that integrate with power platform quite easily. Salesforce does not have such existing enterprise footprint. So they have to innovate more and innovate faster and keep users happy to continue getting money from enterprises.
Hopefully I made some good points. Please reach out to me at puskark4@gmail.com and or LinkedIn if you'd like to provide feedback or connect
. For now, as a power platform architect, I feel good about my decision to bet on Microsoft.