The rapid growth of the Salesforce ecosystem, including customers, developers and partners, is having an impact that stretches well beyond just the company’s own success. Two new studies take a look at what effect the growth in Salesforce deployments is having on the economy and the jobs market.
On the jobs front, an analysis by Burning Glass leveraged the research firm’s proprietary database of more than 100 million job postings collected across over 40,000 sites and found that more than 300,000 job postings over the past year (July 2015 to June 2016) called for Salesforce skills—everything from a basic understanding of Salesforce to complex software development.
Those job postings looking for Salesforce skills represent a 260 percent increase from 2012, with demand for Salesforce developers and administrators more than tripling. The research firm also found that the average salary across the 300,000 postings is more than $70,000 annually, including more than $100,000 for Salesforce developers.
“People are reinventing their resume thanks to Salesforce,” Sarah Franklin, senior vice president of developer relations at Salesforce, told eWEEK. Salesforce has an online training service called Trailhead designed to let anyone learn Salesforce-related skills. Users can achieve micro-certification in specific skills that employers may be looking for and highlight those in a resume or LinkedIn profile.
“Being digitally savvy is essential to being successful in today’s increasingly dynamic and competitive marketplace,” Jeff Kaplan, managing director at consulting firm ThinkStrategies, told eWEEK. “Given these escalating demands, it’s not surprising that cloud-based SaaS [software-as-a-service] alternatives like those offered by Salesforce are gaining more market share.”
Economic Impact Heading for $400 Billion?
Meanwhile, research firm IDC has released a white paper sponsored by Salesforce that looked at Salesforce’s impact on both the economy and jobs.
On a worldwide basis, IDC expects some 1.9 million jobs to be created by Salesforce and its ecosystem within the Salesforce customer base from the use of cloud computing between the end of 2015 and the end of 2020. More than 2.8 million “indirect” jobs will be created over that same time frame. These would include jobs created in the supply and distribution chains that serve Salesforce customers, as well as from new company employees spending money in the general economy.
Over this same five-year period, IDC estimates that Salesforce customers will add a whopping $389 billion in new business revenue to their local economies.
“Cloud computing generates these benefits primarily by permitting an increase in IT innovation, which in turn supports business innovation that leads to accelerated development schedules, faster project completion, shorter time to market for new products and lower operational costs,” IDC said in its report.
IDC also estimates that revenue from the Salesforce ecosystem is three to four times bigger than Salesforce itself because organizations that spend on cloud computing subscriptions also spend on ancillary products and services, from additional cloud subscription and professional services to additional software applications, hardware and managed services. By 2020, IDC predicts that for every dollar Salesforce makes, the company’s ecosystem will make $4.14.
Salesforce’s ecosystem will be on full display at the company’s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco Oct. 4-7, expected to attract more than 170,000 attendees. Franklin said there will be a special Trailhead area where attendees can get a sense of how the training works and earn a Trailhead online badge in about 10 minutes for learning how to connect a Salesforce account to a mobile or so-called internet of things device.
The company also is investing in the next generation of users at a very young age. Dreamforce will feature Trailhead for Kids, which breaks down the process of creating a lemonade stand business using Salesforce, including building a mobile app to take orders, inventory management and various ways to connect to customers.
“We think it’s a fun way to learn Salesforce,” said Franklin.