Updated: October 24, 2018
At Salesforce’s 2017 Dreamforce convention, the company announced its alliance with Google.
According to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, “There has never been an easier way for companies to run their entire business in the cloud–from productivity apps, email and analytics, to sales, service and marketing apps, this partnership will help make our customers smarter and more productive.”
Announcements like this are often met with skepticism, as they can quickly fade into the background. However, there are enough parts to this announcement that it may stand the test of time.
Here is a summary of the components of the announcement and what they each mean to both small and large businesses.
Google Workspace License Promotion For Salesforce Customers
Salesforce is now offering free Google Workspace licenses to Salesforce customers for up to twelve months. The promotion is available through Salesforce until December 31, 2018. Here are some of the details.
- Companies with 1-9 people can get Google Workspace Basic free for 3 months
- Companies with 10-349 employees can get Google Workspace Business free for 3 months
- Companies with over 350 employees can get Google Workspace Business free for one year
According to Google, “the number of eligible Google Workspace seats will be equal to the number of Salesforce seats. A higher number of seats may be offered for the promotion at the sole discretion of Google.”
Based on this, if a company has over 350 employees, but has only 50 Salesforce users, the promotion will apply to just the 50 Salesforce users. However, Google has left open the possibility of applying the promotion to more than the 50 Salesforce users. Salesforce does use the term “company wide” in its press release.
For a company with 350 employees and 50 Salesforce users, this represents a $6,000 savings (50 users x $10 x 12 months). If all 350 employees are eligible, the savings would be $42,000 (350 users x $10 x 12 months).
A business with 50 employees and 25 Salesforce users will save $750 (25 x $10 x 3 months). If all 50 employees are eligible, the savings is $1,500.
The order can be placed by a Salesforce administrator through the Salesforce store. There is a button on this page.
Hunter Willams of Google, who manages Google’s relationship with Salesforce, explains some of the current integrations and what’s on the roadmap (from October 23, 2018).
Salesforce License Promotion for Google Workspace Customers
Small businesses that are currently using Google Workspace can get the entry level Salesforce Sales Cloud Essentials a.k.a. Lightning Essentials free for three months. The Essentials license cost is $25 per user per month and is billed annually. A one year contract is required.
Essentials is for up to five users. As an entry level edition, it has a number of limitations compared to the pricier Salesforce editions. According to the fine print, the “three months free” offer will only be available through an email invitation from Google to Google Workspace customers.
For the maximum Essentials user count, this would represent a savings of $375 (5 users x $25 x 3 months).
Google Workspace Salesforce Integration
There are four areas of Google Workspace Salesforce integration that were announced.
1. Integration between Salesforce and Google Workspace used to only be available from third party vendors such as Cirrus Insight and YesWare.
Lightning for Gmail and Lighting Sync for Google are included for all Salesforce customers with Professional Edition and higher.
Salesforce is also offering new feature license called Salesforce Inbox that integrates Salesforce with Google Workspace. The cost of Salesforce Inbox is $25 per user per month.
2. All Google Workspace customers have the Hangouts Meet video conferencing app included in their subscription. If you’re a Google Workspace customer and haven’t tried Hangouts Meet, check it out. According to Salesforce, within Hangouts Meet, “users will be able to surface relevant Salesforce customer and account details, service case history, and more.”
3. Users can auto-update data between Salesforce Records or Reports and Google Sheets, which is the spreadsheet component of Google Workspace. Google has released a free Google Sheets add-on called Data connector for Salesforce.
4. Quip is a recent acquisition of Salesforce. It’s a competitor of sorts to Google Docs. As part of the alliance, teams will be able to embed and access Google Drive files (e.g., Google Docs, Slides, Sheets) or their Google Calendar inside Quip. According to Salesforce, “The Quip Live Apps integration with Google Drive is expected to be generally available in the first half of 2018 with any Quip Enterprise License, for $25 per user, per month.”
Google Analytics 360 for Salesforce
Different from free Google Analytics, Google Analytics 360 is a paid offering from Google. This integration offering was primarily developed to exchange data with the Salesforce Marketing Cloud. For example, Data from Analytics 360 will be visible in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud reporting interface. Marketing Cloud tends to benefit larger B2C companies the most. However, it is available to any size B2C or B2B company.
Data from the Sales Cloud will also be available in Analytics 360. Details can be found in this post.
Update: On January 17, 2018, Google announced the first integration — Sales Cloud to Analytics 360.
Salesforce’s Use of the Google Cloud Platform
Salesforce plans to use Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for its core services as part of the company’s international infrastructure expansion. GCP is a competitor to Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
Summary of the Benefits to Businesses
For Salesforce customers with over 350 employees that are using Salesforce, a move to Google Workspace would represent a substantial financial savings. Smaller businesses would benefit financially, but not to as large a degree.
For companies that use both Google Workspace and Salesforce, the Gmail, Google Sheets and Hangout Meets integration features can translate into improved collaboration, greater sales effectiveness, better customer service and additional insights into CRM data.
Existing Google Workspace customers can test the Salesforce waters without a large investment by subscribing to between one and five licenses of Salesforce Lightning Essentials at a reduced cost.
Marketers at larger B2C companies may stand to benefit the most from insights provided by the Salesforce Marketing Cloud to Google Analytics 360 integration.
Small business owners can download a free sample business plan from Salesforce.
