Ford and Salesforce Partnered on an Industry Specific CRM

Hiding in plain sight was a little known joint venture launched between Ford and Salesforce in 2021.

Who is VIIZR?

A SaaS startup building a custom CRM for trades businesses - entirely native to Salesforce ❗

This is part of Salesforce's OEM license business line.

While most of Salesforce revenue comes from direct subscriptions (i.e. companies using Sales Cloud internally and paying monthly license fees), OEM is a model where companies build custom solutions on top of Salesforce and pay a % of their subscription revenue back to Salesforce for each license sold.

(It’s similar to the cut Apple takes when a Developer lists paid apps in the AppStore.)

The fact the Salesforce OEM licenses exist present an enormous opportunity for Independent Developers and startups to use the core Salesforce infrastructure and launch niche or industry-specific applications on top of the out-of-the-box features.

For example, VIIZR is a CRM for trades / services businesses like plumbing, HVAC, landscaping, and general contractors. It helps them manage jobs, work orders, client data, estimates, scheduling & dispatching, maps & routing etc.

Sounds a lot like Salesforce Field Service, eh? It’s because VIIZR leverages a ton of these native Salesforce features and tailors it a bit more to fit the specific needs of their customers. This is all further evidence that the future of Salesforce is industry specific solutions.

Who are some of the biggest players building industry-specific CRMs on Salesforce?

👉 Veeva Systems is CRM for Pharma ($27B market cap)

👉 AgentSync is CRM for Insurance ($111m raised)

👉 Litify is CRM for Legal ($60m raised)

👉 nCino, Inc. is CRM for Banking ($3B market cap)

👉 FinancialForce has a 'CRM' for Professional Services ($193m raised)

👉 Navatar is CRM for Private Equity