At its London World Tour, Salesforce outlines how it plans to grow the company’s impact in the UK.
British businesses have faced unprecedented headwinds over the last two years — from the pandemic and war to global supply chain issues. In light of the challenging macro environment, the top priority in the board room has shifted from one focused on growth to efficiency. The automation and efficiencies cloud technology can deliver represent a clear solution, and today digital transformation is at the heart of the CEO agenda in the UK.
At World Tour London, we are committing the full power of Salesforce to serve and support British businesses grappling with such challenges. And, we’ll showcase how companies of all sizes and industries are partnering with Salesforce as their trusted digital advisor and leveraging the Salesforce Customer 360 as their digital platform. We’re also sharing how our teams will support digital transformation in the future of work, and how Salesforce will invest in various community support initiatives as part of our commitment to reskill the future workforce.
Growing Salesforce’s UK presence through customer success
The UK is a key growth market for Salesforce and we have built a diverse and thriving customer and partner ecosystem. Home to some of the world’s most innovative industries and companies, it’s inspiring to see so many business leaders recognise the power of the cloud.
At the same time, we’re acutely aware of the pressure felt by our customers to create incredible experiences across every interaction with their customers to remain competitive. They need to realise productivity gains, efficiencies, and resilience.
Leading British companies like Asda and Currys in the retail sector, and Revolut and GoHenry in the financial space, have announced they are leveraging Salesforce technology to connect with their customers in a whole new way across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and more.
I’m incredibly optimistic about the future of UK business and the continued innovation and growth we will continue to see.
How Salesforce’s Success from Anywhere strategy is informing the future of work
In conversations with our customers, the future of work continues to be raised as a top priority. Every company is navigating how to be successful in this new digital-first environment. While there has been a lot of focus on “where” we work, we believe the focus needs to be on the “how.”
At Salesforce we don’t have a return to office mandate. Our focus is on creating incredible experiences for employees, no matter where they’re working.
We’re empowering teams to decide how, when and where they work through our Flex Team Agreements. And we’ll continue to invest in our physical spaces, which serve a different purpose to what they did two years ago. Employees are still coming to the office to get work done, but they’re using it in different ways. The office has become a destination for collaborating and connecting. At Salesforce Tower London:
- 59% of office-assigned employees came in at least once each week in May.
- Wednesdays and Thursdays have had the highest attendance in recent weeks, followed by Tuesdays.
- Salesforce Tower London was our second highest attended global office in May, behind only Salesforce headquarters in San Francisco.
- And London, like many of our larger offices, has seen spikes in attendance on days where large team events like Town Halls, Company All Hands, and team offsites take place.
In addition to our physical spaces, we’ve built a digital HQ with Slack where we can communicate and collaborate from anywhere. Slack has made us more efficient and productive.
- As of April, we reduced the number of emails sent per day by Salesforce employees by 42%.
- Our meetings are down 7% across the company.
- We’ve adopted Huddles and Clips for fast collaboration and asynchronous communication.
Salesforce’s commitment to giving back in the UK
Helping people learn is close to my heart, as I have experienced first-hand the challenges of finding pathways to working in business.
I’m also acutely aware that the UK is facing a digital skills crisis. According to recent research by Salesforce, more than three-quarters of people do not feel ready to operate in a digital-first world. As the digital economy continues to grow, more and more jobs will be created. Salesforce, and its network of partners and customers in the UK, will alone create 271,700 new jobs by 2026 (IDC).
There is a lack of understanding of just how accessible digital skills can be. Businesses like Salesforce have a responsibility to provide opportunities for people to train. One of the ways we are addressing this is through Trailhead, our online learning tool – it’s free and empowers anyone to learn new technology and business skills, and to hone existing ones.
This year, we’re bringing our apprenticeship programme population to over 90 young adults from under-represented backgrounds. And, we’ve also awarded a $500,000 grant to Ada, the National College for Digital Skills, who will deliver a two year project aiming to attract and support young adults from underserved backgrounds in London and Manchester to access, and thrive in high quality entry-level digital apprenticeships.
We’ve further awarded a $400,000 grant to charity, Leadership Through Sport & Business (LTSB), who will launch a three year initiative preparing and supporting 70 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into legal and marketing apprenticeships.
Investing in Britain’s businesses and communities for the future
We have a relentless focus on remaining a trusted partner for British businesses, and a heart for supporting our communities there. With technologies a vital component for both, we will remain committed to bringing our full support to bear in this important region.
Explore World Tour London here and find out more about how Salesforce could help your business or community.
