CEO of customer relationship management platform Salesforce (CRM), Marc Benioff, retweeted a very interesting post. The post, shared by popular anchor and correspondent Jon Erlichman, contains an image of Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon (AMZN), on the cover page of Time magazine in 1999. This was the year when Bezos was named Time person of the year, having raked in $1.5 billion in annual revenues. Interestingly, in the post, Erlichman pointed out that that is exactly the amount Amazon generated on a per-day basis in 2021.
Though the caption of the post is a bit of an exaggeration, it is true that Amazon crossed the average $1 billion-a-day mark in 2020, the year it brought in $386.1 billion in annual revenues. This highlights the manifold growth that Amazon has achieved over the years, under the leadership of Bezos.
In contrast, Salesforce has a long way to go before arriving where Amazon stands now, in terms of revenues. Its annual revenues for fiscal 2021 came up to $21.3 billion.
However, both are leaders in their own rights. While Amazon reigns in the e-commerce and cloud spaces, Salesforce is a dominant player in the customer relationship management market. Salesforce’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model focuses on salesforce automation, customer responsiveness and support, software, social media monitoring and marketing, and other social enterprise areas.
Interestingly, Salesforce revenues have witnessed a CAGR of 51.22% over the last 20 years, while Amazon went from $1.5 billion in 1999 to $386.1 billion in 2020. In its last reported quarter, Salesforce generated revenues of $6.86 billion, representing a climb of 27% year-over-year.
On the other hand, Amazon’s net sales of $110.81 billion increased 15% year-over-year in its last reported quarter.
