arbiter
JournalsAccount

Teaching Case: How to Grow the Salesforce Platform Business?

Martin Mocker & Ina M. Sebastian

Journal of the Association for Information Systems2026article
AJG 4*ABDC A*
Weight
0.50

Abstract

In 2025, Salesforce was the provider of the CRM system with the biggest market share. In addition to providing the CRM software product, the company also offered Salesforce Platform—enabling customers to customize their CRM system, allowing partners (third-party developers) to develop cloud apps that could be distributed via Salesforce’s AppExchange marketplace, and serving as the internal digital platform for Salesforce’s CRM products. Since its official launch in 2008, Salesforce Platform had become a major revenue contributor for the company, including from over 9,000 partner apps in AppExchange. Based on interviews with twelve senior Salesforce executives, this teaching case illustrates what it takes for a product company to expand its digital platform supporting its internal products into an external-facing, thriving platform business. The case explores the challenges and practices required to establish and grow a platform business.

Cite this paper

@article{martin2026,
  title        = {{Teaching Case: How to Grow the Salesforce Platform Business?}},
  author       = {Martin Mocker & Ina M. Sebastian},
  journal      = {Journal of the Association for Information Systems},
  year         = {2026},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

Teaching Case: How to Grow the Salesforce Platform Business?

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.