Klarna has confirmed to CX Today that it has stopped using Workday and Salesforce’s CRM solutions.
Yet, despite reports suggesting it’s replacing them with AI, Klarna is instead using Deel as its HR platform and has pulled together other SaaS tools to replace its CRM functionality.
While Klarna didn’t confirm these “other” tools, it’s blending alternative third-party and in-house solutions.
Klarna will also continue to leverage Slack and – therefore – remain a Salesforce partner. It’s just no longer leveraging its CRM apps.
The “buy now pay later” services provider shared this update with CX Today after suggesting that particular publications misinterpreted remarks by Sebastian Siemiatkowski, CEO of Klarna.
In doing so, they made it seem like Klarna is using AI to replace many of their SaaS apps altogether. However, it’s switching them with SaaS alternatives, converging capabilities, and layering over AI.
Indeed, a Klarna spokesperson told CX Today: “We have a number of large internal initiatives that combine AI, standardization, and simplification to enable us to shut down several software-as-a-service providers.
This consolidation, supported by AI, will help create a much more lightweight tech stack, allowing us to run the business more effectively and with higher quality.
Previous media reports had made their way through to Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, who couldn’t make heads or tails of how Klarna could just rip out systems like Salesforce and Workday.
Just two weeks ago, he told the Big Technology Podcast: “We want to know exactly what they’re doing to manage their employee information, their financial information, their customer information… what the technology specifically is.”
“If you make a provocative statement and say, “Listen, the future of software is not what you’re using now. It’s this great new thing,” you have to at least tell us what the great new thing is.”
Yet, there appears to be no “great new thing”. Ultimately, it’s a chopping-back exercise that prioritizes particular apps and in-house innovation to pull everything together. The Klarna spokesperson continued:
We don’t want to talk publicly about how we’re solving each use case other than to say we have – of course – solved for the data management aspects raised by Marc. We’re a licensed bank so we have good processes for handling personal data.
However, it’s fascinating to consider how Klarna didn’t seek out a direct CRM platform alternative as it did with Workday. That may embolden those who have questioned the future of CRM solutions.
Sam Lessin, former VP of Product at Facebook, is one such person, claiming last month that his venture capital firm now uses Google’s AI application NotebookLM as a CRM alternative.
NotebookLM assists users in interacting with their documents, generating summaries, answers, and explanations based on uploaded content.
In a post on X, Lessin asserted that he can’t imagine how “any structured CRM product that requires work to update and maintain will survive this shift.” Here’s his full post:
Short all the structured CRM companies… a personal example with NotebookLM. pic.twitter.com/6ky5mCxNbJ
— sam lessin ☠️ (@lessin) October 29, 2024
Yet, it doesn’t seem that Google itself views applications like NotebookLM as a “CRM killer”. Indeed, it reportedly investigated an acquisition of HubSpot earlier this year.
Moreover, even if CRM solutions do face an existential threat, Salesforce is much more than a CRM provider now. It’s a data and AI business, too.
Its CRM + data + AI ecosystem is where it hopes to drive long-term customer value and – ultimately – offer customers security.
That security will appeal to many, as Salesforce has warned about taking more of a DIY approach – like Klarna has – in embedding AI into business operations.
“I don’t think you can DIY this,” said Benioff in his Dreamforce 2024 keynote. “I think you want a single professionally managed, secure, reliable, and available platform.
“I think you want the ability to deploy Agentforce capabilities across all of these people who are vital to your company, all of these digital and human workers.”
Thankfully, as Klarna seems set to become a public company, onlookers may soon get more visibility into the long-term success of its technology transformation.
More on Klarna and Its Generative AI Adventures
While it’s perhaps too soon to evaluate the success of Klarna post-Salesforce and Workday, it has reported significant success in leveraging new GenAI use cases – particularly in customer service.
In February, it made a splash by announcing that its GenAI-fuelled virtual agent – built with OpenAI –automated two-thirds of its customer service chats.
In doing so, the bot completed the work of 700 employees.
By applying GenAI throughout its customer service operation, Klarna revealed that its query resolution time dropped from an average of 11 minutes to two minutes. Meanwhile, its customer satisfaction rates remained steady.
In August, the company also revealed that a drip-feed of AI innovations over the past two years had enabled it to trim its workforce by 1,500.
Finally, last month, Siemiatkowski claimed in a LinkedIn video:
Klarna’s ongoing AI-powered innovations continue to positively impact our bottom line, contributing to a net income of $20 million in Q3.
These numbers are impressive, but whether more of a DIY approach can lead to longer-term success – away from an all-encompassing ecosystem like Salesforce – remains to be seen.
Indeed, much of Salesforce’s value doesn’t come from its individual apps. Instead, it’s in how customers can leverage the ecosystem to share data and deploy autonomous agents that streamline and automate workflows.
That’s the promise, and many Salesforce customers are realizing that potential, with positive customer stories from the likes of Capita, Heathrow Airport, and Wiley.
However, as more customers play with Agentforce, onlookers can seek references to consider whether an option like Salesforce or a Klarna-esque approach is the better fit for them.
