ServiceNow landed nine CRM and Industry Workflow deals worth over $1MN last quarter.
The tech giant also revealed that 16 of its top 20 deals included CRM.
ServiceNow didn’t add much more color to these deals. Yet, it underlined that enterprises like Pure Storage, The Whole Group, and Yokohama City are now “on the CRM journey with ServiceNow.”
Thanks to these deals, CRM and Industry Workflows remains ServiceNow’s fastest-growing business.
That’s according to Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, who reiterated his objective to “be the leader” in the CRM market.
McDermott first voiced this goal after ServiceNow’s $2.8BN acquisition of Moveworks.
Since then, ServiceNow snapped up CPQ provider Logik.ai, which – according to company leaders – represents another “major acceleration” in its CRM ambitions.
ServiceNow supports those CRM ambitions with a differentiated strategy.
Indeed, it’s not competing on price or ease of implementation like many others in the space do.
Instead, ServiceNow delivers service, sales, and order management on a unified platform.
From there, the vendor leverages its workflow expertise to pull that unified CRM platform closer to the back and middle office, providing a more data-rich experience.
Yet, as McDermott stressed during an earnings call: “Our ambitions [in CRM] supersede a database.”
After all, with those workflows laid out, ServiceNow can connect functional teams, pull front-office teams into the broader enterprise, and put AI agents to work.
“We believe strongly that our massive capabilities have emboldened us to go after a CRM in a differentiated way,” continued McDermott.
The customers are responding. They realize, whether you’re a telco or a manufacturer or a public sector entity, the fragmented legacy CRM stacks without this unified platform approach actually can’t really take advantage of AI.
“So we’re going to make CRM faster. We’re going to make it smarter, and it’s going to be purpose-built for modern business,” he concluded.
Could ServiceNow Lead the Fragmented CRM Market?
Ultimately, ServiceNow’s strategy aims to displace Salesforce as the CRM market leader.
That’s an almighty task, given that Salesforce outsells its closest competitor – Microsoft – by a ratio of almost four-to-one, according to 2024 IDC data.
However, the IDC study also suggests that – even with that lead – Salesforce only occupies 21.7 percent of the market.
Critically, that speaks to just how fragmented the space is and perhaps the potential for a disruptor like ServiceNow that’s not just competing on price or with a few more bells and whistles.
That said, any threat to Salesforce’s CRM leadership is surely long-term. After all, it continues to consolidate its CRM ecosystem while maintaining its frenetic pace of agentic AI innovation.
Earlier this month, it even introduced two new editions of Agentforce in just two weeks.
Nevertheless, recent rumblings from Salesforce suggest it may make a big push in ITSM – the market ServiceNow established – which could indicate its wariness over ServiceNow targeting CRM.
ServiceNow Pens a Deal to Expand Its CRM Business in Europe & the Middle East
During ServiceNow’s earnings call, McDermott also celebrated a new partnership with Devoteam, a prominent consulting firm.
ServiceNow claims the move will “redefine” CRM transformation for businesses based across Europe and the Middle East.
Indeed, Devoteam will deliver “end-to-end solutions” that include ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management (CSM), Sales & Order Management (SOM), and Field Service Management (FSM) platforms.
“Working together, we’re positioned to help our customers realize a faster time to value and new levels of productivity while delivering standout customer experiences within their CRM initiatives,” summarized Cathy Mauzaize, President of EMEA at ServiceNow, in a press release.
ServiceNow also announced new partnerships with Aptiv and Vodafone Business.
In the case of Aptive, the companies will develop joint AI solutions for the telco, automotive, enterprise, and industrial sectors.
Meanwhile, Vodafone will leverage ServiceNow’s Service Assurance solutions for telecoms to deliver more proactive, AI-led support to its own customers.
More on ServiceNow’s Latest Earnings
Alongside its burgeoning CRM business, ServiceNow had much more to celebrate in Q1.
Its subscription revenue growth surpassed analysts’ expectations, exceeding $3BN for the quarter and rising 20 percent year-over-year (YoY) in constant currency.
ServiceNow also secured 72 deals with an annual contract value (ACV) greater than $1MN.
In doing so, it recorded its biggest Q1 ever in terms of ACV from net new customers.
ServiceNow also passed the milestone of having 500 customers drive over $5MN in ACV, with those contributing $20MN+ increasing by almost 40 percent YoY.
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