In 2011, two entrepreneurs, Bret Taylor and Kevin Gibbs, founded Quip (opens in new tab). Before co-founding the company, Taylor founded and sold FriendFeed, an early social network, to Facebook, the leading social media (opens in new tab) platform globally. Likewise, Gibbs held a previous role at Google, where he helped launch its cloud computing platform.
The original Quip app focused on word processing (opens in new tab) and spreadsheet (opens in new tab) creation. It added more features over time and morphed into a full-fledged productivity software (opens in new tab) suite.
In 2016, Salesforce acquired Quip. Salesforce is the most popular customer relationship management (CRM) software (opens in new tab) platform globally. After acquiring Quip, it integrated the app into its broader software suite.
Quip: Plans and pricing
Unlike most note-taking apps (opens in new tab), Quip is a strictly paid tool. There’s no free version, and the paid plans are pretty costly. There are three such plans; Starter, Plus, and Advanced, costing $10, $25, and $100 per user per month respectively.
You can pay for the Starter plan on the official Quip website and start using it right away. However, you have to contact the company’s sales team if you want the Plus or Advanced package. The good thing is that you can test the Starter package under a 30-day free trial period.
If your company already has a Salesforce CRM (opens in new tab) subscription, you can create a free Quip account for personal use, but sharing files within your company has limits unless they pay for a separate workplace subscription.
Quip: Features
As we’ve mentioned, you can sign up for the Quip Starter package directly on its website without any external help. You can create a new account for your subscription or sign in with your existing Salesforce or Slack account.
The first feature you should notice on your Quip dashboard is creating notes. To do this, look for the compose icon resembling a pen on a notebook and click on it. You’ll see several options, including creating a new document, which you should click, and the app will redirect you to a text editor where you can type in notes.
Quip has a pretty good editor that allows users to format text extensively. For example, you can bold, underline, italicize, or strike-through text. You can also change the text color, which helps identify important blocks of text or make them aesthetically pleasing. Likewise, you can use the text highlighter to highlight specific blocks of text, which also helps with identifying vital information within a note.
You can insert photos or videos when typing in the text editor. Quip lets you fetch photos from Unsplash, a popular stock photography website, or insert animated GIFs from Giphy. Similarly, you can upload multimedia directly from your device.
Another great feature of the text editor is the checklist tool, which comes in handy for task management. You can create checklists, which consist of checkboxes attached to lines of text representing tasks that you want to complete. Once you complete the task, you can mark the checkbox to automatically strike through the text, indicating completion.
Once you’re done creating a note, you can save it for personal use on your Quip account or share it with other users through their usernames or email addresses. Anyone you share a note with can read, edit, or comment on it, depending on the permission you supply the person.
Quip: Interface and use
The Quip app has one of the best interfaces we’ve encountered in a note-taking tool. The interface is minimal and uncluttered, making the app enjoyable. We also liked the step-by-step tutorials the app provided to help guide us through it.
Quip: Support
As a paid Quip subscriber, you can contact customer support representatives from its parent company, Salesforce, if you run into challenges. Likewise, any user can access the official Salesforce Knowledge Base, which has extensive tutorials, documentation, and answers to frequently asked questions concerning the Quip app.
Quip: The competition
Quip’s main competitors include Bear (opens in new tab), Simplenote (opens in new tab), and Ulysses (opens in new tab). We consider Quip to be better regarding functionality and ease of use. However, the app is considerably more expensive than these rivals.
Quip: Final verdict
We enjoyed using Quip all around. The app has a tidy interface that makes it easy to navigate. We also liked its comprehensive feature set, as it lets you format the content of your notes extensively and share them with other users alongside having an intuitive tool for creating spreadsheets.
The main drawback with the Quip app is its relatively high price.
We've featured the best iPad Pro notetaking apps (opens in new tab).
Editor’s note: This article has been condensed and repurposed from an existing article from Salesforce.
With rising gas prices, food shortages, skyrocketing interest rates and ever-present inflation, consumers are thinking and that means retailers are worried, too. In the face of these challenging factors, the stars are aligning to deliver another “unprecedented” holiday season for the retail industry.
We’re already seeing online shopping demand level off, with consumers finding a new balance between digital and physical channels. In fact, Salesforce has already predicted that the modest growth of the 2021 holiday shopping season could foreshadow this year, with Q1 data showing a 3% YoY decrease in global digital sales. But, given the significant surge of the last two years, there’s no cause for alarm relative to the health of online shopping.
We also can’t ignore inflationary pressures. In the first quarter, the average selling price (ASP) increased by 11% in the U.S. and shoppers placed 12% fewer orders worldwide compared to the same period in 2021. A peek at second-quarter data indicates this trend is accelerating, with April and May showing a 7% increase in ASP on top of a 17% increase during the same period in 2021. This scenario sets up a battle across all sectors of the economy for brands looking to tap into consumer wallets as they shop for fewer items at fewer retailers.
Despite these economic headwinds, it’s no secret that the industry is seeing continued growth. In fact, record inflation has historically been a tailwind in catapulting revenues. But this era of inflationary pressure is unique because the cost of goods is rising faster than what can be reasonably passed on to consumers. For the 2022 holiday season, the trillion-dollar question is how do brands and retailers maintain growth, but do it profitably with an omnichannel approach?
Here are our five holiday shopping predictions to consider as you develop your strategy for the 2022 season.
1. Shoppers will Buy Even Earlier to Avoid Price Hikes
While shopping sprees leading up to Black Friday happened before 2020, more shoppers bought in early November over the last two years due to inventory and supply chain issues. But this year, the main motivating factor driving early purchases will be inflation. According to Salesforce research, 42% more shoppers worldwide and 37% more in the U.S. plan to start buying gifts earlier – the No. 1 behavioral change this holiday due to inflation. They hope to snag their holiday gifts before prices rise too much.
While we predict that ASP will increase monthly between 8% and 12% for the remainder of 2022, there is a silver lining for holiday shoppers: the return of discounting.
The inventory crisis of 2021 drove retail buyers to purchase too much in certain categories. Now that this 2021 inventory has finally reached warehouses, retailers have a new inventory problem: too much product, many in the wrong categories. Now, to increase inventory turn and remove excess stock from their balance sheets, retailers will likely launch a highly promotional season starting in late summer.
2. Loyalty Shifts to Value
In 2020 and 2021, customer loyalty saw a huge shift to convenience and safety as consumers demanded a frictionless experience – often buying online from home and having the order fulfilled in or from the store. Now, as inflation rises, consumer loyalty is shifting again — this time to experience and value.
In fact, according to Salesforce research, half of all shoppers will switch brands this holiday due to pricing. This means that 2.5 billion shoppers worldwide could ditch their brand for a lower-priced competitor.
Pricing and discounting strategies will be more crucial than ever to holiday success, as 17% of global shoppers (850 million) and 15% of U.S. shoppers (31 million) are unsure if they will buy any gifts this year. Try these tactics to compete in an economy with an increasingly price-conscious shopper:
Personalization: By leaning into intelligent segmentation and personalization – driven by artificial intelligence – retailers can ensure they deliver the right product at the right price at the right time to the right customer.
Digital marketplaces: With 16% of shoppers saying they will increase their use of digital marketplaces this holiday, consider marketplace approaches this holiday to expand assortments on your site or offer products on third-party platforms.
3. Physical Stores will Drive Growth Across all Channels
Up to 60% of digital orders are now influenced by the store – whether demand is generated or fulfilled. This holiday season, with stores fully operational once again, we’ll see consumers gravitate to physical locations in even greater numbers. We predict that retailers with physical stores will grow online sales at a rate 1.5Xfaster than those without.
While there is an upside for those with brick-and-mortar locations, there also are potential operational challenges as well:
Experience versus cost: Consumers are gravitating to stores for the in-person experience they’ve missed, but labor costs have skyrocketed. The pressure on labor costs may only continue to mount this winter as we predict workers will face a nearly 200% increase in costs to work.
Demand versus inefficiencies: Online fulfillment through physical channels will continue to propel the store’s growth, but unresolved inefficiencies threaten to undermine this lift. For example, store associates should get measured on fulfillment metrics if they are picking and shipping.
Service versus complexity: Stores will once again be customer service destinations this holiday – whether shoppers interact in a physical store or via text, email, chat or video. Based on our research, 25% more customer service engagements this holiday – both physically or virtually – will involve associates compared to 2019. To maximize these opportunities, retailers must arm store associates with digital tools and online access.
4. Shoppers will Gravitate Toward Sustainable Options
We’ve found that 88% percent of consumers now expect brands and retailers to clearly state their values. And shockingly, 64% will stop doing business with a company if corporate values don’t align with their own.
This is especially true when it comes to the environment. According to Salesforce research, 83% of shoppers will seek out sustainable brands and products this holiday. In fact, after a company’s treatment of customers and employees, its environmental practices are the top factor influencing buying decisions, placing the importance of sustainability initiatives ahead of actions around racial and economic justice.
Consumers expect brands to be honest about their carbon footprint, so be prepared to account for your emissions. We are still in the early innings, though, so don’t despair. Today, 81 of the Digital Commerce 360 top 100 online global retailers publicly report sustainability initiatives regularly. However, based on our analysis, only 23% will promote sustainable practices – in shipping options, on the homepage or within the product detail page – this holiday season.
5: Retailers will Test NFT Drops
This season’s hot collectibles come straight out of the metaverse. In fact, 46% of shoppers said they would consider purchasing non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a digital asset that represents something unique or scarce stored on a blockchain. This could be a virtual version of a real item or a digital collectible. Younger shoppers particularly are drawn to “digital twins” — a digital version of a physical good. Gen Z is 4X more likely than Gen X to buy a physical good if it is paired with a digital twin this holiday.
Nonetheless, NFT purchases are still in an exploratory phase. And while the market for digital assets is small, expect retailers and brands to test new ideas and capitalize on the buzz this holiday season. We predict that approximately half a million NFTs will be purchased from retailers and brands between November and December, with a potential total market value of $54 million.
Put Salesforce’s Holiday Shopping Predictions to Work
For retailers, 2022 is about playing the long game. Economic challenges and shifting consumer preferences mean that leading with a data-driven strategy will be critical to reacting to conditions in real time. And while we can’t stop inflation, we can recession-proof our businesses by improving profitability and solving for operational inefficiencies.
Get our new Holiday Planning Guide for a year of happier shopping and discover strategies for delivering holiday happiness all year long.
Get the Salesforce 2022 Holiday Planning Guide for Retailers
Salesforce.com (CRM) closed at $189.75 in the latest trading session, marking a -0.22% move from the prior day. This change lagged the S&P 500's 0.12% loss on the day. At the same time, the Dow added 0.09%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq gained 0.4%.
Heading into today, shares of the customer-management software developer had gained 8.36% over the past month, lagging the Computer and Technology sector's gain of 10.34% and outpacing the S&P 500's gain of 8.25% in that time.
Salesforce.com will be looking to display strength as it nears its next earnings release, which is expected to be August 24, 2022. On that day, Salesforce.com is projected to report earnings of $1.02 per share, which would represent a year-over-year decline of 31.08%. Our most exact consensus estimate is calling for quarterly revenue of $7.7 billion, up 21.47% from the year-ago period.
For the full year, our Zacks Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of $4.75 per share and revenue of $31.73 billion, which would represent changes of -0.63% and +19.78%, respectively, from the prior year.
Investors should also note any exact changes to analyst estimates for Salesforce.com. These exact revisions tend to reflect the evolving nature of short-term business trends. As a result, we can interpret positive estimate revisions as a good sign for the company's business outlook.
Research indicates that these estimate revisions are directly correlated with near-term share price momentum. We developed the Zacks Rank to capitalize on this phenomenon. Our system takes these estimate changes into account and delivers a clear, actionable rating model.
Ranging from #1 (Strong Buy) to #5 (Strong Sell), the Zacks Rank system has a proven, outside-audited track record of outperformance, with #1 stocks returning an average of +25% annually since 1988. Over the past month, the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate has moved 0.15% lower. Salesforce.com is currently sporting a Zacks Rank of #3 (Hold).
Looking at its valuation, Salesforce.com is holding a Forward P/E ratio of 40.02. Its industry sports an average Forward P/E of 30.84, so we one might conclude that Salesforce.com is trading at a premium comparatively.
We can also see that CRM currently has a PEG ratio of 2.39. This popular metric is similar to the widely-known P/E ratio, with the difference being that the PEG ratio also takes into account the company's expected earnings growth rate. CRM's industry had an average PEG ratio of 2.21 as of yesterday's close.
The Computer - Software industry is part of the Computer and Technology sector. This industry currently has a Zacks Industry Rank of 164, which puts it in the bottom 35% of all 250+ industries.
The Zacks Industry Rank includes is listed in order from best to worst in terms of the average Zacks Rank of the individual companies within each of these sectors. Our research shows that the top 50% rated industries outperform the bottom half by a factor of 2 to 1.
Be sure to follow all of these stock-moving metrics, and many more, on Zacks.com.
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At Helium.com, the company website for a much-talked-about Web3 startup, the section under the header "HELIUM IS USED BY" included 14 logos yesterday, but there are only 12 such logos today. The missing logos, for the cloud-based software company Salesforce, and the e-scooter rental giant Lime, were both mentioned in a report on Friday by Mashable's Matt Binder.
The status of Helium's partnership with Lime was seriously in doubt after Russell Murphy, Lime's senior director of communications, told Mashable, "Beyond an initial test of its product in 2019, Lime has not had, and does not currently have, a relationship with Helium." Lime indicated that as of Friday it was preparing a cease and desist letter addressed to Helium.
In a statement to Mashable, Nova Labs, Helium's parent company, acknowledged Friday that Lime and Helium had grown apart after that 2019 product test. "Lime has since restructured and the team members we worked with are no longer employed there," the statement read.
Lime's supposed status as a client was not trivial, but part of what appeared to be a core part of Helium's marketing pitch. Helium bills itself as a decentralized network of Internet of things (IoT) devices, capable of providing their own connectivity where existing internet service providers can't or won't. Helium's hardware is, in a sense, only as good as the network of users keeping it functioning — except there's a bonus value proposition: the devices also mine a cryptocurrency, $HNT, whenever the network is used. And as long as major tech companies are customers, there is, in theory, plenty of crypto to be mined.
In a New York Times story from February, the use of the Helium network by Lime is cited as evidence that Helium is "a real product used by real people and companies every day." In fairness, the Times story also mentions that Helium is used by the Victor mouse trap company as well — apparently for its line of IoT-enabled mouse traps — and the reality of that partnership does not appear to be in dispute at this time.
However, as of yesterday, Salesforce, the other company associated with a logo now missing from Helium.com (and from the site's "Enterprise" page as well) had not commented publicly on its relationship with Helium.
UPDATE: August 2, 2022, 10:25 a.m. ET. A Spokesperson for Helium gave the following statement: "Since the Network launched in 2019, we’ve worked with a variety of companies on various applications and pilots. In the case of the brands mentioned in exact articles, we had approvals to talk about the use cases but we’re going to be much more rigorous now about the logo approval process going forward to avoid any confusion. Both Nova and our partner the Helium Foundation have removed the reference."
August 2, 2022, 10:25 a.m. ET. Eddie McGraw, a spokesperson for Salesforce, gave the following statement: "Helium is not and has never been a Salesforce partner."
The UK Government’s Crown Commercial Service (CCS) procurement body has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Salesforce to make it easier and cheaper for public sector organizations to buy from the supplier.
According to Philip Orumwense, Commercial Director and Chief Technology Procurement Officer at CCS:
The agreement will further ensure increased collaboration and aggregation of government and wider public sector spend to achieve increased automation, forecasting, reporting and customer engagement management tools.
The main items on the Salesforce MoU are:
- A discount on licences (Salesforce, Mulesoft, Tableau & Slack) and services for eligible UK public sector bodies, including health bodies.
- Free experimentation projects, so that eligible bodies can test and learn how Salesforce solutions can be used to meet their requirements.
- Direct access to a panel of Salesforce’s SME implementation partners.
- Discounted training and support.
- A discounted trial of Salesforce’s Net Zero Cloud, supporting the UK government’s drive towards Net Zero.
Salesforce has a number of UK public sector customers, including the Health Service Executive, Department for Works & Pensions, various local authorities and CCS itself.
More MoUs
CCS has signed a number of such MoUs in exact years with cloud suppliers, including the likes of Oracle, Google and Microsoft. Oracle’s agreement was first signed as far back as 2012 with an updated and expanded deal signed last year. At that time, Orumwense commented:
This enhanced Memorandum of Understanding will continue to deliver savings and benefits for new and existing public sector customers using Oracle's cloud based technologies. It will continue delivering value for money whilst supporting public sector customers' journey to the cloud.
Expanding the list of suppliers offering cloud services has become a political agenda item in the UK as legislators have queried the amount of business that has gone to Amazon Web Services (AWS). As of February last year, some £75 million of contracts had been awarded in the previous 12 months.
Lord Maude, who previously ran the UK Cabinet Office where he waged a war on excessively priced tech contracts and essentially began the MoU process in earnest as part of his reforms, was quoted as warning:
When it comes to hosting, we've regressed into allowing a small group, and one vendor, in particular, to dominate. If you take a view of the government as simply as a customer, it makes absolutely no sense for the government to be overly dependent on one supplier. No one would sensibly do that.
The Salesforce MoU looks well-timed as CCS recently launched a tender for a range of cloud services in a set of deals that could be worth up to £5 billion in total. Procurement notices have been issued under the G-Cloud 13 framework, covering cloud hosting, cloud software and cloud support, with a further lot for migration and set-up services to follow. Contracts can last for 3 years with an option to extend by a further year.
Eligible suppliers must be able to offer services in the following capabilities:
- Planning - the provision of planning services to enable customers to move to cloud software and/or hosting services;
- Setup and Migration- the provision of setup and migration services which involves the process of consolidating and transferring a collection of workloads. Workloads can include emails, files, calendars, document types, related metadata, instant messages, applications, user permissions, compound structure and linked components.
- Security services - Maintain the confidentiality, integrity and availability of services and information, and protect services against threats.
- Quality assurance and performance testing - Continuously ensure that a service does what it’s supposed to do to meet user needs efficiently and reliably.
- Training
- Ongoing support - Support user needs by providing help before, during and after service delivery.
My take
Having a wider range of potential providers operating under such MoUs is crucial for government to deliver value for taxpayers money.
Those of us who lived through the crusading days of Maude insisting that tech vendors - mostly large US systems houses and consultancies - come back to the negotiating table, tear up their existing contracts and start from scratch, have been dismayed, but not surprised, that the so-called ‘oligopoly’ simply had to sit it out and wait for a change of government/minister to get things back to ‘normal’.
There were successes that linger. The UK’s G-Cloud framework was a triumph when set up and continues to do good work. As an aside, and given this article has been triggered by a Salesforce announcement, I do remember talking to CEO Marc Benioff in London prior to the formal announcement of G-Cloud and how it would work.
At the time there was a heavy push from certain quarters to make G-Cloud all about virtualization and private cloud rather than the public cloud push it was to become. I asked Benioff if he thought this was the right direction of travel and got a very firm rebuttal as he told me:
The UK government is way behind in this, and way too much into virtualization…Government needs to stop hiding behind the private cloud.
I was in good company - Benioff had been in at the Cabinet Office the previous day and given Maude the same message. Thirteen years on, the Public Cloud First policy that was shaped later that year still stands, but progress hasn’t been made at the rate that was promised back in those heady launch days and which needs to be achieved.
In 2022, there’s the risk of a different sort of oligopoly, as the concern around AWS' grip on government contracts suggests - and not just in the UK - but unfortunately there’s no sign of a Maude to take charge this time and bang the negotiating table.
Instead the Secretary of State with responsibility for digital thinks the internet has been around for ten years and retweets memes of politicians being stabbed. Meanwhile a putative, unelected new Prime Minster has just announced that she (somehow) intends to redesign the internet into adults-only and kid-friendly versions. Sigh.
