Salesforce to acquire Traction on Demand

Traction on Demand revealed little about the acquisition plans.

Salesforce consulting firm, Traction on Demand is becoming part of Salesforce Professional Services.

Traction on Demand announced on February 25 that it has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Salesforce. “We anticipate the transaction will close in the first quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2023, ending April 30, 2022, subject to customary closing conditions,” a Salesforce spokesperson told BetaKit.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“We’ll have more exciting news to share when the acquisition closes,” Traction on Demand wrote in a blog post. “For now, nothing is changing and it’s business as usual. After the transaction closes, we will share more about the product roadmap and what it means for Traction on Demand and Salesforce.”

With more than 14 years of experience building solutions on the Salesforce Platform, Traction on Demand is a dedicated Salesforce consulting and application development firm delivering cross-platform strategies and solutions. In addition to headquarters in Canada, Traction on Demand has a presence in Australia, New Zealand, India, and the United States.

Founded in 2007, Traction on Demand employs over 1,200 people. The startup announced its acquisition of fellow Salesforce consulting partner New Zealand-based Trineo in September 2021.

Guidepost Growth Equity and Salesforce Ventures both took a minority stake in Traction on Demand in 2019. Traction on Demand’s founder and CEO Greg Malpass said the infusion of funds enabled him to launch five software companies.

One, Traction Guest, an enterprise visitor management system, received a $17 million CAD Series A financing round in 2019. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round with participation from existing investor Salesforce Ventures, and other private investors.

Traction Guest was one of Traction on Demand’s first incubated products, and the first product to be spun off into an independent company. In 2018, Traction Guest became one of the first four companies to receive an investment from Salesforce’s $100 million Canadian-focused fund.

Traction Guest was acquired by PSG, a growth equity firm based in Boston, Massachusetts that focuses on growth-stage software companies in December 2021.

Burnaby-based Traction on Demand announced last September that it intended to open its next regional office in Winnipeg, and had said that it planned to hire 100 employees from the area for its new Manitoba hub, which was slated to open in 2022. It was unclear at press time if plans for that office will still move ahead.

The Manitoba government committed $520,000 over the next two years to provide skills training for the new hires for the office.

Traction on Demand isn’t the first Canadian startup Salesforce has acquired. Salesforce acquired e-commerce software startup Mobify in 2020, and then snapped up the communications startup Slack in 2021.

Last year, Salesforce also purchased Toronto SaaS startup LevelJump.io.

Charles Mandel

Charles Mandel

Charles Mandel's reporting and writing on technology has appeared in Wired.com, Canadian Business, Report on Business Magazine, Canada's National Observer, The Globe and Mail, and the National Post, among many others. He lives off-grid in Nova Scotia.

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