Salesforce is in talks for a $600 million acquisition, its biggest deal in more than two years
The report, citing an anonymous source, said the company was valued at roughly $250 million in its last round of funding, and the deal would be mostly in stock.
Salesforce declined to comment.
Steelbrick offers quote-to-cash technology that makes it easier for sales people to put together complex quotes and billings for potential customers. It simplifies the sales process by automatically putting together the right product offering and financial terms of the contract, while also taking care of paperwork like contracts and invoicing.
It saves a lot of time and resources for enterprise salespeople, who often deal with thousands of different pricing and product options. It's also one of the fastest growing industries - according to Gartner, the overall quote-to-cash market is expected to top $41 billion in size by 2018.
Steelbrick is run by Godard Abel, the former CEO of BigMachines, another quote-to-cash software maker acquired by Oracle for $400 million in 2013. Abel recently told us the main difference between Steelbrick and BigMachines, or other popular quote-to-cash software like Apttus, is the target market: Steelbrick mostly deals with mid-size and small businesses, who previously never had access to such software due to its high cost, while others mostly sell to big enterprises.
Salesforce has been oddly quiet in the M&A market this year. Although it made a number of small acquisitions, including a 4-person startup called MinMash earlier this week, it hasn't spent like it has in previous years: last year, it bought RelateIQ for $390 million, and the year before that, it spent $2.5 billion to acquire ExactTarget.
Steelbrick's acquisition could also help Salesforce reignite its growth in its Sales Cloud business, the segment that has historically been the largest revenue-driver, albeit at a much slower growth rate. Its recent acquisitions have mostly been aimed at expanding its marketing business and analytics software.
Salesforce shares remain largely flat as of Thursday morning, trading at around $78.16 per share.