Salesforce has announced some shifts to its leadership roles, as veterans retire and new faces take the reins. The SaaS giant announced that David Schmaier has been named President and Chief Product Officer. In this role, Schmaier will lead Salesforce’s global product team, strategy, and vision. Schmaier initially joined Salesforce through the company’s $1.3 billion acquisition of Vlocity in 2020, where he was the co-founder and CEO. Last June, he was named CEO of the Salesforce Industries division.
Schmaier has a deep understanding of industries and enterprise technology, with over three decades of experience building cloud, CRM, and industry-specific vertical software companies as an executive, entrepreneur, board member, and investor.
Brent Leary, Founder and Principal Analyst at CRM Essentials, explained that Schmaier’s track record of building Vlocity from the ground up made this promotion an easy decision, especially given the trajectory Salesforce hopes to achieve over the next few years.
“Over the last several years we’ve seen just how important developing industry-specific solutions have become to the major players in the space, and Schmaier’s promotion reaffirms this while illustrating how important creating verticals is to their platform [and] to the future of Salesforce,” Leary said.
The company’s current president and CFO, Mark Hawkins has also announced his retirement, which was effective as of January 31. Hawkins served as Salesforce’s CFO for more than six years. Salesforce said Hawkins would be replaced by company President and Chief Legal Officer, Amy Weaver.
During Hawkins’s tenure, Salesforce ballooned to a market capitalization of more than $200 billion, acquired data-analytics platform Tableau Software for more than $15 billion in stock, and acquired cloud-application builder MuleSoft for nearly $6.5 billion.
Hawkins has been a finance leader for more than 35 years at software and tech companies, including Autodesk, Logitech, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard. He spent five years as Autodesk's finance chief, and three years as CFO and senior vice president of finance and IT at Logitech.
It will be up to Schmaier and Weaver to join forces and determine how to help Salesforce connect to their customers in entirely new ways, one of the driving forces of the company's outlook for the future.
