Congratulations to Neeracha Taychakhoonavudh, SVP of Partner and Industry Innovation, who has once again been included in CRN’s 50 Most Influential Channel Chief’s List. Neeracha has spent the last nine years of her career at Salesforce and this is such an exciting, and well deserved, achievement for her. This honor is also a big accomplishment for the entire Salesforce partner ecosystem as it underscores Salesforce’s continued commitment to the channel.

This list from CRN honors the best of the best—leaders who build, support and deliver superior partner programs and strategy. Under Neeracha’s leadership this past year, the Salesforce partner program has transformed in the following ways:

• We announced new product and distribution enhancements including more options around partner accelerators. This includes Lightning Bolt, a framework for deploying pre-built solution templates and process flows. Our industry-specific accelerators allow customers to achieve faster time-to-value in key industries including financial services, retail, and healthcare.
• Salesforce updated its Consulting Partner Program, including an increased emphasis on partner tiering based upon cross-cloud delivery capability, increased emphasis on expanding Salesforce’s expert consultant ecosystem, and an increased focus on product and industry specializations, helping Salesforce partners better align to customer needs.
• We also closely integrated a diverse set of enablement programs: self-service options leveraging Trailhead, partner-specific online tools, rigorous certification programs and in-person bootcamps, allowing partners to learn at their own pace through their preferred channel.
• In an effort to further incentivize partners to release Salesforce-native solutions, we vowed to invest $100 million in a Platform Fund that supports innovative partner apps that extend the power of Salesforce for customers. In addition, Salesforce Ventures launched a $50 million SI Trailblazer Fund, dedicated to assisting the next generation of system integrator partners with more resources and support.

It’s clear that Salesforce has the most powerful partner ecosystem in the industry—built on innovation, collaboration and an unwavering commitment to customer success. As the company has evolved over the years, we’ve always invested in fearless leaders for channel and partner initiatives. In addition to the 50 Most Influential Channel Chiefs, Salesforce is also listed in this year’s CRN’s 100 Coolest Cloud Vendors. This recognition shows continued momentum and builds upon previous CRN awards—including the CRN Power 100 List, CRN Women of the Channel, and even CRN’s Cloud Partner Program Guide.

The recent IDC Salesforce Economy study revealed that Salesforce and its ecosystem of partners and customers will create 3.3 million new jobs and $859 billion in new business revenues worldwide by 2022. We are honored to receive this kind of recognition year over year, reinforcing the fact that Salesforce partners are one of the company’s key growth levers on our path to $20B and beyond.