Salesforce’s mega-event and takeover of San Francisco known as Dreamforce entered its 16th year. The week-long conference brings together thought leaders, industry pioneers, and IT professionals. Over 170,000 attended to hear keynote addresses, educational breakout sessions, and network with peers.
CEO Marc Benioff’s kicked off the event with a keynote focusing on 3 key areas: connectivity, sustainability, and values. Cloud computing and artificial intelligence have radically changed the way companies do business. It’s become crucial for organizations to integrate enterprise technology solutions to leverage business data to better understand and maximize opportunities.
Amid the productivity and financial gains, Benioff mentioned that organizations need to ask “is what we are doing today ethical and humane”. Organizations need to make sure they are listening to their customers and employees and working towards environmental sustainability.
Here are 4 key highlights from our week at Dreamforce:
Customer 360 + Mulesoft Acquisition
Earlier this year, Salesforce acquired Mulesoft, a platform that provides integration for connecting applications, data, and devices. Customer 360 takes advantage of that Mulesoft backend to make it easier to streamline and connect customer identities across the ecosystem.
For customers of Salesforce B2B products, all information is in one place, in a single data model for marketing, sales, B2B commerce and service. This makes it easy for a marketer to see how their campaigns turn into leads, opportunities, pipeline, and sales. A sales rep can see support cases before they go into a meeting. Support reps can see open sales opportunities. Customer account hierarchies and contact relationships enable even deeper visibility.
Einstein Voice Assistant / Analytics
AI is the next great technology disruption transforming how we live and work, and Salesforce Einstein is the first comprehensive AI platform for CRM. Natural language processing has become one of the key features of AI applications as seen by Google and Amazon. Arriving in 2019, Einstein Voice assistant will allow users to log notes, create tasks, build interactive bots, and get personalized updates through common smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and Google Home.
On the analytics side, the platform will help in sorting through data and providing intelligent predictions, recommendations, and alerts. Additionally, the platform provides data integration not only from Salesforce but also from third-party web-based stores with Einstein Connectors. Organizations can extend data to every part of your business without having to do any coding or major development.
Better Google Integration
Google and Salesforce formed a global strategic partnership last year to deliver smarter, more collaborative experiences for customers. Specifically, this partnership provides new integrations that connect Salesforce with Google Analytics 360 and Google Workspace.
Customers can now purchase Google Marketing Platform products — including Google Analytics 360, Google Optimize 360 and Google Tag Manager 360 — directly from Salesforce in the U.S. and Canada. This simplifies the buying experience for customers looking to increase their marketing effectiveness with an integrated mix of industry-leading solutions, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Sales Cloud and Google Analytics 360.
- Improved buying experience
Customers can now purchase Google Marketing Platform products — including Google Analytics 360, Google Optimize 360 and Google Tag Manager 360 — directly from Salesforce in the U.S. and Canada. This simplifies the buying experience for customers looking to increase their marketing effectiveness with an integrated mix of industry-leading solutions, including Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Sales Cloud and Google Analytics 360. - Better connected data
Additional advanced capabilities for the Salesforce Sales Cloud and Google Analytics 360 integration. For instance, Sales Cloud user attributes, Einstein Lead Scoring, and additional e-commerce metrics can now be imported into Google Analytics 360 for a more holistic look at customer behavior and business performance. - Increased productivity
With four new features, Salesforce is continuing to improve productivity integrations between Salesforce and Google Cloud:- Inbox Beta for Gmail
There is now one Gmail Chrome Extension that supports both the native Gmail integration and the powerful intelligence features provided by Salesforce Inbox. When customers upgrade to Salesforce Inbox, productivity tools such as Insert Calendar Availability, Email Tracking, Send Email Later, and additional lists of Salesforce records are made available in the same Gmail side panel. - Lightning Object Creator
Customers can convert a Google Sheet into a Salesforce app in minutes using the new Lightning Object Creator, enabling an improved development experience across the Salesforce Platform. - Data Connector for Salesforce
Google Cloud has made the add-on for Google Sheets generally available to Salesforce users. Customers can now import data and reports from Salesforce into Sheets, and push updates from Sheets back to Salesforce, thus optimizing workflows and reducing duplicative work between the two products. - Google Sheets for Salesforce
Updates to the Data Connector for Salesforce is making it possible to open a Salesforce List View in a Google Sheet that is directly embedded in the Salesforce UI.
- Inbox Beta for Gmail
Partnership with Apple
Salesforce announced a strategic partnership with Apple that brings together the number one CRM platform and iOS. Their new partnership is opening the doors to better native applications, better development support, and accelerated educational paths. The initial focus areas of this strategic partnership include:
- Native Salesforce iOS apps for business
Salesforce, working with Apple, will redesign the Salesforce Mobile App to give customers rich experiences exclusively on iOS, with unique Apple capabilities such as Siri Shortcuts, Face ID, Business Chat and more. Salesforce will also introduce its first-ever Trailhead Mobile App first on iOS. The partners will also deliver powerful iOS apps for industries and small business that will serve their specific customer needs. - Empowering Salesforce developers on iOS
Apple and Salesforce are developing the first Salesforce Mobile SDK that is optimized for Swift, Apple’s powerful and intuitive modern programming language. The native SDK will enable businesses and developers to build and deploy apps for iPhone and iPad on the Salesforce Lightning Platform, adding to the hundreds of thousands of iOS apps for business in the App Store today. - Accelerating developer learning and career growth
Apple and Salesforce believe strongly in the democratization of technology and empowering developers—with any education level or background—to learn skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow. To support developer learning and career growth, Apple is launching a new Get Started with iOS App Development Trail that will teach anyone how to build native iOS apps in Xcode with Swift.
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