Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block has come out in favor of a national privacy law, according to CNBC.
Privacy is becoming one of the biggest battlegrounds for companies, governments and individuals alike. The U.S., however, does not have a comprehensive privacy law to outline what companies can and cannot do with individual data, or what rights individuals have to protect their privacy.
In contrast, the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect in 2018 and provides comprehensive privacy protections and gives consumers rights over their own data. Similarly, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect January 1, and provides similar protections. Although companies, such as Microsoft and Mozilla, have expanded GDPR and CCPA protections to all of their customers, there are far more companies that have not, and have no intention of doing so.
At a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Keith Block said the U.S. needs its own version of the GDPR.
“You have to applaud, for example, the European Union for coming up with GDPR and hopefully there will be a GDPR 2.0,” said Block.
“There is no question there needs to be some sort of regulation in the United States. It would be terrific if we had a national data privacy law; instead we have privacy by zipcode, which is not a good outcome,” he said.
As the issue continues to impact individuals and organizations, it will be interesting to see if the U.S. follow’s the EU’s lead.
Google has announced its acquisition of “AppSheet, a leading no-code application development platform used by a number of enterprises across a variety of industries.”
Custom applications are an excellent way for businesses to meet their needs and adapt to an ever-evolving landscape. As Google points out in their post, however, not all businesses have the resources to have a large, in-house development team. No-code or low-code solutions are an excellent way to address that shortcoming and AppSheet is one of the best available.
The platform uses a database, spreadsheet or form to build a mobile app. According to the company site, “AppSheet will automatically generate an app by using the data in your column header (i.e. the first row of your spreadsheet) as fields. These fields determine how the app captures or displays data.” Once the data is pulled in, the platform’s tools provide a way to alter how the app looks and behaves.
“AppSheet complements Google Cloud’s strategy to reimagine the application development space with a platform that helps enterprises innovate with no-code development, workflow automation, application integration and API management as they modernize their business processes in the cloud,” wrote Amit Zavery, Google Cloud VP of Business Application Platform. “AppSheet’s ability to power a range of applications—from CRM to field inspections and personalized reporting—combined with Google Cloud’s deep expertise in key verticals, will further enable digital transformation across industries like financial services, manufacturing, retail, healthcare, communication and media & entertainment.”
AppSheet currently works with AWS, Box, Dropbox, Office 365, Salesforce and other cloud hosted databases. Both Google’s announcement and an announcement on AppSheet’s site reassures users AppSheet will remain cross-platform.
Business Insider is reporting Google Cloud is taking the unprecedented step of inviting partners to its annual Accelerate sales event.
The move underscores how important Google’s cloud business is, as it seeks to gain ground against Amazon and Microsoft. Latest estimates place Amazon’s AWS at 47.8% market share, Microsoft Azure at 15.5%, while Google Cloud holds a distant 4%. There has even been speculation Google may purchase Salesforce in an effort to bolster its cloud business and leapfrog Microsoft.
As Business Insider points out, partners are an invaluable part of the cloud business and Google is looking to Accelerate as a way to help bring partners “deeper into the fold.”
Tony Safoian, president and CEO of Google Cloud partner SADA Systems, told Business Insider: “It delivers on the promise of the journey with Google Cloud, to treat partners as an extension of themselves by inviting them to their sales kickoff, which has never been allowed before.”
As Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian pursues the stated goal of Google becoming the number two cloud vendor within five years, it’s a safe bet this Accelerate is only the beginning as Google continues to cultivate strong partner relationships.
According to Business Insider, RBC Capital Markets believes Google may purchase Salesforce and use it to better take on Amazon and Microsoft.
Google is currently a distant third among U.S. cloud providers. As of 2019, Gartner estimates Amazon’s AWS has some 47.8% of the market, Microsoft Azure accounted for 15.5% and Google Cloud brought up the rear with a mere 4%.
Even worse, a recent report shows that 97 percent of companies polled are using Azure to some degree, and far more companies are planning to deploy Microsoft’s cloud platform than are planning to use AWS or Google. While Amazon has room to lose market share, Google Cloud does not.
According to Business Insider, a source said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has the goal of Google becoming “at least the No. 2 cloud.” For that to happen, however, the company will need to gain significant ground. RBC doesn’t see that happening without making a major move.
“We don’t see a viable organic way to get there,” said the RBC note.
If Google does purchase Salesforce, RBC estimates the deal could be worth as much as $250 billion. While expensive, it would catapult the company into the No. 2 spot.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says that Salesforce is now entering the fourth stage of computing, the pursuit of Single Source of Truth. The official name is Customer 360 Truth and it is a new set of capabilities that allow companies to connect, authenticate and govern customer data and identity across Salesforce. The goal is to provide a complete view and deeper understanding of every customer so that companies can deliver extremely personalized customer experiences.
Marc Benioff, co-CEO of Salesforce, discusses Customer 360 Truth at their annual Dreamforce conference with Jim Cramer of CNBC:
Single Source of Truth – A Computer Science Holy Grail
360 Truth is another amazing thing that we’re introducing here (at Dreamforce 2019) that has been the holy grail of computing. It’s what we call SSOT, the single source of truth. We’ve had three amazing waves of computing. They are stems of record, systems of engagement, and systems of intelligence including AI. We’re now entering the fourth stage of computing. It’s the pursuit of Single Source of Truth, and we’ve built that into our platform.
This is a computer science holy grail that we’ve been trying to put together for a long time. Now because we acquired MuleSoft and because we acquired Tableau we are closer to providing for our customers the Single Source of Truth for their customer information.
Enables Companies To Build a Single Source of Truth
The company describes Customer 360 Truth as a new set of data and identity services that enable companies to build a single source of truth across all of their customer relationships. They say it connects data from across sales, service, marketing, commerce and more to create a single, universal Salesforce ID for each customer.
All of a customer’s previous interactions and shared preferences are brought together to create a complete view so companies can better serve and even predict their needs, whether addressing a customer service problem, creating a personalized marketing journey, predicting the best sales opportunities or surfacing product recommendations.
Salesforce Launches Single Souce of Truth | Benioff: A Computer Science Holy Grail
From the Salesforce Press Release:
The Holy Grail of CRM: A Single Source of Truth
Nearly 70 percent of customers say they expect connected experiences in which their preferences are known across touchpoints. However, organizational and technical complexity often gets in the way of meeting these expectations. Companies have legacy infrastructure and data silos, leading to fragmented data and fragile integrations between systems. Inconsistent methods for accessing, reconciling and activating customer data make it challenging for companies to deliver connected experiences across these systems. As a result, companies often have multiple usernames, email addresses, or purchase histories for the very same customer across different systems, and managing a customer’s consent and contact preferences across the business becomes harder as new data regulations come into play.
Having a source of truth—a single, trusted place that brings together all the customer data needed to deliver amazing experiences—has been the holy grail of CRM. Today Salesforce is delivering it.
Deliver a Trusted, Personalized Customer Relationship With Customer 360 Truth
Customer 360 Truth enhances data management across Salesforce apps and other systems, and provides instant access to consistent, reconciled customer data. Services include:
Customer 360 Data Manager: Delivers the ability to access, connect and resolve a customer’s data across Salesforce and other systems, using a canonical data model and a universal Salesforce ID that represents each customer. With a click-based user interface for app and data management, admins can easily establish trusted connections between data sources to prepare, match, reconcile and update the customer profile. The reconciled profile across apps enables employees to pull up relevant data at the time of need from any connected system, such as when a service agent may need to pull a list of past purchases from an order system to better assist in solving a problem.
Salesforce Identity for Customers: Removes friction from the login experience and enables a single, authenticated and secure relationship between a customer and all of a company’s websites, e-commerce stores, mobile apps and connected products. Instead of having separate logins and profiles that lead to disconnected experiences, customers now have one login across all of a company’s digital properties. Identity for Customers also elevates trust and compliance with a simple to use two-factor authentication. And it allows companies to obtain valuable customer insights with the ability to analyze engagement and usage with identity reporting and analytics.
Customer 360 Audiences: Builds unified customer profiles across known data such as email addresses and first party IDs and unknown data such as website visits and device IDs. It then creates customer segments and marketing engagement journeys from those profiles and delivers AI-powered insights, like lifetime value and likelihood to churn. Customer 360 Audiences goes beyond traditional customer data platform (CDP) capabilities and extends the power of CRM to connect customer interactions across various touchpoints — for example, a customer who was redirected from an email campaign onto the website through a service interaction — and make the profile data available in real-time to optimize the experience.
Privacy and Data Governance: Enables companies to collect and respect customer data use and privacy preferences, as well as apply data classification labels to all data in Salesforce. Companies can easily understand what types of data they have, what uses of data customers have approved and how best to interact with them. These capabilities can help customers address obligations from regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), with respect to data governance and customer consent.
Introducing the Cloud Information Model
Salesforce Customer 360 Truth is powered by the Cloud Information Model (CIM), an open source data model that standardizes data interoperability across cloud applications. The publication of CIM is enabled by MuleSoft’s open source modeling technology, providing multiple file formats to make it easy to adopt CIM with varying applications. By easily integrating data in the cloud, developers can build new products that deliver connected and personalized customer experiences. CIM reduces the complexities of integrating data across cloud applications by providing standardized data interoperability guidelines to connect point-of-sale systems, digital marketing platforms, contact centers, CRM systems and more. Developers no longer need to spend months creating custom code. Instead, they can adopt and extend the CIM within days to create data lakes, generate analytics, train machine learning models, build a single view of the customer and more.
Unleash the Power of Customer 360 Truth with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform
Customer 360 Truth allows companies to connect siloed customer data sources to a single source of truth, across Salesforce apps or third-party data using MuleSoft. With MuleSoft Anypoint Platform™, organizations can easily build APIs that connect any application, data, or device to Customer 360 in an application network, creating a truly complete customer view.
At Dreamforce, MuleSoft also announced new innovations and learning modules, empowering anyone to become an Integration Trailblazer and create connected customer experiences.
Comments on the News
“Having a complete view of the customer is not a new idea, but it has been difficult to achieve. Companies have siloed data; disconnected apps; a complex, patchwork of sometimes incompatible services; and no way to connect it all,” said Patrick Stokes, EVP, Platform Shared Services, Salesforce. “Customer 360 Truth overcomes those challenges, creating a single source of truth that is the foundation for delivering smart, personalized customer experiences across every touchpoint.”
“In order to truly succeed with delivering a great customer experience, you have to adopt an agile platform that fosters growth and supports constant innovation,” said Rick Fuson, President and Chief Operating Officer, Pacers Sports & Entertainment. “With the Salesforce Customer 360 platform, Pacers Sports & Entertainment has real-time visibility into all aspects of our business and can operate more efficiently across channels, increase per customer loyalty and drive innovation across the organization.”
“Connecting customer data and managing consent is more important than ever in light of changing customer expectations and increasing regulations,” said Alan Webber, Program Vice President for Digital Strategy and Customer Experience, IDC. “As a result, companies are prioritizing data unification in ways that will lead to more loyal and valuable customer relationships. Salesforce Customer 360 Truth will help companies break down data silos and deliver the experiences customers expect.”
Salesforce Customer 360
Customer 360 Truth is part of the Salesforce Customer 360, which includes industry-leading apps spanning sales, service, marketing and commerce, and across every customer touchpoint. The Customer 360 Platform is an underlying set of services and APIs including AI, blockchain, mobile, security, voice and other capabilities that allow companies to connect every customer, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation. Salesforce will power more than two trillion B2B and B2C transactions this year for more than 150,000 companies and millions of Trailblazers—those individuals and their organizations who are using Salesforce to drive innovation, grow their careers and transform their businesses.
Salesforce executives took the stage at Dreamforce 2019 to provide an update on Salesforce Einstein and the tremendous success it has been.
Marco Casalaina, Vice President Products, Einstein, opened it up by discussing how far AI has come in the business world. When Einstein’s capabilities first started coming to light in 2017, only one in five businesses were using any kind of AI. Fast-forward to 2019 and nearly half of companies have integrated AI in their operations. Despite AI’s increased usage, not all companies are seeing the benefits they would like. In fact, seven out of ten companies report little to no impact from deploying AI.
This is one of the ways in which Salesforce’s Einstein is designed to be different. It’s goal is to be simple, providing a voice interface to the data in Salesforce Customer 360. Einstein is already available in Sales, Service, Marketing and Commerce clouds. Soon, Einstein search will be taking over the Search bar, giving customers the ability to perform natural language searches using their voice.
Yakaira Núñez, Director User & Product Insights, AI & Analytics talked about the work her team has been doing.
“We’ve been focusing our work on voice ad nauseam.”
She also highlighted three areas of concern for customers.
1) Data Privacy and Security is of tantamount importance to customers, and Salesforce is committed to protecting that data.
2) Guidance, specifically the importance of voice guidance. Salesforce recognizes that voice-controlled systems aren’t always the easiest to use. As a result, they worked to make Einstein as easy as possible.
3) More diverse use cases, beyond just sales.
Núñez also showed off Einstein Voice Skills. Any admin or developer can use the tool to build custom voice apps. These voice apps can be deployed on the desktop, mobile or smart speakers.
Few would argue that AI represents a fundamental shift in technology, commerce and more. Companies like Salesforce are demonstrating how it can be a useful tool, providing new functionality and making customers’ lives easier.
Sales tech company Aviso announced version 2.0 of its AI-powered guided selling platform during Dreamforce event.
The company’s CEO is Trevor Templar, the former VP of enterprise sales at Salesforce. Templar is taking a page from Salesforce’s playbook, trying to disrupt an industry and end its dependence on legacy CRM systems.
“Twenty years ago, Salesforce launched their famous ‘No Software’ campaign as a rallying cry for innovative sales technology. Twenty years later, the #NoCRM campaign urges companies to reimagine the sales experience once again with a focus on performance. #NoCRM makes good on what was promised by ‘No Software’ two decades ago through leveraging predictive artificial intelligence to bring sales teams more cost-effective, modern, and insightful software.”
Aviso uses a ‘less is more’ approach to help companies analyze data, prioritize opportunities and close more deals by providing AI-powered guidance, rather than relying on—and being bogged down by—traditional CRM.
“CRM is 25% of all enterprise software, but less than half of sales reps meet their quotas, and teams spend more time fluffing and wrangling data than closing deals,” says Templar. “Our customers are excited about our 2.0 platform to shift focus away from CRM databases to using AI guidance for the core business of selling and serving customers.”
Version 2.0 of Aviso’s uses a next generation core predictive framework, resulting in greater simplicity, flexibility and data generation up to 400% faster. The new platform is in beta with select customers, with a general release expected later this year.
Climate change has been in the news, with people on both sides of the issue debating what should or shouldn’t be done. In the meantime, companies large and small are taking steps to minimize their own carbon footprint, with global sustainable investing (PDF) reaching $30 trillion in 2018, a 34 percent increase over the previous two years.
To aid in that endeavor, SalesForce has unveiled Sustainability Cloud ahead of Climate Week 2019. Sustainability Cloud is a product that helps businesses make informed decisions about their business operations, with the goal of achieving carbon neutrality.
The product is designed to give businesses a 360-degree view of their current environmental impact, as well as data-driven insights into the changes they can make. The platform—along with Salesforce Einstein Analytics—provides an easy way for businesses to track, analyze and report environmental data. This will enable companies to track KPIs over time, including renewable energy use, overall energy consumption and carbon emissions. This information can then be used for engagement with executives, investors and customers, as well as for regulatory and audit purposes.
In the company’s press release, Suzanne DiBianca, chief impact officer and EVP of corporate relations said: “At Salesforce, we’ve always believed business is the greatest platform for change. Addressing climate change with speed and at scale is critical to see a turning point by 2020. Businesses must work together to be the greatest force for climate transformation the world has ever seen.”
“There’s a huge wave of digital transformation,” says Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block. “A lot of these different technologies are coming together. I have the opportunity and Mark has the opportunity to go around the world and talk to a lot of other CEOs. There’s just this huge imperative around digital transformation. Everybody needs to get closer to the customer. Everybody’s trying to improve that customer experience. That’s where Salesforce really brings value to the table.”
Keith Block, co-CEO of Salesforce, discusses the company’s blowout earnings announcement and how their growth is powered by a huge wave of digital transformation happening worldwide. Block was interviewed by Jim Cramer on CNBC:
There’s A Huge Wave Of Digital Transformation
We are so very excited. We’ve had great execution and lots of customer success. A lot of this is really powered by this wave of digital transformation that we’re seeing all over the world. There’s a huge wave of digital transformation. A lot of these different technologies are coming together. I have the opportunity and Mark has the opportunity to go around the world and talk to a lot of other CEOs. There’s just this huge imperative around digital transformation. Everybody needs to get closer to the customer. Everybody’s trying to improve that customer experience. That’s where Salesforce really brings value to the table.
There’s a huge TAM for CRM. We’re creating that TAM and we’re executing incredibly well and that’s really driven by customer success. There is this thing referred to as the 360-degree view of the customer. That is all about the walls of sales and service and marketing coming down. That is what our 360-degree platform is all about and our customers are looking for that. They’re looking for growth strategies. That’s why you see these great results.
It’s About Bringing Companies Closer To Their Customers
We have been recognized widely as one of the most innovative companies in the world. That takes two forms. One is obviously organic innovation and there’s been plenty of that in our history. That’s why we’ve been so successful and our customers keep coming back. But we also have acquisitions. We’ve got a fantastic history of execution. Whether it is the ExactTarget acquisition, or most recently, a year ago, the MuleSoft acquisition, those have all been wildly successful for our customers.
I had the opportunity to go to Milan to meet with the CEO of Unicredit (in Italy). We’re glad to welcome them to the Salesforce family. They’re going through a transformation that every financial services institution is really going through. It’s all about improving the customer experience. It’s all about reinventing the business model. It’s all about transformation in the retail bank. Unicredit gets it and we’re thrilled to welcome them to the family. They’re doing some of the things that you see being done at Barclays Bank or Citibank or many of the other great financial services institutions. It’s about digital transformation. It’s about bringing companies closer to their customers and that’s what Salesforce is doing.
Companies Are Investing In Their Growth
FedEx is a storied brand. It’s a 50-year-old company, they revolutionized the package industry. Fred Smith is an iconic visionary CEO and now they’re taking it to the next level through customer experience. They’re leveraging Einstein to have predictions and make a better customer experience around knowledge. For example, if you had a challenge in some particular way, and FedEx is high quality, but if there were a challenge an agent can help you by bringing relevant information recommended by Einstein to drive a better experience. There were a million use cases of Einstein just like that in many many industries.
What we’re seeing all over the world is this wave of digital transformation. That digital transformation begins and ends with a customer. We’re seeing CEOs invest. They’re investing in their future. They’re investing in their growth. They’re investing in customer experience across all industries, all geographies, and all segments. It has never been more important. That’s why you’re seeing this growth and you’re seeing these results (with Salesforce). We’re just co-innovating and co-creating with these customers, these companies. That’s why we’re having so much success on their behalf.
There Is A Huge Wave Of Digital Transformation, Says Salesforce CEO Keith Block
“Retailers and brands took advantage of the buzz, the demand, the awareness, that Amazon has created and really rode that wave for great growth,” says Rob Garf, VP of Industry Strategy and Insights for Salesforce. “Retailers didn’t just ignore Prime Day, but they leaned into it. They really recognized this manufactured holiday, recognized the demand that was being created, and really took advantage of the consumers and their willingness to look for a good deal.”
Rob Garf, VP Industry Strategy and Insights for Salesforce, discusses how retailers “leaned into” Amazon Prime Day, taking advantage of the buzz and overall consumer interest, to initiate their own Prime marketing. Rob was interviewed by Owen Milbury, Senior Manager, Analyst Relations for Salesforce:
Retailers Didn’t Just Ignore Prime Day, They Leaned Into It
What we saw is that this manufactured holiday, Hallmark has to be proud, really rose all ships if you well. The tide has risen where we saw 37 percent year over year growth for global retailers other than Amazon. What’s really interesting is that it just didn’t take place over those two days, but rather the entire month of July. We saw July having a ten percent higher growth rate than any typical month. Retailers and brands took advantage of the buzz, the demand, the awareness, that Amazon has created and really rode that wave for great growth.
Retailers didn’t just ignore Prime Day, but they leaned into it. What we found was that emails were at a heavy double-digit increase week over week. The other really interesting thing is our team stepped back and we actually looked at the Internet Retailer 500. We subscribed to all of their email lists and we went to their homepages over the last week. What we found was 51 percent of the IR 500, more than half, did some sort of promotion either on their home page or through email.
They just didn’t ignore it, they leaned into it. We found that 17 percent of the IR 500 mentioned either Prime Day or Black Friday in July as part of those promotions. They really recognized this manufactured holiday, recognized the demand that was being created, and really took advantage of the consumers and their willingness to look for a good deal.
We Saw Two Breakouts, Apparel, and Footwear
Consumer electronics was certainly big. But we also saw two breakouts, apparel, and footwear. That’s really important because Amazon is leaning into their own private label. So these brands need to think how to differentiate. They didn’t just go to market and give deals. They also promoted limited edition products, special assortments, customizable merchandise, and even looking for subscriptions to be able not only to attract but to retain them over time.
The other one was consumer product goods. What was interesting about that was typically what you find in a grocery store they use the retailer as the intermediary, they’re looking generally to leapfrog these retailers. According to Salesforce research, 99 percent have some sort of active direct to consumer (D2C) type of initiative underway. That was no different this Amazon Prime Day. They were taking advantage of the buzz and really looking for ways to engage the consumer directly.
49 Percent of Orders For Non-Amazon Retailers Were On Mobile
When you think about the time of the year, most of Europe was on holiday, most of the US was taking time off as well, they’re not tethered to their computer. They don’t have the luxury of sitting down and searching that way. That showed in our data. In fact, 49 percent of orders for all non-Amazon retailers were done on a mobile device. This just speaks to the fact we’re on the go, the phone is the remote control of our daily lives.
We’re using it to break through the friction that usually exists between inspiration—I like something and I want to buy it—and then actually purchasing. Just for a point of context, that was a 20 percent increase year over year. It’s become a bellwether for shopping not only during the rest of the year but in particular on Prime Day.
Retailers Saw Prime Day As a Test Run For Holidays
Retailers are seeing this as really the test run for the holidays. They’re looking at their mobile strategy. How are they going to breakdown their friction? They want to make sure that they have mobile wallets so that they can really get through the checkout process. They are incorporating artificial intelligence so not forcing the consumer to swipe five times down the phone to find if you like this you might like this. Instead, putting it right above the fold.
They are also looking for fulfillment as well. As you are thinking through towards Cyber Week and the overall holiday season, and with it being five or six days shorter between Thanksgiving and Christmas, how are we going to use the store as a fulfillment center? You really bump up against that shipping deadline and need to also be able to fulfill that for several days after. Retailers are really cutting their teeth. They’re really bearing down. They’re looking at Prime Day as a way to get ready and gear up and go full force to back to school, Halloween, and through the holiday season.
https://youtu.be/JHm8PZ2z1xU
How Non-Amazon Retailers “Leaned Into” Prime Day To Increase Sales – Salesforce Execs Explain
“We have something brand-new we call the Commerce Page Designer,” says Mike Micucci, CommerceCloud CEO at Salesforce. “It allows you to create experiences with clicks not code. You can literally drag and drop things around on the page and just put them right where you want to. You don’t need to be a programmer or a data scientist to do it. Your marketers and your merchandisers can build those experiences super fast to respond to different market changes.”
You Have To Really Put the Customer Right At the Center
In today’s industry, it’s not just about showing up and having a pretty picture you have to really put the customer right at the center. When they are there experiencing your brand you’re not delivering just the premium experience but you’re personalizing it to them. It’s not just on the shopping site it’s everywhere they go, from how you engage with them on social all the way through on customer service.
Putting the customer at the center to deliver a premium, a personalized experience, that’s a differentiator today. That’s what the customers are expecting everywhere they go. That’s is the key.
Commerce Page Designer Creates Experiences With Clicks Not Code
Our team has been working all year to get ready for Connections. We’ve got some great news that we’re going to showcase. First and foremost, we have something brand-new we call the Commerce Page Designer. It allows you to create experiences with clicks not code. You can literally drag and drop things around on the page and just put them right where you want to. You don’t need to be a programmer or a data scientist to do it. Your marketers and your merchandisers can build those experiences super fast to respond to different market changes. That’s one of the biggest things that we’re producing.
The second thing is we also have a lot of new tech for developers. We’re connecting Heroku Solution kit and Commerce together in a whole new way. With this new Heroku Solution Kit, which includes templates to help you build mobile apps, shopping apps, and service cloud apps. They are all right there in front of you so they developers can be super productive with this great environment with Heroku where you can manage and build apps.
Thirdly is MuleSoft. It takes on average about 39 different systems to pull off a commerce scenario. Those are back-end systems like ERP, your order system, and inventory. What we’ve done with MuleSoft is we made it a lot easier to connect commerce through MuleSoft to all those legacy systems through one unified layer. So today, we’re announcing this new MuleSoft For Commerce Cloud Accelerator so that developers have a whole set of preset of APIs so they can jump-start that process.
Those are three great innovations. One for all your marketing and merchandisers. Then there are two great innovations for the developers that make them much more productive. Our goal is to help you not only deliver premium experiences but do it really fast.
Einstein and AI Are Really Reshaping Commerce
So what is next on the horizon? First and foremost, we always listen to our customers tell us here are the things that they need to drive their business. But what you should be looking for is how Einstein and AI are really reshaping commerce. You’ll see that in how Einstein is not just doing product recommendations but reshaping the entire customer experience.
Einstein takes away of a lot of those things that you used to do manually, let’s say like visual search where you can shop by pictures, where Einstein will figure out, hey, what’s in that picture and make it really easy to add it to the cart. It can take a lot of the guesswork out of it and just really make the shopping experience delightful. So stay tuned for a lot more AI and a lot more Einstein.
https://youtu.be/Wpu7zVQTZ-Q
Salesforce Commerce Page Designer – Creates Experiences With Clicks Not Code – Mike Micucci
“There really hasn’t been a foundational cloud company born from the ground up in the cloud,” says CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz. “There’s been no Salesforce of security. We think we’ve taken the right approach and created the right architecture to be that fourth pillar of cloud computing. That’s one of the areas that I think gets our customers most excited. It’s made their lives a lot easier. As I like to say, it just works for them and that’s what customers are looking for.”
George Kurtz, Co-Founder and CEO of CrowdStrike, discusses their IPO (today) and CrowdStrike’s unique position as the first cloud platform for security in an interview on CNBC:
We Built The First Cloud Platform For Security
We’ll let the market dictate the (stock) pricing. What we’re focused on is really building long-term value for shareholders and obviously making sure that our customers are protected. That’s the way we built the business, focusing on preventing breaches for our customers. What is fundamentally different is that we really built the first cloud platform for security.
When you think about Workday and ServiceNow and Salesforce, there really hasn’t been a foundational cloud platform for security. What is fundamentally different is that we really built the first cloud platform for security. That was one of our goals when Demetri Alperovitch and I started the company in 2011. This cloud platform has allowed us to stop breaches and to scale different modules that really hit a specific customer need. It’s been well received by our customers.
A Big Part Of Our Platform Is Collecting Data At Scale
CrowdStrike really runs on your endpoint or computer or your server or workload in the cloud. What we found with traditional antivirus, as an example, we do way more than that, is that signature-based technologies were just not capable of stopping breaches. So a big part of our platform is actually collecting data at scale. We collect a trillion events per week. We use that data to train our machine learning algorithms and we can identify attacks and breaches that have never been seen before at the speed of the network.
This crowdsourcing aspect, which is the crowd in CrowdStrike, really has enabled us to identify these attacks that are causing the most damage to large and small organizations around the globe. They just haven’t been able to do that with traditional, I call fossilized, vendors that are in the market. This architecture has really changed the game for us.
Obviously, security is an evolving area. Adversaries continue to change their tactics. The good part about AI is that you can evolve it to identify these sorts of threats no matter if it’s stealing intellectual property or credit card information or breaking in and destroying data on someone’s computer. What’s important to realize is that at cloud-scale, and the way we operate, we have the ability to take all this data, synthesize it, and provide the best protection and prevention methodologies for our customers.
AI Is Great But It Is Not a Panacea
It’s really all about the data. You hear a lot about AI and AI is great but it has to be used in the right ways. It’s not a panacea. So it’s easy to come up with an algorithm but it’s really hard to collect this data at scale and be able to train these AI algorithms. This is really one of the things that we spent a lot of time on, building a very scalable architecture to get this data in (into our Threat Graph), which is one of the most advanced security databases around.
It really allows us to get better efficacy and lower false positive rates in detecting these breaches. In my view, it’s all about the data. We will continue to get more and more data. It’s that network effect. Our threat graph gets smarter the more data we actually consume.
CrowdStrike Threat Graph
We See The Tip of The Breach Being The Endpoint
When we look at the threats, whether it’s a nation-state or whether it’s an e-crime group obviously, the threats are evolving and they’re rapid. There are hundreds of thousands of new pieces of malware that come out every day. It’s incumbent on companies to be able to protect themselves. It’s just been an area that’s been underserved because most of the existing technologies have focused on stopping malware instead of stopping breaches, which is again part of our core mission.
If you look in the past, there’s been a lot of point product companies that have come out and try to solve a specific problem. But if you just step back, the problem that most companies are trying to solve is not being breached. Whether that’s network technology or endpoint technology, at the end of the day we see the tip of the breach being the endpoint. That’s where the data resides, the servers, the endpoints, the desktops, and that’s what we’re protecting.
There’s Been No Salesforce of Security
From that standpoint, if you look back in history there really hasn’t been a foundational cloud company born from the ground up in the cloud. There’s been no Salesforce of security. We think we’ve taken the right approach and created the right architecture to be that fourth pillar of cloud computing. That’s one of the areas that I think gets our customers most excited. It’s the ability to rapidly install our technology, just have it work, and be able to scale with us and use different modules with that single agent architecture. It’s made their lives a lot easier. As I like to say, it just works for them and that’s what customers are looking for.
There’s Been No Salesforce of Security, Says CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz
“The third cornerstone of digital transformation is the analytics and the visualization and the business intelligence to see everything in your company,” says Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff. “There’s no more amazing company in that category then Tableau whose mission is to make sure that the world can see and understand data. This is just going to be an incredible acquisition for Salesforce. It’s really the best of both worlds, two amazing companies coming together.”
Marc Benioff, co-CEO of Salesforce, discusses their transformative $15.3 billion deal for Tableau, in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
Tableau With Salesforce Supercharges Our Organizations
There are really three cornerstones of digital transformation. The first one is the customer. Of course, we do that in spades. We do that better than anybody else. The second cornerstone, we did that a year ago with MuleSoft integration. The ability to integrate all your data sources together so you can get a more holistic view or what we call Customer 360. But you’re really touching on the third cornerstone of digital transformation, which is the analytics and the visualization and the business intelligence to see everything in your company. There’s no more amazing company in that category then Tableau whose mission is to make sure that the world can see and understand data. That is what excites us as well.
I was in Minneapolis just last week. When I was with one of our very largest customers, they’re doing some incredible work with their supply chain and the ability to connect with their customer in a whole new way. Of course, that’s what we do for them. But at the very end of the meeting, they’re talking about how they’re going to visualize and provide analytics and business intelligence on this incredible infrastructure that we’ve helped them build. They had chosen Tableau. Then, of course, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, wow, this is just going to be an incredible acquisition for Salesforce. It’s really the best of both worlds, two amazing companies coming together. Tableau is a company at scale. It’s an incredible company and putting that together with Salesforce just supercharges both of our organizations.
Tableau Didn’t Want Our Cash, They Wanted Our Equity
In terms of cash flow, I don’t know if you remember our quarter that we just announced last week but we had record cash flows. We’ve had phenomenal cash generation. Our business has done a great job in cash. But I have to be honest, Tableau didn’t want our cash. They wanted our equity. They know that the real value here is in the company that we’re creating together. We would have been more than happy to give them any currency they wanted but ultimately they want our stock.
Hey, I can’t blame them. Look at how it’s performed over the last decade. It’s been incredible. I have a huge vision and so do they on what’s possible for the future. When you look at that we’re really looking at a company that’s going to fast track to $30 billion in revenue in enterprise software and there just isn’t very many of those companies out there today.
We Can’t Build the Technolgy Fast Enough
I’m a huge believer in innovation. It’s one of our core values. Our four core values; trust, customer success, innovation, and equality. Let me just talk about innovation for a second. I so strongly believe in not just organic innovation, and you’ve seen that of course, our core Sales Cloud, our core Service Cloud, and our core platform, but I also strongly believe that companies to be competitive and successful today have to also believe in inorganic innovation. You don’t have to look any farther than things like our Marketing Cloud or Commerce Cloud and our Integration Cloud as well. In these technologies, we were able to acquire great companies like ExactTarget, like Demandware, and like MuleSoft, that became the heart of our Customer 360.
We can’t build the technology fast enough to be able to deliver to our customers demand. Now by doing that (acquisition of Tableau) we are able to create this complete Customer 360 platform that gives our customers everything they do to not only connect with their customer in a whole new way, not only to connect with every data source they have but also to be able to have the visualization data analytics and business intelligence to achieve their total success. For digital transformation, which is what’s happening right now, that is mission critical.
Tableau With Salesforce Supercharges Our Organizations, Says Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff
“If you haven’t been on Trailhead.com this is an amazing place to go,” says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. “You can learn all the technical skills to be successful in this Salesforce ecosystem. Our customers are just on there at an incredibly high rate. We have more than 1.4 million users on Trailhead now and 25 percent said that they changed jobs in the last year because of the skills that they got on Trailhead.com.”
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, discusses the signing of the White House Job Training Pledge and announced that they now have over a million users on Trailhead.com in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
More Than a Million Users On Trailhead.com
That (White House Job Training Pledge) is probably the most exciting thing that I have seen happening in the Salesforce ecosystem. We have this broad ecosystem that surrounds our company. While we’re talking about these incredible (quarterly) results here today, the one thing that makes me even more excited is the work we’re doing with people retraining them. Reskilling them is kind of the technical word.
We’re able to get people onto this service. We call it Trailhead. If you haven’t been on Trailhead.com this is an amazing place to go. You can learn all the technical skills to be successful in this Salesforce ecosystem. Our customers are just on there at an incredibly high rate. We have more than 1.4 million users on Trailhead now and 25 percent said that they changed jobs in the last year because of the skills that they got on Trailhead.com.
White House Job Training Pleadge – Ivanka Trump at Toyota Plant in Georgetown, KY.
We Signed the White House Pledge For Jobs To Reskill America
We even had an amazing event in Indianapolis just a couple weeks ago with Ivanka Trump. We signed that White House pledge for jobs because we’re reskilling America. That’s our job. We want to make sure everybody can participate in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. That’s really exciting to me. To see the success on the faces of the broad range of people who’ve had this capability that is just setting us up for a tremendous future.
Anybody who participated in jobs that don’t exist anymore, they can get onto Trailhead.com and they can reskill. This is proven, it’s easy, and it’s free. That’s why we’ve had such great support, not just from the White House but from thousands of our customers who are also now deploying this inside their own companies. We have a product called myTrailhead.com so you as a Salesforce customer can set up your own internal reskilling system with your products. That’s a build your own ecosystem. We want everyone to be as successful as we are.
Mark Benioff added these comments during the recent earnings call:
Learners Changing Their Careers and Lives on Trailhead
Our ecosystem just developed in a huge economy around Salesforce, one that is going to create more than 3 million jobs and more than $850 billion in GDP by 2022, and that is why we’re so excited about Trailhead, which is our online learning platform and our online reskilling platform that empowers everyone.
Now we have more than 1.4 million learners changing their careers and their lives on Trailhead, and I’m sure so many of you have met these inspiring people and their incredible stories of how they transformed themselves using Trailhead. And in the quarter, our new myTrailhead product became generally available and now any of our customers can actually create their own branded service just like what we have done and reskill all their employees, customers and partners too.
myTrailhead Is a Force Multiplier
So it will be a huge driver of workforce development, which is why we are so excited that two weeks ago, we were with Ivanka Trump at our First-Over Trailblazer Day in Indianapolis, in our headquarters in Indiana, where we signed the White House Pledge to America’s Workers and we plan to give more than 1 million Americans the skills they need and earning Salesforce credentials and badges and do everything necessary to make them successful and to get top jobs in our ecosystem over the next 5 years.
myTrailhead is an excellent example and an excellent solution, not just how they can scale their people up on this modern technology, but also to prepare them for this modern world. And we see this again everywhere in the world. And we have special programs with companies all over the world to talk about how they reskill the workforce. I mentioned the meeting I had with the CEO of Telstra and his executive team and how concerned they were about the modern reports and what they wanted to do with our reskilling their workforce.
We have the same conversations with CEOs all over the world. So myTrailhead is a force multiplier. It is so important on so many levels when you think about modern skills and we’re very, very excited about that. Bret, do you want to comment more from a product perspective?
Salesforce Now Has 1.4 Million Learners On Trailhead.com says Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff says that every company is becoming a B2B2C company. “Every B2B company and B2C company is becoming a B2B2C company,” says Benioff. “What company does not have to directly connect with the consumer? You could be a traditional industrial company who’s selling to B2B resellers and you have to be ready in this connected digital revolution to be able to connect directly to your consumer as well.”
Marc Benioff, co-CEO of Salesforce, discusses their recent high flying quarterly results and talks about how every company is becoming a B2B2C company in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
We Just Had a Fantastic Fourth Quarter
We just had a fantastic fourth quarter. We’re taking a look at those numbers right now and it was an amazing quarter. In fact, we beat our revenue estimates quite handily. As part of that, our co-CEO Keith Block closed the largest transaction in our history and the largest transaction ever in Barclays history. It was a deep nine digit transaction to help automate their 50 million customers. It really goes to show how the three major trends that are playing out in computing today, the cloud, broad digital transformation, and a focus on the customer, can really impact our company by creating a huge deal and also being able to support a huge transformation at Barclays.
I feel great about our business. I’ve always felt great about it. We’re coming up on our 20 year anniversary this Friday. It’s been 20 years that have been unbelievable to us here. We are coming up on a year that we’re going to do $16 billion in revenue that far exceeds my expectation. I still have never been more excited about Salesforce than I am right now. When I look at the short term I see $20 billion right around the quarter and I see $30 billion right around the corner. In fact, we initiated a four-year guidance today of $26 to $28 billion.
Every B2B and B2C Company Is Becoming a B2B2C Company
You can look at a great deal that we did this quarter with Amgen, a tremendous biotechnology company. This is a company that’s really expanding with our health cloud. This is our vertical strategy to build products specifically for certain industries. In this case, our health cloud is going to help Amgen connect with their customers in a whole new way. Every B2B company and B2C company is becoming a B2B2C company. What company does not have to directly connect with the consumer?
Not just Amgen, everybody. You could be a traditional industrial company who’s selling to B2B resellers and you have to be ready in this connected digital revolution to be able to connect directly to your consumer as well. That’s a major trend that we’ve benefited from for so many years now and you’re going to see that continue to play out. That’s certainly something driving this relationship with Amgen as well.
Brunello Cucinelli and Lamborghini Using Salesforce to Connect
Brunello Cucinelli is one of the great fashion brands in the world and we’ve completely transformed Brunello Cucinelli. He actually touches the customer in many different forms. He has a direct B2C relationship. He’s online with them. We run his website. You go into his stores. That’s a direct consumer connection. But did you know he’s a B2B company also? That’s because he’s selling to resellers who are reselling his products in some of the big retail stores around the world. He’s a B2B and a B2C company. We have to bring it all together with him and give him a single view of his customer. That’s the transformation he has to go through and has gone through and that’s why he’s had such great growth and we’re so excited for him.
Another great example is Lamborghini. Of course, Lamborghini is actually traditionally a B2B type company. They’re selling to their dealers and they’re making sure their dealers are successful. some of those dealers are not even owned by Lamborghini but now they need to be able to connect with their customer in real time, all the time. They’re also a B2C direct customer. That’s why the new Urus, their new SUV, is built entirely on Salesforce. It’s the connected Lamborghini. That’s a vision for all car companies in the future that they can directly connect with you, not just connect with their dealer. That’s the B2C and B2B transformation that we’re talking about.
“Our customers, they’re betting their business on us,” says Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block. “They’re disrupting their business models. They’re reinventing themselves leveraging our technology. They want to know that we have a trust-based relationship. At the end of the day, it is all about trust.”
Block says that we are just at the dawn of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and that companies love to work with Salesforce because they represent the future.
Keith Block, co-CEO of Salesforce, discussed how companies are going through massive business model and digital transformations in this Fourth Industrial Revolution that is just getting started. He was interviewed by the legendary Jim Cramer on CNBC: (video below)
We Are Just at the Dawn of this Era
We’re playing for the long game here. We’re going to be celebrating our 20th anniversary coming up in just a month. When we think about what’s happened over the last 20 years, we’ve seen revolutionary changes in technology and we’re in this Fourth Industrial Revolution. In that Fourth Industrial Revolution, we have companies going through business model changes and digital transformations and the role of the CEO is different than it used to be.
This is where companies love to work with Salesforce because we represent the future. We’re all about the future. We’re about creating and innovating and co-creating around customer engagement. This is a long game this Fourth Industrial Revolution and we’re just at the dawn of this era. So this will be happening for a long time.
Disrupt or Be Disrupted
It’s all linked together. We live in a world with these technologies where it is disrupt or be disrupted. If the CEO of a company is not the Chief Transformation Officer they need to come up with a strategy, they need to make a move, they need to embrace these technologies. No industry is really immune from this level of disruption.
At the end of the day, everything begins and ends with the customer. It’s all about the 360-degree view of the customer. That has been the Holy Grail since I’ve been in the industry. Providing the insights, providing the level of engagement, the technology, around how customers can have a greater experience.
Our customers, they’re betting their business on us. They’re disrupting their business models. They’re reinventing themselves leveraging our technology. They want to know that we have a trust-based relationship. At the end of the day, it is all about trust.
Everything Rotates Around Trust.
We are a values-based company. Since the day the company was established we were a values-based company. We have four values and our number one value is trust. Then we have customer success and innovation and equality. Those are very very important to our stakeholders. The modern company is a stakeholder theory company.
It’s not just about Wall Street and earnings, which is obviously very important. We take our shareholders very seriously. It’s also about our customers. It’s about our partners. It’s about the community that we live in. Everything rotates around trust. We have a trust deficit. Some people call it a trust crisis in the world right.
If you have an employee, an employee wants to know that they have a leadership team that’s listening to them, that they have a voice, and that they trust the decisions the leadership is making. They want to trust that they’re responsible decisions that are consistent with the values of the company. With governments, we trust in our leaders. We want to trust in our leaders that they’re making great decisions for our citizens.
Cloud is just getting started says Okta CEO, Todd McKinnon. He says that everyone talks about the how cloud has come of age, but it’s really at only 20 percent of $1 trillion in IT spend. “We’re still in the early days of cloud adoption,” says McKinnon. “We’re very excited about the runway ahead and the value we can provide, in that context of really… cloud taking over the world.”
Todd McKinnon, CEO & Co-Founder of Okta, recently talked to Jim Cramer on CNBC about the massive future still ahead for cloud computing and Okta:
We’re the Plumbing, We’re the Infrastructure
We’re changing their world. We’re making it incredibly easy for them to connect to all their technology. Whether they’re logging into their business applications at work or they’re a customer of one of our customers, logging into a website, making their customer experience more enjoyable and more secure. They’re big fans of Okta.
We help our customers both directly, where their end users can see what we do in some cases. But in many cases, we’re behind the scenes, we’re the plumbing, we’re the infrastructure, that’s making their technology secure and making the end user experience super enjoyable. We’re happy to place to play both roles because at the end of the day it’s about making customers successful with any technology they want to use. Whatever they choose to use we will fit in with it and will make their lives productive.
Cloud is Taking Over the World
This is our ten-year anniversary. We’re incredibly excited about ten years. and during those 10 years, we’ve benefited from several trends that are really lifting us to these new heights. The main one is cloud computing. Cloud has progressed tremendously over the last ten years, but the most exciting thing is it’s really just getting started.
If you look at the overall IT spending market, it’s over a trillion dollars of IT spend. Everyone talks about the how cloud they think the cloud has come of age, but it’s still only 20 percent of that. It’s about $200 billion. We’re still in the early days of cloud adoption. We’re very excited about the runway ahead and the value we can provide in that context of really… cloud taking over the world.
Adobe Has Done Something Amazing
We help Adobe in a couple of really important ways. They’ve been a longtime customer of ours. The first way is that we help their business customers connect into the Creative Cloud. The second way we help them is we help their 20,000 employees connect into all the applications they need to do their job at Adobe.
Adobe is an interesting story, not just because it’s an Okta customer, but they’ve done something very amazing. They’ve transitioned their business from a package software business to a cloud business. You’ve seen the results in their business and in their strategic position in the market. We were lucky enough to play a helping role as we helped that login securely to that new Creative Cloud product they’ve had in the market for the last four or five years.
We Are Focused on What Customers Need
We help enterprises get rid of those passwords. Our customers that use Okta for their employees, they have one single login credential that takes them into all their applications. It greatly simplifies the end-user experience and as a result, makes it way more secure and way more productive. At the end of the day, it’s about how productive you can make your people and how great you can make the experience and how attractive you are as an employer and the kind of people you can attract.
There are companies that have similar solutions. We at Okta are trying to be focused on what our customers need and not get too caught up in a platform player that’s trying to do what we’re doing or a niche upstart that’s trying to copy some of our features. We are really focused on what do the customers need? Do they need help connecting to their customers? Do they need help with certain kinds of security architectures that are emerging as they move to more of a cloud central model?
From the beginning of the company over the last ten years, we’ve been incredibly customer-centric, listening to what customers needed and having that be our North Star. That’s worked incredibly well. It’s not a coincidence (that I sound like Marc Benioff). I worked at Salesforce for six years. I basically learned the ropes of cloud computing from Marc and the entire team at Salesforce. So it’s not it’s not a shock that there are a lot of similarities there.
Cloud adoption is just in the very early days says Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block. He says that over the last few years we’ve been in a perfect storm of cloud and mobile and data science and artificial intelligence coming together that have given companies the opportunity to reinvent themselves and reinvent their business models. Block says that this has been an incredible wave and a global phenomenon of digital transformation.
Keith Block, Salesforce co-CEO, discussed the global phenomenon of digital transformation in an interview on CNBC:
Cloud Adoption is Still in the Very Early Days
I believe we’re in early days. Salesforce will be celebrating its 20th anniversary very quickly and we’ve had a meteoric rise. We’ve been the fastest enterprise software company and in the top five software companies in terms of growth to $10 billion. We just gave our guidance to $13 billion and we’ll do $16 billion for next year. But cloud adoption is just in the very early days.
Incredible Wave, Global Phenomenon of Digital Transformation
What we’re really seeing right now is this incredible wave, this global phenomenon of digital transformation. Over the last few years, when you think about this conversion, this perfect storm of cloud and mobile and data science and artificial intelligence, these amazing technologies that have come together, it’s given companies the opportunity to reinvent themselves and reinvent their business models. I think classically of a company that is a B2B company that now wants to become a B2C company and that’s where Salesforce really plays beautifully in terms of getting closer to that customer.
MuleSoft Completes the Wave of Digital Transformation for our Customers
Specifically on MuleSoft. A great example is really having the holy grail of the 360-degree view of the customer, where you have information about the customer, where you can personalize the experience for the customer, where the customer feels like they are personally engaged with the companies that they do business with. MuleSoft is an amazing integration technology and we’re very lucky to have it. It really completes the wave of digital transformation for our customers in the sense that it’s allowing you to unlock data from any source.
Cloud Brings the Ability to be Agile, Nimble and Flexible
Think about decades of legacy data that have been built up and built up and built up and CEOs want to know how do we access that legacy data in a very agile and in a very quick fashion so we can serve it up to our systems of engagement? That’s why the marriage of Salesforce and MuleSoft has really become very compelling for CEOs all over the world. At the end of the day what the cloud brings you and what we bring at Salesforce is the ability to be agile, to be nimble, to be flexible, and actually bring something we refer to as a beginner’s mind. Completely taking a step back and saying, how do we reinvent, how do we innovate, how do we go quickly?
You can move, because of the technology that’s available today, far more quickly than you could in the age of the legacy system. It starts with that, bringing a point of view, speaking the language of the industry, understanding that talking to a bank is different than a telecommunications company. These technologies apply in different ways. Those are very fundamental than what you see with some of the legacy technology companies that are still using the same motion.
CEOs Must Commit to Digital Transformation
The second is it’s all about trust and making sure that you have a trust-based relationship with your customers. The third thing that I would tell you and I think is very very important is that we live in a world today where because of that convergence, that perfect storm of technology, we now have this global phenomenon called digital transformation. The most important aspect of that is the commitment from the CEO. The CEO has become and must be become the Chief Transformation Officer.
Salesforce is booming and the reason is that virtually every company in the world is going through a huge digital transformation, according to Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff. “The reason why is every company that we’re dealing with is going through a huge digital transformation and every digital transformation begins and ends with the customer,” says Benioff.
Marc Benioff, co-Founder, Chairman, and co-CEO of Salesforce, recently discussed the companies latest financial results and explained how the digital transformation is powering their continued massive growth in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:
Fastest Growing Enterprise Software Company of All Time
We see hitting our big goal which is $22 to $23 billion in revenue within two fiscal years. By fiscal year 2022. Now here we are we’re giving fiscal year 2020 guidance for the first time at $16 billion. Salesforce remains the fastest growing enterprise software company of all time and that’s incredible. I don’t think the company has ever been stronger or been in a better position.
These revenue numbers are incredible and way beyond our expectations for the quarter It’s awesome. We had a great quarter, the third quarter was phenomenal. We’re giving phenomenal guidance for the fourth quarter and certainly, we’re all praying and hoping to improve on that by the way and now we can see a strong fiscal year ahead in fiscal year 2020 as well.
Every Digital Transformation Begins and Ends with the Customer
I don’t think the company has ever been stronger or been in a better position. The reason why is every company that we’re dealing with is going through a huge digital transformation and every digital transformation begins and ends with the customer.
Just look at one of the largest deals we did this quarter, it’s a nine-figure deal with one of the largest banks in the world and they’re just rebuilding how they deal with their customers. That’s an amazing story for us just to see everybody go through this transformation. It’s everything that is customer facing for one of the top five financial institutions in the world.
Another one that I can give you the actual name for that is doing something just as exciting is Citibank. Michael Corbat has done a fantastic job as CEO of Citibank. We’ve been working on the retail transformation there and this quarter they opened the door for us and now we’re doing the wealth transformation as well. We couldn’t be more excited about everything that Citibank is doing.
Every Company is Transforming Their Customer Relationship
Every company is transforming their relationship with their customer. We’re going from a world where if you don’t have a digital one-on-one relationship with your customer you’re just not going to be that successful. You can look at some of the huge successes that we’ve had in the quarter. One of the stories that I love is Uber. Uber has a tremendous need to have a relationship not only with you the consumer but also with the driver and their own internal operations. As we’ve been able to improve our relationship with Dara Khosrowshahi and other executives in the company, we’ve seen them really transform their relationships with their customers.
Apple has been a great opportunity for us, we’ve worked on that for so long. Of course, we all use our Apple products all the time at Salesforce. Now we have a strategic alliance with Apple and we’re encouraging our customers to do what we do which is take their information on the road. All of our products work natively now on iOS. We have the ability to automate every enterprise around that incredible platform and we see customers doing that.
ServiceMaster Building a 360-Degree View of the Customer
Another great story during the quarter was ServiceMaster. This is a company that has a lot of brands such as Terminix and many others. This is a huge field service operation but it’s also the integration of their call center, their contact center. They’re trying to build a 360-degree view of the customer, so of course, you’re working with their technicians in the field and they need to have a strong institutional memory of you back in headquarters. That’s a digital transformation that is so exciting for so many companies where they protect their homes.
Who’s Not Going Through a Customer Transformation?
We’re the largest and most important CRM company in the world. We’re number one in CRM by market share and revenue and by revenue growth. It’s a big industry and all the players are doing well because every company is going through this customer transformation. Who’s not going through a customer transformation? Everywhere I go in the world this is happening and it’s been going on and it’s not going to stop anytime soon.
It’s about sales, it’s about service, it’s about marketing, it’s about commerce, it’s about analytics, it’s about applications, it’s about good building community, or in the case of one of the great customers that we have, DuPont, it’s about integration. We had this fantastic acquisition this year, MuleSoft, the ability to integrate everything together. This is so important for us and so many of our customers.
In 2010, Freshworks started as Freshdesk with a dream to make a dent in the world of customer support. The company has grown exponentially since then, moving well beyond customer service offering products that compete directly with Salesforce and others…
By necessity, from their humble beginnings in Chennai, India eight years ago, Freshworks brought an innovative sales and marketing approach which enabled them to compete globally immediately.
Freshworks CEO Girish Mathrubootham recently discussed in an interview on ZDNet how Freshworks disrupted the global SMB business model:
What We Really Have is a Business Model Disruption
What’s different with our approach is that you have to really understand the US model or the Silicon Valley model of scaling a SAAS business. It’s not suited to serve the long tail of the global SMB. The model is dependent on going upmarket and selling to the enterprise because when you actually have salespeople and the territories are shrinking and you want to grow in revenues you really want to go upmarket and close those million dollar deals or 350k deals.
What we really have is a business model disruption where we are able to serve the long tail of the global SMB profitably. To understand this you have to probably look at the only other company that I can think of is Atlassian, which also started off outside the valley. When that Atlassian IPO happened I’m sure you also saw along with the rest of Wall Street in Silicon Valley on how different the economics of the model was.
The Flywheel Effect
Even though Atlassian didn’t have a lot of SMB customers, their highest price point was $8,000. Even Walmart paid them their $8,000 one-time fee. I think what Atlassian shows you is a glimpse of a different model where you call it the flywheel effect, where a lot of teams just buy the software off the web and then you grow through land and expand inside these companies. That is the closest model that I can tell you.
Because we started in Chennai, India about eight years ago, we did not have any customers in Chennai and we didn’t have many customers in India for that matter, so we were actually from day one we had to go global. Our first customer came from Australia. When we had six customers we had them from four different continents. When we had 70 customers the average that a customer was paying us was $30 a month. The average revenue per customer was $30 a month in 2011.
Fundamentally a Different Business Model
We were really starting from the SMB, then we started building more products, expanding our product plans, expanding our portfolio, offering customers more features to get them to upgrade, or add more agents or try other products. I think what we had is fundamentally a different business model of acquiring customers online and selling profitably to the long tail of the global SMB.
What helped us was like the tailwind that we rode, in hindsight, I can tell you were all the SMBs actually going through this digital transformation. SMBs did not have the budget 13 years ago to go spend a hundred thousand dollars for on-premise software. Today, they can put on their credit card $100 or $200 a month and actually buy software. We were probably at the right place and at the right time in terms of bringing that software to them and being able to sell to them globally from Chennai.
At the recent Salesforce Dreamforce conference, Salesforce announced Einstein Plus, a visually improved no-code version of their artificial intelligence platform. Prior to announcing this new product release, Ketan Karhanis, SVP & GM of Salesforce Analytics discussed why AI insights are potentially transformative to businesses who have the guts to trust them.
Ketan Karhanis, SVP & GM, Salesforce Analytics at Salesforce talks about the need for smart analytics in businesses in order to drive better actions:
Technology is Simply an Enabler
We must be clear about one thing, technology is simply an enabler. Real transformation requires trailblazers. We live in a time of tremendous technological change with lots of good stuff happening AI, AR, voice. This is not about the technology, it’s simply about you. The single biggest question is how does all this enable your success and what does this mean to you?
You all know the world of business applications, such as sales, service, marketing, you know this world very well. Then there’s the world of analytics, some call it visualizations and some call it reporting,. No matter what you call it it is important because it’s crucial to see what is happening in your business and why.
AI and Analytics Need to Come Together
Now we have AI, the game-changing power of AI insight. What does that mean? Now we can get a glimpse of the future. We get predictive and prescriptive, very exciting technology. But are you going to be swivel chairing three different boxes, three different logins, different stats for everything, one stack for ML, one stack for visualization?
That’s probably not going to be fun because here’s one simple thing we need to realize, these are not three separate boxes they are facets of the same experience. AI and analytics need to come together and they need to be infused in your business applications.
You Need Automated Discovery
What you need is not just a digital experience but an intelligent experience where analytics is built right in and if done right analytics becomes invisible but you get the benefits of it, and the benefits are pretty spectacular. We are drowning in data, lots of data everywhere. Making sense out of millions of data points in sub-second speeds to derive insights, that’s kind of hard, our brains are not really wired to do that.
You need automated discovery. Automated discovery helps you discover the story in your data and the intelligent experience comes built with automated discovery. Insights have to be outcome focused.
You Need Smart Analytics that Drive Better Actions
Of course, you need charts which tell you about the past, but you need recommendations and explanations. You probably don’t need yet another dashboard which tells you what happened. You need better outcomes for the future and you should not settle for incomplete. From visualizations to predictive to prescriptive you need it complete in one experience.
You need smart analytics. AI stands for actionable insights because an insight which does not lead to an action is just a dumb chart. That’s why connecting to the business process is key. Insights need to drive better actions.
You need to be able to leverage your existing teams and bring them to this new world of no-code AI, of a completely different way of interfacing with your insights. AI’s role is amplifying your effectiveness, it’s about augmenting your skills but how will you trust it. That’s why accountability is key, transparency is key, and you need all of this.
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