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Tag: Salesforce

  • Verizon Business Markets CIO: We Have to Humanize Technology

    Verizon Business Markets CIO: We Have to Humanize Technology

    The CIO of Verizon Business Markets, which is Verizon’s small business segment, says that “We have to humanize technology.” What Rajeev Chandrasekharan is talking about is Verizon’s push internally to modernize the customer experience and to make it less frustrating.

    The Verizon Business Markets CIO says that they are modernizing and becoming more customer-centric with the help of Salesforce CRM and other tools. Their goal is to ensure that the customer’s concerns and information follow the customer, regardless of who at Verizon the customer is speaking with.

    Rajeev Chandrasekharan, CIO of Verizon Business Markets, recently discussed how they are reimagining the customer experience at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco:

    The Three Pillars for Industry Transformation

    Our industry is seeing a lot of need for transformation and if you really look at it there are three different pillars. One is we’re engineered for scale and not for speed to market. We do something well and we are big and now that whole equation is changing with needing to get to the market quickly with products. The second aspect is we’ve been around for a while and use different kinds of technologies and we need to refresh them so we need to start using some of the cooler capabilities that exist.

    Lastly, there’s a lot of pressure on us with all the other industries, the digital unicorns, trying to provide this amazing customer experience and it’s not good enough now just to provide service or be a commodity. The intersection of those three needs is creating a need for a huge digital transformation.

    My role here in Verizon Business Markets is while we launch new products try to build digital business and try to leverage all of this technology and customer experience while we penetrate newer customer segments.

    Verizon Business Markets in the Midst of a Digital Transformation

    Generally, when you do a digital transformation there’s a lot of work and a lot of investment and the question companies always have is how much is it worth to go change everything that I’ve done? Luckily for us since we have multiple business units we pick the small business unit and said we see a tremendous potential here for new products and for penetration of the market so the investment is well justified. So go, do not compromise on things, drive this digital mobile first omnichannel thinking to the extreme and build something that’s like a beacon for all the other business units to follow.

    We’ve taken this to a place where revenue is going to be generated and when you have a promise of being able to grow the top-line it’s easy to justify all the work that goes into it. The other aspect is we’ve got a lot of buy-in from the top on trying to do things differently, so we’ve tried to put together a few rules of how we want to operate. We call them the big rules. Then build on that, where we’re trying to make sure the whole organization is saying, don’t fall into the trap of doing things the old way and make sure we focus on these big rules. Culturally and then opportunity wise Verizon Business Markets, the small business segment, becomes a fantastic place to try out this concept and we’re going all-out.

    This is a Customer-Centric Digital Transformation

    This is a customer-centric digital transformation. We started with the customer, we looked at the product research, we looked at the capabilities and then we decided what platform we wanted and what processes we can change. We also challenged ourselves by saying that we need to break our own rules and do something different. For example, if you’re going to get into a house differently and you can’t get to through the window, you can’t build another door, you can’t break in and you have got to use the key, then different about it? We challenge ourselves to break those rules.

    That customer in mindset is what we are struggling with and that’s the one thing I would say that we didn’t have, the digital native aspect, the customer-centric aspect as much. We have that in our service, in our network, and in our products, we have amazing stuff. When we top it off with this we’re going to be in a good place.

    We Have to Humanize Technology

    I think we have amazing products and services so innovation is constantly going to happen there. The two things that I see is operations are going to become digital with artificial intelligence and those sort of new age technologies, which is very important for you to be competitive in the marketplace or you’re not going to survive against your competition. Then, the most important thing is the way you go to deliver capabilities to a customer.

    We have to humanize technology. The customer is basically saying what do you think, what do you say, what do you do, and we then turn it into some garble technology talk. We need to operate as a digital entity and make the customer feel like we as a company are doing one-on-one personal services for you in think, say, and do.

    We’re giving you intelligent recommendations, executing your orders, and we are communicating with you effectively. That is going to almost take you back to the olden days of manual stuff which were one-on-one but without the human and instead with technology. That is the sweet spot for us going forward.

  • Vlocity Thriving on the Salesforce AppExchange Focusing on Industry Verticals

    Vlocity Thriving on the Salesforce AppExchange Focusing on Industry Verticals

    The Salesforce AppExchange is where companies can find third-party applications that run on and integrate with the Salesforce platform. David Schmaier, CEO and Founder of Vlocity, a Forbes Cloud 100 Company, says that Vlocity is the fastest company ever built on the Salesforce AppExchange and the Salesforce platform.

    Companies leverage Vlocity Industry Cloud apps to extend the power of the Salesforce platform.

    Vlocity CEO and founder David Schmaier discussed his companies amazing rise in an interview at Dreamforce:

    Vlocity Has 5 Industry Verticals Built on Top of Salesforce

    Vlocity is the single fastest company ever built on the Salesforce AppExchange and the Salesforce platform. The app exchange has 4,000 companies that do basically everything you can do possibly with the world’s number one CRM platform and cloud platform Salesforce. What we do is we build five industry verticals on top of the Salesforce platform; communications and media, insurance, healthcare, government, and our newest addition is the energy business. We take what our regulated businesses and we make them digital.

    I came to my first Dreamforce in 2013 and I was looking around for opportunities. Some friends had built a company called Veeva, which is the biggest company ever built on the Salesforce platform and they do pharmaceutical and life sciences CRM. I came to Dreamforce to find the next Veeva and when I found was astonishing. Back then there were around 2,700 companies on the AppExchange and I saw CPQ, CGI, Middleware and Document Management, but no other industry vertical applications.

    There was only one back then and yet it was the largest company ever built on the Salesforce platform and the only one to go public. You didn’t need to be a Ph.D. in computer science to figure out that there was an opportunity to build another Veeva, a bigger Veeva, which we call Vlocity.

    Vlocity Transforms Industries to be Modern, Digital, and Customer Centric

    We named the company Vlocity because we’re fast, but we try and we’re trying to improve the agility of our customers. A good example of this is last night we were with New York Life Insurance which has rolled out about 18,000 users of Salesforce and Vlocity in about a year and they do it all in a mobile-first way.

    Before they would go in and talk to you about life insurance in your kitchen with pen and paper and now they just tap on their phone to sell life insurance. We’ve taken the whole process and made it mobile first and made it digital so they can connect with their customers in a whole new way. That’s the kind of capabilities that we provide for people. We call it digital, we call it agile and it’s all available now on the mobile device.

    Vlocity Announces New Mobile Products

    We’re announcing two new mobile products. The first is a visual studio where I can point and click and drag and drop and I can put in a companies logo and I can build high fidelity rich mobile apps and I can deploy them really really fast versus having to custom build them. We simplify the development process and allow you to point-and-click and put your colors and your branding and your logo and roll out very high fidelity mobile apps.

    The second part is we’re coming up out with a new app for consumers so that when I want to browse my bill or look at my usage or add devices or buy the new iPhones that just came out I can do that all from a branded consumer mobile app that’s that comes out of the box and ready for use. We’re doing a lot of things in the mobile-first area.  

    Vlocity Integrates AI and Siri

    I’m excited about Salesforce’s big announcement this week where Einstein and Siri are now best friends. We were in parallel working on these mobile apps and because our software’s all built 100% native and additive on the Salesforce platform all that great work Salesforce is doing with Einstein and Siri we get for free.

    Now we can ask Siri questions about paying the bill or understanding usage or adding the new iPhone and I can do that all through the voice capabilities that Salesforce has added to the platform. The platform keeps getting better with analytics, with Einstein, now Einstein meets Siri, and we’re just thrilled to be part of this great ecosystem.

  • How adidas is Creating a Digital Experience That’s Premium, Connected, and Personalized

    How adidas is Creating a Digital Experience That’s Premium, Connected, and Personalized

    Digital marketing is changing and adidas is working to make it integral in connecting with their customers and to really change their lives in a positive way. Joseph Godsey, Head of Digital Brand Commerce at addidas, says that “The beauty is with digital is we can create relationships at scale.”

    The company is reaching out and connecting with customers in a personalized way via their app that they launched last year and have recently announced major new features.

    Joseph Godsey, Head of Digital Brand Commerce at adidas discusses the company’s new digital marketing strategy at Dreamforce:

    Digital Brings the addidas Core Principals to Life

    We spend a lot of time really listening to consumers in focus groups and through lots of studies in order to really understand what their needs are and how we can serve them better, particularly using our digital channel. It started really with our core belief as a company that through sport we have the power to change lives.

    Then we asked ourselves the question if digital is a focus and clear priority for us how does digital actually bring that core to belief to life? The beauty is with digital we can create relationships at scale. We can really connect with the consumer and match their needs using digital in a way that we could never do before.

    Creating a Digital Experience That’s Premium, Connected, and Personalized

    When we talk about interacting with the consumer we look at how we can make a difference in their game, in their life, and in their world. We look at how we can hit home on all of those fears and then ultimately in digital create an experience that’s premium, connected, and personalized.

    Premium is about inspiring love for the brand and desire for the products. Connected is about taking all the touch points that they can interact with us in a physical or in an online environment, and there are a lot, that we’re actually seamless and really interacting with them in a consistent way. Personalized, because in our brand there are so many sports to talk about, but I need to talk with you about what’s relevant for you, not what’s relevant for someone else.

    I can’t just blast out a communication anymore and hope that it’s interesting for you. I need to respect the interactions we’ve had together across any touch point and make sure I bring what’s relevant to you in that particular context but also what’s interesting in terms of your profile. We really want to create that relationship that creates value and meaning that hits home on what’s most interesting for the consumer.

    Announcing the Launch of a New addidas Membership Program

    We have some exciting news that we’ll talk about during Dreamforce this week which is about a new membership program that we’re launching in the US and then later will expand that in other countries. It gives us the ability to really engage and hit home on what’s most interesting for a consumer. They might be looking for value, they might be looking for experiences, or they might look to actually give back and be part of broader causes. Depending on what’s most interesting to them we can expose that in our ecosystem and reward them for those interactions but also give them the chance to interact as well.

    I think to be relevant in today’s world with the proliferation of brands and experiences that are out there we have to have something that’s really meaningful that consumers will come back to again and again. They have to also see how we are represented as a brand and have a way to interact and connect with that as well. We’re looking across all the experience to have something that’s sticky and makes it seamless and easy to use. If you want to buy something you can do it quickly and easily but we also make the experience a positive one.

    The App Changed the Paradigm

    We launched the app last year and we’ve now rolled it out in 18 countries which is a very small space of time for a massive global rollout but also expanding the features and the capabilities in the app. It’s a great example where we really tried to change the paradigm and how we develop things because when we initially launched the app we put out there a starting point, we had a very clear strategy how the app would enable us to create a connection with the consumer to be even more personalized. For instance, with the newsfeed, they can really surface what’s personally relevant for that consumer where we can talk with them about new releases and new things that are coming.

    At the same time, we only launched it as a starting point, so almost like we put out the very first version of a car. We wanted consumers to give us feedback in mass.  We did consumer testing to build the app extensively but when you really get it out there and people start using it they tell you what’s really interesting and what they want more of. Through that experience we realized some of the things that we might prioritize in our backlog, actually, we need to elevate some other topics that are more important to the consumer.

    The adidas Digital Strategy for the Future

    I think for us ultimately with our digital strategy the first part is how do we create that ever-tightening relationship that has meaning and value from a consumer perspective and really hits home on those three pillars of premium, connected, and personalized. How do you really surface that in a meaningful way?

    Take something like a product description. How do we really have the product descriptions and offerings so that if you’re interested in sports we will help you find exactly the product that you need for the sport that you’re interested in? We will also educate you and bring you back at different points in time to help you find out what you need when you need it, or with an engagement program. Ultimately, like the membership program, that it has something that’s sticky, that you can give back to something, even more, you can participate in events and experiences.

    For us, a lot of it’s really deepening those experiences but also exploring new technologies and new areas. Omnichannel was kind of the original wave which happened and  I said it was the freight train that came past us a couple of years ago. Now we’re also looking at what those next freight trains are, whether it’s technologies like blockchain or experiencing picking up a new channel. For example, we’re working extensively with Salesforce on automation, how we can automate consumer experiences. Take something as simple as a consumer service interaction. How do I make it so easy for you, no matter if you talk with us via Messenger, WhatsApp, online, or in the app itself, that we can respond to those questions fast and easy but not have to have thousands of agents all the time on the call?

    I would say the interesting complexity but also the opportunity comes from that connected sphere. How do you connect all of those different things that are relevant? If you participate in one of our communities how do we also reward that interaction through a membership program? How do we build that seamlessly into a sales or commercial experience as well? That’s really part of that opportunity and that multi-year journey that we’re on and really expanding.

  • Study Says Half of All Tasks Will Be Automated… Are We Facing a Jobless Future?

    Study Says Half of All Tasks Will Be Automated… Are We Facing a Jobless Future?

    Is artificial intelligence going to replace our jobs? That’s the question a panel of experts discussed at the Salesforce Dreamforce conference. James Manyika, Director of the McKinsey Global Institute, says that about half of all job tasks and activities are going to be replaced by AI. Are we facing a jobless future?

    James Manyika, Chairman, and Director of the McKinsey Global Institute talks about the impact of AI on jobs:

    When we think about AI, first it’s important to recognize that this is actually an extraordinary time and we’ve made so much progress in AI in the last five years or 10 years, much more than the last 50 years. Of course, these questions about work become very important to us. Rather than start with jobs, we should think about activities and tasks because what we all do is actually composed of tasks and activities. In fact, if we take any of our occupations they’re made up of a variety of tasks that we do every day and AI and other automation technologies are starting to be able to automate those tasks.

    We’ve looked at something like over 2000 activities and tasks that make up what people do in the economy and you look at what’s now possible to automate based on AI and automation technologies, you very quickly come to the conclusion that it looks like it’s going to be possible to automate close to about half the tasks that people do. That’s a lot, but it’s important to recognize these are tasks, not jobs because any job also constituent activities.

    If you then take this task view and then you try and map it back into occupations, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks about 828 occupation categories. If you map these back to those occupations, you suddenly realize that about 10 percent of occupations look like they have nearly 100 percent of their tasks that can be automated. Approximately 60 percent of occupations have about a third of their constituent activities that can be automated. That means that many more occupations are going to be augmented by technology than will be automated away.

    It’s natural to wonder, so are we facing a jobless future? We concluded with the research that we’ve done that yes, of course, there will be jobs lost, but there will also be jobs gained, and also jobs changed. In some ways, the jobs that are going to be gained and changed are probably a much larger number. So do I worry about a jobless future, I actually don’t. That’s actually the least of my worries.

  • Marriott Using Salesforce Einstein to Reinvent the Hotel Experience

    Marriott Using Salesforce Einstein to Reinvent the Hotel Experience

    Salesforce Co-founder & CEO Marc Benioff announced at the Dreamforce conference a new partnership with Marriott that is going to bring the power of artificial intelligence into the hotel room via a phone app. This new Marriott app will connect directly with a Salesforce Einstein powered customer database that knows the customer’s preferences and will be accessible via Siri and other voice recognition platforms.

    Marc Benioff provided some interesting details of the Marriott and Apple partnership and in a discussion with CNBC’s Jim Cramer at the Dreamforce conference:

    Marriott Using Salesforce Technology to Reinvent the Hotel Experience

    Every company has to rethink who they are in the fourth industrial revolution. This includes Marriott, that’s why Arne Sorenson is here, the CEO of Marriott, and you are going to see in the keynote a whole new vision for the future of Marriott. All the technology, everything they need to do to connect with their customer in a whole new way via Salesforce.

    That includes the ability to check into a Marriott with your digital key right on your phone, and then the ability to talk to Siri and order your favorite sandwich. In the Salesforce customer database, we will know you want a turkey sandwich and we are going to bring it to your room. Then if you tell Siri to lower the lights and put the room temperature to 67 degrees the lights go down and the temperature adjusts.

    Salesforce Einstein Radically Empowering the Customer

    How does it know, where does it get all the data, how does it have the customer background, it comes from Salesforce, we’re the backend. This is what the conference is about, helping these incredible people, our trailblazers, know how to build these systems. We had to build something amazing first. This isn’t voice recognition that we did. We had to build something called Salesforce Einstein, the number one artificial intelligence platform in enterprise applications. We now are doing billions of Einstein transactions every day giving the ability for our customers to radically use artificial intelligence to make them more productive and smarter about their customers.

    We are connecting Einstein to Siri or Einstein to any other voice platform, then we take that voice recognition and we are able to move it to the database. Don’t forget, when I say I want my favorite sandwich, Siri knows what I’m saying with my voice, but then we have to take that and retrieve it or insert into the customer database. That’s the magic, that’s Einstein Voice, it is the glue, the middleware that links all the voice systems that you are using in your home and your phone with the number one CRM in the world Salesforce.

    Marc Benioff Say the Economy is Ripping

    The economy is ripping. There is incredible demand from customers to rebuild their systems, they’re benefitting from the tax breaks, they are benefitting from a huge economy that is growing at rates they’ve never seen before. Even here in San Francisco, our unemployment now is below 3 percent. That’s amazing!

  • Clorox: Digital is About Changing the Way We Do Business

    Clorox: Digital is About Changing the Way We Do Business

    When you think of Clorox you probably think about bleach and consumer products. However, from a business operations and marketing perspective, you might be surprised to discover that Colox itself is undergoing a multi-year transformation with the goal of becoming a digital company.

    Recently, at Salesforce Live, Doug Milliken, VP Digital Experience Transformation at The Clorox Company, described their digital journey:

    We were doing digital, but we have to go to being digital. In the past, we’ve been doing digital marketing or doing e-commerce and we realized we really need to be digital, meaning the company needs to be organized around and operating in a digital way end-to-end.

    Digital is About Changing the Way We Do Business

    That led us to realize is that for us digital is not just a channel and a technology, digital fundamentally is about changing the way that we do business. Digital for us is about changing the way that every function in the company operates, leveraging the possibilities of digital technology.

    We have efforts across the whole value chain of the company, how we do R&D, how we do product supply, how we do marketing and sales, and a program that’s funded and built into our three-year long-range plan across every sector of the company to digitize and change how we work.

    Goal of Digitizing is to Improve the Consumer Experience

    We then decided we have to have a North Star, why are we doing that and to what end are we digitizing the company? For us, that end is to improve the consumer experience. Digital transformation is changing how we work across the whole company in service of improving our consumers’ experience.

    What this is about at the core is about becoming more radically consumer-centric and human-centered. Companies like Clorox,  most CPG companies, we are very consumer oriented, but we’ve typically been very brand-centric. We’re very organized and our thinking is very much around our brands.

    What is the Goal of the Consumer?

    Our brands are critical and they’re the unit of value for Clorox, but we’re trying to put the consumer much more at the center. Who is the exact consumer or the persona who we’re designing around and what is her goal?

    If we take one of our brands, Renew Life, it’s a probiotic, that consumers goal is not to buy Renew Life, her goal might be to enhance her wellness. What is the consumer’s goal, what is her journey to that goal and what are the pain points or difficulties along those journeys that we can help with?

    Becoming a Helpful Part of the Consumer Journey

    We’re trying to shift our mindset from how do we sell our brand or product to how can our brand help the consumer along this journey. That includes products but it could include other things too. It’s about their whole end-to-end experience and moving from being product and brand centered thinking to think about an end-to-end experience along a journey to a goal. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish.

    I think in the next three to five years this is going to really come to fruition. What we’re going to be able to do for our consumer, to move them along their journey, to enable them to reach their goal and our ability to help them and our ability to grow our business while we’re helping them do that is really exciting.

  • Salesforce is Working on a Blockchain Product, Could Be Released at Dreamforce 2018

    Salesforce is Working on a Blockchain Product, Could Be Released at Dreamforce 2018

    Cloud computing company Salesforce is reportedly working on a blockchain product. If all goes well, the San Francisco-based company might even announce the newest addition to its services during Dreamforce, Salesforce’s yearly customer conference.

    The alleged blockchain product was revealed during an interview conducted by Business Insider’s Julie Bort with both of Salesforce’s co-founders Parker Harris and Marc Benioff. The interview touched on various topics before touching on the company’s foray into blockchain technology.

    According to Benioff, the decision to tap into blockchain technology was due to serendipity. The 53-year-old Benioff recounted how he was at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland when he got to talk with a participant from a crypto conference that was being held at the same time. The fortuitous conversation soon led to Benioff thinking about Salesforce’s stand on blockchain and its “strategies around cryptocurrencies and how will we relate to all of these things.”

    Benioff said that the more he thought about the technology, the more it cemented his belief that Salesforce can utilize blockchain. A sudden epiphany had him realizing a way to put blockchain and cryptocurrencies to work in the company.

    “A lot [these ideas] comes from paying attention, listening,” Benioff said. “There’s new ideas coming all the time.”

    Salesforce’s chief is hoping that they will be able to roll out a “blockchain and cryptocurrency solution” by Dreamforce. The company’s yearly customer conference is set to be held in the City by the Bay from September 25 to 28.

    Blockchain is an electronic ledger that is utilized to track digital currencies like Bitcoin. However, it can also be used in a more general role. The technology, which is becoming increasingly popular, can also track anything of value and record transactions in an irrefutable way. A lot of states are already legitimizing blockchain technology. Arizona, for instance, has amended a bill that validates data stored and shared on blockchain.

  • Salesforce Wants to Buy MuleSoft, $6.5 Billion Offered for Acquisition

    Salesforce Wants to Buy MuleSoft, $6.5 Billion Offered for Acquisition

    In today’s ultra-competitive business environment where customer satisfaction is key to success, every company needs to have a proper Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy in place to stay ahead of the competition. This explains why the services of CRM-focused cloud computing companies such as the San Francisco-based Salesforce is in demand as they help other businesses polish their brand’s image while tapping into the full potential of their existing clientele.

    But even CRM experts must evolve with the changing times to stay on top of the game, and this sometimes includes the plain old mergers and acquisitions route. Recently, Salesforce announced that it is willing to shell out some serious cash to buy API expert MuleSoft.

    The deal is valued at a whopping $6.5 billion, which is expected to be finalized by July this year. At $44.89 per MuleSoft share, Salesforce is even willing to pay 36 percent on top of the current market price to sweeten the deal. However, it won’t be a pure cash transaction; Salesforce will pay $36 in cash as well as 0.0711 of its shares for every MuleSoft share.

    Given the multitude of applications available to businesses, MuleSoft makes it easier for companies to connect, utilize and make sense of the jumble of data generated by their horde of apps and devices. The company is an industry leader in terms of integrating different APIs, making them work seamlessly in any cloud-based platform. Obviously, the company’s technical expertise is invaluable for Salesforce’s CRM and marketing services.

    Aside from tech, the deal will also bring MuleSoft’s clientele within Salesforce’s reach. As an industry leader in cloud integration, Mulesoft runs a globe-spanning operation with around 1,200 clients across 60 countries, which includes Fortune 500 firms such as Coca-Cola, VMware, GE, Accenture, Airbus, AT&T, and Cisco.

    The deal is ultimately geared toward improving Salesforce’s bottom line and, hopefully, help the CRM giant meet its rather ambitious revenue target. The company aims to increase its annual revenue to $60 billion by 2034. While MuleSoft only posted $300 million for its 2017 sales, Salesforce could tap into its tech expertise to improve its service and further boost its future revenue.

    [Featured image via Salesforce]

  • Salesforce Acquires CloudCraze, a B2B eCommerce Software Startup

    Salesforce Acquires CloudCraze, a B2B eCommerce Software Startup

    Salesforce has added another tool to their CRM applications with its upcoming acquisition of CloudCraze, a Chicago-based eCommerce platform.

    The news was announced on Monday by CloudCraze. While the terms of the deal with Salesforce was not disclosed, it was revealed that the two companies had already signed an agreement.

    CloudCraze president Ray Grady pointed out in the company’s announcement that the B2B industry is slated to grow to $1.2 trillion and that it’s crucial for businesses to grab this opportunity. He also added that “the addition of CloudCraze to the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Salesforce and its customers can now take advantage of this shift to digital commerce, enabling business buyers to browse and purchase online as easily as consumers shop today.”

    The deal between the two companies is not surprising considering how intertwined CloudCraze and Salesforce are.  Salesforce built its B2B software on CloudCraze’s platform and its investment division also supported CloudCraze’s $20 million round in 2017. Insight Venture Partners also backed the Chicago startup during its latest funding run.

    Last year’s investor round gave CloudCraze the needed capital to scale its business and expand its team. The company’s software helps businesses produce online revenue and remain connected to their customers effortlessly. Companies that use the platform can instantly see all the relevant customer data and quickly share it across various channels. Companies like Coca-Cola, GE, Kellogg’s, and L’Oreal are all using CloudCraze.

    This is far from the first startup that Salesforce bought. About two years ago, the company purchased Demandware. It also absorbed Chicago startups Gravitytank AKTA, InStranet, and Model Metrics. The company also acquired SteelBrick in 2015 for $300 million.

    CloudCraze will be Salesforce’s second acquisition for the year, after taking a break from buying startups in 2017. The company acquired Attic Labs in January. It’s still unknown if Salesforce will be going on a buying spree again this year, although the company has been very open about its new revenue goals. Acquiring fast-growing startups is one sure way to hit their mark.

    [Featured image via Salesforce APAC YouTube]

  • Salesforce Improves Einstein Analytics to Make it Easier for Customers to Extract Data

    Salesforce Improves Einstein Analytics to Make it Easier for Customers to Extract Data

    A lot of people find it challenging to use the different analytics tools at their disposal. But Salesforce hopes to change all that by making it possible for businesses to extract data by using conventional conversational language.

    Salesforce has been developing and filling artificial-intelligence features into its system so that users will be able to utilize their marketing and sales data to the fullest. The company introduced Einstein Analytics in June 2017. Now it has made improvements that allow the service to accept natural-language inquiries, thereby making it easier to use.

    Dubbed “Conversational Queries,” the feature recognizes popular phrases the user is typing and provides an automated method to develop queries and access data. For instance, a sales executive can type “show top accounts by yearly profit” into the Salesforce dashboard and it will immediately generate a report. Marketers previously had to set up the parameters and fields to get the data they need. Now Einstein Analytics can even suggest possible search terms to use, as well as the correct output vehicle, like a graph or a map.

    Technical users have used similar tools effectively for building queries, but it does require extensive knowledge on how to extract the data you need and fashion it into a specific query. By simplifying the system and using plain language to make queries, more people can access key analytics.

    According to VP of Product for Einstein Analytics Amruta Moktali, “Conversational Queries offers a new way to explore data and get answers to questions faster, eliminating clicks and the training required to create and drill down into charts.”

    There’s no question that enterprise tech is focusing on improving AI and machine-learning but for certain services, like customer-relationship management, ensuring that people can use the technology without having to hire a data scientist or going back to school is more critical.

    Salesforce’s Einstein Analytics is currently available in beta.

    [Featured image via Salesforce]

  • Salesforce Offers New AI Features to Small Businesses

    Salesforce Offers New AI Features to Small Businesses

    Most Corporations have the advantage of unlimited access to all the features a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform offers. Now small businesses can also enjoy this perk as well.

    During Salesforce’s yearly Dreamforce conference, the company announced that one of their best performing CRM platforms – the Sales Cloud Lightning Essentials – will be available to all. With this, small businesses will enjoy the same access to features that large enterprises use to grow rapidly and work quicker and smarter. Small companies will also have access to Salesforce’s newest innovations, like Einstein AI, Lightning, and Trailhead.

    Essentials Meet the Demands of Small Business

    Salesforce knows that to be able to cope with the demands of today’s competitive marketplaces, businesses should be able to easily integrate new technology into their day-to-day operations. This need is underlined by the revelation that 66% of small company heads are handling two or more departments. Meanwhile, only 26% of small businesses have an in-house IT department while the rest either deal with contractors or try to work out IT problems on their own.

    Salesforce Essentials can go a long way in easing this burden, as the platform was designed for simplicity and functionality. Small business analyst, Brent Leary, explained that small companies need guidance and a user-friendly platform, especially if they’re new to CRM. Essentials’ simple interface does meet that requirement, with the Trailhead feature providing the necessary assistance needed to develop leads faster and see results more quickly.

    New AI Features Great for Small Business

    The three key features added to the Sales Cloud Lightning Essentials will definitely make a difference to small businesses.

    Trailhead is an interactive, online learning platform that assists users in its implementation. It also gives guidance on topics like how to implement innovation and raise business knowledge.

    Meanwhile, Einstein is showing small businesses the practical aspects of artificial intelligence. In an interview, Salesforce’s Senior Product Director of Marketing, Eric Bernsley, explained that while most have a lot of questions about AI, they don’t want big, vague concepts. They want to see how AI can help businesses get more done.

    Entrepreneurs and small business owners know that manually inputting data is time-consuming and leaves little time for a company to identify or pursue new opportunities. But with Einstein, basic sales activities can be automated or records kept up-to-date. It can also help with predictive lead scoring or look at areas connected to possible leads.

    Since Essentials is built on Salesforce’s Lightning framework, small businesses will be able to enjoy a smooth transition of their workflow on any device due to the system’s intuitive design. And when Essentials is combined with other Salesforce Apps, small businesses can eventually manage their whole sales conversation – accounts, leads to contacts – on any device, whether from the office or out in the field.

    More importantly, all of Essentials’ features are scalable, meaning they’re flexible and can meet the CRM needs of any company, regardless of the size. And since Essentials is also built on a global platform, upgrading can be done anytime, something that will be beneficial to small companies.

    [Featured Image via Salesforce]

  • Salesforce Has a New Partner, and Its Name is Google

    Salesforce Has a New Partner, and Its Name is Google

    Google and Salesforce have come to an agreement, one that will see the former’s G Suites productivity apps directly integrated with the latter’s CRM service. The impressive partnership between the two companies was one of the highlights of this year’s Dreamforce event.

    While the two companies have been associated with each other for more than a decade, the new arrangement will see Google Cloud becoming Saleforce’s prime choice of public cloud provider, as well as becoming its key cloud provider for the global expansion the company is said to be making.

    Not only will this partnership see the integration of Salesforce’s service with Google’s G Suite software, it will also give Salesforce’s clients a free G Suite subscription that will be good for a year. This means clients who run G Suite will have access and be able to share information from their accounts in Google Calendar, Gmail, Drive, Docs, and Hangouts. It will also feed data from the CRM platform’s Sales and Marketing Clouds into Google Analytics 360. It’s expected that Google Analytics 360 will already be embedded in Salesforce’s Sales and Marketing Clouds by the first six months of 2018.

    The alliance between Google and Salesforce will also see Quip being integrated as a live app in both Google Calendar and Drive. This will permit users to work in those apps inside a Quip document. The feature will be available to Quip license holders by the first half of 2018 as well.

    Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff described the partnership as a way for customers of both companies to have the best of both worlds. He explained that it will make it easier for companies to manage their business in the cloud, whether its analytics and emails, sales, service and marketing apps, and even productivity apps. Benioff also promised that the deal between Salesforce and Google will assist in making clients work smarter and become more productive.

    The integration of Salesforce’s data into the Calendar, Drive, and Gmail has already commenced, and other integrations are set to be released next year. What’s more, the tie-up with analytics is reportedly scheduled to be rolled out next year and will be offered for free.

    Salesforce and Google do not have time to rest on their laurels though, as Microsoft has been determinedly targeting the two companies’ services through the Azure and Office 365 platforms. Luckily, Google and Salesforce’s new alliance means that they have their own means to counter Microsoft’s prime selling points.

    [Featured image via Salesforce]

  • We Don’t Sell Products, We Sell Change

    We Don’t Sell Products, We Sell Change

    “I actually believe that we don’t sell products, we sell change,” says Tiffani Bova, Customer Growth and Transformation Evangelist at Salesforce. Bova was interviewing legendary speaker and author Seth Godin when she made that comment.

    “What great marketers and great sales people and great organizations do is only one thing, as Michael Schrage has written about, we make change happen,” responded Godin. “My favorite example of this is Harley Davidson. Harley turns disrespected outsiders into respected insiders. That’s what they do. They make half of their revenue licensing their logo, because the logo, the totum, the uniform is a symbol of the change. You don’t even have to have a motorcycle to be changed by the brand.”

    This is the company’s internal marketing positioning statement that illustrates the point that Bova and Godin are making:

    The only motorcycle manufacturer
    That makes big, loud motorcycles
    For macho guys (and “macho wannabes”)
    Mostly in the United States
    Who want to join a gang of cowboys
    In an era of decreasing personal freedom.

    Per Inc. Magazine

    Godin also talked colorfully about sales, marketing and social media:

    “It all comes down to what story does the sales person tell himself when he shows up at work every morning. Trust and awareness are the two key things here. What we want isn’t email, we want me-mail. What we want isn’t to hear about you, we want to hear about us. We want to hear about our dreams, where we are going. Salespeople who get that, who show up at work everyday intent on making that happen, they don’t have a social media problem.”

  • What is CRM? Salesforce Provides Small Businesses with a Simple Explanation

    What is CRM? Salesforce Provides Small Businesses with a Simple Explanation

    Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, often gets small business owners eyes rolling. Saleforce recently created a simple, yet effective, video answer to that question targeted toward small businesses.

    What is CRM?

    Salesforce explains to small business why CRM is important to them. The video is a little cheesy but helpful as a CRM intro to small business owners who find the concept daunting:

    “You are in a business that some call small business, wearer of many hats, blazer of new business trails, it’s anything but small. It’s everything, not the least of which is finding, winning and keeping customers in a world where you’re expected to keep up like a bigger business.”

    “But how do you do all that? Welcome to Customer Relationship Management, CRM for short. It does all the things you already do to keep track of customers, only easier. It starts when you take what you know about your customers, name, phone, job title, company and put it in a place that makes it easy for everyone in your company to use, share and take action from.”

    “It’s so everyone understands every interaction from calls, emails and meeting notes to quotes and closing deals. You can even see what your amazing sales revenue look like at a glance. It’s the kind of info that lets service be quicker, more informed and more personal with customers and lets marketing capture leads and follow up with smarter and better email campaigns to bring customers in.”

    “It’s one place that allows everyone to work together seamlessly from anywhere, right in the palm of your hand. There is no need for sticky notes or staring at spreadsheets so no one is ever in the dark about what’s going on, especially you.”

    “CRM… in a nutshell, it’s the everything helper, from people who need to do everything to make business grow bigger.”

  • Technology Helps Salespeople and the Customer Connect

    Technology Helps Salespeople and the Customer Connect

    Technology is impacting sales in a way never seen before as evidenced by Salesforce’s massive integration of artificial intelligence into all of their various clouds and products. At the Salesforce Dreamforce event much of the discussion is about how technology is changing the sales landscape requiring salespeople to adapt or fail.

    There are so many trends really impacting sales right now,” says Tim Clarke, Director of Product Marketing at Salesforce. “You can’t lead with products anymore, as Brent Adamson of CEB said, 57% of the buying process is completed before they engage the salesperson. We know that with a lot of the purchasing decisions that we make we’ll just do our research online, so the professional sales person now needs to truly add value.”

    He noted what we all know, that the most effective sales strategy relies on having the right conversation at the right time, at the right place and on the right channel. However, it’s really more than that, it’s about standing out knowing everything there is to know. “We’ve probably all received those prospecting emails which are just generic, and then you get the second one saying, I didn’t hear from you and then the third one asking, did you get hit by a car?” said Clarke. “Clearly, prospecting and sales development is really an exciting area right now and there’s so much technology that really can support sales professionals to be successful.”

    Salespeople Must Stand Out From the Herd

    An extreme depth of knowledge about the customer is becoming more important. “First, the customer is obviously much more educated today than they were even 5 or 10 years ago,” said Will Anastas, SVP of Enterprise Corporate Sales at Salesforce. “The proliferation of technology that enables customers to be smart is also at our disposal as well in sales.”

    He noted that it is key for salespeople to “stand out from the herd of salespeople” that literally have the same information as we do. “So how do we change our perspective and how do we do discovery so that we can show up literally like your customers customer?” Anastas asks. “By providing that point of view that is authentic, genuine and empathetic that will help you break through and separate yourself from really everyone that is trying to sell to this individual. I think it’s a challenging time, but I think it is full of opportunity.”

    Try Different Things to Get in Front of Your Prospects

    “We launched a project with a company called Somersault Innovation which is led by Ashley Welch and her co-founder Justin Jones,” said Anastas. “What they did was take the principals of design thinking and applied it to a sales process, a sales discovery methodology. There were 3 main components of it, empathy, customer centricity and curiosity.”

    Salesforce rolled out their program internally in order to improve their own sales. “What I’ve noticed is that as we’ve rolled out this training to our salespeople they have found themselves in situations that they didn’t expect to find themselves in,” noted Anastas. “For instance, one of my executives has Greyhound as a prospect account and we been trying to get into Greyhound for years, doing the same thing over and over again, looking at LinkedIn and looking at the available information on the web.

    “Finally, after we did this training, our account executive just went and got on a bus,” he said. “Instead of flying to LA for the weekend, he took a Greyhound from San Francisco to LA, he talked to a bunch of people at Greyhound and he figured out a bunch of insights that he would never have gotten by sitting at his desk and looking at the web.”

    Later, Anastas said that when the salesperson phoned up Greyhound he was able to talk about his personal experience of the bus ride and as their customer. “That warm, empathetic intro has taken him all the way to the office of the CEO at Greyhound in a very short period of time.”

    “So to me, it’s really about separating yourself out and trying different things to get you in front of your prospects faster.”

    The Personal Connection is Also Important

    The CEO of CCI Global Holdings, Walter Rogers, says that technology has become available that really allows a seller to become much more knowledgable about their buyer, their buyers customers, their buyers needs, both personal and professional. However, he says making a personal connection with these individuals and leveraging all of this information enables the salesperson to make an “impact” on the potential customer.

    “We talked a lot about the impact of technology on sales,” he said. “I want to sidestep and talk about the personal connection with a human being. That’s something that I personally experienced working in partnership with Amazon Web Services. I’ve actually gone deep into their sales cycles as they try to convince customers to move from on premises to a cloud based infrastructure.”

    “There was one customer that we were working with that just did not want to move,” Rogers said. “They were very efficient in how they were running their operation and they felt they would not save any money. However, when we dug really really deep, his personal motivator was impacting the public education system.”

    He said that showing the customer that moving their data from to the cloud, would allow them to correlate information across many other databases and build out a predictive analytics model. “This let them spot students before they got in trouble, by looking at various trends, such as did the parents just go on welfare, those types of things,” says Rogers. “Because we are able to make that human personal connection, this company is beginning to make a migration across the AWS infrastructure.”

    “We can’t ever overlook the impact of the human connection,” he said. “You’d be amazed at what a difference it can make in getting email response when you take the words me, I and we out of your emails completely and focus them all on the word you and what’s important to the other person. The response rates will go up about 50%.”

  • A Connected Product Can Drive Success

    A Connected Product Can Drive Success

    Salesforce is conducting their annual Dreamforce conference this week with a variety of speakers giving talks. One that was interesting yesterday was from Bharat Anand, who is the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

    Bharat’s talk was about ‘Digital Innovation Trends Shaping Our Future’ which is also the subject of his book that is launching in 10 days.

    screen-shot-2016-10-05-at-12-44-38-pm

    What is the problem with newspapers?

    “I went up to the plant manager and asked, what is this room (rolls of paper for newspapers) going to look like 10 years from now?” asked Anand. “I thought I would get a rousing defense of print, but instead he walks up to me and whispers in my ear, I get all of my news on the iPad.”

    Anand asked what is the problem with newspapers and what are the challenges they face? plant manager sayid it’s online news because you can get it quick, you can get it cheap, you have more variety, it’s rich media and you can personalize it.

    Anand wondered how has this has effected news readership? “This has been going on for 60 years,” he said. “Oh my gosh, this has nothing to do with the internet. What started the decline? It was radio, then broadcast TV, then black and white TV, cable TV, 24/7 cable news, and then the internet. If you took out time, the impact of the internet is imperially indistinguishable from everything that came before it.”

    screen-shot-2016-10-05-at-10-23-57-am

    “And yet, every story we hear is about how the internet has destroyed newspapers,” he says. “It did, but it had nothing to do with the news content. The impact was really on classifieds. Classified ads account for around 40% of the revenue of a newspaper and more than half the profits.”

    Anand points out that if you look at the New York Times between 1994 and 20110, average decline in news readership was less than half a percent a year. Be he says that classifieds on the other hand, lost 90% of those revenues. Why the difference?

    News is Stable, But Classifieds Have Disappeared

    “The reason goes back to something pretty fundamental about behavior, which is how do we consume both of these products?” says Anand. “Which news site would you like to go to? Well, it doesn’t depend on what my friends choose. Even if my friends like Google, CNN and Yahoo, if I like the NYTimes.com, I will go there. In other words, I’m making decisions based on product quality and price.”

    He points out how classifieds have a very different dynamic. “Which classified site do I choose to go to?” he asks. “Where there are the most listings. Where do people list? Where are the most buyers?”

    “More listings, more buyers…more buyers, more listings, exclaims Anand. “We have what I call a feedback loop or what is sometimes called network effects, meaning my decision to go to a particular site depends on the decisions of many other people.”

    A Connected Product Can Drive Success

    Anand says that a connected product means there are connections between users and that news on the one hand is not a connected product but classifieds is. This has fundamental implications for a bunch of things.

    screen-shot-2016-10-05-at-10-41-42-am

    He points out that for the last decade, circulation revenue for most newspapers was roughly stable. Why? “We had slight decreases in revenue per household offset by price increases, but with classifieds, we basically lose the entire thing, said Anand. “Meaning once we are ahead in classifieds, such as Craigslist and Monster, you get more and more listings, more and more buyers. It’s what we call winner take all dynamics.”

    screen-shot-2016-10-05-at-10-45-30-am

    “When I have this conversation with news executives and I ask them what are the problems facing newspapers, they (typically) say it’s online news and they explain because it’s better, faster, cheaper,” he says. “At some point I ask how their circulation revenues are holding up. They say, actually pretty well. Then what’s the problem? Oh, classifieds! I say wait, you are in the news business.” He says that even newspaper executives fall into the trap thinking the problem is about content. After all he says, “We never called it a classified ad paper, we called it a newspaper.”

    Where Else Do We See This Dynamic?

    All over the place he says. It’s the history of digital.

    Microsoft vs. Apple and PC’s: Apple has probably been the best product for 30 years, but ends up with 3% market share. Why? Microsoft owned the networks. More buyers, the more likely that other people will buy PC’s because we want to share files, more buyers more app developers, more buyers more app developers and so on.

    What’s interesting about this is that we have just seen the greatest corporate transformation in history, where Apple’s market share in PC’s has increased from about 3% globally to around 9% globally. Barely moved the needle. Conversely, we’ve seen a company (Microsoft) that probably makes every mistake known to mankind, and yet top 5 in market cap. That’s the power of networks.

    Facebook vs. Google+: When Google+ came out many people said, this is a better product, allowing you to create circles of friends (and much more), until someone said, there is no one playing in the sandbox but me.

    eBay marketplaces: When it wins around the world, it wins big. When it loses, like in Japan and China, it doesn’t go from 80 to 75%, it goes all the way down to zero and exits the market.

    AirBnB: Same idea of connections, which is the more people list on the site, more renters, more renters more listings. You end up with winner take all. This is a tweet from an AirBNB executive showing the power of networks:

    screen-shot-2016-10-05-at-11-14-55-am

    Uber: What’s interesting is that when they started Uber Black with their own drivers it was sort of going nicely. But when they opened up to partner drivers, exponential growth. Again the same dynamic.

    Network Connections Can Be Created

    Anand also talked about how companies, such as Pokemon, can create the network effect out of thin air. “There is nothing about a card that says this is a connect product,” he says. “But Pokemon goes to great lengths to convince you and me that the value in this card lies in trading with others. Suddenly, I don’t want to be the only kid in school who doesn’t have a card.”

    He also gave the example of how building tools can help news organizations create a network dynamic. Trove is a personalized news reader build by the Washington Post that was doing okay, but took off after they connecting it to Facebook, prompting millions of new readers. Unfortunately, Facebook later changed their algorithm!

    Another example he gave was of a Norway newspaper called Schibsted, which actually saw this dynamic about 15 years ago. “They looked at classifieds and said this is a winner take all dynamic and that if we don’t move fast, we lose the entire game,” Anand said. “They actually built out just when the dot com bubble was crashing. Everyone was moving away from newspapers, they moved in.”

    He added, “They create the online classified site, with the results being that when you win in classifieds you are 3-5X ahead of the second player. There is something quite fascinating about their market share, they now have a 90% market share of jobs and real estate in Norway, but they say in their annual report that we have a 100% marketshare in cars. I wondered why. They said that our size is actually so liquid that people all over Europe are actually listing their cars on our site.”

    The Norway newspaper created this network dynamic even more spectacularly in response to the European volcanic ash crisis that started in Iceland where air travel was disrupted. “The challenge for everyone in Norway was how do I get from point A to point B with all air travel disrupted,” commented Anand. “They noticed that people were actually exchanging conversations on their website. Someone saying, anyone going from Oslo to Trondheim? Someone replies, yep, I have a car and I’m going at 3pm and I can pick up 3 people at the train station. This stuff was feeding on itself.”

    What did the newspaper do? The had their IT team build an app called Hitchhiker Central that became the most important product featured during this crisis, with everyone in Europe using it.

    How Companies Can Gain the Network Effect

    Now, every time there is a major news event Schibsted asks, how can we help readers help each other? “As a result, their front page traffic is off the charts, online CPM’s are as high as print CPM’s, which is unheard of in the Western world,” says Anand.

    “It’s about user connections,” he says. “One thing you can see is that companies that win on connections, they really don’t have to market. Think about how much Microsoft spends convincing you and me to buy the next Microsoft operating system. Effectively, the installed based is their sales force.”

    He says that if you win the network game that often trumps product quality.

  • Salesforce Einstein Announced–Artificial Intelligence for Everyone

    Salesforce Einstein Announced–Artificial Intelligence for Everyone

    In a major initiative that has been in the works for two years, Salesforce is integrating artificial intelligence into all of its CRM cloud platforms. It enables any business to use clicks or code to build AI-powered apps that get smarter with every interaction. Their AI system learns from all of the data you enter about your customers and prospects (CRM data, email, calendar, social, ERP, and IoT), and makes predictions and recommendations on actions you should consider. It can even automate tasks it certain situations.

    Salesforce Einstein is designed to help their customers take advantage of the huge amounts of data produced by making sense of it and seeing trends before humans typically do. What Salesforce has done is to make the use of artificial intelligence possible for all businesses, without have to employ their own data science teams.

    “Powered by advanced machine learning, deep learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing and smart data discovery, Einstein’s models will be automatically customized for every single customer, and it will learn, self-tune, and get smarter with every interaction and additional piece of data,” writes Jim Sinai who is VP of Marketing at SalesforceIQ in their company blog announcement. “Most importantly, Einstein’s intelligence will be embedded within the context of business, automatically discovering relevant insights, predicting future behavior, proactively recommending best next actions and even automating tasks.”

    Salesforce Einstein is designed to be a simple and intuitive approach to deliver AI to companies using their cloud CRM products. They say that by “removing the complexity of AI” they are “enabling any company to deliver smarter, personalized and more predictive customer experiences.”

    “We couldn’t be more excited to finally unveil Salesforce Einstein after two years of hard work and targeted acquisitions,” added Sinai. “As we continue to build out AI for CRM, we are committed to understanding the next generation of AI technology and how it can best be applied to Salesforce. This effort will be led by Salesforce Research, a new research group focused on the future of AI, under the leadership of Dr. Richard Socher, our Chief Scientist.”

    Bringing Artificial Intelligence to Sales

    Adam Blitzer, the EVP & GM of Sales Cloud at Salesforce sees significant value in companies using AI within the sales process. “At Salesforce, we are focused on helping companies evolve from the first level, where the CRM is a one-dimensional system of record, to the second level, where the CRM is a system of engagement. And finally, we are helping companies make the leap to the highest level, where the CRM works for them as a predictive system of intelligence.”

    “AI arms teams with more intelligence, enabling them increase productivity and predictive capabilities across everything they do,” adds Blitzer. “Importantly, it gives sales teams better insights that build human relationships, an area where sales reps far excel beyond machine capabilities.”

    Screen Shot 2016-09-19 at 11.20.25 AM

    “This (Sales Cloud Einstein) makes people, teams and entire companies, better able to discover insights from data, recommend actions that help close deals, automate processes that give reps more time to build 1:1 relationships, and predict outcomes or hiccups that enable reps to be proactive and remain a step ahead of each customer’s needs and competitor’s potential attack,” stated Blitzer. “I’m excited for our customers to start experimenting with the features we’re announcing today—Predictive Lead Scoring, Opportunity Insights and Automated Activity Capture, you can learn more here. And, I’m even more excited about the business growth these AI solutions are going to drive.”

    Bringing Artificial Intelligence to the Service Industry

    “Until now, most customer service leaders have been unable to put intelligence in action,” stated Mike Milburn who is head of the Service Cloud at Salesforce. “With Service Cloud Einstein, companies of any size will be able to deploy a connected customer service experience that is predictive, automated and intelligent, bringing AI to the forefront of customer service like never before.”

    Milburn says that with Service Cloud Einstein, organizations of all sizes will be able to resolve customer service cases faster by utilizing history and trend data, automate routine inquiries and predict case resolution times.

    He also offered a bigger picture of how the Salesforce Cloud Platform could be integrated within devices far removed from CRM and marketing. “Consider this: a connected device–like a dishwasher–could self-diagnose that it needed routine maintenance from a field tech. The dishwasher is connected to Salesforce IoT Cloud, where it’s performance is monitored. When IoT Cloud identifies an issue, it triggers a case in Field Service Lightning and a dishwasher repair tech is dispatched automatically–without a customer or agent needing to be involved. That’s the future of service, and the amazing thing is that with Einstein and the Customer Success Platform, it’s possible today.”

    Bringing Artificial Intelligence to Marketing

    AI in marketing is about combining historical and real-time data in order to see trends, predict what’s likely to happen and offer contextual suggestions on what to do next. “We are giving marketers the ability to shift away from using analytics that only look at past behavior to analytics that predict the optimal timing, channel, content and audience for any marketing message,” says Bob Stutz, CEO of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud and their Chief Analytics Officer.

    Einstein integration within their marketing cloud enables companies to take advantage of Predictive Scoring which puts a percentage on the likelihood of a customer taking a certain action such as making a purchase, or unsubscribing from an email blast. With the Predictive Audiences feature marketers can group predictive actions based on their scores in order to more effectively modify marketing strategies. Finally, Automated Send-time Optimization predicts the best time to send new marketing messages.

    Screen Shot 2016-09-19 at 11.45.34 AM

    Stutz says that Marketing Cloud Einstein has been in beta for about a year with “tremendous” results. He says that ecommerce and coupons company ShopAtHome redefined customer engagement around predictive scores and experienced a 23% increase in email clicks, and a 30% increase in email opens.

    Bringing Artificial Intelligence to the Entire Salesforce Platform

    Salesforce has also added Einstein AI to their Community Cloud, IoT Cloud and App Cloud.

    “What is most important to Salesforce Community Cloud customers is that Einstein’s intelligence will automatically discover and surface relevant insights, predict answers to solve questions fast, and proactively make recommendations,” said Mike Micucci who is the SVP of Product Management at Salesforce. “It will even automate certain tasks. And you don’t have to do a thing. Einstein puts the best alternative right in front of you.”

    “With IoT Cloud Einstein, our customers will be able to unlock a whole new wave of innovation for the Internet of Things by pairing their IoT data with services powered by Salesforce’s new artificial intelligence platform,” notes Woodson Martin, the head of Thunder & IOT Cloud at Salesforce.

    Salesforce is also making it possible for companies to build custom apps using their Einstein AI technology. “Today, as we launch Salesforce Einstein, we’re democratizing the technology necessary for any business to build AI-first apps,” said Adam Seligman, Executive Vice President and GM of the App Cloud at Salesforce. “Einstein combines all of our adventurous reaches into data science, data management and modern app development into one set of platform services enabling anyone to build the next generation of apps, powered by AI, that customers will love.”

  • Data is Marketing Gold

    Data is Marketing Gold

    “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half,” said marketing pioneer John Wanamaker in the early 1900’s. That is why CRM software was invented and why it is used by every serious marketer. In today’s “Big Data” World, enterprises are making not just marketing decisions, but almost ALL decisions based on data analytics.

    “Big Data holds the potential to describe target customers with an accuracy and level of detail unfathomable only a decade ago,” said Jean Spencer on the SalesForce blog, who is a Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft and was previously the content marketing manager at Kapost. “While old-school marketing efforts were limited to things like tracking returns on direct mail campaigns, or number of subscribers to newsletters, modern marketers can have data on people’s exercise habits, digital clicking behavior, time spent on various sites, purchasing history, personal preferences based on social media postings, time awake, time spent in the car, caloric intake, and almost anything else you can imagine.”

    SalesForce is at the epicenter of data, marketing and sales. They offer this overview of the concept:

    Using Data To Make Better Marketing Decisions

    A report by the Aberdeen Group says that 44 percent of executives are dissatisfied with the analytic capabilities available to them and that they often make critical decisions based on inaccurate or inadequate data. That was in 2014 and fortunately CRM has improved dramatically since then and executives are now typically integrating CRM solutions into their marketing platforms.

    “No longer do we rely on conclusions based on vague and imprecise relationships such as “we advertised last week and sales increased so it must have worked” or the common one that I’ve heard many times, “the objective was awareness and clearly many people are now aware of us”, said Gerald Chait who is Director/CEO of Marketing By Objectives. “In today’s world, this just does not cut it anymore.”

    Chait added in a blog post, “Gone are the days when we would define roughly segmented target audiences and place an ad hoping someone would purchase something. Today’s marketing enables us to identify who to work with to make a sale, right down to the individual level. What’s more, we can personalize and customize our advertising and messaging to each specific person, no matter how many people there are. We can even customise and personalize website pages depending on who’s viewing them.”

    It’s often referred to as predictive marketing, gathering data to learn what is working and what isn’t using precise analytical strategies and technologies in order to finely tune your marketing.

    “Predictive marketing is the application of predictive technology to the entire marketing process, across the entire buyer’s journey, and across every channel of communication,” says Eli Snyder, Associate Technology Director of Strategy at Intelligent Demand. “It means not only having predictive insight into the future through predictive analytics, but also using that insight to make better decisions about who and how to engage, and then build better content, campaigns and programs.”

    “In order to execute your marketing strategy in the most effective way, you’ll need your business management platform (or CRM) and marketing automation tools to work together seamlessly; using one to generate leads, and the other to maintain them, so you can get a complete picture of your business,” said Mark Sokol who is the VP of Product Marketing and Branding at ConnectWise.

    The Intersection of Marketing & CRM is Leads

    CRM and marketing are now tightly integrated in order to make marketing more efficient and and successful. “In the past, the marketing campaign stops here in the CRM software system and the rest is carried out externally,” said Denise Holland, VP & Senior Analyst of Genesys Advisory in the CRMsearch blog. “In today’s world, the right customer relationship management system can create the message, compile your target list, distribute your messaging pursuant to an automated schedule, capture the replies and inquiries from these marketing placements, route them to the right sales person or department, track the sale opportunity progress, record the successful sale event and calculate the campaign ROI.”

    “This CRM system can also advise the best time to call or email your customers, what type of messaging will illicit the best response, if your customer is really serious or just shopping around, how you can improve your products and services, and what new products and services your R&D department should focus on next,” he says.

    “CRM has one common component to help you make marketing decisions, Leads, says Joe CRM on the PowerObjects blog. “Lead data allows you to gauge how healthy your marketing is, what works and what doesn’t, and lets you understand lead quality. In today’s post, we’ll provide some lead data sources from CRM you can use to help make marketing decisions.”

    Joe at PowerObjects says you need to know where your leads are coming from. “Some examples of lead sources include outbound cold calls, email, chat, website form submission, and events,” he said. “Keeping the lead source simple lets you use a different field, source campaign, to describe the lead source in more detail as needed.”

    He says that knowing where leads come from drives marketing decisions such as:

    • Number of employees needed for the inside sales team
    • Budget disbursement for paid advertising
    • Landing page success
    • P&L for events attended

    Create a Data-Driven Culture

    “To cultivate a data-driven culture within your organization, it’s important to remember that without data, you’re simply another person with an opinion,” commented MeetMe CTO Jonah Harris on the NGDATA blog. “All too often, with valuable data and insights in hand, people remain invested in their own hunches and intuition.”

    “Transitioning to a genuine data-driven culture is a challenge for many organizations, but one of the ideal first steps is to start leveraging the data your business has to guide evidence-based decision making,” added Vaclav Shatillo of Business Intelligence at Clutch. “When data reinforces or, better yet, contradicts the gut feeling, the conversation around the importance of a data-driven approach is bound to begin.”

    David Waterman, Senior Director of Earned Media/SEO at The Search Agency says getting in front of the data is key:

    1. How to get/collect the data,
    2. Specifically what data to use,
    3. How the data will inform business decisions,
    4. At what frequency the data is needed to make actionable decision, and
    5. How to package the data so it can be easily digested, analyzed and reacted to.

    Find other great advice from a variety of experts quoted about how to create a data-driven culture here.

    Darren Catalano, the CEO of HelioCampus offers some great tips on building a data-driven culture that can be applied to any business:

    Data is Marketing Gold

    “Data isn’t an overwhelming set of facts and figures,” said Megan Totka is the Marketing Director for ChamberofCommerce.com. “It’s marketing gold. It shows you what your customers want and how to get your customers to buy from you.”

    Joe CRM says that the “data you receive from leads that turn into opportunities and then end up as customers is a goldmine.” He says, “This data alone can give your company direction and help you find your niche. That’s why when you use your closed as won accounts it should be for a macro view of your marketing processes. This is the data executives want to see from marketing because it helps prove ROI or that the money spent was worthwhile.”

    Data that can power your successful marketing strategy is sometimes found in places that you don’t expect. “New marketing technology, measurement platforms and other advances have greatly expanded the sources that marketers can sift through for nuggets of information,” said Eva Rohrmann, the director of solutions and customer lifecycle marketing for PR Newswire. ”

    Rohrmann says that the “most useful data that will turn strategic, positioning and tactical efforts into gold oftentimes is hiding right under your nose: with other teams within your organization.” She believes that ideas and data are “streaming” from many directions, “from sales to product to customer support.”

    “Every team within your organization has a treasure trove of actionable marketing intelligence waiting to be discovered,” she says.

    The marketing landscape is changing and that should make every CMO’s job easier because they are using justifiable logic instead of just gut intuition. In order for a company to reach their maximum sales potential they must utilize data-driven CRM strategies.

    “Marketing is currently undergoing a metamorphosis from a once qualitatively measured art towards a quantitatively driven science,” said Eamonn O’Raghallaigh, the Managing Director of Digital Strategy. on the company’s blog. “This paradigm shift will indeed lead to significant impacts on the competitive landscape; with the bias towards companies who adopt and embrace a data-centric culture within their organization.”

  • Salesforce Acquires MetaMind To Add AI to Services

    Salesforce Acquires MetaMind To Add AI to Services

    Artificial intelligence startup MetaMind launched in late 2014 with $8 million in funding from Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff and Khosla Ventures. Now, Salesforce has has acquired it.

    Salesforce will integrate MetaMind’s technology into its services.

    “With MetaMind and Salesforce coming together, we’ll be able to offer customers real AI solutions with breakthrough capabilities that further automate and personalize customer support, marketing automation, and many other business processes,” says MetaMind co-founder and CEO Richard Socher. “We’ll extend Salesforce’s data science capabilities by embedding deep learning within the Salesforce platform.”

    “Over the past year and a half, we’ve been on a mission to empower business users with state of the art deep learning technology to simplify, improve and automate decision making,” he says. “And now, we’ll be able to continue our journey at Salesforce on a much larger scale, with the resources and ecosystem of one of the world’s most innovative and influential enterprise software companies.”

    While under Salesforce, MetaMind intends to continue its AI research. According to Socher, they’ll be publishing “groundbreaking discoveries” that advance the technology. They’re also hiring.

    MetaMind’s products will be discontinued on May 4 for unpaid web users with June 4 being the end date for recurring monthly users. The company says all user data will be deleted “promptly” after closing.

    Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

  • For ROI, Email Marketing Makes Big Leap Over Last Year

    For ROI, Email Marketing Makes Big Leap Over Last Year

    Salesforce released its 2016 State of Marketing Report, finding that marketers are seeing increased ROI with email, mobile, and social media marketing. The report is based on a survey of about 4,000 marketers from around the world.

    Of those who use email marketing, 80% agree it is core to their business. Nearly half of them say it’s directly linked to their business’ primary revenue source. That’s up 140% from last year’s report. 79% of marketers, according to this year’s, say email generates ROI, which is a 48% increase year-over-year.

    Salesforce Reports Email Data

    The report says that intelligent email is driving higher revenue.

    “As email personalization capabilities grow more sophisticated, the channel becomes even more integral for marketers to deliver a holistic customer journey,” it reads. “Eighty percent of marketers agree that email is core to their business.”

    “Predictive technology is breathing new life into established marketing channels such as email,” the report adds. “Top teams are 4.2x more likely than underperformers to leverage predictive intelligence or data science to create personalized emails.”

    Salesforce email data

    What’s interesting is the diversity in the types of campaigns found to be effective. Take a look:

    salesforce email data

    The high-performing marketers, Salesforce says, are 2.3x more likely to trigger personalized emails in real time based on events. The high performers in general take a “more sophisticated” approach to email, it says.

    sophisticated email marketing

    75% of marketers using social report that it’s generating ROI, which is a 166% increase from last year’s report. Unsurprisingly, Facebook is found to be the most effective social channel for high-performing teams. This is followed by Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and then Instagram. Considering that advertising on Instagram is in its early days, it’s likely it will gain significance if you ask me.

    In terms of mobile, adoption of location-based mobile tracking saw a 149% increase while mobile push notifications saw a 145% increase. Mobile text messaging adoption saw an 111% increase, and mobile app adoption saw a 98% increase. More importantly, 77% of those who use mobile as part of their marketing strategy say it actively generates ROI, up 147% from lat year’s report.

    The report found that 65% of high-performing marketers say they’ve adopted a customer journey strategy. 88% say such a strategy is critical to their marketing success.

    The study found that 58% of high-performing marketing teams strongly agree they’re implementing digital transformations across the company. This compares to just 8% of underperformers. 63% of the high-performers also say they’re excellent at creating personalized, omnichannel customer experiences across all business units. It’s just 2% for the underperformers.

    You can find the full 2016 State of Marketing Report here.

    All charts via Salesforce

  • Salesforce Launches Wave for Community Cloud

    Salesforce Launches Wave for Community Cloud

    In 2014, Salesforce launched Community Cloud, propelling itself into the fast-growing enterprise collaboration market. Last year, it launched Wave Analytics.

    Now, the company is introducing Wave for Community Cloud, which gives businesses analytics tools that can be applied across their partner ecosystems.

    “We’ve heard it before: Selling is a team sport,” says Salesforce’s Jamie Domenici. “Companies across the manufacturing, high-tech, consumer packaged goods, financial services industries and more rely on an extensive network of resellers, distributors, brokers, franchises and agents to drive growth. In fact, thousands of Salesforce customers are already using the Salesforce Community Cloud to better manage relationships and foster collaborative selling, planning and knowledge sharing amongst their channel partner ecosystem. And they’re seeing results — Community Cloud customers report an 86 percent increase in cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Now with Wave, customers can further extend the power of Community Cloud by arming partners with the same sales insights that a company’s own reps leverage to accelerate growth.”

    “Wave for Community Cloud enables customers to embed Wave Analytics dashboards into any Partner Community, providing channel partners with the insights they need to optimize sales,” Domenici adds. “Previously, partner managers couldn’t see all of their data in one place and would spend time reconciling spreadsheets or searching disparate systems looking for insights on what worked in the past. And worse, partner sales reps would often be left guessing which deals to focus on or wasting time following up on the wrong opportunities. But when armed with personalized, data-driven sales insights, channel partners are able to unlock new sales opportunities and close deals faster, as if they are a true extension of a company’s sales team.”

    You can check out a demo here:

    According to the company, the offering will help channel partners better understand their own business by way of interactive performance summaries and historical trends. Dashboards can utilize data from any source, and security permissions can be personalized for visibility on a partner-by-partner basis.

    Image via Salesforce