December 23, 2020 | John Lange | Senior Manager, Product Marketing
Even though Dreamforce went virtual this year, Salesforce charged ahead, making major announcements and promising many new features to further expand Salesforce Customer 360. The Spinnaker Support team recently convened to collect and compare our impressions from this year’s mega-event. We all agreed that Salesforce continues to keep their foot on the gas.
What resonated most with us was Salesforce’s continued development beyond sales. This ever-expanding ecosystem presents amazing opportunities for businesses to develop a “single source of truth” across their entire organization.
However, with every new layer of Salesforce functionality, your system complexity increases, and companies need to plan accordingly (e.g. resources and access to talent) to make the most of their investment.
Here’s what stood out with the Spinnaker Support team:
Big Announcements:
- Hyperforce: Probably the biggest announcement from Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote address was a new platform called Hyperforce. As a re-architecture of Salesforce, Hyperforce enables companies to store data on the cloud service of their choice (e.g. Azure, AWS).
It makes sense for Salesforce to be “cloud agnostic” for their customers as the company has also diversified its own cloud infrastructure. Our immediate thought is that Hyperforce could help companies meet various General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and privacy restrictions.
- Slack acquisition: It seems only proper for Dreamforce to include an announcement of an acquisition or two. This year that distinction goes to Slack. The $27.7B acquisition promises to deliver new social interactivity to better equip virtual workplaces and customer engagement initiatives.
Watch out Microsoft Teams. Slack may be the missing link that Salesforce needs to improve internal and external organizational communication. (We joked that due to the many mentions of “Zoom” during the keynote that they might be the next acquisition!)
- AI, all the time! Salesforce continues to double down on artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and the importance of data integration to create a “single source of truth.” Einstein Automate, a new solution, brings key Salesforce functionality including AI, Flow Orchestrator, Mulesoft, Industries, and OmniStudio together into a single platform to streamline and automate complex workflows.
Salesforce repeatedly made it clear: companies that utilize AI will have a definite advantage over the companies that do not. We couldn’t agree more.
Fascinating Stats from Dreamforce:
1. Covid-19 and Salesforce:
- 29% of companies increased Salesforce usage during the pandemic
- 57% of companies said they could more easily pivot during the pandemic due to Salesforce
2. 48% of sales professionals say they are less productive than they used to be
3. 68% of companies indicated that the top priority is improved IT collaboration for data integration
4. 72% of people say it is a challenge to extract meaning from data when seeking customer insights
5. 80% of the customers that have a well-functioning Salesforce ecosystem use outsourced services to help manage innovation and platform complexity
Our Favorite Dreamforce Quote:
“If you don’t have a digital business, you don’t have a business…360° is how you go digital, fast.”
-Bret Taylor, Salesforce’s President and COO.
A Final Note
The Spinnaker Support team would like to give a shout out to the Salesforce marketing department, who probably has one of the most challenging brand management jobs of all time. Einstein Analytics is now Tableau CRM, and CPQ & Billing is now Revenue Cloud.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the new features announced at Dreamforce? You are not alone!
At Spinnaker Support, we help you and your team realize the potential of Salesforce, cost-effectively, through our various Managed Services packages. Let us show you what a great Salesforce partnership looks like!