7 Snapshots from Salesforce Dreamforce

Emakina Group’s Bart Roofthooft enjoyed the excitement of the Salesforce Dreamforce event in San Francisco, together with a strong delegation of Emakina colleagues. And he brought seven interesting takeaways with him. Let’s follow him on his journey through Dreamforce 2019.

So many things made this Dreamforce a wonderful event… the majestic entrance with its stone arch, the welcoming faces all around, the busy (and buzzy) atmosphere, and the information overload from the many workshops and keynotes.

From the first glimpse of the Dreamforest to the applause closing at the last day’s final session, Salesforce once again made it a true experience. It is impossible to tell you everything, so let me just pick out some snapshots to remember Dreamforce ’19 by.

1. Salesforce is for everyone

It is immediately visible at Dreamforce that Salesforce welcomes people from around the world into its universe. We’re not only talking about nationality, age or gender, but also about more practical differences like industry or function. It has come a long way from a CRM tool for your sales team. They have created a space where all different parts of a company can converge and easily communicate with each other. Production, management, finance, marketing, sales, human resources, … it doesn’t matter in what team you are, Salesforce has something up its sleeve to make you happy.

2. It’s all about the customer

Customer 360 is a new set of capabilities that allow companies to connect, authenticate and govern customer data and identity across all Salesforce solutions. With a complete view and deeper understanding of the people you are in contact with, you can deliver more personalized customer experiences. All customers expect to have connected experiences that show knowledge of their preferences a across touchpoints. It doesn’t only fix problems for marketing, sales and after-sales, but a single customer truth also provides easier maintenance of people’s personal data now more and more privacy laws come into play.

Reach out to Emakina now to make sure you also get a perfect 360 view of your customers!

3. Artificial Intelligence and the Next Best Action

With Einstein, Salesforce has created a layer of intelligence within the Customer 360 Platform that brings powerful AI technologies to everyone using their tools. You get a rich set of platform services to build smarter apps and customize the AI for your businesses.

The Next Best Action tool is a form of AI within the Salesforce interface that uses recommendations, business intelligence, and artificial intelligence to synthesize tactics, strategies, and business insights at lightning speed. It has an opinion, hints and tips about anything. Just let it run your business and take the day off.

4. Click, not code

It’s all (or as much as possible) about declarative programming. Accomplish the same results by telling the system the end result and let it figure out how to get there. In simpler terms, a  drag-and-drop solution allows someone without coding knowledge to build an application. One such platform is the Lightning Platform from Salesforce.  You get a quick turnaround in the initial development phase meaning a faster and simpler problem resolution. Just identify issues without having to dive into lines and lines of code and examine them closely. It also allows for scalability. Grow your platform or app however you need it to.

5. How about some Marketing Automation?

We have been talking about it and offering it to our clients for years, but still it always seemed the less shiny part of Digital Marketing. This changed since the big vendors started to enter the game the past years. Now Salesforce doesn’t only offer MA (SFMC & Pardot), it also makes it one of its spearpoints. They bolted on some serious analytics & AI (Einstein) and opted for complete out of the box solutions for every kind of organization. Are the SF MA tools best-in-class? Not yet, but they have some serious pro’s against the competition; they integrated with a world-class CRM and AI, plus they are supported by a global community of trailblazers.

6. Commerce is still high on the list

As ecommerce solutions have come to adulthood the past years and many different options are within reach of every kind of organization, it becomes more important every day to be able to choose the right one.

Salesforce has integrated its commerce offering with its other solutions like AI, analytics and a new CMS to power  seamless experiences to inspire and convert shoppers. And this for most purposes, industries and wallets. They have made it easier, faster and smarter so delivering personalized customer experiences across mobile, digital, and social platforms becomes within reach of more companies than ever, B2B and B2C.

Not sure what to choose? Contact Emakina to get some help!

7. It pays off to have a lot of friends (and money)

Salesforce has done well for itself past years. The SAAS business is definitely paying off and good money makes good friends, by partnerships or acquisitions.

The recent addition of Tableau and ClickSoftware, plus the investments in companies like Qualified and Anaplan, shows that you can never have enough friends. Salesforce has countless investments in hidden gems. We see some promising companies we will definitely see more of in the coming years. Next to handing out money, Salesforce is of course also creating and upholding global partnerships to make sure their customers get the best support in the strategy, implementation and maintenance of their solutions.

World-wide support, as provided by Emakina, is important for the future growth and development of everyone in the ecosystem.

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Images: Salesforce Dreamforce

Bart Roofthooft is Head of Marketing Automation at Emakina Group.