Salesforce Roadmap with Customer 360 & Einstein Artificial Intelligence (videos)

For us at CloudAnalysts, Salesforce implementation consultants who like to be at the forefront of delivering customer-centricity, — for us, the best of Dreamforce 2018 means a formidable step ahead into the future (2019 and beyond), particularly with Einstein Voice and Customer 360.

Best of Dreamforce 2018: Learn the details here and get ready.
Your Salesforce future is in the making today!

Overall, Dreamforce is becoming an ever larger event with more than 175,000 people this year. Now it overtakes the entire city of San Francisco. Huge! There is a lot going on in that event. So, we went through the effort of distilling the essence for you, asking the experts for the Salesforce Dreamforce 2018 Major Announcements, and then summarising these here, in 3-4 super-short videos.

Last week, in our Brighton Salesforce User Group at our wonderful Brandwatch Brighton venue, we invited London-based Salesforce Engineering masters, Simon Cook and Sanjay Pradhan, to share their views of the Dreamforce 2018 major announcements with us 1).

Best of Dreamforce 2018

Among the many announcements, the very best of Dreamforce 2018 on everyone’s list was probably:

Customer 360, and
Einstein Voice.

Followed by:

Salesforce & Apple Partnership: technology-wise & in trailhead learning
Quip update now with Slides
Salesforce Lightning Flow Overhaul & new Flow Solutions on AppExchange
Sales Cloud Enhancements with Salesforce High Velocity Sales, a new cloud for Inside Sales with Sales Cadences, Work Queues and Marketing Automation, and Salesforce Billing.
Service Cloud Enhancements, like Service Cloud Essentials, a stripped down version of the full-suite Service Cloud. (BTW. We just implemented a prior version of this, when it was still called Employee App, in one of our clients. Very successful solution at a fraction of the cost. See our Salesforce Healthcare Case study – Service Cloud.)
New developments on Trailhead, most notably, My Trailhead.

Simon and Sanjay discussed each of these Major Salesforce Dreamforce 2018 announcements at the Brighton Salesforce User Group meeting earlier in November.

A 30 sec introduction to the video series.

Customer 360

4 min video.

This topic probably warrants a whole article. See the video for a really clear and quick overview of how it works. In a nutshell, Customer 360 will have 3 aspects:

One single 360 ID going across all your clouds, to enable every system to know the customer.
Customer Resolution features, to prep, match, reconcile, and update customer records.
Data Stewardship, with process governance and change requests.

See the video here, as Sanjay explains this really well. In just 4 minutes.

To be able to deliver this, in March Salesforce bought Mulesoft, a company that provides integration software for connecting applications, data and devices. It was a $6.5 billion deal, so let’s just say: this is important to Salesforce, and as a Salesforce user, to you.

Einstein Voice

5 min video.

To me, this is one of the most exciting upcoming developments as in my mind’s eye this can completely pivot the whole adoption pinnacle for Einstein into its favour, and that is the serious adoption by sales reps and execs of Salesforce.

How to Sales reps work? Seen any today in the corridor? They were on the phone. At their desk? On the phone. In line at Starbucks? On the phone. In the train? On the phone. You get the picture: Sales folks and top level executives alike: they love their phone.

Moreover, they also all love answers, in figures, ideally. And they love things being done for them, automatically.

Well, Einstein Voice is promising to become all that. But wait, it’s in beta, so don’t get too excited just yet. Meanwhile, read my article on Salesforce Einstein Voice, and get ready.

Other Announcements

9 min video.

Apple Partnership

This partnership may be really significant. 4 reasons.

First, it is leading to an enhancement of the Salesforce1 Mobile app, leveraging the latest iOS technology.
Second, it brings an optimised Salesforce Mobile SDK (software development kit) for iOS.
Third, you are now going to find Apple development content on trailhead. You can learn Swift and Xcode in specific trails.
Last, but not least, it is going to make Trailhead mobile! So you can learn while you are on the go. So stay tune for these developments to materialise.

Quip Slides

First, what is Quip? It is like Google apps for Salesforce. Quip is mostly free, however a premium paid version is available today. It’s now introducing slides is akin to Google Slides or Powerpoint.

Quip is potentially really powerful as it can link back into real-time data straight from your Salesforce org. That’s a unique aspect, which moving forward can really make collaboration more meaningful and presentations stay up-to-date.

Lightning Flow

Salesforce lightning flow had a major overhaul. A new interface, with new features. E.g. You can now build flows quickly with drag-n-drop actions. Really easy and intuitive. But also far-reaching and tailored and efficient. You can now assemble industry-specific flows on the fly using 3rd party flow solutions on the AppExchange.

Sales Cloud Developments

There are a number of interrelated announcements here.
Starting with the exciting High Velocity Sales – introduction. This is something I initially overlooked in the announcements but that Sanjay pointed out. Potentially very powerful, and cost effective. It is to build your next generation of Inside Sales with Salesforce.

Salesforce High Velocity Sales allow you to:

Create repeatable success, by optimising prospecting with Sales Cadences.
Prioritising the next best steps, focusing on the best prospects selected by Einstein’s artificial intelligence.
Increase rep productivity. Streamline tasks with the power of Work Queues and B2B automations, again leveraging Einstein for smarter use of Pardot.
Reach customers faster. Maximise your engagement with Lightning Dialer.

All to optimise the effectiveness of your inside sales team.

We would be delighted to work with clients and do a Salesforce project implementing High Velocity Sales! I can’t wait.

Salesforce Billing

Also for the Sales team, and Finance: Dreamforce 18 saw the new announcement of Salesforce Billing, a next generation billing system. Salesforce Billing was formerly called Steelbrick Billing or Invoice IT, and is part of Salesforce’s Quote-to-Cash solution.

Automate the customer lifecycle, through invoicing and payments for recurring revenue.
Provide flexibility for customers, with workflows for contract amendments, prorations, co-terminations, and renewals.
Make informed financial decisions, thanks to a Unified View of customer, order, & payment data.

So, no more spreadsheets!

As far as General Availability goes, creating subscriptions that never expire, and pricing products based on usage – that is already possible in the current Winter 19 release. Check this out for more info.

Service Cloud Essentials

Also Service Cloud has some updates. Service Cloud Essentials is more or less a replacement/renaming of the prior Employee App or Platform license. It’s super cheap and flexible. Also connects to Dropbox, GetFeedBack and Slack for extended functionality.

Designing a perfect Salesforce solution with platform licenses can be a tat tricky for your implementation consultants, but great savings to be had for particularly the SME and CBU markets with smaller and mid-sized companies alike, on long-term Salesforce license costs.

My Trailhead

Trailhead. There are now over 400 batches. I have about 50 of them so far. Almost a Ranger, aka super star on this learning platform. (smile). It is ever expanding its courseware to build Business, tech & soft skills and functionality for you to connect with your peers and your team. Gamification builds the fun of learning and also adoption, as well as insight into that adoption.

MyTrailhead is a customisation option, allowing companies to make their own trails and curate their own content for a tailored training solution. Use MyTrailhead both to onboard new employees and skill up existing ones.

Safe Harbour

On that, I’d like to highlight the Salesforce Safe Harbour statement that is associated to this content posted here.

Note 1) Dreamforce is about envisioning the future. So, please note our/Salesforce’s forward-loooking /safe harbour statement that these development are a roadmap. And you are advised to only buy a Salesforce solution that is based on features that are available for you today. As CloudAnalysts, we’ll be happy to help you determine your best Salesforce solution, taking advantage of the latest and greatest that is available now.

Learn More

That’s it for our round of Best of Dreamforce 18 announcements. We hope you are inspired. If you want more information, you can visit the Salesforce website for more goodies and info, or talk to us directly at CloudAnalysts about a solution that befit you best today.