Dreamforce 2019 was an incredible week. As always, the energy was fantastic and it was inspiring to hear clients discussing how Salesforce is helping them further innovate within their own organizations and with their customers.
I am so proud that AllCloud had representation from across the globe. We brought in some of our top experts to learn the latest and greatest from Salesforce to take back to our clients and to share their knowledge on everything from the CTA Summit and Field Service Lightning to CPQ & Billing, Lightning and more. It was even more rewarding to see some of our clients, such as Tempo, Carasso and Israel Post, up on stage detailing the transformations they’ve achieved across the Salesforce product suite.
With the countless opportunities the week provided to learn, grow and network, it’s always a humbling experience to see all that is possible with our partnership with Salesforce and to learn about all of the amazing new things Salesforce is doing. Two areas, in particular, stood out as key highlights from this year’s event:
Dreamforce Highlight #1: Moving forward the powerful Salesforce & AWS partnership
Of the big announcements made at Dreamforce this year, what excites me most is the focus forward on the AWS and Salesforce partnership — a powerful union that will create countless exciting possibilities.
Based on what we heard at Dreamforce, we can expect that AWS will be one of the largest, strategic partners for Salesforce from an infrastructure and technology standpoint for the foreseeable future. This relationship is far beyond just the ability to host workloads in the cloud; rather, it will take the solution possibilities between these best of breed technologies to the next level. For example, companies will be able to significantly increase automation and intelligence by integrating these front and back-end cloud systems so seamlessly.
One specific feature that stands out is the integration between Amazon Connect and Service Cloud Voice, which truly unifies the service console and will transform the future of service as a result. As a boutique firm born in the cloud and specializing in AWS and Salesforce, AllCloud is already working with clients on unique use cases that support this and further integrations, and the results we’ve seen are truly incredible.
Dreamforce Highlight #2: A focus on data
Another key area that stands out from the big Dreamforce announcements is the focus on data. In the world of CRM, traditional data tools were always about data uploading functionality. Now, Salesforce is changing that, thanks in large part to new opportunities made possible by Mulesoft and Tableau.
With MuleSoft in play, Salesforce is completing the picture of CRM as the source of truth for customer data. Even when data is dispersed across other systems like ERP, the CRM system will ultimately need to be the aggregator for all data, and Salesforce is making that a reality. Additionally, using data in combination with a machine learning environment within an infrastructure like AWS changes the capabilities for CRM to give even more power to what Salesforce is doing.
Finally, the new product integration of Tableau presents another myriad of opportunities. The tight integration between Salesforce and Tableau allows vendors such as AllCloud to configure machine learning algorithms on top of CRM data to deliver more predictive and actionable insights around customer interactions. These types of insights are particularly powerful in two areas: (1) in the sales cycle, for predictive lead scoring and predictions surrounding the opportunity to close a sale and (2) in service, offering the ability to predict churns and interactions with customers.
Looking forward to another year of innovation with Salesforce
The takeaways from Dreamforce always highlight the constant innovation we see from Salesforce and the opportunities for growth that innovation provides.
For a company like AllCloud — a Salesforce Platinum Partner and AWS Premier Consulting Partner, plus one of the only boutiques that specialize in both Salesforce and AWS — this year’s event and what lies ahead gives us the chance to lead the market by helping our clients continuously innovate. We work with best of breed technologies, and the future will be about these two technology giants working together.
I know my team is excited to take all of the learnings from this week back to our clients. As AllCloud continues to grow and expand, I’m certainly excited about the opportunities that lie ahead and look forward to having an even bigger presence at Dreamforce next year.