Year after year, everyone from across the sales industry has their eyes on the Salesforce ecosystem, wondering what innovations the company will bring to the table next.
This time around, it looks like we will follow the changes more closely than ever.
Salesforce is aiming at the bigger picture in 2020: making the sales process fully data-driven, handing over more and more work to AI, and unlocking the potential of blockchain for sales teams. And there are other important changes underway.
To help you make sense of it all, we talked to seven experts on what to expect this year in different parts of the ecosystem.
Let’s jump in.
One way companies can scale innovation with Salesforce in 2020 is by providing self-service to solopreneurs and small business owners.
Companies should work to integrate the customer service experience with multiple social media platforms, chat platforms, and more. They can do that at a low price with tools like Service Cloud Essentials.
The goal should be to create a seamless, technology-enabled customer service experience accessible to everyone.
As my focus is mostly on Marketing Cloud, I feel that a good part of 2020 will be based on Interactive Emails and the connection of emails to Cloudpages.
With the RebelMail acquisition, there is an amazing base of offerings already, and I know that Salesforce has done a ton of work behind the scenes on this in the past year.
Overall, I believe data and how it is handled and passed will be a major focus. Not just for things like ensuring compliance with GDPR and CCPA easily, but also making data storage and relationships easier and more efficient.
I’m noticing the focus shifting more and more to integration and compartmentalized architecture.
The Customer 360 platform is focused on giving a holistic view of each customer and that requires integration with other systems. From an admin perspective, this means that a clicks-not-code admin needs to add knowledge of some other systems (Marketing Cloud, Pardot, Mulesoft, AWS, DocuSign, etc.) as well as DevOps and system architecture best practices to their skillset in order to really succeed.
There is a more rigorous focus on managing groups of metadata with packages and source control. We’re not just talking about building a custom object and pushing it in with a change set anymore, we’re talking about seamlessly integrating distinct external and internal applications in a way that can and should produce actionable output for business.
It’s exciting to see that so many new Salesforce roles emerge, but no one should forget that building confidence and making informed decisions is fundamental.
Those of us with years of experience have a responsibility to coach our new trailblazers to design for scale and performance.
With so many new acquisitions and features, it’s all the more important to make informed decisions that reduce time to value.
I see increases in upfront investment to get Salesforce done right from the very beginning, in order to avoid technical debt and evolve existing organizations into legacy ones.
1. We will hear a lot more this year about the capabilities and possibilities of Salesforce Blockchain. Many companies will start discussions on weather the technology can benefit their company and customers with blockchain offerings in the market.
2. We will hear about more and more companies focusing on a customer-first approach to their business, and many more will consider the Customer 360 product on top of their Salesforce instances to provide better service to their customers.
3. More and more companies will utilize Lightning Web Components this year to extend the functionality in their instances.
Salesforce is recognized as an innovator, so I think that this year they will disrupt the Artificial Intelligence market.
They will make Einstein affordable and easy-to-use for everyone, and it will become the leading sales AI engine in several industry verticals.
Thus, intelligent sales, services, marketing, commerce, and productivity will be accessible to all.
Salesforce is all about managing your customers’ data. With new innovations like the Customer 360 data platform and Einstein Voice assistant, users can work more efficiently, delivering connected experiences across all channels and departments and meeting customer expectations.
With recent acquisition of the analytics platform Tableau, Salesforce expands its existing analytics offering, delivering the world’s most complete solution for everyone along the Voice assistant and Datorama.
Another big thing is Trailhead GO, which lets you play around Trailhead on your mobile devices.
Salesforce introduced some never before seen changes for 2020, and I hope all of this will lead to more success for its customers.
