How SalesForce's Acquisition of MuleSoft helps them Disrupt CRM with AI

Everyone knows that SalesForces is the leader in SAAS based CRM. But not many fully understand their strategy. Although not officially completed yet, SalesForce has augmented its' massive investments in AI/automation algorithms with an enterprise API Framework (Mulesoft) for $6.9B.

Why Did SalesForce Buy MuleSoft?

Mulesoft is the king of API's and helps companies use APIs from their legacy systems to get data instead of doing an expensive forklift upgrade to a new system. With the purchase of MuleSoft, they are laying the ground work to remove obstacles for Enterprises to grow. With APIs, value can be unlocked from legacy systems and mapped into modern, mobile friendly solutions. MuleSoft already has full integration into SalesForce allowing access to legacy "on-premise" data. This sets the foundation needed to grow Machine Learning and AI automation since it unlocks data beyond the cloud. And data is what is needed for AI and its' subset, Machine Learning to thrive. Granted, it takes some careful analysis to get the right data lined up, but once it is done, they have made it easier for companies to unlock value.

SalesForce is making AI easy to use without needing Data Scientist

Their idea is to democratise AI in a way where data scientist are no longer needed. They are trying to automate the creation of machine learning models for each of the 150,000 SalesForce clients. For example, SalesForce and their partners in their ecosystem are developing AI based solutions that is opening up new productivity areas in sales, marketing and operations. In the financial services space, SalesForce is helping provide personalised services and dashboards by analysing customers data (via APIs) and using AI to provide a unique customer experience. With Einstein Discovery, they use AI to analyse data combinations, finding underlyng causes and surfacing new questions. With Einstein ABM, they already use AI to optimize campaign performance, align sales with marketing and improve customer engagement. Perhaps the best example is myEinstein. With myEinstein, SalesForce gives admins a tool to train their own customers service bots, which can help predict the best service path.Everyone knows that SalesForces is the leader in SAAS based CRM. But not many fully understand their strategy. Although not officially completed yet, SalesForce has augmented its' massive investments in AI/automation algorithms with an enterprise API Framework (Mulesoft) for $6.9B.

SalesForces head of Research, Richard Socher, was quoted as saying "AI is only as good as the data it gets". which is why the Mulesoft acquisition is so important since their APIs help unlock legacy data that SalesForce needs to deliver on their strategy. And although SalesForce is behind Google, Microsoft and IBM in terms of adopting AI, their approach looks like a winner! To get an idea of the work SalesForce has already done around AI, look here. For more examples of how SalesForce is aiming to deliver "code-free" solutions, see this article about the recent Dreamforce conference.

References:

1. "The API Imperative: From IT concern to business imperative", from Deloittes 2018 Tech Trends
2. Why SalesForce purchase of Mulesoft is a big deal. See this investor article.
3. Salesforce's Einstein ABM
4. "Salesforce's quest to bring AI to everyone." See article on wired website.
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