Salesforce Applications are Just the Side Show…

Everything Goes Back to the Customer

Last week, I attended Salesforce’s ultimate cloud conference, Dreamforce. My observations have led me to believe that Salesforce is a formidable competitor that is investing heavily to expand its customer data set.  They are about connecting every data source to the customer to extend the journey across all touchpoints. They do it because they are cloud native.  They have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution that is very customer centric versus content centric.  

 The company’s emergent strategy is to be the single source for all customer interaction data and to use that information to drive higher levels of engagement, advocacy and ultimately revenue. They are a data play wrapped in CRM, and their ecosystem is second to none.

 Companies are making a lot of money on the Salesforce platform. The challenge for this $6 billion company is the level of investment balanced with their ability to hold pricing against upstarts while they move to this data play. Speed will be a critical factor for the company.    

 The Future is Experience

We are at the beginning of the next phase of Experience. Rather than focus on design-driven experiences, I think the magic that’s rapidly coming is data-driven design that leads to highly personalized and dynamic experiences that are truly ubiquitous, contextually aware and predictive. In the old paradigm, marketers (because IT was the limiting factor) sensed what happened and move quickly to respond. Today, (again enabled by IT) marketers must understand what people are doing, where they’re going and who they interact with. Marketers have to predict the experience people want the moment before people even know they want it. That is the future, and it’s here now. 

Salesforce is a Business Intelligence Company

Yes, Salesforce is one of the largest software companies on the planet, but after immersing myself at Dreamforce, I was struck by how it is really about the customer data. They own the customer relationship today. They understand their customers, their needs and their motivations. They use customer data as the foundation from which to build services. Part of their success is due to their analytics and engagement platform that is quite good at identifying, communicating, tracking and converting prospects.

They also have an ecosystem of partners that is amazing and efficient. The company has done a tremendous job of delivering Salesforce.com as a platform for others to build on and integrate with. They have perfected not just sales as a service but everything as a service. They don’t simply sell CRM as a sales tool; they sell CRM, Marketing and Support as a service. Their customer-focused approach nets a seamless and valuable customer experience, which puts them ahead of the competition.

 Creating Stronger Customer Connections

During the conference, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff launched two new platforms that help companies connect with customers: Lightning and Thunder. 

Lightning

Lightning is a highly configurable interface that replaces the three-column dashboard Salesforce has today and creates a development platform for creating rich user experiences. The platform allows users to configure on the fly with drag and drop functionality. Users can size things that are more relevant, place them anywhere they want on the page and integrate third party plug-ins as if they were native to Salesforce. Lightning is beautiful, simple and very personal. Oh, and it was designed for mobile first and then the web! I was definitely impressed. The platform provides a highly personal experience that can be changed at the whim of the customer and it creates a development platform to help configure applications to the needs of the business.  It delivers reports as a service. 

Thunder

Thunder is a big data pipeline that processes events from huge data sources like Microsoft Office 365. Thunder uses a rules engine to mine customer responses from events generated in Office 365, for example, then sends the data back to Salesforce.  Their Internet of Things (IoT) Cloud is connected to Azure Event Hub so that any time someone receives or responds to an email or downloads information, that event is processed and sent back to Salesforce.  

 Thunder marks the maturation of Big Data from technology to data services, which is where the real value is delivered. What we are starting to see is the ubiquitous view of a client that is created through nearly infinite data sources. This can apply not just to a target for a sale but to end customers as well. I think this could be very interesting in helping B2B companies get beyond their distributors and create direct relationships with their end customers.

From Sense and Respond … to Understand and Predict

Thunder is also the backbone to Salesforce’s IoT Cloud. IoT Cloud connects everything to Salesforce such as website data, applications, social data and the like. The future from Salesforce’s view is that the cloud (theirs plus all others) will provide an infinite source of data about who you are, where you are and what you’re doing. Analytics enable people to move from Sense and Respond (it happened, now do something) to Understand and Predict.  Salesforce could discern context across all the data and predict a need which in turn leads to a buying decision. This is cool and a bit scary.  It’s like a pre-cog for customers, but that’s what all sellers want.  They want to understand what you’re doing, why you are doing, the buying decision you’re contemplating, the specific decision points along your journey and the factors that will influence that decision.  The sooner and more accurately they can figure out your next likely step, the higher the probability they can influence the decision.

 Supply Chain

Salesforce has a sell-side solution today, but they are turning their attention to buy-side. In my view, they are replacing the “C” in Customer Relationship Management with an “S” for Supplier. With the IoT and Supplier Relationship Management, they can really start to create a dynamic two-way linkage between Customer and Supply Chain Management.  Think of it like this:  they observe my behavior to better predict demand for certain products based on search and social listening. The data feeds into the demand signal to suppliers who are more accurately able to stock items, which lowers the risk of stock outs and lost sales. Equally as important, if there is excess inventory or stock outs, suppliers can target that inventory to people who have a history of buying that particular product or redirect me to similar products that are in stock. By doing so, suppliers can protect the margin and brand as well as reduce the risk of customers going somewhere else.  Very cool stuff.

Connecting to an Experience Cloud

So, while everyone talks about the marketing cloud as the fully integrated, virtual connected space that drives acquisition, engagement, conversion and loyalty, the major players are coming at it from very different angles.  Salesforce is building what I’m going to call the Customer Cloud.   Adobe and Sitecore are leveraging their strength in content and analytics to create what I’m going to call the Content Cloud.  SAP with their unique view of enterprise data now coupled with hybris can build what I’m going to call the Enterprise Cloud.   Is one right and the others wrong?  Nope. 

The magic will happen when we have the Experience Cloud.  That’s when we know our customer; we connect them to content, drive to a transaction, measure their performance and keep them engaged with our business.  Today’s customers expect relevance, continuity, speed and simplicity.  Businesses need a data-driven approach versus a software-driven approach where content and the information continuum delivers against the customer’s expectations wrapped within the appropriate digital experiences. The sum of all of these parts is necessary to create the types of experiences that cause people to consider, engage, buy and stay…and tell their friends about you.