Innovation and sustainability were two major themes at the annual Salesforce event, Dreamforce 2022. Industry conferences typically see the host company promoting its brand by handing out company swag to attendees. Dreamforce 2022 opted instead to focus on Salesforce's sustainability efforts by announcing plans to plant trees for each attendee as part of the company goal to plant one trillion trees by 2030 and provide donations to local public schools. In addition, the company that has helped fuel the CRM Software category announced updates and innovations to its product offerings, including Slack, Salesforce Sales Cloud Unlimited, and of course, Salesforce Genie.

Intelligent and personalized insights fueled by Salesforce Genie

At Dreamforce 2022, Salesforce announced the launch of Genie, providing real-time data integration to power the Salesforce Customer 360 suite in all facets. With consumers and businesses seeking greater personalization than ever, Genie helps companies leverage data to transcend customer experiences by tailoring and timing interactions effectively. The launch of Genie is, according to Salesforce president and chief product officer (CPO) David Schmaier, “our most significant innovation ever on the Salesforce platform. Genie makes every part of Customer 360 more automated, intelligent, and real time.”

Salesforce Genie synchronizes data from multiple channels and historical data to build a unified customer profile and provide businesses with insights across their organization and customer base. Genie leverages Salesforce’s Einstein AI to facilitate personalized guidance and predictions based on what the company calls “real-time data,” with some insights provided in milliseconds. Next, Genie uses Salesforce’s flow automation to trigger actions automatically, increasing engagement efficiency. 

Also, with a growing focus on data privacy today, Salesforce looks to combat these concerns with data ethics features that bring governance and enhance consumer trust. Genie is built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s public cloud infrastructure, providing data security, privacy, residency, and compliance controls. 

How does Genie benefit organizations?

With Genie providing a real-time customer profile, organizations can efficiently engage with prospects and customers through greater personalization. For example, sales representatives can gather information in real time to better understand customer needs and have insights into their preferences or pain points. Marketers can effectively distribute messaging to the right persona, at the right time, with personalized messaging based on the real-time insights provided by Genie. 

It is likely that Genie is currently more well-suited for enterprise businesses, as they have larger volumes of data from a variety of first and third-party sources and have the resources necessary to successfully implement, maintain, and leverage the benefits offered by Genie. As data is considered the oxygen or fuel for AI engines, Genie’s capabilities will likely be further heightened and intelligent in the future as more data is stored and analyzed by its AI capabilities. 

Salesforce introduces Sales Cloud Unlimited 

Salesforce Sales Cloud, the leading CRM in G2’s Fall 2022 Grid® Report for CRM Software for CRM software, announced new pricing and package offering, Sales Cloud Unlimited, to buyers to help consolidate some of the key capabilities offered by the company. Salesforce has historically offered a variety of add-on products to further enhance their platform’s functionality, but now with Sales Cloud Unlimited, customers can leverage features of previously packaged add-ons through a singular purchase.

Sales Cloud Unlimited provides a unified platform to combine workflows, intelligence, and automation. This package includes Salesforce Sales Engagement, Salesforce Inbox, Sales Cloud Einstein, Einstein Activity Capture, and Einstein Conversation Insights. Customers can now leverage real-time recommendations through Einstein’s AI capabilities to engage more effectively. Einstein Conversation Insights provides call transcriptions and feedback to enable sales representatives to navigate customer conversations better. Consolidating Sales Engagement and Inbox capabilities provides a unified experience for representatives to preset cadences and automate workflows. With ongoing competition in the CRM market, Salesforce is once again seeking to amplify the value of its platform by providing additional features to its customers and remaining at the top of the category. 

Slack, the new digital HQ? 

In July 2021, Salesforce acquired Slack. At Dreamforce 2022, the company announced some of its first major enhancements to the product that it views as the "digital HQ" to aid teams in becoming increasingly productive and collaborative. 

Salesforce first announced that it would expand the capabilities of Slack huddles, which began as a quick way to connect with peers via audio. Its features have now expanded to include lightweight video, screen sharing, and message threads. The message threads feature automatically saves information shared in the huddle, whether files, notes, or links, to centralize information and provide a trail for employees to reference. 

Salesforce announced another major update to Slack, Slack canvas, a digital surface for teams to arrange and exchange knowledge in the app. Canvas will enable businesses to centralize the most relevant information and resources pertinent to a particular item (customer, channel, business unit, etc.) and pull in data from their record system. Slack canvas will enhance knowledge transfer between employees, centralize key information, and surface key insights and is scheduled to be released next year. It will be interesting to see the variety of use cases for which customers can leverage this, perhaps different than originally intended. 

Introducing Net Zero Marketplace

Salesforce also announced the introduction of the Net Zero Marketplace, built on Salesforce’s Commerce Cloud. This marketplace provides a transparent way for organizations to make carbon credit purchases. With the continued focus on positively impacting the climate in today’s world, the Net Zero Marketplace simplifies the currently complex process of buying carbon credits and educates consumers on relevant climate issues. 

As organizations try to become net zero and reduce emissions, the transparency of the Net Zero Marketplace helps businesses trust the carbon credits they are purchasing to ensure that they have a positive impact. With sustainability being a key theme from Dreamforce 2022 and likely a continued emphasis for the organization, this marketplace is a crucial pillar in its fight to combat climate change and enable its customers to do the same.

Let’s not forget about people and processes

While these innovations sound great, it is important to remember that technology is only as good as the people and processes in an organization. While having a real-time source of truth is a critical aspect of optimizing operations and catering to customer needs, ultimately, it will not create a fine-tuned revenue engine on its own—particularly in these large enterprise organizations, which typically face challenges connecting across departments. In today’s technology-centric world, businesses look to applications to solve their problems (which they may do in part), but it’s just as important to ensure that one’s organization is ready to adopt these innovative technologies, both in terms of business processes and stakeholders. 

It is likely that Genie’s early adopters will primarily be enterprise companies with the resources and data volume to take advantage of Genie’s capabilities, evident by Salesforce’s promotion of brands like L’Oreal, Ford, Formula 1, and FedEx. With the volume of data likely to multiply in the coming years, Salesforce Genie will theoretically be more intelligent as it will have more data and historical patterns to learn from.

With the emergence of Genie and the other product enhancements announced at Dreamforce 2022, it will be interesting to see how Salesforce’s large partner ecosystem will support and contribute to the adoption of Genie and differentiate themselves from their competitors who rely on Salesforce’s technology.

Edited by Shanti S Nair