Where can CRM take you? With the forward-looking theme of “Back to the Future” (which got a bit too weird at times, especially with an aging Huey Lewis and the News playing live at 9 a.m.) at Dreamforce ’13, we got a few glimpses and I am impressed.
First of all, in case any of you who attended need a reminder, Dreamforce is insanely large. More than 125,000 attendees turn into an endless sea of people. That’s not to say that any one place in particular was overly crowded—I waited in far fewer lines than I expected—but the sheer size gives the event a certain weight. It felt like the happening place to be. So what did we learn? I picked up on three big themes:
1. CRM is truly a platform
Simply by surveying the Cloud Expo halls and the hundreds of sponsors, let alone the thousands more on the App Exchange, you can’t help but think that one of the most useful aspects of Salesforce is that so many useful apps (and remember, these are entire companies we’re talking about!) are built on top of the SFDC platform. Similar to the strength of the Apple App Store, useful apps make the platform purchase that much more worthwhile. Many of the SF admins that we spoke to recognized this: buying SFDC is a first step into unlocking the value from the platform, but that the add-ons are what make Salesforce so useful.
2. Mobile is the future and the future is now
Salesforce unveiled Salesforce One, their native mobile application that makes it easy to access Salesforce when you wake up in the morning and find your apps while in Salesforce. Why is it so important that Salesforce continues to make a splash for the past three years with a mobile announcement? Because the value of the data entered, stored and accessed through a CRM is only realized if you can use it. And if your field team is only using tablets and smartphones, your CRM probably isn’t getting the attention that it did five years ago.
But it’s more than that—mobile really does change the way that CRM becomes useful. Take the Service Cloud experience of the medical device technician wearing Google Glass and being able to fix a broken part by taking a picture, interacting with an expert in the home office and executing the job—all done through CRM but making use of a variety of technologies.
The game-changing technology at the core of everything is Wi-Fi, and the result is increased efficiency and the ability for a customer to deliver a hyper-focused customer experience. While many SF admins weren’t yet looking at ways to make their reps more useful with Google Glass, many were challenged with getting useful content out of the data within CRM and onto the tablets being used in the field. We were happy to show a lot of them how we help solve that problem!
3. CRM isn’t just for sales
The Salesforce acquisition of ExactTarget marketing software means that SFDC could soon become the platform for your marketing efforts as well as your sales teams. While most of the attendees at Dreamforce come from the sales side of the house, it is clear that CRM can inform automated marketing actions, whether through email campaigns, push notifications or lead scoring.
So what will a successful implementation of SFDC look like in five years?
It very well may resemble your iPad—SFDC is the delivery mechanism and underpinning operating system, but you interact with the environment exclusively through best-in-class applications built on the system. Furthermore, those apps all accomplish one task: build a customer-centric, highly personalized experience.
The future is bright, mobile and better for customers.
