Category: System Updates

Top Takeaways from Dreamforce 2024

Dreamforce 2024, the world’s largest software conference, delivered new innovations that are set to transform industries. Highlights include the launch of Agentforce, Salesforce’s autonomous AI suite, and major updates to Data Cloud and the Customer 360 platform. Powerful Retail & Consumer Goods sessions with McKee Foods, Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC), and Dole Fresh Fruit showcased how Consumer Goods Cloud is helping businesses optimize processes, strengthen relationships, and drive growth. Here are the top takeaways from Dreamforce 2024!

Agentforce

The biggest news coming from Dreamforce 2024 was, of course, Agentforce. Salesforce’s new Agentforce suite represents a major leap in the AI landscape, with CEO Marc Benioff claiming, “The Agentforce platform represented the third wave of the AI revolution.” The autonomous AI agents are designed to handle tasks independently across sales, marketing, service, consumer goods, commerce, and more. Unlike traditional chatbots or copilots, Agentforce analyzes data, makes decisions, and takes action autonomously. This significant breakthrough allows organizations to quickly scale their workforce, responding to business demands in real-time without requiring human input.

The true power of Agentforce is its ability to operate accurately and efficiently by integrating deeply with Salesforce’s Data Cloud. Whether resolving customer service inquiries, qualifying sales leads, or optimizing marketing campaigns, these agents can perform tasks that free up human employees to focus on more strategic and high-level activities. This will increase productivity and customer satisfaction, making Agentforce a game changer in AI.

With its bold vision of empowering one billion agents by 2025, Salesforce is not just advancing AI technology but redefining what’s possible in the workplace. As Marc Benioff says, “This is the biggest and most exciting piece of technology we have ever worked on, and we are just starting.” For businesses across industries, Agentforce offers the opportunity to enhance efficiency, improve customer relationships, and drive growth—all with a few clicks and without the complexity of traditional AI implementations.

Consumer Goods Cloud Customer Success Stories

Three leading consumer goods companies took the stage to share how they harness the power of Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud to transform their businesses.

Jack Corrao, Managing Partner of Corrao Group, highlighted McKee Foods’ success in optimizing trade promotions using Salesforce Trade Promotion Management. With trade spending being one of the biggest challenges in the Consumer Package Goods (CPG) industry, McKee Foods has found that the right tools can make a significant difference. By leveraging TPM, they have been able to navigate the complexities of trade promotions, maximize ROI, and enhance their overall business performance.

Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) showcased how they use Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud and Data Cloud to unify B2B and B2C data on a single platform. The session focused on how integrated planning and new data sources are helping RNDC make smarter, more profitable decisions, ultimately transforming their route-to-market strategy.

Dole Fresh Fruit shared its success story of improving planning and forecasting with Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud Customer Planning & Forecasting (CPF). By utilizing Salesforce’s CPF capabilities, Dole has strengthened their relationships with retailers and boosted revenue through more accurate forecasts. Salesforce CPF has set a new standard for driving business growth and enhancing retailer partnerships.

All three of these sessions highlighted the transformative impact that Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud has across the consumer goods industry, empowering companies to make data-driven decisions, optimize processes, and achieve greater success. Corrao Group has been proud to partner with McKee Foods, RNDC, and Dole Fresh Fruit to ensure a seamless rollout and successful adoption of these cutting-edge solutions.

Data Cloud

Salesforce’s Data Cloud continues to show impressive growth and innovation, with a 130% year-over-year increase in customers and the capacity to process over 2.3 quadrillion records per quarter. Salesforce’s Data Cloud, the foundation of the Salesforce Platform, and Agentforce continue to drive innovation in unifying customer and business data to deliver personalized, contextually relevant experiences across Customer 360 applications, Flows, Analytics, and Agentforce. “In this new era of AI and Agents, customer data and metadata are the new gold for the enterprise,” said Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM for Data Cloud at Salesforce. At Dreamforce 2024, Salesforce introduced several key innovations that enhance Data Cloud’s capabilities, cementing its role as the heartbeat of Salesforce’s AI ecosystem.

One of the most notable additions is Data Cloud’s support for unstructured data, which can natively process audio and video content such as customer calls or webinars. This opens up new opportunities for deeper customer insights and enhances the accuracy of Agentforce’s agents. Data Cloud also features a standardized semantic data model, allowing AI and human users to interpret and use data consistently. With improved search capabilities, Data Cloud enables a quicker discovery of relevant information. Real-time data activations also enhance the ability to instantly respond to changing customer needs, providing organizations with more dynamic and timely customer interactions.

Finally, Salesforce has strengthened Data Cloud’s data security and governance features. New policy-based governance allows organizations to maintain strict control over how sensitive data is shared with AI agents. These innovations, combined with Data Cloud’s role as the foundation for Agentforce, enable businesses to harness the power of AI while safeguarding their crucial data and operations.

Customer 360 Platform Innovations

Salesforce unveiled a range of exciting new innovations within its Customer 360 platform, further enhancing AI-powered, personalized experiences across sales, service, marketing, and commerce. These innovations leverage shared data and services to deliver a seamless customer experience while integrating powerful analytics and collaboration tools such as Tableau and Slack. Built on the Salesforce Platform, Customer 360 ensures that every touchpoint is connected, enabling businesses to deliver customer interactions that are both efficient and impactful.

Among the standout innovations announced is Tableau Einstein, which opens up the power of business intelligence (BI) and analytics to everyone who wants to make data-driven work scalable, efficient, and more valuable. By bringing data and insights across workflows in Customer 360 apps, Agentforce, Pulse, and Slack, teams can make data-driven decisions faster and more effectively. Slack has also introduced a new user interface for agents, enabling users to interact directly with data, surface insights, and collaborate in real-time. This includes an integration with Agentforce agents, making it easier for teams to stay aligned and move work forward by connecting Salesforce CRM records with Slack channels. (More updates on Slack are below).

Salesforce has also enhanced its core products with AI innovations. Sales Cloud now features Agentforce SDR and Sales Coach and capabilities like account planning, forecasting, and compensation management. Similarly, Service Cloud’s new features provide service agents with step-by-step resolution plans, sentiment tracking, and AI-based recommendations to improve the customer experience. Agentforce’s Service Agent can autonomously handle customer cases 24/7, seamlessly escalating problematic cases to human representatives when needed. These innovations and the introduction of Agentforce agents tailored for commerce, field service, and marketing demonstrate Salesforce’s commitment to transforming every role and workflow across industries with AI.

Slack Innovations

Salesforce announced a new series of Slack innovations, transforming the platform into an agent-powered work operating system that unifies company knowledge, data, agents, apps, and automation in one seamless interface. Denise Dresser, CEO of Slack, mentioned, “We’ve moved beyond collaboration; every day, millions of teams are leveraging purpose-built AI, with customer data, automation, and now agents seamlessly integrated into the flow of work. This isn’t just about getting work done. It’s about unlocking new productivity levels to drive results and move business forward for every team and department.”

With an Agentforce integration, teams can now collaborate with AI-powered agents directly in Slack to surface insights, automate tasks, and access customer data from Salesforce. Additionally, third-party AI agents from partners like Adobe and Anthropic can be deployed securely within Slack, allowing users to work smarter and faster. New features like Slack AI huddle notes, automated workflows, and enhanced search capabilities further streamline productivity, while Salesforce channels bridge CRM data and Slack conversations to keep teams aligned. These innovations position Slack as a central hub for boosting department efficiency and collaboration.

Free AI-Training

Salesforce has announced a major initiative to offer free hands-on AI courses and certifications through 2025, investing over $50 million to help bridge the growing AI skills gap. Salesforce will provide premium AI training through Trailhead, making AI education accessible to everyone. Additionally, Salesforce plans to open AI centers at its San Francisco headquarters and global offices, providing community and employee training spaces. This initiative reflects Salesforce’s commitment to preparing the workforce for the future of AI, equipping individuals with the tools and skills needed to succeed in an AI-driven world.

Dreamforce 2024 Conclusion

Mark it down as another successful Dreamforce event by Salesforce. We want to give a big shout and thank you to Salesforce as they put on an extraordinary event that featured some incredible guest speakers. The energy around San Francisco was electric as attendees gathered to witness and learn what new features Salesforce would release next. We are already getting excited for Dreamforce 2025!

If you would like to learn more about any of the new features from Dreamforce 2024 and how it can relate to your business, please contact us.

About Corrao Group

Corrao Group is a top Salesforce consulting partner in the retail, consumer goods, and professional service industries. Since 2002, we have helped organizations of all sizes and industries optimize and streamline their business processes with Salesforce. Our mission is to flawlessly translate your business processes into Salesforce, promoting successful integration and widespread user adoption.

Salesforce Winter ’23 Release Account Engagement

The Salesforce Winter ’23 Release Notes are here! We’ve gone through every page and highlighted new features and enhancements from Account Engagement (Previously Pardot).

Automate Tasks with Extensibility Enhancements

    • As part of extensibility enhancements, you can now take actions on prospects outside of Account Engagement. Supercharge Engagement Studio programs by automatically registering prospects for a webinar, sending them an SMS text, creating a new lead Salesforce, and more. External actions are built on invocable actions, so you can customize them to fit your business needs. Use external actions independently or in combination with external activities to close automation gaps across platforms.

Simplify Prospect Opt-Out Status between Account Engagement and Salesforce

    • The prospect Opted Out field now requires a designated system of record, giving you one place to check for a record’s opt-out status. Choose between Account Engagement or Salesforce as the primary value for the prospect Opted Out field. Previously, the Opted Out field inherited the value from the most recently updated record.

Review Prospects with Bot-Like activity

    • To protect the health of your business unit, Account Engagement can pause activity tracking for prospects with an excessive amount of activity. When a prospect’s activity tracking is paused, an icon appears on the prospect list view and an error appears on the prospect record. A prospect’s activity tracking is paused only if it impacts Account Engagement’s performance. Paused prospects who are opted in can still receive marketing emails.

Form Security Features Now Mandatory

    • A security update that better protects your forms and marketing content can affect forms served over the default go.pardot.com domain. For continuous form support, we recommend that you use a custom domain with forms or use them with Pardot landing pages. To find out where affected forms are being used, refer to the Content Served Using the Default Domain report in Pardot Settings.

Give Access to Account Engagement with a Dedicated Permission Set License and Permission Set

    • To accommodate Account Engagement users who don’t require full access to Salesforce, you can now assign them the Account Engagement permission set license and Account Engagement User permission set. This permission set grants users access to most of the marketing tools available in the Account Engagement Lightning app. It doesn’t include full access to campaigns in Salesforce.

Sync All Prospects Records with One Click

    • Use the Sync All Prospects option to sync prospect records with Salesforce. Previously, you needed to update a prospect field to trigger a full sync. Business units with fewer than 500,000 prospects can trigger a full sync every 7 days.

Pardot Classic App is Being Retired

  • The Pardot Classic App is scheduled for retirement in all Salesforce orgs by October 17, 2022. To access Account Engagement in Salesforce and get access to the latest features, use the Account Engagement Lightning app (formerly the Pardot Lightning app). You can also continue to access the standalone legacy application at pi.pardot.com.

If you would like to learn more about the Salesforce Winter ’23 Release and Account Engagement, please contact us.

Sources/Photos

Salesforce Winter ’23 Release Notes

salesforce_winter23_release_notes

The Importance of Manufacturing Cloud

The release of Manufacturing Cloud is a fantastic accomplishment for Salesforce. Manufacturing Cloud takes the current pain points of the industry and turns them into an experience that is flexible in reacting to the customer’s ever-changing demands. In this blog, we are going to share with you the importance of Salesforce’s latest release.

Forecasting

Salesforce knows that the manufacturing industry contains more than just customers. Suppliers, contractors, dealers, service technicians, distributors, and internal warehouse and factory all play a crucial role in the development of your product and the experiences of your customers. Manufacturing Cloud helps users collaborate in real-time across the ecosystem to ensure your forecasts are accurate and updates to your schedules are automatically communicated to warehouse and purchasing departments.

According to Salesforce, “Manufacturers need a clear understanding of all past shipments, current production plans, and future production forecasts.” Forecasting in Manufacturing Cloud is all about taking control and allowing flexible releases to your customers’ needs. Manufacturers often have very different sales and forecasting processes that your supply and chain teams must know when to deliver new items. Manufacturing Cloud gives users the upfront awareness of what you think you’re going to sell, and when you are going to sell it. Having critical insights into the timing of selling your product will make every part of your business sufficient.

Forecasting in Salesforce isn’t just about how you’re going to sell your product on your unique timeline. It’s about knowing how you need to staff your factory: Do I need a second shift, or can I get by with the first shift? Manufacturers always have absurd spikes where their employees are forced to work long hours to get their product out. Forecasting in Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers an overview of all their businesses, allowing them to take control and make smarter decisions.

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Partner Collaboration

Manufacturing Cloud extends benefits to all your partners to collaborate across the same forecast order and demand data in one single source of truth. For example, the Partner Community allows your vendors and partners to see and engage in real-time updates to your sales forecasts. Additionally, analytics will be tied directly to order data with additional information into the territory, customer, agreement, product line, or product performance. Improving inventory management allows manufacturers the chance to analyze their customer data, and gain insights into every product and territory performance.

A New Era

Manufacturers for far too long have used old proprietary systems that have never been scaled. In addition, these systems are not cloud friendly. Salesforce being able to tie manufacturing into the leader of the cloud is a big deal. The era of using and exporting spreadsheets or pivot tables is over. A new era is emerging for manufacturing, and it allows manufacturers to have complete control over the ability to operate their business in a much more profitable point of view.

Our experience with manufacturing dates back to our Managing Partner, Jack Corrao. Jack has developed numerous operational infrastructures to support hardware and software companies to deliver the best in breed solutions. As our #1 vertical, we are here to help you integrate and train you on best practices involving Manufacturing Cloud.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be releasing a new blog related to Salesforce’s new Cloud. We’ll cover manufacturing pain points Salesforce solved, our favorite features, and how to integrate Manufacturing Cloud. If you would like to learn more, please contact us.

Sources

https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/09/introducing-manufacturing-cloud.html

All Photos can be found here: https://www.salesforce.com/products/manufacturing-cloud/overview/

The Effects of Bad Data

Did you know poor data costs businesses on average around $700 billion annually, equivalent to 30% of the company’s revenue (Salesforce)? Having a powerful CRM platform like Salesforce doesn’t automatically ensure business success. Keeping data inside Salesforce healthy takes a lot of time and effort for your employees. Clean and quality data ensures that all high-level data related to marketing campaigns, sales forecasts, project management, pipeline reports, and dashboards are accurate.

But what happens when the data in the system is unreliable?

What is Bad Data Quality?

Unhealthy data is information in the system that can disrupt a company’s business process through missing, inaccurate, or duplicate data. A recent Salesforce study found, “The average contact database is composed of 90% incomplete contacts, with 20% of records being useless due to several factors, 74% of the records needing updates, and more than 25% of those being unintentional duplicates.” In essence, poor data includes:

    • Missing Data: Empty fields that data is required to be in.
      • Example: Missing phone/email, title.
    • Inaccurate Data: Wrong information put in the fields.
      • Example: Wrong address, phone numbers, emails, titles.
    • Duplicate Data: Contacts, accounts, or leads that show up more than once.
      • Example: Two leads with the same number or email.

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How Poor Data Effects You

According to RingLead, the 2nd largest issue among Salesforce customers is bad data. Companies start making poor business decisions because of inaccurate data producing misleading results. Here are just three ways that bad data can hurt a company:

    • Inaccurate Reports and Dashboards: Inaccurate data negatively impacts the sales or marketing teams to stay on top of qualified leads or opportunities. Employees could be wasting time on the wrong opportunities. False reports can lead to the company’s top decision-makers making choices based on inaccurate data.
    • Wasted Time and Money: Spending money on campaigns will be inefficient if the ROI reporting is incorrect. Bad data can report that your advertisement campaign only sourced $6k worth of deals when it could have actually been $80k. Not seeing that proper ROI could lead to missing out on the chance to rerun successful campaigns and efforts.
    • Decline in User Adoption: Users might use another system to keep track of their data if they have little to no confidence in the quality of data. Employees tracking data in another system is another example of time and money wasted on a powerful CRM system.

How to Improve Your Data Quality

According to Salesforce, “Because the quality of the data affects the entire organization, data quality metrics should be a company-wide responsibility.” Improving your data quality starts with training employees on the importance of data. The Corrao Group can help you standardize your Salesforce process and implement data requirements throughout your Salesforce sales process. Healthy data brings better results for the company in terms of customer experience, reports and dashboards, shorter sales cycles, and more. Your company can expect great results when employees start inserting data of high quality into your CRM system.

Bad Data across the world in different countries

Corrao Group x RingLead Data Solution

RingLead is the #1 data quality platform for sales and marketing, and has a suite of products dedicated to removing and preventing duplicates, improving data quality, and performing system-wide data scans. Partnering with RingLead has given Corrao Group an easy to use platform to consistently improve lead quality by providing tools to help prospect new leads, standardize records, and clean unhealthy data. Corrao Group ensures your sales and marketing efforts are reaching the right people with accurate information.

Corrao Group Health Check

One of the ways Corrao Group can help your company improve bad data is through a Health Check. A Health Check is a reverse Salesforce system demo to ensure you’re getting the most out of your current investment. Health Checks help ensure your system is up to date on the latest Salesforce release and enable you to learn best practices from a certified Salesforce implementation expert. Corrao Group can help standardize your Salesforce process and implement data requirements throughout your Salesforce Sales process.

Please contact us to take your first step towards optimizing your data and maximizing your Salesforce investment!

Sources

Salesforce.com 

RingLead