The Wednesday morning IoT session “Driving Sales with IoT Cloud: Turn Every Connected Device Into a Sales Machine”, was interesting.
Here is my rundown of the high points and key takeaways.
The connectivity revolution offers a massive opportunity to disrupt. A traditional “Products Only” mindset and strategy can have limited growth potential and can be susceptible to cost pressures. IoT connectivity offers a new model of product plus digital engagement. This new model has the potential for recurring revenue, higher margins and innovative business models.
The Salesforce IoT Cloud helps bridge the “IOT Transformation Gap” between today’s siloed IoT solutions, connected devices and your customer’s experience. Cross-cloud experiences play into this with IoT Cloud’s ability to integrate IoT orchestrations with Sales, Marketing, Service and other clouds.
The Leased Automobile demo illustrated the potential to drive revenue from IoT Cloud. This demo showed how IoT Cloud can be used to marry automobile sensor data such as mileage with “slow moving” contextual data like lease information (e.g., mileage limits) and user information to create an IoT orchestration that includes the creation of an opportunity in Sales Cloud when the Lease term limit approaches. The following orchestration states were included in the demo:
• Lease started
• Driving Evaluation
• Mileage limit notification
• Lease term limit approaching
• Hybrid car opportunity created (in Sales Cloud)
A noteworthy point was the ease at which the IoT Cloud can integrate with Sales Cloud to create the Hybrid car opportunity in any Salesforce org.
The following 3 trailblazer key learnings were highlighted:
1. Don’t “Over” IoT: Choose 2-4 products. Don’t boil the ocean.
2. Pick a high margin or short life cycle product. Short lifecycle supports a quick feedback loop.
3. Put together a team of specialists. IoT is a different ballgame.
