Last week, Perficient attended the largest AI event in the world, Dreamforce, in San Francisco. During the three-day conference, 40,000 Salesforce partners, clients, and vendors got together to hear from Salesforce leadership, industry experts, clients, and a handful of celebrities, as well as get hands-on experience with the Salesforce platform.
Fueled by generative AI, IDC reports that Salesforce and its partner ecosystem will create a net gain of more than $2T in business revenue and 11.6M jobs by 2028. This solidifies that Salesforce is leading the charge in AI, and Perficient is leaning into the partnership to bring innovative solutions to our clients.
We learned about new Salesforce capabilities and technologies, heard new product announcements, and connected with peers and clients from across industries. Read on to learn about my top nine takeaways.
Data, AI, and Trust
There were several key themes at this year’s Dreamforce, including Data, AI, and trust. Salesforce announced its Tenets of Trusted, Ethical & Humane AI that guide all of its innovations, which are designed to keep the trust between Salesforce and its customers, and Salesforce partners and their customers.
These tenets are:
- Your data isn’t your product
- You control access to your data
- We prioritize accurate, verifiable results
- Our product policies protect human rights
- We advance responsible AI globally
- Transparency builds trust
Launch of Einstein 1 Platform
The Einstein 1 Platform is a new AI-driven platform that enables businesses to leverage data, develop low-code AI apps, and revolutionize CRM experiences. It also promises to make application building safer and more efficient by using machine learning to identify and mitigate security risks, and provide developers with tools to build more secure applications.
The key to Einstein 1 is Einstein Copilot, a new conversational AI assistant that is built into the user interface of Salesforce applications to help users with their Salesforce tasks. Users can interact with the assistant in natural language, and it can offer additional actions beyond user queries, such as automatically completing tasks, providing recommendations, and answering questions.
Free Data Cloud and Tableau Licenses
Perhaps the biggest announcement to come out of Dreamforce, Salesforce is providing free Data Cloud and Tableau licenses for existing Sales and Service Cloud customers – Enterprise or Unlimited edition – and includes two free Tableau Creator licenses and Data Cloud licenses for up to 10,000 profiles.
Enhanced Data Cloud Features
With Data cloud embedded in the Einstein 1 platform, dynamic, real-time data from different systems can be automated, called Data Cloud-Triggered Flow. This allows users to create flows that are triggered by changes in data. Another new feature is Data Graphs, which are visual representations of data relationships that can help users better understand their data.
Increased Capabilities for Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud
Salesforce introduced 26 generative AI capabilities between Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud, 14 of which are in GA now, with an additional 14 to arrive by the end of 2024. These features are built on Data Cloud, and help create more personalized and engaging customer experiences. Those currently available are:
- Marketing Cloud: Marketing in Starter, DC + Account Engagement, Personalization Insights in Core, Data Spaces in Data Cloud, Advertising Audiences in Data Cloud, Einstein Lookalikes in Data Cloud
- Commerce Cloud: Salesforce Payments, Order Management, Omnichannel Inventory, Reorder Portal, Pay Now, Generative Product Descriptions
New Slack Innovations
Slack now has AI features to enhance productivity and save time. These features include thread summaries, channel recaps, and search answers; automation; and Slack Lists to track projects, product launches, and handle approvals.
Most Sustainable Dreamforce Ever
- 74% of structures were recycled or reused
- 5,500 square feet of biodegradable signage
- 10M gallons of water conserved
- 100% compostable meal packaging
- Multiple Net Zero Cloud sessions
- New Net Zero Cloud capabilities, including simplified ESG reporting for companies amid changing regulations; Einstein for Net Zero Cloud is expected in Spring 2024
New Life Sciences Cloud
The newest industry cloud, Life Sciences Cloud, is tailored to expedite onboarding on the Salesforce platform. More information will be available in the coming weeks.
Expanded Partnerships
Salesforce and Google are expanding their partnership to further integrate their products. Salesforce is the first partner to integrate with the Google Workspace Duet AI extensions framework, and Google Workspace is the first extensibility partner for Salesforce Eistein Copilot. These integrations will generate tailored content in Google Workspace and Salesforce, ensuring Salesforce records stay current with Google Workspace insights.
AWS
In 2024, Salesforce and AWS will pilot a series of integrations to enable the sharing of data lakes and large language models (LLMs). Amazon Redshift, EMR, Athena, Bedrock, and SageMaker users can leverage foundation models within Salesforce with security – the process has no copying and moving of data.
An existing integration between Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect allows users to launch contact center services with Salesforce’s agent desktop with various Amazon services to improve agent productivity.
Databricks
Salesforce and Databricks are expanding their partnership to allow for seamless merging of data from Data Cloud with external Databricks Lakehouse Platform data. Ultimately, this will reduce the cost and complexity of moving and copying data while keeping security, governance, and trust standards. Users can access Databricks data in Data Cloud and vice versa.
Interested in More Dreamforce Content?
If you weren’t able to attend Dreamforce in person or want to revisit some of the sessions, you can access select sessions on Salesforce+, Salesforce’s free on-demand content platform.
Perficient + Salesforce
We are a Salesforce Summit Partner with more than two decades of experience delivering digital solutions in the manufacturing, automotive, healthcare, financial services, and high-tech industries. Our team has deep expertise in all Salesforce Clouds and products, artificial intelligence, DevOps, and specialized domains to help you reap the benefits of implementing Salesforce solutions.
