The closing of one year and the promise of a new one right around the corner makes the last week of December a prime time for reflection. Taking stock of the innovations and technologies that defined this year creates a fertile ground for discussing and brainstorming what’s next—whether that means fine-tuning existing applications, creating entirely new designs, or a little of both.
On October 13-16, Salesforce held its 12th annual Dreamforce event, a massive live and online conference that celebrated recent innovations in CRM and cloud computing technology, with a pointed look toward the future and new areas of focus that will help define 2015. A virtual “Best of Salesforce,” the event served as a prime backdrop for two major new product announcements: Salesforce Lightning and Salesforce Wave, the Salesforce Analytics Cloud, the next generation of solutions for the Salesforce1 Platform, designed to make it easier than ever to capture, track, and review customer data and monitor team performance.
Salesforce Lightning is based on a new backend designed to be just that—lightning fast—making application design, data integration, and process automation more streamlined to facilitate networking between partners, developers, and business analysts. With features such as pre-built templates that let users simply drag and drop data to create applications on the go, no coding experience is required, drastically shrinking the time it takes to build and manage customer information.
After data is captured and stored, it can be monitored and studied through Wave, the new Salesforce Analytics Cloud. The sixth cloud in the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, Wave is built on business intelligence software with a focus on cross-device mobility, designed to drive actionable insights from customer and team data and help shape and sharpen business strategies. The first cloud analytics platform, Wave helps companies quickly deploy sales, service, and marketing analytics, create custom dashboards, or even build custom mobile analytics applications, providing the answers needed to make critical business decisions.
As these new releases demonstrate, a focus on the future is critical to ensuring technology remains up-to-date and relevant. But perhaps most important is an ever-steady focus on the customer—a resolve to consistently reassess user activities, frustrations, challenges, and demands in an effort to create products that keep pace and exceed expectations. As companies like Salesforce look back on existing solutions and make adjustments to meet ever-shifting user needs, the technology industry itself is strengthened, leading the way for more conversation, more ideas, and ultimately, more innovation.
To learn more about these new technologies and how our seasoned Salesforce consultants can deliver this functionality to your business, please contact any member of our consulting team at [email protected]. We also encourage you to contact Tokara’s VP of Business Development, Mark Fillingim, directly at +1 972-719-0213.
Source:
Computer World, “Salesforce’s Big Opportunity is in Keeping it Simple,” October 17, 2014, http://www.computerworld.com/article/2834589/salesforces-big-opportunity-is-in-keeping-it-simple.html
NOTE FROM THE PRESIDENT
