Another Dreamforce has come and gone, and 172,000 attendees flocked back to their offices this week buzzing with fresh ideas and insights.
Our list of takeaways is too long for one blog post, so we’ve boiled it down to the top 10 things that headlined this year’s Dreamforce:
1. Einstein
Einstein stole the show during Marc Benioff’s keynote address – although we were disappointed Parker Harris didn’t go for the full blown costume this year.
Einstein promises “artificial intelligence for everyone” and will be embedded across the Salesforce platform to bring machine learning, predictive analytics, and smart data discovery to the products we all know and love. Availability, cost structure, and other specifics have yet to be announced, but we’re excited to see what’s in store.
2. Lightning Bolt for Communities
The Community Cloud has gotten a major boost with the recent debut of Lightning Bolt – a framework enabling customers to create and rollout next generation portals faster than ever before. Industry-specific Lightning Bolt solutions are being built every day and added to the AppExchange.
3. Dreampitch
A new addition to the Dreamforce agenda this year was “Dreampitch” – a pitch contest for early stage startups building apps and products on the Salesforce Platform.
The winner? Claire, a chat-based online product testing startup, took home the honors along with a $150k investment from Salesforce Ventures.
4. 1:1:1 Model
Social welfare and justice issues were woven into many of the sessions and keynotes in the entire conference. Salesforce gave significant air time to the 1:1:1 corporate social responsibility model, where 1% of their time, products, and equity are given to philanthropic causes.
5. Quip
Quip is a productivity application that is one of the newest additions to the Salesforce family.
In Benioff’s keynote, he announced a new Quip Lightning Component, allowing Quip users to view their content in the Salesforce platform. Additionally, users can now use SSO to log into Quip with their Salesforce credentials.
6. Brand your Salesforce1
The mobile experience in Salesforce is one of its best loved features. We can now add custom branding to the list of perks built into the app!
7. Trailhead
If you haven’t yet explored Trailhead – sign up today! The Trailhead platform is the spot to learn all things Salesforce, and licenses are free.
8. Salesforce Live Message
Salesforce Live Message (formerly HeyWire) facilitates conversational customer service from any messaging system, app, and social network. The product promises to usher in new levels of customer engagement when fully integrated with the Salesforce Service Cloud.
9. Take your forecasts mobile
Salesforce1 Forecasting allows business leaders to manage forecast on the go – from their phone or tablet when they’re out of the office.
10. A new cloud is born!
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is the new name for Demandware, a company bought by Salesforce just a few months ago. The goal of the Commerce Cloud is to allow brands provide a unified shopping experience for customers—across web, mobile, social and in-store.
What were your key takeaways?
What announcements made your ears perk up? Did any of the case studies hit home with you? Let us know in the comments!
