Takeaways from the 2018 Chicago event for anyone considering if, what and how to connect your business to Salesforce.
The short Salesforce answers to the above questions are naturally: yes, anything, and very shortly as easy as it gets.
The Salesforce Connections event in the (at least from a swede’s perspective) massive McCormick place in Chicago, Illinois spared no expense in highlighting every part and integration possibility there is to any and all of the Salesforce clouds.
Spearheading the conversation regarding Salesforce’s drive to even simpler integration processes is naturally their latest API-service acquisition, Mulesoft. In short Mulesoft’s service is a platform that can be used as a middle way to connect your service to multiple others. Mulesoft also provides a library of API connections between systems that developers can reuse to create new processes and experiences.
In Salesforce’s end to end solution world it is easy to see how this amplifies the argument for you to integrate those last remaining data points into your Salesforce installation. So far, the inclusion of Mulesoft into the Salesforce packaging is still in an early stage, but multiple sources in Chicago suggested that it will be a part of the Salesforce overall product offering, at least in some way, shortly (few seemed however to know exactly how and when). To say the least, it sure looked promising.
Apart from the Mulesoft API, the event also highlighted an array of other connections in different forms and categories. Some of the more prominent ones were:
Google 360 – Salesforce is now the first third party service with a complete integration to Google’s premium analytics subscription, Google 360. In this forum it might fall under the category of “nice to have” integrations, but it is a frequently mentioned request from many businesses and have up to this point required additional development as part of different work around processes.
E-commerce – The list of toplevel event partners included most of the name worthy payment service suppliers (among them Swedish Klarna and the Dutch former undercover giant, Adyen). At the same time highlights from the product updates, released in conjunction with the event, listed: Service for commerce, B2B commerce and Commerce journeys. If anyone missed it, Salesforce appeal to connect to more businesses in this vertical is prominently present.
People – Salesforce is putting a lot of work into their connection to people. May it be in the form of open education through Trailhead and boot camps, or this event’s diversity headline starring Lucy Liu on stage. Salesforce drive connections through inclusion and made some clear statements that they want to open up for everyone to partake.
If you are considering implementing Salesforce in your organisation or want to further improve your Marketing Automation processes, you can reach us at: info@recoordinate.com
To discover more of everything Salesforce related, check out: trailhead.salesforce.com
Kristoffer Thelenius Marketing Consultant at Recoordinate