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The realms of business and technology converged for one of the most anticipated tech events of the year: Salesforce's Dreamforce 2023. Being a Salesforce partner, we were among the 40,000 in-person attendees at the event and closely followed more than 1,500 sessions to understand how AI, data, CRM, and trust will enable digital transformation. In this event recap, we will reflect on the key announcements and highlights of the grand event's 21st iteration - an event attended by A-list celebrities, top tech leaders, and prominent political figures.

DREAMFORCE 2023 HIGHLIGHTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Dreamforce 2023, Salesforce's annual flagship event, was the largest AI event. This year, Dreamforce began as the CRM leader's commitment to solidifying its pole position in the artificial intelligence (AI) landscape. Through this event, Salesforce also strengthened its commitment to integrating AI across its portfolio of services and products.

Marc Benioff's Keynote

Like every year, Dreamforce '23's major highlight was the keynote session presented by Marc Benioff - Salesforce's CEO. During the keynote, Salesforce rolled out a slew of AI-enabled products, emphasizing that technological progress must run in parallel with security and trust.

Benioff stated that trust is integral and a top priority for the CRM leader. He underscored that Salesforce has ensured that every product is trustable, integrated, intelligent, and automated to drive end-to-end business transformation. Benioff also said that low-code no-code (LCNC) is one of the top priorities at Salesforce to propel workforce productivity and streamline development life cycles. In his keynote, Benioff even shared that the generative phase of AI is in its ninth month and has followed the predictive AI revolution; he confirmed that generative AI will pave the way for "Artificial General Intelligence" in the future.

We have discussed the highlights of Benioff's keynote, so let us look at the event's announcements and high points.

Unveiling The Einstein 1 Platform

The first big reveal of Salesforce was geared toward AI's reliability. Benioff explained that Salesforce's Einstein 1 platform is engineered as a low-code system to ensure AI application development must meet safe data connectivity. The best part is that the Einstein 1 platform can easily integrate with a suite of productivity tools: Google Workspace, Slack, Tableau, Mulesoft, Microsoft 365, Canvas, and Heroku. The platform harnesses the Salesforce Data Cloud to overcome any data fragmentation challenges. Moreover, the platform depends on a strong metadata framework that would help unify any datasets, regardless of how they are structured or where they are sourced from. But Benioff added that the platform will have to be trustable so that users can democratize it while using it inside their business systems so that it understands enterprise metadata.

Discovering Investment Prospects

Benioff referred to trailblazers as AI innovators from whom Salesforce has created a solid venture capital pool worth $500 million. The half-a-billion fund is earmarked only for those trAIlblazers who are developing on the Einstein 1 platform. It may seem that $500 million is a steep budget just to market a platform, but it isn't in reality. Salesforce has a strong track record of generating an appreciable Internal Rate of Return of 28 percent from venture capital investments worth $5 billion. Moreover, this strategy will accelerate the adoption of the Einstein 1 platform.

Diving Deep Into Einstein Copilot and Einstein Copilot Studio

Einstein Copilot, Salesforce's generative AI conversational assistant, depends heavily on the Salesforce Data Cloud. This dependence helps engage the generative AI model in a natural conversation with users and deliver reliable answers to complex queries. Salesforce even confirmed that Einstein Copilot is not just any other generative AI assistant because it can be integrated with the CRM's service section. This integration can be leveraged by users to meet their different workplace needs, such as updating account information, automating clause drafting and email generation, managing catalogs, handling digital storefronts, and developing detailed and insightful product descriptions. Customizing your Einstein Copilot deployment is simple with Einstein Copilot Studio - a new toolkit that comprises three elements: skills builder, model builder, and prompt builder. These elements help build AI-based sales applications that meet business goals as effectively as possible. That means Einstein Copilot helps improve customer experience; on the other hand, Einstein Copilot Studio enables users to unlock Einstein Copilot capabilities for consumer-facing channels, such as Slack, websites, and other productivity apps.

Getting A Sneak Peak At Slack Innovations

Slack was not left out in this year's Dreamforce event, as it announced an array of innovative features that will change enterprise communications once and for all. At the forefront of this transformation is "Slack Lists" - a nifty feature designed to help professionals evaluate their tasks and make teamwork the foundation of everything they do. The feature will debut this year only and will unlock the true potential of generative AI. This particular feature is expected to unify workflows from a range of conversions, thereby ensuring that deadlines are never missed. Additionally, Slack's unwavering commitment to augmenting user experience was evident when the CRM giant rolled out "Slack Sales Elevate." By integrating AI, Slack aims to help users simplify tasks and save time using this feature. Moreover, the feature will strengthen the synergy between Slack and the Sales Cloud and push the envelope in terms of workplace efficiency.

Listening To Sam Altman At DF '23

Salesforce's Dreamforce event this year was graced by OpenAI's co-founder, Sam Altman. During his hour-long talk, Altman suggested a governing agency must be formed to create a strong framework to handle long- and short-term challenges that AI brings to the table. Additionally, Altman's talk had a future-centric tone in which he shared the benefits of technology for businesses. During his session, Altman also shared how the fast-paced progress of AI is not surprising. Eventually, the savvy OpenAI founder also touched upon AI hallucination and how his company is regulating the use of data models so that every response is measured and accurate.

Exploring Fresh Horizons With The Life Sciences Cloud

The suite of Salesforce Industries solutions is expanding with the rollout of the all-new Life Sciences Cloud. The cloud is tailored specifically for companies belonging to the life science sector. Additionally, this platform brings a robust yet one-of-a-kind architecture, ensuring seamless and blazingly fast integration with the comprehensive Salesforce ecosystem. A company belonging to any of the life sciences segments - medical devices manufacturing, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, etc. - will transform its operations by harnessing the capabilities of the Life Sciences Cloud. This cloud product is specifically designed with a unique architecture that will help these organizations deploy their Salesforce CRM and leverage its capabilities at a quick pace.

Uncovering Tableau And Data Cloud Freebies

They say there is no such thing as a free lunch. It may be true, but not in Salesforce. At the Dreamforce '23 event, Salesforce rolled out a series of free Tableau and Data Cloud licenses for customers who use the following products: Sales Cloud and Service Cloud (enterprise or unlimited edition). These free licenses will help these users leverage a series of Salesforce products that they have not thought of using. The free package comes with complimentary Tableau Creator subscriptions (two) and Data Cloud licenses for almost 10,000 profiles.

Unleashing The AI Power In Commerce Cloud And Marketing Cloud

In this year's event, Salesforce made a strategic move by tightly integrating the Commerce Cloud and the Marketing Cloud. The cloud products are slated to have more than 50 generative AI capabilities by next year. All of the generative AI goodness will be built on Data Cloud. With this integration, Salesforce plans on bringing unequaled synergy that will unlock the AI power in building customized marketing campaigns and improving e-commerce experiences.

Integrating Salesforce Into Google Workspace

At the Dreamforce event this year, Salesforce also revealed how its partnership with the search giant Google is going from strength to strength. Under the newly formed partnership ambit, Google has become the first taker of Einstein Copilot. Likewise, Google has found its partner organization in Salesforce for Workspace's Duet AI. Salesforce applications (updating records, triggering workflows, etc.) can be operationalized in Google Workspace with the help of the data or content generated in Google Docs/Sheets, Calendar, Meet, Gmail, and other productivity applications. Nonetheless, the integration and relationship shared by Salesforce and Google are bidirectional; that means the account data in a Salesforce org can be used to form the content in Google: slides, documents, etc.

Discovering Salesforce's New Partnerships

Salesforce also revealed yet another partnership in its flagship annual conference this year; the CRM giant facilitated data sharing with its newly announced partnership of integrating the Databricks Lakehouse Platform with its Data Cloud. Not just that, just one week before Dreamforce 2023, the company integrated with Snowflake, which is a Databricks rival. The deep integration between Databricks and Salesforce enables users to access data on these platforms. These integrations help minimize the complex extract transform load (ETL) processes and make a case for BYOL or Bring Your Own Lake. In addition, this integration enables customers to gain access to and unlock the potential of data housed in multiple platforms seamlessly. That way, a user can leverage multiple business datasets without having to think about governance, trust, and security.

FLEXSIN'S COMMITMENT TO ENABLING BUSINESS SUCCESS WITH SALESFORCE

At Flexsin, we stand at the forefront of Salesforce innovations that maximize business value. We are committed to helping companies capitalize on the latest Salesforce updates to improve customer experience and boost business success. As a Salesforce consulting company, we have helped government entities, NGOs, and enterprise customers make the most of their CRM deployments. Our expertise lies in using different Salesforce products: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Experience Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Tableau, Nonprofit Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Einstein Analytics, Education Cloud, etc. Having a 4+ rating on Salesforce AppExchange, we help businesses develop innovative Salesforce solutions with Lightning, LWC, Apex, Visualforce, and API integrations. Because of our strong commitment to driving Salesforce success, we have been reorganized as a Salesforce Silver Partner. Connect with our Salesforce consultants today to unleash the full potential of your CRM deployment.