EMEA Analyst Summit - Cloud Updates

In my last post EMEA Analyst Summit - EMEA Business Update I talked about how I was lucky enough to be invited to the Salesforce's EMEA Analyst Summit and what I learnt from Miguel Milano, President of EMEA's opening session.

In this post I talk about what I learnt from the rest of the day, which was jam packed with another six sessions following Miguel's. Starting with Scott Ivell, Senior Director of Product Marketing, who presented the 'State of the Product Clouds'


Scott presented the capabilities of the Intelligent Customer Success Platform which is now much more comprehensive and layered than ever before due to acquisition and development. He told us that Salesforce has the ambition to be the leader in every space.


With the new Commerce Cloud largely made possible through the purchase of Demandware, the addition of Quip as an additional collaboration tool, and Einstein's AI technology, the suite of products available to customers is now on a completely different scale to ever before.

The numbers that Salesforce supports today really is incredible, as the below slide illustrates. The volume of data and transactions going through the Salesforce clouds each day is testament to its infrastructure.


Lightning and Einstein were both the main focus point of many of the day's sessions and Scott talked about how the Spring and Summer 17 releases were key to the adoption and availability of the technology. 





Scott showed us the progress made as we near feature parity with the Classic UI.









And how the new features and tools now made available are enhancing every cloud.





Scott went on to highlight the impact to both B2B and B2C markets, as well as a range of slides entitled What's New for the VP of Sales / IT Leaders / CMO etc. Essentially the message was that the recent enhancements will have an impact on all of Salesforce's customers and every role within these companies.

Graham Rowe, Director of Technology for EMEA was next on the agenda presenting the App Cloud's highlights of FY17. He talked about how the new technology could now empower customers to do more for their business faster through integrations via real-time events. He also told us a bit about Salesforce DX, which I have heard good things about but have not experienced myself (as someone who doesn't write code). We had some embargoed teasers about how Wave and Einstein will work together, which certainly opens up endless possibilities.


Though Einstein had featured heavily in each of the day's sessions, it was the sole focus of Madlen Nicolaus, Head of EMEA Cloud Marketing and Thierry Donneau-Golencer, Director of Product Management's session.
Madlen gave us a demonstration of Einstein in action and took a number of questions from the room. The example used in her demo was a company who sold solar panels and so who's criteria for a good lead included the roof shape of the prospect as well as the downloading of a brochure on this product.


This gave me an insight into the set up required for new customers of Einstein, which in turn lead me to ask a question about what these customers should plan for. My company has a very broad product range and so setting up the criteria for a good lead score for each product would be a big undertaking. I asked about this and was advised that Salesforce recommend that customers engage a partner to help them with the setup of the AI functionality.

We were also treated to a demo of Einstein Vision, which was my first sight of the new tool. 

The next session was Marketing Cloud focused and was presented by Tom Smith, Product Marketing Manager, Marketing Cloud, EMEA. The scope and scale of the cloud, which has been boosted by the acquistion of Krux, on top of that of Exact Target a few years ago, has certainly grown substantially.


As a Marketing Cloud customer I was interested in this presentation, as well as the turn the session soon took. The subject of GDPR was raised fairly early on and it rather derailed Tom's talk as data protection was obviously a key topic for a lot of people in the room and how the data harvested via AI could be compliant with the legislation was queried (but left unanswered).


The penultimate session of the day was a customer presentation featuring UCAS and Andrew Hargreaves, Director of CX, Marketing and UCAS Media.

Andrew delivered a passionate presentation on how UCAS had identified the need for 'Technology' and how they selected Salesforce as their partner.  He told us how they were using the Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud, and doing so largely unaided. The 'customer' insight they have gained from the technology was fascinating and Andrew presented the facts of their implementation frankly.

James Peckham, Sr. Director, Digital Innovation and Transformation of Ignite bravely took the last slot of the day and talked about the initiatives that this arm of Salesforce manage and how they work with customers. In FY17 Ignite undertook more than 150 Ignite engagements compared to 20 in FY14. Ignite work with customers to help them on their digital transformation journey and they are obviously a key string to the Salesforce bow.

The day provided me with a slightly new insight to the Salesforce world. The pitch delivered to the analysts is different to that I see as a customer or community member and I enjoyed experiencing an alternative angle.

I spoke to a number of the analysts and they asked me a variety of questions but mainly around the new technology and my take on it as a customer as well as the reality versus the pitch.
Questions I was happy to answer honestly, providing my own perspective as a customer, and proudly, an MVP.

I was quite pleased my place setting

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