Salesforce’s Dreamforce 2013 is taking place this week in San Francisco, known as the world’s largest technology conference and cloud computing event of the year.
Like all CRM software, Salesforce is a collection point for a lot of a company’s sales, marketing and customer data, but that data is worthless unless you use analytics to find meaning in it. One of the criticisms industry analysts have leveled against Salesforce this conference week is that the company hasn’t put enough focus on the analytics aspect of its products.
This week’s Daily Analytics News Roundup brings you articles on these criticisms and the other news coming out of Dreamforce 2013.
- Salesforce.com Launches Salesforce1, A New CRM Platform For Connecting Apps, Services Like Dropbox And the Internet of Things at TechCrunch: “Salesforce.com is launching Salesforce1, its next-generation CRM platform that it has designed for developers, independent software vendors and customers to connect apps and third-party services such as Dropbox, Evernote and LinkedIn.”
- Salesforce Desk.com Beefs Up Analytics, Reporting Features at ZD.Net: “The idea is for small companies to get ahead of potential problems and share them beyond the help desk, so that design teams, sales representatives or product managers have a better idea of how to prioritize or focus their attention. You have to be part of the Plus plan to take advantage of this, which costs $39 per agent per month if billed monthly, or $29 per agent per month if billed annually.”
- GoodData Launches Four New Apps on the Salesforce AppExchange, the World’s Leading Business Apps Marketplace, at Dreamforce 2013 at Market Watch: “Dreamforce 2013 is the world’s largest vendor technology conference, and expects more than 120,000 people to register to attend this year’s 11th annual conference and experience the power of social and mobile cloud computing and connect with their customers in a whole new way. With more than 1,100 sessions and 350 cloud companies in the expo, attendees can participate in interactive sessions, hands-on training with cutting-edge technology, thousands of live demos and unparalleled networking.”
- Salesforce Launches Salesforce1 – Coherent Platform But With Some Notable Holes at Forbes: “Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff has made it a habit in previous years to ‘leak’ some big announcements in the days and weeks before the company’s annual DreamForce event. This year is no different and last night Salesforce announced Salesforce1, the company’s new platform that is aimed at wrapping all customer related interactions including third party application ones, within a consistent platform. But Salesforce has greatly expanded the reach of what constitutes a customer and the platform is geared to give developers and Salesforce customers the ability to start building applications that not only interact with humans, but also the plethora of connected devices that exist and will exist in the future.”
- Salesforce’s Benioff Explains Grand Vision Behind Salesforce1 at SiliconANGLE: “Another missing piece in this puzzle is analytics – who’s going to crunch all of the data that emerges from Salesforce’s new vision? Benioff made no mention of Big Data during his talk, but it’s a sure bet he would have done if he had the answers. Saleforce’s deserves credit for its vision, but it could be some years before its plans come to fruition.”
If you’d like to learn what important insights into your business you can get out of the data in your CRM and other record-keeping software, download our guide to data analytics:
DataClear is a Baton Rouge-based data analytics consulting firm. Contact us for a free 30-minute consultation and discover how your company can profit from data-driven decision making using tools that won’t break your budget.