Salesforce continues to build momentum with Data Cloud, the heartbeat of the Salesforce Platform and foundation of Agentforce.
The growth is fueled by strong business demand for unified data to
deliver more personalized, contextually relevant, and timely customer
experiences across Customer 360 applications, Flow, analytics, and
Agentforce, Salesforce's groundbreaking suite of autonomous AI agents.
Building on that momentum, Salesforce today introduced several new
Data Cloud innovations that advance an organization's ability to
transform the customer experience using data and AI.
They include: additions to unstructured data support including native
processing of audio and video content - such as webinars and calls - to
unlock deeper customer insights; a standardized semantic data model that
enables Agentforce Agents and humans to interpret and use data
consistently; improved search capabilities that factor in customer
context and allow for quicker information discovery; real-time data
activations to respond instantly to changing customer needs; and
additional data security and governance features to safeguard operations
and prevent unnecessary data exposure.
As the fastest-growing organic product in Salesforce's history with
130% YoY growth in paid customers, Data Cloud has shown impressive
scale, processing 2.3 quadrillion records (+147% YoY) in the second
quarter alone. Companies like The Adecco Group, Air India, Aston Martin, FedEx, Kawasaki Motors Corp., and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts rely on Data Cloud daily to help strengthen customer relationships, boost productivity, and improve their bottom lines. Air India,
in particular, is unifying its data across loyalty, reservations, and
flight systems. Now, the airline has a single source of truth to handle
more than 550,000 service cases each month.
"In this new era of AI and Agents, customer data and metadata are the
new gold for the enterprise," said Rahul Auradkar, EVP and GM for Data
Cloud at Salesforce. "Every day, more companies are using Data Cloud to
unify all their data - from customer interactions and product usage to
IoT and social media data - to gain deeper customer insights across all
touchpoints and channels. Because Data Cloud is the foundation of
Salesforce, companies can act on data to create the most personalized
and meaningful customer experiences."
Data Cloud + Customer 360 + Agentforce: Data Cloud surfaces trusted customer data in all Salesforce Customer 360 applications, Agentforce, Flow, and analytics
- creating a foundation for personalized customer experiences and
real-time analytics, triggering data-driven actions and workflows, and
safely driving AI across all Salesforce apps. With its zero-copy technology and MuleSoft connectors, Data Cloud can ingest data from hundreds of diverse data sources, including data lakes
and warehouses. Its built-in vector database converts various data
formats - PDFs, texts, calls, voicemails, often trapped in 90% of customer data
- into readily usable data and harmonizes it with structured data to
create comprehensive customer profiles that are stored as metadata in a
unified data foundation. Because it's fully integrated in the Salesforce Platform,
this metadata can flow seamlessly into any Salesforce application based
on set governance policies. This gives every team a 360-degree view of
the customer to power trusted AI and drive automation and analytics
across every touchpoint - without compromising data security.
Data Cloud provides the vital customer data that grounds Agentforce,
making agents more contextually aware, knowledgeable, and adaptable to
customer needs. For example, when a frustrated customer contacts Agentforce Service Agents, Data Cloud's built-in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
capabilities add real-time insights and context from past emails,
support tickets, product photos, voicemails, and any sources as defined
by governance policies to help Agentforce better understand the customer
perspective. Data Cloud's hybrid search then identifies the right
knowledge article based on customer context to help Agentforce resolve
the issue accurately. As customer requests evolve, Data Cloud guides
Agentforce with next-best steps, like automating follow-up emails or
passing detailed chat summaries to support human representatives.
Finally, Tableau Semantics facilitates a seamless transition between AI
and employees by ensuring they speak, understand, and operate using the
same definitions of data.
New innovations and additions: Data
Cloud customers now have access to new capabilities and enhancements
that make data accessible and actionable across every Salesforce
activation, including:
- Support for unstructured audio and video content: With 90% of customer data
trapped in unstructured formats, businesses and AI can now analyze and
extract customer data from previously inaccessible audio and video
sources like customer calls, training sessions, product demos, feedback
surveys, voicemails, and webinars. This content, now searchable,
enriches customer profiles, reveals deeper intent behind customer
preferences and behaviors, and improves Agentforce's accuracy.
- For example, by analyzing recorded sales calls, a sales team can
pinpoint common objections and refine their pitch to address them more
effectively, leading to higher conversion rates.
- Data Cloud connectivity ecosystem expansion: Building on Data Cloud's promise to be open and extensible, organizations can bring their own data using additional pre-built Data Cloud connectors
for apps like Square, Stripe, Meta, Splunk, and more, adding to the
rapidly growing connector ecosystem that already supports various data
lakes, warehouses, and third-party systems. They can also tap into
unstructured data from Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint, Confluence,
and Sitemap into Data Cloud using pre-built integrations provided with MuleSoft Direct for Data Cloud. This means data can be pulled in and unified from wherever customers interact, then used to power agentic experiences.
- Sub-second real-time layer: With 62% of IT leaders
noting the need for real-time data to stay competitive, organizations
can now ingest, unify, analyze, and act upon data in real time across
Salesforce. This powers Einstein Personalization,
now built on Data Cloud, along with real-time AI recommendations,
analytics, and automations to enable faster decision-making and instant
personalization across customer touchpoints.
- For example, a support agent assisting a customer with equipment
issues can access real-time sensor data, recent maintenance records, and
past support tickets directly in Service Cloud.
If the equipment's sensor stops sending data, a triggered alert
notifies the agent, allowing them to quickly diagnose the issue and
recommend targeted solutions to minimize downtime.
- Governance and security for trusted data and AI: To
safeguard operations, manage governance at scale, and prevent exposure
to unauthorized parties while using AI, these new features improve how
structured and unstructured data are managed, protected, and securely
shared with AI applications and across the platform.
- AI tagging and classification automate the labeling
and organization of unstructured data per business policies. Data
becomes consistent, governance is easier to apply, and both AI and users
can easily search and analyze the data.
- Policy-based governance helps achieve access
governance at scale by creating granular security policies that grant
appropriate access to user groups based on tags, metadata, and user
attributes. This simple experience ensures that users, including AI,
can only access the data it's permitted to see across the platform.
- Customer-managed keys allow organizations to manage their own encryption keys, ensuring data stays encrypted and secure regardless of how it's used.
- Private Connect for Data Cloud enables
organizations to safely share and integrate their data between Data
Cloud and public cloud environments by establishing secure, direct
network connections between them. This means data can be safely shared across network boundaries without compromising its integrity.
- Tableau Semantics: Organizations can organize data
based on its meaning and relationships, creating a standardized semantic
model that allows anyone to understand, use, and act upon data
consistently, regardless of origin.
- For example, a hospital can standardize data across these
departments, ensuring that a patient's test results, X-rays, and
doctor's notes are all linked and understood in the same context
regardless of how they are written (abbreviations, typos, synonyms,
etc).
- Hybrid search: Organizations can find the most
relevant information in the company's knowledge base by combining
semantic capabilities of vector search with the exact match capabilities
of keyword search, which are critical to deal with specific domain
terms like product names or acronyms. This makes it faster and easier to
find information across any medium, such as PDFs, pictures, audios, and
videos.
- For example, Agentforce can use part numbers found in customer-sent
photos to pull up relevant knowledge articles for that product category
and help support representatives resolve customer issues faster.
- Data Cloud One: Organizations can now connect multiple Salesforce orgs
that may be siloed across different departments, regions, or business
units and extend all of Data Cloud's functionalities across all
Salesforce instances using a no-code, point-and-click setup. This allows
them to create a single Data Cloud instance as the source of truth,
enabling data sharing and actions, like automation, calculated insights,
and more across all Salesforce orgs, without creating new Data Clouds
for each org.
- For example, a sales leader looking to enrich sales leads with a
360-degree view of customers no longer needs to have their team write
custom code to integrate Data Cloud data across multiple Salesforce
orgs. Instead, a single central Data Cloud can now power each org with
its features, seamlessly enriching sales profiles across all Salesforce
orgs.
- A new data community: Salesforce also announced its new Datablazer community,
an online platform to connect IT and business leaders, developers, and
Data Cloud enthusiasts. It provides space to learn, share insights, and
stay informed on the latest best practices, trends, and tools to
maximize the value of data.
The customer perspective:
"Salesforce allows us to fuse together our trusted data from across
our business to deliver tailored quality experiences to every current
and future Aston Martin customer while creating the personalized, VIP
experience they expect, as we look to grow and succeed in the AI era,"
said Matthew Randall, Head of Software and Integration, Aston Martin.
"As a professional recruiting, staffing, and consulting business we
match talent to the most exciting companies and opportunities around the
world. On any given day, we connect 700,000 people with fulfilling
opportunities to match their skills. We are redefining the future of
work by enabling augmented recruiter experiences thanks to AI,
connecting employees to the right data at the right time. Today, Data
Cloud gives 27,000 employee users seamless access to key information to
match skills to specific roles," said Caroline Basyn, Chief Digital and
IT Officer, The Adecco Group.
"Each and every one of Wyndham's hundreds of millions of guests want
to be seen and heard on an individual level. Salesforce gives our
reservation agents a comprehensive view of the specific guest they're
serving so they can receive a personalized experience based on context
about their stay history, loyalty service, and notes from past requests.
This is made possible by the suite of products with Salesforce,
including Data Cloud, which harmonizes data and unifies guest profiles
from our reservation platform. With this data aggregated, agents can now
access guests' booking histories at any franchise property, such as
accessible room requests, loyalty status or milestones, personalizing
every interaction," said Scott Strickland, Chief Commercial Officer,
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.
Expected availability: New Data Cloud innovations will be available in pilot, beta, or general availability within the below time frames.
- Now:
- Customer-managed keys is generally available.
- Sub-second real-time layer is generally available and can be enabled
through sub-second real-time profiles add-on consumption SKU.
- MuleSoft Direct for Data Cloud will be in beta in late September 2024 and requires a MuleSoft Anypoint Platform license to use.
- A comprehensive list of pre-built connectors generally available and in beta can be found in Data Cloud Connectors Directory.
- In October ‘24:
- Support to process unstructured audio and video content, currently in pilot, will be generally available.
- Data Cloud One will be generally available.
- In November ‘24:
- Hybrid search, currently in pilot, will be generally available.
- AI tagging and classification will be in beta.
- Policy-based governance will be in beta.
- Private Connect for Data Cloud will be generally available.
- In February ‘25:
- Tableau Semantics, currently in pilot, will be generally available.
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