SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/
-- Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the global leader in CRM,
today announced the next generation of Sales Cloud Einstein,
bringing AI to every step of the sales cycle, from building
pipeline and closing deals, to growing the business. With the new
Einstein Forecasting, sales leaders gain visibility and
intelligence to more accurately predict sales revenue at every
stage in the sales cycle. In addition, Einstein Opportunity Scoring
automatically prioritizes high-value opportunities and Einstein
Email Insights automatically identifies the most important emails,
enabling sales reps to sell faster and smarter.
Introducing Einstein Forecasting
From the head of
sales to the CFO, Einstein Forecasting delivers a breakthrough
innovation that drives business predictability. Sales leaders still
rely upon incomplete spreadsheets and antiquated systems to
forecast sales projections, resulting in inaccurate forecasts,
underperformance and a disconnected business. In fact, less than
half of deals close as forecasted, leading to missed quotas for
sales teams and revenue shortfalls1.
Einstein Forecasting is a fully automated, out-of-the-box
solution that uses all of a company's historical CRM data to take
the guesswork out of forecasting. Combining the art of data mining
and science of machine learning, Einstein Forecasting is able to
analyze, process and understand key factors like seasonality and
historical performance to make highly accurate, individualized
sales forecasts. Additionally, Einstein Forecasting combines a
unique mix of self-learning algorithms that learn individual and
team forecasting behaviors, analyzes whether they are consistently
optimistic, pessimistic or on target, and then synthesizes an
unbiased analysis for the sales leader. Then, Einstein uses special
logic to translate the data behind each forecast into human
language so sales leaders know what to expect from the pipeline and
why.
With Einstein Forecasting, a regional manager for an insurance
company, for example, can quickly view a dashboard to see if his
team is on track to hit its sales numbers for the quarter or if any
deals are in jeopardy. With foresight from Einstein Forecasting,
the regional manager and other sales leaders can take action with
their sales agents before it is too late to get the quarter back on
track. Additionally, if the CFO of the insurance company is looking
to expand the business to a new region but unsure if the company
can take on the development cost, she can quickly tap into Einstein
Forecasting to predict whether the company will have enough funding
that month or quarter to take on the new region.
In addition, Salesforce also introduced Einstein Opportunity
Scoring and Einstein Email Insights, ensuring sales reps stay
focused on the most important deals.
- Einstein Opportunity Scoring—Identifies, surfaces and
prioritizes the most valuable deals—those with the largest deal
size, most executive engagement and more—directly within Sales
Cloud. Additionally, Einstein continues to monitor deals in
progress to identify any high-value deals that may be in jeopardy,
keeping sales reps laser-focused on building pipeline and closing
more deals. For example, with Einstein Opportunity Scoring a sales
rep no longer has to spend countless hours sifting through
opportunities. Instead, sales reps are able to focus on the deals
most likely to close and add resources to deals that may be at
risk.
- Einstein Email Insights—With Einstein Email Insights
every sales rep is armed with their own personal email assistant.
Powered by natural language processing (NLP), Einstein Email
Insights identifies the most important emails and recommends the
best action or response, enabling sales reps and leaders to
prioritize their inbox and quickly address customer needs.
Proactive action and response recommendations enable reps to keep
deals moving, from scheduling a meeting to sending a quote. For
example, if a sales rep is returning from a full day of customer
meetings to an inbox full of emails, they no longer have to dig
through their inbox to find the most important emails.
Salesforce Einstein Celebrates One Year of
Innovation
In September 2016,
Salesforce introduced Einstein AI to bring the power of artificial
intelligence to every business user. In the months since, the
company has infused advanced AI capabilities across the Customer
Success Platform to transform customer experiences across every
touchpoint. Today, Einstein is delivering more than 475 million
predictions daily, enabling trailblazers including U.S. Bank,
Room&Board, FareCompare, Silverline and Black Diamond to be
smarter, more productive and predictive about their businesses. In
addition, Einstein Platform Services empowers developers of any
skill level to build AI-powered CRM apps using computer vision and
natural language processing—with clicks, not code. Already there
are more than seven thousand developers building Einstein-powered
apps. As Salesforce Einstein's pace of innovation continues,
Salesforce Research is focused on pushing the state of the art in
deep learning. Under the leadership of Chief Scientist Dr.
Richard Socher, the group has
published 10 academic papers in its first year, bringing cutting
edge technology to Salesforce customers. For more highlights from
Einstein's first year, see here.
New Salesforce AI Innovation Fund to Fuel Next-Generation
AI
To fuel the development of new AI solutions, Salesforce
Ventures—Salesforce's corporate investment group—today announced
the new $50 million Salesforce AI
Innovation Fund. Fast-growing AI start-ups Highspot, Squirro and
TalkIQ are the first recipients of funding from the Salesforce AI
Innovation Fund to accelerate their development of transformative
AI solutions on Salesforce. Additionally, Salesforce Ventures has
completed an investment in All Turtles, an AI startup studio that
partners with founding teams and companies to build AI-centric
products. Salesforce will partner with All Turtles to co-create
cutting edge AI solutions built on the Salesforce platform.
Comments on the News:
- "Salesforce continues to lead the CRM market, delivering
innovation, after innovation," said Adam
Blitzer, EVP and GM, Salesforce Sales Cloud. "As we
celebrate our first year of Salesforce Einstein, we're excited to
introduce the next generation of Sales Cloud Einstein, an
unparalleled sales platform. Now, equipped with predictive and
intelligent capabilities, Sales Cloud Einstein has cracked the
traditionally flawed forecasting model, bringing AI to every step
of the sales cycle."
- "Artificial intelligence has the potential to make every
company and employee smarter, faster, more efficient and more
productive," said John Somorjai, EVP
of Corporate Development and Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce. "The
new Salesforce AI Innovation Fund will help accelerate the
development of transformative AI solutions that extend and
complement Salesforce, helping our customers reach new levels of
success."
- "At U.S. Bank, we're committed to delivering trust,
transparency and a smarter banking experience for the customers we
serve," said Bill Hoffman, chief
analytics officer and head of CRM at U.S. Bank. "Salesforce
provides us with a single platform to empower every customer and
employee interaction, and we're excited about the predictive
abilities Einstein Forecasting will further deliver."
- "Predictable and profitable business growth is something that
every company strives to achieve," said Sheryl Kingstone, Research
Director, 451 Research Customer Experience and Commerce. "However,
accurate sales forecasting has been a longstanding challenge for
many companies. By combining intelligence, pipeline transparency
and key sales data, Einstein Forecasting provides a crucial view of
sales revenue indicators that helps business leaders correctly
predict business growth."
About Sales Cloud
Sales Cloud, the world's #1
intelligent sales platform, delivers an unparalleled user
experience—enabling sales teams to sell faster, smarter and the way
they want. No matter the industry, role or company size, Sales
Cloud arms salespeople with the intelligence and insights they need
to navigate and manage the entire sales process, from lead-to-cash.
In the first half of 2017, Salesforce continued to extend the Sales
Cloud platform with the introduction of Einstein High Velocity
Sales Cloud, arming sales reps of all levels with the intelligence
they need to achieve new levels of productivity; and Sales Cloud
PRM, enabling channel partners to close deals faster than ever.
Companies that have deployed Sales Cloud have seen an average 35
percent increase in sales productivity, a 30 percent increase in
lead conversions and an overall 25 percent increase in
revenue2.
Pricing and Availability:
- Einstein Forecasting, Einstein Opportunity Scoring and Einstein
Email Insights are currently in pilot and expected to be generally
available in the first half of 2018. Pricing will be announced at
the time of general availability.
Additional Information
- To learn more about Sales Cloud Einstein please visit:
www.salesforce.com/einsteinnextgen
- Discover how Sales Cloud Einstein can help companies sell
faster and smarter via Trailhead:
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/modules/ai_sales
- Learn more about Salesforce Einstein's features across the
Salesforce Platform via Trailhead:
https://trailhead.salesforce.com/modules/get_smart_einstein_feat
- To learn more about Salesforce Ventures, please visit:
https://www.salesforce.com/company/ventures/
Connect with Salesforce
- Like Salesforce on Facebook http://facebook.com/salesforce
- Follow @salesforce, @salescloud and @SalesforceVC on
Twitter
About Salesforce
Salesforce, the global CRM leader,
empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new
way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit:
www.salesforce.com.
Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other
press releases or public statements are not currently available and
may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase
Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based
upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has
headquarters in San Francisco,
with offices in Europe and
Asia, and trades on the New York
Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information
please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call
1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.
1 CSO Insights 2017 World Class Sales
Practices Study, February 2017
2 Salesforce Customer Relationship Survey;
2014-2016
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SOURCE Salesforce