Today, Marc Benioff’s Keynote highlighted that we are moving into a smarter world where everything is connected. Devices are connecting more and more people that then form communities with technologies. That’s what Dreamforce is all about, said Benioff, focusing in on the customer behind the technology and getting closer to those customers than ever before.

Benioff stated that the five areas of focus for Salesforce are:
Intelligence
Speed
Productivity
Mobility
Connectivity

Salesforce Wants to Democratize Intelligence
The rapid pace of connectivity in today’s customer age creates a high demand for software that offers businesses a single view of their customers and the connections they are forming. Benioff emphasized that this needs to be done declaratively, so code isn’t needed for incredible solutions and customer connections. That’s why Salesforce Einstein means that AI is being built into the deepest level of every application built on Salesforce and into the very core of the platform. Einstein is available programmatically for developers to leverage but Salesforce is also focused on democratizing this technology by building it into the fabric of the platform itself.

Currently 80% of companies’ data is dark and untouched. As the market moves toward focusing on AI and cognitive technologies, this data is going to be brought to light and business processes will have to shift to capitalize on the insights that data brings. Eric Berridge commented today in his super session on AI that “data is becoming a valuable currency.” That value will grow rapidly with the addition of intelligent technologies.

The Transition to Lightning Is Speeding Up
Acceleration into keeping up with this new, connected age is accomplished with Lightning. Salesforce is placing a big focus on checking for Lightning Readiness and they’ve added over 500 new Lightning features since Dreamforce 2015. The entire third floor of Moscone West has been dedicated to Salesforce Lightning with experts ready to help customers identify where they are in preparing for Lightning and how to get Lightning ready.

Salesforce is encouraging partners to facilitate the move to Lightning. Just prior to Dreamforce, they launched the Dreamforce 2016 SI Partner Lightning Accreditation exercise. Partners were required to demonstrate competency in Salesforce Lightning Experience, by meeting a minimum threshold of accredited consultants who passed 2 training exercises: one in migration from Salesforce Classic to Lightning, and another (much more difficult) exercise to earn a Trailhead “Superbadge” in Lightning. Bluewolf passed our certification thanks to the hard work of our technical teams. We’ve seen from our work with clients like T-Mobile that Salesforce Lightning can have a huge impact on productivity with the ability to build beautiful and intuitive UIs powered by the Salesforce platform.

New Products for Productivity 
Salesforce announced new products and features targeted for productivity including Quip for document processing and collaboration capabilities all on Salesforce. The addition of LiveMessage will change the interface of how you interact with customers via social by bringing in voice messaging. Think “conversations as a platform.” Commerce Cloud is gaining momentum as an addition to the platform. All new products and current Salesforce offerings are expected to become smarter with the help of Einstein.

We know from this year’s The State of Salesforce Report that people see the most value from Salesforce when they have integrated clouds. Part of Einstein’s power is sure to come from the insights gained from data when it’s removed from the silo of just one type of customer interaction, and interpreted by a tool that can compile that data into a single view of all of the ways customers interact, in real time.

Mobile Means Better Connection
IoT cloud is helping to bring data from connected devices and translating it into a single view of the customer. Benioff mentioned mobile views and capabilities being added to all of Salesforce Clouds. The Lightning Design System helps app developers create UIs that scale across devices so by encouraging adoption of the Lightning platform, Salesforce is promoting more and more mobile-friendly applications.

User experience is about more than mobile. The best companies are investing in making Salesforce easier to use by considering their users’ routines. It’s not enough to just turn Lightning on, companies have to continuously improve Salesforce’s ease of use to achieve great experiences according to The State of Salesforce Report.

Connectivity Comes Built In
The CTO of Salesforce, Parker Harris’s discussion of Einstein focused on the fact that the core purpose of AI on the Salesforce platform is to connect users to customers faster and more easily than ever before by taking the complexity out of leveraging data and just giving users what they need, which is an understanding of their customer and quick ways to communicate with them. Examples of AI are all around from Amazon giving you recommendations on what to purchase next to Siri calling you an Uber. Customer data + AI = insights. The value of Einstein is that those insights are inside of the Salesforce platform so it’s easy to configure the way those will be delivered to users and then simple for users to respond.

The Winter ‘16 preview showed an Einstein icon built in where you click to configure your data preferences. If you’re ready to accelerate your use of intelligent applications or Salesforce Lightning, come speak to us at booth #1205, or connect with us here.