As thousands of professionals in the CRM space congregated at Melbourne Convention Centre on Tuesday, I had a distinct feeling that Australia’s cloud computing market is about to skyrocket. Born and raised a Yank, I have called Australia home for the last three and half years — and this week, it became evident to me that cloud adoption in Australia is set to explode, as companies are putting their customers at the centre of their business. Here are my three main takeaways from the conference:

Complete CRM blurs boundaries between Sales, Service, and Marketing.

The main takeaway from Leyla Seka’s keynote was the growing emphasis enterprises are placing upon complete CRM. This was the first time I have heard Salesforce use this rhetoric — it really resonated with me. CRM  is more than a Sales or Service application; it should deliver a seamless customer experience at every touchpoint, including:

• Engaging via marketing programs or targeted advertising.
• Interacting with a sales rep or live chat on website.
• Making a purchase — is this a frustrating or enjoyable experience?
• Support via online knowledgebase, or other channels (phone, social, web) to reach you.
• Marketing additional products or services to the existing customer based on their current product and relationship with your company.

As you can see, the boundaries of sales, service, and marketing are disintegrating. Leading organisations are consolidating their view of customers to deliver consistent, extraordinary customer moments at every point in the customer lifecycle.

It's clear that Salesforce wants to be the system of record for all customer-facing departments. Yet most large corporations have customer touchpoints outside of salesforce: SAP, ecommerce, multiple orgs, and so forth. This fragmentation of customer data means that gaining a full picture takes careful planning, smart design, and expertise. There are now a variety of ways to integrate data, whether it be Lightning Connect, point to point integration, or ETL tools to push and pull data from these external sources. Be sure to consider all of these touchpoints when planning your CRM strategy.

New products hone in on intelligent tools.

Analytics Cloud

The much-anticipated Analytics Cloud officially launched downunder during the Keynote. With the tagline “Analytics for the rest of us,” this launch puts a powerful analytics engine in the hands of managers and business analysts. A key differentiator? It’s mobile-enabled to empower on-the-go employees. This tool is especially beneficial for companies that use Salesforce as their main data source.

Salesforce Service Cloud Intelligence Engine

It’s a mouthful to say, but I believe it revolutionises the contact centre. A persisting challenge for service agents has been managing workflow across multiple channels: phone, SMS, web case, email, and social. With intelligent algorithms, however, agents can now maximise their productivity with automated case distribution based on their expertise to handle specific cases, as well as their caseload. This is one tool I’m eager to get my hands on, later this year when it becomes generally available.

Buzz on the Expo floor: training and adoption key areas of focus.

So I’ve told you what Salesforce told us, but what’s interesting is the types of conversations I was having on the expo floor. A theme that came up in every conversation I had was around training and adoption. Many IT departments have been able to deliver quality CRM instances, but there is a gap in the handoff between the implementation teams and the end users. At Bluewolf, we believe in a holistic approach to change management and learning, which includes a top-down and bottom-up strategy — there is a marked difference between teaching someone how to do something and incentivising them to do it. To learn more about effective change management in your organisation, check out our blog series.

I hope you've gleaned some valuable insight from my recap of the Salesforce World Tour. To put your learns into action, get in touch with one of our experts. Or download our dedicated State of Salesforce: Australia Edition to see how leading Australian companies use Salesforce.