Natalie, Alan and me recorded a hangout on Day #3 of Dreamforce, sharing our takeaways:
Here is what we talk about:
- Salesforce positions as the Customer Success Platform
- Salesforce launches its 6th cloud (after Sales, Marketing, Service, Communities and Apps) - it is the Analytics Cloud
- Salesforce announces the Lightning framework to build applications faster.
Takeaways for end users:
- Look at Analytics Cloud value proposition - The Analytics cloud with $125 for a regular user and $250 for a professional user comes with a steep (list) price. What is the value / cost realtionship for your enterprise, start from here.
- Consider (existing) alternatives - It is very likely your enterprise has already a place where 3rd party information is brought together for insights, so have a look at that and compare it with Salesforce's Analytics Cloud.
- Take stock and plan for 2015 - Look at what systems you have, but also look larger and include people and training and then start planning for 2015.
- Revisit Collaboration - Don't look at Chatter and Collaboration as stand alone, but bring them into business processes across sales, marketing and engineering (and more) to make them more efficient.