The IT Nerd

Dreamforce is happening this week in San Francisco, and Salesforce will have lots of announcements coming out of the conference. Three of them have already appeared. They are as follows:

Partnership with WhatsApp

Salesforce and WhatsApp announced a new strategic partnership that will allow businesses to connect with their customers and build new messaging experiences on WhatsApp. The WhatsApp-first business messaging will be a new way to sell, market, and support right from a conversation to increase customer engagement, accelerate sales, and drive better customer support outcomes. Key features:

• Businesses can craft end-to-end customer journeys to offer seamless experiences as 90% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services
• Brands will be able to personalize marketing-driven interactions on WhatsApp in real-time using trusted first-party customer data. 
• Reduction in support wait time and increased efficiency by using a combination of convenient automation and personal interactions via messaging on WhatsApp. 
• Customizable message templates that include brand and product videos and images or showcase products and services with interactive messages that allow consumers to review and purchase products in WhatsApp.

Innovations to Slack

• Slack Canvas is a new surface in the digital HQ that will transform how teams can curate, organize, and share critical resources. 
• Slack huddles builds on its audio-first experience by offering teams lightweight video, multi-person screen sharing, message threads, and more to power live coworking sessions. 
• The new Slack platform Developers and teams can transform work with new ways to automate tasks and connect siloed systems
• Slack Partner Industry Solutions Slack-certified consulting partners are launching the first wave of industry-specific solutions for financial services, manufacturing, communications, retail, media, and technology.

Net Zero MarketplaceSalesforce introduced the Net Zero Marketplace, a trusted platform that makes carbon credit purchases simple and transparent, allowing organizations to accelerate climate positive impact at scale.

Key benefits:

• Organizations can purchase carbon credits to help mitigate their direct emissions by investing in projects that avoid, reduce, or remove carbon from the atmosphere. 
• At launch, Net Zero Marketplace will offer more than 60 projects across the world and buyers will be able to see project descriptions, alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, with official third-party ratings, all with the help of a strong partner network of ecopreneurs.
• The Net Zero Marketplace will also provide detailed information about projects and other sustainability-related topics to any individual who wants to learn and engage in climate action.

There’s likely to be more coming from Dreamforce so stay tuned for updates.

Salesforce has released their 2022 Trends in Communications Report — featuring key data and insights gathered from a survey of 500 industry experts and 6,000 consumers worldwide. 

The report reveals new customer expectations and industry insights against a backdrop of industry changes, with standout findings including: 

• Half of customers (50%) believe they get the best service when they threaten to switch to a different provider
• 51% of customers reported they prefer to do business online, with 64% reporting having used their provider’s website over the last month
• Most customers don’t recognise the benefits of 5G in providing more reliable internet for underserved communities (53%), immersive entertainment (72%), internet of things (IoT) capabilities (72%), or real-time control of remote devices (74%). 

You can find the full report here if you’re interested in more data points from the study. It’s pretty timely given the recent Rogers outage and the fallout from that, along with the fact that Canadians pay way too much for their telco services.

Salesforce today released its February Shopping Index Report which analyzes data from over one billion shoppers globally. As inflation drove higher prices, the report revealed that prices for Canadian consumers rose a dramatic 10.4% YoY in February while only by 4.4% globally YoY.

Overall, challenges including inflation, low inventory and supply chain management have impacted consumer spending in Canada creating new hurdles for retailers. 

Key Canadian Data – Salesforce’s February Shopping Index: 

• Following a holiday season with modest growth, digital commerce sales in Februarydropped by 21% YoY in Canada, and decreased by 5% YoY globally.
• Prices for consumers in Canada rose 10.4% YoY in February while globally prices increased by 4.4% YoY.
• Product inventory in February shrank by -22% in Canada and -5% globally as retailers and consumers continued to grapple with supply chain issues and rising costs brought on by inflation.
• Product categories with the highest price growth globally in February include:
  • Home, Furniture (21.8%)
  • Home, Appliances (17.9%)
  • Home, Dining, Art & Decor (11%)
• Product categories with least price growth globally  in February include:
  • Active Footwear (1.3%)
  • General Footwear (.8%)
  • Electronics and Accessories (.5%)

 You can read more here.

Today Salesforce and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a customizable direct-to-customer offering for next-generation video streaming and monetization. 

Building and scaling a profitable D2C streaming service that helps content distributors manage the customer lifecycle remains a complex task. This is because attracting and retaining a diverse audience while delivering consistent high-quality video content represent a few of the challenges content distributors still face. 

To help alleviate some of these pain points, Salesforce and AWS’s new D2C offering combines high-quality video streaming technology with unique viewer data and feedback analysis tools to enable content distributors to deliver more personalized viewer experiences.

Key Features

• More Integrated, Personalized Experiences: Content distributors can personalize viewer experiences while driving new subscriber acquisition, generating incremental revenues while increasing customer loyalty, retention, and support.  
• Increased Retention and Additional Insights into Viewer Intelligence: Content distributors gain deeper insight into subscriber engagement with content such as clickstream actions or likes and dislikes on specific content recommendations served up to a subscriber. 
• Configurable Platform to Easily Support Innovation: Content distributors now have a view into the entire subscriber journey and engagement with their content from start to finish.

For further information see here.

Salesforce Canada’s newly published Digital Skills Index reveals that 81% of Canadians are currently struggling with learning the digital skills needed for work with that sentiment increasing to 86% in the next five years. 

According to LinkedIn, many of the  top 20 growing jobs in Canada for 2022 require digital-savvy skills such as an e-commerce coordinator or data science specialist. However, the Digital Skills Index reveals that respondents rate themselves as ‘beginner’ in many of the skills needed for these growing job titles: AI (78%), coding and development (73%), and product management technology (60%).  

Key highlights of the report include: 

• Nearly three-quarters of Canadians (81%) don’t feel equipped to learn the digital skills needed by businesses now and even more (86%) don’t feel equipped for the future.
• Younger respondents have the greatest confidence and ambition to learn new skills – 17% of Gen Z is actively learning and training for skills needed over the next five years compared to 8% of Baby Boomers.
• According to the Index, skills in collaboration technology are viewed as the most important skills needed by businesses today and over the next five years, but only 19% of Canadians rate themselves ‘advanced’ in those collaboration technology skills needed for the workplace.

For further details here’s a link to the Digital Skills Index data dashboard here.

Today Salesforce announced the launch of Safety Cloud, a tool to help businesses better manage their entry protocols and health testing to create safer in-person experiences at events and in the workplace. 

With Ontario emerging from its fourth lockdown yesterday, it’s clear that Canadian businesses and governments are struggling with effective ways of managing and tracking the health and safety of the public. Though 56% of Canadians supported the latest round of government restrictions, one in four people feel increased loneliness due to lockdowns, longing to ‘just move on with it.’ Going forward, technology will play a critical role in bringing communities together safely. 

Key Safety Cloud Features

• Management of health and safety protocols: Innovations allow employees and customers to get together safely by automating protocols and easily scaling health status collection
• Collect and verify COVID health status: Organizations can now implement and manage health and safety protocols, collect and verify employee and customer health status, and streamline entry into buildings with secure, multi-factor credentials
• Automate and streamline entry: Instead of reviewing every proof of vaccination manually, SMART Health Cards enable organizations to automate verification of an individual’s health status

Salesforce has now used different features from Safety Cloud to reopen 84 of its offices globally. It also facilitated more than 21,500 COVID-19 tests and verified more than 8,000 vaccine credentials, helping more than 4,500 attendees get together safely at Dreamforce SF and NYC 2021. Partners Traction on Demand and Accenture are also using the technology. 

Salesforce has announced that it is adopting multi-factor authentication (A.K.A. MFA) for all users starting on February 1st. Thus companies that use Salesforce will have to enable a form of MFA for their accounts or see employees cut off from accessing the platform. Here’s the list of acceptable forms of MFA:

• Salesforce Authenticator mobile app (available on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store)
• Time-based one-time passcode (TOTP) authenticator apps, like Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, or Authy.
• Security keys that support WebAuthn or U2F, such as Yubico’s YubiKey or Google’s Titan.
• Built-in authenticators, such as Apple’s Touch ID and Face ID, or Windows Hello.

This is a good move by Salesforce as it will ensure that any data on the platform is secure. The company’s decision was initially announced last March, and most customers had been notified about the new requirement since at least February 2021 so they’d have time to prepare. So if you’re a Salesforce admin and you haven’t rolled out MFA yet, you need to do it ASAP.

Pro Tip: You can set up multiple forms of MFA. I would do that to ensure that you are never locked out of your account.

Yesterday, Salesforce announced a partnership with One Tree Planted to grow and conserve 500,000 native trees on Nazko First Nation Territory in the Fraser Plateau in British Columbia.

• The high-priority region is still recovering from a 2017 wildfire that burned over 540,000 hectares. The impact of this reforestation will reduce recovery time by decades, regenerating the environment and benefitting the communities that live on the land.
• This is one of multiple Canadian reforestation projects that Salesforce is partnering with One Tree Planted to achieve its 100 million tree goal, and accelerate 1T.org — a global movement founded in partnership with the World Economic Forum, to restore, conserve and grow one trillion trees by 2030.   

In addition, Salesforce also announced a tree equity initiative focused on long-term climate justice in partnership with One Tree Planted in the city of Malton, Ontario. 

• The program will engage four local schools to teach youth about the historical roots of environmental justice and how trees are a solution for creating equity. They will also plant 720 large trees around the Claireville Dam Restoration Site with them to create more greenspace and address the region’s “urban heat island effect.”

These are some cool projects that Salesforce is involved in which makes Salesforce more than just a SaaS company.

Salesforce and DocuSign today announced an expansion of their global strategic partnership to build new joint solutions that make it easier for customers to accelerate how agreements are facilitated around the world. New innovations will automate the contract process with AI-based, smart solutions that improve the customer experience of preparing, signing, and managing agreements, drive faster ROI, and increase collaboration amongst organizations with Slack functionality.

New innovations

Companies must maximize productivity and collaboration in an all-digital, work-from-anywhere world. Salesforce and Slack enable organizations to build their digital HQ by improving employee collaboration both internally and externally with customers and partners – no matter where, when, or how they work. 

Salesforce’s expanded partnership with DocuSign will offer new ways to make it easier to prepare contracts, quotes, and invoices, track and enforce contract terms, and manage the entire contract lifecycle management (CLM) process efficiently across DocuSign, Salesforce, and Slack platforms. New applications will be jointly designed and developed natively in Salesforce Customer 360:

• Agreement collaboration with DocuSign and Slack platforms: This integration aims to accelerate the broader agreement collaboration process for customers, right from within Slack. New workflows will notify teams on agreement progress and action items, enabling them to work quickly to review, edit, monitor, and execute agreements, without ever leaving their digital HQ. DocuSign eSignature for Slackis available now; DocuSign CLM for Slack will be available in 2022.

• DocuSign Gen for Salesforce Billing: Customers can close, bill, and recognize revenue faster through branded invoices, directly inside Salesforce Billing, with configurable templates. Customers can also schedule batch invoice generation and delivery or generate an invoice, on-demand, driving more on-time payments and fewer customer service issues. DocuSign Gen for Salesforce Billing is available now.

• DocuSign Gen for Salesforce CPQ Plus: Customers can automatically generate professional, customizable agreements from Salesforce with just a few clicks. The entire process can be configured and controlled from Salesforce, saving customers time, eliminating errors, and speeding up the path to revenue.DocuSign Gen for Salesforce CPQ Plus is available now.

• DocuSign CLM for Salesforce Field Service: Customers will be able to automate Obligation Management by tracking, enforcing, and updating key contract terms across departments. Obligations and terms from contracts executed via DocuSign CLM, such as warranties and service level agreements (SLAs), can be mapped into Service Cloud contract objects. This will enable smarter and more automated service experiences, and efficient service contract execution. DocuSign CLM for Salesforce Field Service will be available in 2022.

For more detail on the partnership, please visit https://www.docusign.com/solutions/salesforce.

Salesforce’s annual Small Business Trends report with Canadian-specific data is out and it illustrates how small and medium-sized businesses navigated through the last year. They are embracing a digital-first world and are confident in future business success.

For instance, the past 18 months accelerated a number of innovations from SMB owners to digitize. Salesforce’s report found that:

•  72% of SMBs believe operational shifts they’ve made to business operations over the past year will benefit their business long-term; 

• 81% of SMBs plan to offer contactless services permanently, such as secure payments (51%), digital customer service (42%) and Ecommerce (35%); and 
• 90% of SMBs have moved a portion of their operations online in the past year.

Source: Salesforce