Dreamforce 2023, a much-anticipated annual conference hosted by Salesforce, took place from September 12 – 14 in San Francisco. The event brought together thousands of Salesforce customers, partners, and industry professionals to learn about the latest IT innovations, network with peers, and gain insight into how they can use Salesforce to improve their business.
Unsurprisingly, AI was the clear focus of the event, with Salesforce coining it the largest AI conference in the world. AI has officially entered the scene, but what’s next? Our team of experts attended the conference and shared their takeaways on the AI revolution and how it will change the way we work.
With the AI revolution underway, Salesforce is grounding itself amidst all this change with the Einstein 1 Platform. Einstein 1 is the reimagined Salesforce platform with the core pillars of Data + CRM + AI. During the conference, Salesforce positioned itself as “the trusted AI platform for customer companies.” The company put in place various AI-boosting functionality and features that enable this mission and, as Salesforce CEO Marc Beinhoff puts it, help “lead to the AI Nirvana.”
Two of the primary features include:
Integrated metadata framework: Einstein 1 is built into all applications, meaning Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, Analytics, and Platform all exist within the same metadata-driven core. Having all applications within the same core is key to connecting data and AI seamlessly across the whole platform.
Einstein Trust Layer: There is a trust gap associated with generative AI. While it can produce impressive outputs, those outputs can contain errors, biases, glitches, and hallucinations. Salesforce’s Einstein Trust Layer addresses these challenges by acting as a safeguard, preventing AI from exhibiting unwanted behavior and ensuring data privacy and security. The technology is comprised of secure data retrieval, data masking, zero retention, and auditing to enhance the reliability and trustworthiness of your AI solutions.
The Data Cloud was a highlight of the conference as data fuels AI. For AI to be helpful to your team and customers, it needs to have as much relevant data as possible. During the keynote, Parker Harris, CTO and Co-Founder of Salesforce, explained most companies struggle with connecting the data they have in different systems to their critical business actions.
“71% of a company’s applications are disconnected. We want to help you bring it together so that you can use it in your and that’s why we have Einstein 1 Data Cloud,” Harris said.
Salesforce’s new Data Cloud is deeply integrated within their technology and Einstein 1. The Data Cloud unifies data from different sources and systems. With no code at all, your company can connect to any data within your organization, whether it’s a Salesforce Cloud, an external data source, or a variety of connectors. This is an exciting announcement as you can now access a rich amount of data about an individual customer without needing enlist the help of a separate team. Salesforce is giving its users Data Cloud licenses for free, unifying up to 10,000 profiles to start exploring.
Einstein 1 Copilot is the new delivery system of AI within the Salesforce platform. Copilot is an out-of-the-box conversational AI assistant that is built into Salesforce UI and available across the platform. It can assist you within your workflow by giving step-by-step guidance. As the name suggests, Salesforce’s goal is to make Einstein your copilot, helping sales reps and marketers create more personalized experiences, obtain rich context information, and boost productivity.
Copilot can assist you in Tableau as well. The technology automates data curating by generating calculations and metadata descriptions. It also follows best practices to help you create dashboards that you can utilize to act on your findings.
Sean Miller, Concord’s Associate Director of Business Intelligence and Tableau Visionary, states that with this new feature, Tableau users can now explore data and find insights faster than ever.
"The release of Einstein Copilot is a great addition for both new and experienced Tableau creators. The conversational AI assistant helps users visually explore their data and build out calculations, charts, and even dashboards," Miller said. "I’m very excited to get this feature into the hands of our clients so they can more quickly and efficiently unlock hidden insights and ultimately be more data-driven."
These new features will dramatically change the ecosystem for years to come. Concord is a proud partner of Salesforce and can help you take advantage of these exciting changes by finding the right solutions across Experience, Marketing, Commerce, and Data. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you accelerate impact with Salesforce solutions.
Not sure on your next step? We'd love to hear about your business challenges. No pitch. No strings attached.
