If you didn’t know by now – Salesforce is a big admirer of the powers of automation and AI. More features are being embedded into the platform and the company is principally aware that future Salesforce users won’t have time to carry out manually repetitive tasks. In this blog post we analyse the current beliefs Salesforce has on automation and look at some of the newly prescribed tools companies have that are helping automate Salesforce.
Is Automation Here To Stay?
In short yes. Salesforce have a truly impressive budget and team responsible for high level innovation and the culture at the World’s most recognised CRM is one of constant improvement. Marc Benioff has in the past spoken in great detail about nanotechnologies, quantum computing & artificial intelligence – with the company also showcasing a quarterly R&D budget of over 400 million dollars to explore and test these kinds of opportunities. Artificial Intelligence is now present across many functional areas of the platform and is already doing a remarkable job, as long as the data proves that it is making decision making quicker & easier – we can expect a lot more to come. Below we have documented some of the core areas Salesforce have been investing in, which are helping to automate the platform. We also have another blog, which features the external third party software helping automate Salesforce for small and large organisations.
Introducing… Einstein
Einstein is the AI engine room which powers a lot of the AI based recommendations delivered to Salesforce users. Its unique goal is “to make every part of your business smarter”. For large organisations who have adopted Salesforce for years there is bound to be masses and masses of useful information buried deep within the platform. Einstein can analyse all available information to spot patterns and correlations from every data set it has access to; different options and recommendations are then presented to the Salesforce user that would have otherwise been missed. For example, Einstein can:
- Recommend which un-touched leads in a user’s queue are most likely to convert
- Automatically update someone’s calendar without the need for data entry
- Recommend the best placed product for each marketing channel at a given point in time
- Help personalise category landing pages & search pages based on what product data is currently proving popular
Still A Handy Tool… Workflows
Workflows are one of the original cornerstones of Salesforce automation and have been a feature for many years. They may not be as insightful as some of the newer pieces of functionality but certainly can save lots of time once programmed correctly. Each new Workflow is essentially applied to a single Salesforce object and then using “if/then statement” code an actual automated task of action can be taken by the platform depending on the result. They are still an incredible way to automate various tasks and because of the granular nature of workflows they do also create a sea of possibilities. The only downside is users will need to enlist the help of a developer to setup Salesforce Workflows rather than creating them themselves – which can increase the time taken to set them up or to modify them in the future.
Have You Tried… Lightening Process Builder?
A large portion of a Salespersons day to day revolves around repeat tasks which are part of the company’s existing processes. Things like – assigning tasks to junior team members, sending emails to other departments & updating the statuses of various leads. All of these tasks can now help automate Salesforce like never before, providing the right foundations are laid in place. With Process Builder you can manually configure Salesforce to automatically complete a routine task when the correct event triggers it, saving countless hours over the course of a year. The current process types currently supported by process builder automation are:
- Updating existing records when a new record is created, or one is amended
- An event process can be competed when a specific platform event occurs
- An invocable process starts when a different process triggers it
Above are some of the core systems and technologies that users can take advantage of to better automate their own Salesforce platform. There is also a plethora of third-party options within the AppExchange which can add greater levels of automation beyond the standard options. Why not check out some of our own Email-to-Anything and Q-assign apps – perfect for getting more intelligent with Salesforce email & lead assignment.
