Salesforce Releases Next Gen Analytics Cloud

CRM firm Salesforce has today today unveiled the next generation of Salesforce Analytics Cloud, aimed at delivering actionable intelligence across what it describes as its ‘Customer Success Platform’.

New Wave Actions will enable Salesforce users to take actions directly at the point of insight from within any Wave Analytics dashboard. In addition, Salesforce will deliver Wave visualisations across the entire Customer Success Platform. And, new Wave Analytics Apps built by leading ISVs will extend the power of Wave Analytics to more line of business users and industries.

The next wave of Analytics Cloud innovations connect insights and business actions to deliver a whole new level of customer success, according to Salesforce. While legacy analytics solutions are disconnected from the business processes and workflows that drive businesses forward, Wave Actions has been created to empower Salesforce users to act upon deep insights instantly, directly within any Wave Analytics dashboard.

Companies are able to create a menu of custom Wave Actions, such as create a case, update an account or assign a task. And because Wave is natively integrated with Salesforce, Wave Actions will be automatically pushed from Wave into the corresponding Salesforce record. For example, when a sales manager drills into her custom Wave Analytics dashboard and discovers a customer attrition pattern within specific accounts, she can instantly assign a task to a rep directly from the app, addressing the problem from the point of insight.

A Salesforce spokesperson, speaking at the companies annual conference Dreamforce in San Francisco, said: “On-premise analytics software and niche visualisation tools deliver static, outdated reports and often have complicated graphical interfaces with steep learning curves – separating business users from the insights they need.

“And since companies are forced to deploy point solutions for different analytics needs, business users lack consistent user experiences for visualisation and exploration. This makes finding insights a slow and unintuitive process.

“Now, Wave visualisations will power every Salesforce data exploration experience across the Customer Success Platform.”

Lightning Reports & Dashboards

Reports & Dashboards are built into Salesforce and have always delivered operational CRM performance metrics, such as team performance, lead volume, conversation rates and more, all in real-time. Now, with Wave visualisations those metrics will be brought to life through a new, intuitive experience for designing and editing dashboards, including resizing and rearranging components and running reports. And with a diverse charting library and the ability to modify and filter reports on the fly, charts and data will instantly update so Salesforce users always have the most relevant, real-time insights.

New Wave Embedded Dashboards

Wave Analytics Apps deliver dashboards with multi-dimensional analytics for deeper insights, extending beyond operational CRM performance metrics to examine year-over-year trending and complex KPIs from a variety of data sources. Now companies can embed any Wave dashboard or chart directly into any Salesforce record or object, empowering Salesforce users with critical and contextual insights instantly, without having to leave an existing workflow. For example, after getting real-time operational insights into current closed deals and performance against quota, a sales manager would turn to a Wave Analytics dashboard to do a full pipeline analysis and determine whether she needs to reset forecasts or identify which deals need to be accelerated to hit key targets.

The Wave Analytics Platform was designed from the ground up to be open, making it easy to​ build ​and deploy analytics apps faster than ever. More than 80 companies have joined the Wave partner ecosystem to extend the power of analytics to every business need, and at Dreamforce 2015, 13 leading ISVs will showcase new pilot Wave Analytics Apps that enable users to not only uncover insight, but also take instant action.

Apps will include:

Apttus Quote-to-Cash Intelligence: Surfaces deeper, more actionable insights on quoting, contract and customer data, enabling sales teams to meet and beat their revenue-related targets.

FinancialForce ERP Wave Apps: Incorporates and analyses financial and supply chain performance data, allowing business users to gain valuable insight on the entire customer journey and improve the way they run their business.

SteelBrick Analytics: Provides executive leaders across organizations with immediate visibility and insights into the full customer life cycle–from quotes through contracts, orders, revenue and cash–all in one system.

Vlocity Communications Cloud Analytics: Allows communications companies to make more data-driven decisions and improve customer satisfaction by measuring and predicting churn, identifying call-time inefficiencies, analysing service histories and propensity to purchase.

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