Leading up to its annual Dreamforce conference later this month, Salesforce announced Thursday new features for its Sales Cloud platform to help improve sales, billing and marketing.
The customer relationship management (CRM) giant highlighted three new features, including sales analysis powered by its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered Einstein platform; Einstein integration with its marketing automation platform, Pardot; and new processes for billing through its Lightning sales platform.
Einstein will now also be used to automatically analyze leads and identify which ones are most likely to be converted into sales opportunities, according to the Salesforce press release.
These insights will be combined with analysis of what Salesforce called “sales cadences” (automated activity sequences, such as when to call or email prospects) to create email and call lists that will help sales reps more effectively manage leads, the release stated.
With Einstein now powering the company’s marketing automation service, Salesforce Pardot is expected to offer data about marketing campaigns and customer engagement behaviour as well.
“With Pardot now on Lightning and Einstein, sales and marketing teams are even more closely aligned on a single platform and able to work from the same data sets, campaign insights and customers engagement history,” said the release.
Salesforce also announced a new billing feature in Lightning that will allow users to automate sales processes like orders, contract renewals and invoicing.
In addition to its Sales Cloud announcements, the CRM company also revealed new partnerships with Lyft and Kronos Incorporated.
Lyft Businesses, the arm of the rideshare company that works specifically with enterprises, said in the release that it will be using Pardot and the Sales Cloud to help align its sales and marketing strategies.
Meanwhile, U.S.-based workplace management software company Kronos said it uses Salesforce’s Sales, Service and Community clouds, along with its Chatter enterprise collaboration platform, to connect its 35,000 customers and help “automate and improve the quality of its lead to nurture process.”
The Einstein Campaign Insights and Einstein Behaviour Scoring features are currently in pilot and along with the new sales features are scheduled to be available for most users in February.
Pardot will also be available in the Lightning version of Salesforce’s platform starting in October.
Salesforce Billing is generally available now with certain features being rolled out within the next two months, the company said.