Salesforce’s annual mega-event, Dreamforce 2023, has concluded, and it was a remarkable gathering of trailblazers, industry leaders, and visionaries. Today, I have highlighted certain crucial events that anyone attending this big celebration of innovation, technology, and achievement should be aware of.

Highlights of Dreamforce 2023: Unveiling the Future of Technology and Business

Tuesday, September 12th: A Grand Beginning

On Tuesday, September 12th, the Dreamforce journey begins with a bang. The schedule for the day is jam-packed with intriguing opportunities:

• Dreamforce Major Keynote
• Game-Changing Product Announcements
• AI and Data Innovation
• Industry and Role-Specific Sessions
• Success Stories from Customers
• Welcome Reception and Networking

Wednesday, September 13th: In-depth exploration

As Dreamforce enters its second day, the opportunities for learning and growth multiply:

• Product Roadmap Innovations
• Hands-On Workshops
• AI Ethics Sessions
• Deep-Dive Customer Success Demos
• Lodges and Trailblazer Forest
• An A-List Dreamfest

Thursday, September 14th: The Grand Finale

As Dreamforce draws to a close, the big finale promises to excite guests and prepare them to go on their own successful journeys:

• Insightful Keynotes
• Product Innovations on the Roadmap
• Making the Most of AI Sessions
• Shark Tank-Style Dreampitch Competition
• Winter Release Readiness Live

1. The Einstein 1 Platform: A New Beginning

The Einstein 1 platform was the centre of attention during Dreamforce 2023. Positioned as the next big thing in AI, this platform is designed to be the epitome of trust in AI.

• Relaunch: Salesforce’s Einstein 1 is a revamped platform aiming to be the most trusted AI platform.
• Einstein Copilot: A built-in side panel in the user interface, enabling natural language interactions.
• Action Plans: Copilot offers multi-step action plans, allowing users to choose the subsequent steps.

2. Copilot Studio: The AI Powerhouse

Composed of three parts:

• Prompt Builder: Allows for the building of AI prompts based on Salesforce data.
• Skills Builder: Assigns generative AI capabilities to users, personalising their experiences.
• Model Builder: Provides AI model selection flexibility through cooperation with Anthropic, Cohere, Databricks, Google Cloud’s Vertex IX, and OpenAI.

3. Data Democratisation: Free Data Cloud and Tableau Licences

• Salesforce offers free Data Cloud and Tableau licences to Sales and Service Cloud customers.
• Package includes two free Tableau Creator subscriptions and Data Cloud access for up to 10,000 profiles.

4. Marketing & Commerce Cloud: The AI-Driven Synergy

Salesforce’s deeper integration of the Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud is a strategic step. Over 50 generative AI capabilities are predicted to be available by 2024, with 26 currently available and an additional 25+ expected by 2024, all built on Data Cloud.

This combination promises unrivalled synergy, allowing businesses to leverage the power of AI in designing personalised marketing campaigns and improving e-commerce experiences.

5. Data Cloud-Triggered Flow

• Integration Insight: Integrating the Data Cloud into the Einstein 1 framework.
• Live Data Dynamics: Streamlined processes powered by real-time data from a variety of sources.
• Data Realm: A structured area within Data Cloud for consolidating data, gaining insights, and facilitating marketing.

The end result? Routine chores are streamlined, allowing teams to focus their efforts on more important projects.

6. Slack Innovations: The Future of Workplace Communication

Slack is ushering in a transformative phase with its innovative features. At the forefront is “Slack Lists”, designed to revolutionize how professionals monitor their tasks, placing teamwork at its heart. Set to debut in a pilot phase later this year, this feature harnesses the prowess of generative AI. It seamlessly amalgamates workflows from diverse conversations, ensuring that crucial deadlines remain on your radar.

Furthermore, the introduction of “Slack Sales Elevate” is a testament to Slack’s commitment to enhancing user experience. By integrating AI, it aims to streamline tasks, saving invaluable time. This feature epitomizes the synergy between Sales Cloud and Slack, setting new benchmarks in workplace efficiency.

7. Data Graphs: Visualizing Data Relationships

When constructing prompts in Prompt Builder or assigning skills in Skills Builder, make sure Einstein has access to all of the data needed to answer a user’s question. This could necessitate numerous layers of linked data, or data from multiple integrated sources.

How can you know if your data is ready for such an investigation? Data Graphs (in Data Cloud) allow you to visualise the relationships between data model objects (DMOs) at many levels. You can trace the linked fields and reorganise the relationships in a drag-and-drop way, similar to the Schema Builder, to ensure that the relevant field data is included in an AI application.

8. Salesforce’s Global Impact: A Look Forward

IDC reports delve into the crystal ball of the future to see what impact Salesforce could potentially have. Two figures in this edition’s report stand out:

• Revenue Impact (revenue generated), a net gain of $2.02 trillion from 2022 to 2028.
• Employment Impact (global job creation), an estimated 18 million jobs may potentially be created globally between 2022 and 2028, with a net gain of 11.6 million employees.

9. The Ethical AI Paradigm

Salesforce is well aware of this and has established its Trusted, Ethical, and Humane AI Tenets. These standards demonstrate Salesforce’s dedication to ethical innovation. Salesforce is creating a gold standard for the industry by ensuring that AI advances are ethical, transparent, and trustworthy.

10. Sustainability at Dreamforce

• Salesforce’s Net Zero Cloud programme aims to assist businesses in meeting their environmental targets.
• Eco-Friendly Event: The organisation made considerable environmental strides this year, touting the event as the most sustainable Dreamforce ever. Salesforce’s sustainability measures were visible throughout the event, from biodegradable signage to saving millions of gallons of water.

11. Life Sciences Cloud is a new industry cloud.

The Life Sciences Cloud is the latest addition to the Salesforce Industries family. This platform, designed exclusively for the life sciences industry, features a one-of-a-kind architecture that assures smooth connection with the Salesforce platform. The Life Sciences Cloud is intended to transform the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device industries.

12. Salesforce And Google

According to Salesforce, Salesforce and Google have strengthened their cooperation to further integrate their products.

Salesforce is the first partner to use the Google Workspace Duet AI extensions framework. And Google Workspace is Salesforce Einstein Copilot’s first extensions partner.

Users can import context from Salesforce, Google Calendar, Docs, Meet, Gmail, and other productivity apps.

Users of Google Workspace now have the ability to create content in that platform as well as update records and initiate workflows in Salesforce.

PaLM 2 and other Google-hosted LLMs from Vertex AI may also be brought into Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot Studio to build GenAI products and services in Salesforce Customer 360.

13. Salesforce and AWS

Salesforce and Amazon Web Services (AWS) will launch a series of connectors next year that will allow the two vendors to share data lakes and large language models (LLMs).

According to Salesforce, users of Amazon Redshift, EMR, Athena, Bedrock, and SageMaker can leverage foundation models within Salesforce with security. There are no extract, transform, and load (ETL) stages in the process, which means no data copying or shifting.

According to Salesforce, an existing link between Service Cloud Voice and Amazon Connect allows users to establish contact centre services with Salesforce’s agent desktop with Amazon Comprehend, Transcribe, and other services to boost agent productivity.

According to CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs, AWS has over 100,000 channel partners worldwide.

14. Salesforce And Databricks

Salesforce and Databricks have expanded their collaboration to enable for the seamless mixing of data from Salesforce Data Cloud with data from the Databricks Lakehouse Platform.

According to Salesforce, the expanded alliance should lower the cost and complexity of moving and copying data while maintaining security, governance, and trust criteria. The companies claim no ETL for relevant data.

Databricks data can be accessed in Data Cloud and vice versa. According to Salesforce, they can use the data for AI model training and fast access to unified customer data. They can utilise Databricks Machine Learning to create and train models before deploying them to Data Cloud.

15. Deloitte And Salesforce

Deloitte Digital announced a number of new Salesforce integrations, including the addition of Einstein AI to its DigitalMIX platform and additional services for biopharmaceutical (BioPharma) organisations.

According to the global systems integrator (GSI), DigitalMIX has gained additional capabilities for automation, personalization, and analytics across sales, service, marketing, and the back-office.

According to Deloitte, users can benefit from more predictive analytics, GenAI, and visualisations for increased productivity, revenue growth, and customer relationships.

For multi-cloud finance implementations, DigitalMIX provides scalable, pre-configured services. Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and other products are already supported.

According to CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs, Databricks has approximately 1,000 channel partners worldwide.

Although details on the Deloitte Digital and Salesforce BioPharma alliance were scarce, a Deloitte statement promised to “empower BioPharma firms to bring innovative therapies to patients faster” and “the next generation of innovations that help enable the rapid scientific and technological progress of this sector.”

They also promised “new engagement models for healthcare professionals and patients across the entire value chain, from clinical to commercial,” according to Deloitte.

Final Thoughts

The main keynote at Dreamforce 2023 was an innovation masterclass. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, together with a limited group of prominent guests, discussed the future paths of AI. As the tech industry digests these game-changing revelations, it’s clear that Salesforce is at the vanguard of this change, influencing the future of business and technology.