Evolution of Salesforce Data Cloud: Predictions for the Future

Started in 2019, with basic features that were centered on unifying customer data for businesses, to processing over 2.3 quadrillion records per quarter, Salesforce Data Cloud has come a long way. 

Today, it stands as a clear leader in the Customer Data Platform (CDP) market, achieving a remarkable growth of 130% year-over-year in paid customers (Source: Salesforce). It is one of the fastest-growing products in Salesforce’s history. 

However, this success is not achieved overnight and is the result of continuous advancements and innovations that took place in this platform, over the years.

This blog takes you on this journey and introduces what Salesforce Data Cloud brings for you in the future. Let’s get started! 

History of Salesforce Data Cloud 

Where it All Began: 2019

In the year 2019, businesses were facing challenges such as fragmented data that was scattered across business systems, making it difficult for them to gain a unified view. To cater to these challenges, Salesforce responded with a solution named Customer 360 Audience, which bought customer data at a single page, offering a holistic view. This proved to be a game changer as businesses were able to segment their target audience more effectively, allowing for improved and more targeted personalized offerings. 

Customer 360 Audiences went a step further by pulling external data from third parties such as the government, social media, and other market researchers and modeling it into businesses’ systems. With this, they were able to make informed decisions from valuable insights and achieved a competitive advantage over others.  

Rebranding to CDP: 2021

In 2021, business needs evolved more than just being centric to data management. They demanded a solution that catered to various dimensions of business operations where data played a key role. 

Focusing on this aspect, Salesforce empowered Customer 360 Audiences with enhanced marketing and service capabilities. This change resulted in rebranding the platform as Salesforce Customer Data Platform.

Along with this focused change, Salesforce CDP introduced identity resolution capabilities in the platform. It enabled businesses to authenticate and authorize the right users to access the customer data, allowing for a single source of truth. The overall data protection was improved with advanced security and compliance practices, eliminating access to unauthorized parties. 

The Year of Strategic Rebranding: 2022

Considering Salesforce CDP as a core marketing product, Salesforce rebranded it as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform, allowing only the change in the name. 

Until then, this platform was centric on marketing needs only. However, in the same year, during Dreamforce 2022, it was again renamed to Salesforce Genie. 

Introduction of Salesforce Genie: 2022

Looking at how technology progressed and data played a huge role across all dimensions of a business, Salesforce introduced new features and functionalities in the platform. This widened the horizon of its offerings from marketing to sales, service, and more. Businesses were able to offer personalized experiences in sales, streamline cross-departmental collaboration, achieve faster response times, and improve their overall operations. 

The platform utilized a zero-copy architecture, where data was referenced directly from its source rather than copying and storing it. This improved storage allocation and saved costs for businesses. It was transformed into a hyper-scale real-time data platform that simplified the management of a huge bulk of data and databases and allowed fast content delivery across the globe. 

Transition to Salesforce Data Cloud: 2023

In the year 2023, the name Salesforce Genie was dropped, and it was again renamed as Salesforce Data Cloud, signifying a focus on deep integration with Salesforce ecosystem. However, the official mascot continued to drive attraction with the product. 

A big revolution in the platform’s update was the introduction of generative AI capabilities. It utilized AI and ML technology to simplify businesses’ efforts in data integration and analytics. The platform utilized automation capabilities that improved overall business performance. This advancement was not only restricted to marketing but also Salesforce offered a data cloud for Tableau, Health, and Einstein.

Now that we have covered the history of Salesforce Data Cloud, let’s further explore what advancements are going to be made in the coming years. 

What’s New in Salesforce Data Cloud?

In the year 2024, Salesforce rolled out major enhancements in the platform, leveraging the scalability and advancements of AI capabilities. 

The launch of Agentforce and its integration with this cloud has powered its capabilities, allowing a multitude of benefits to businesses.

Here is an overview of what new this platform has to offer: 

• Support for Unstructured Data: Salesforce Data Cloud began the processing of unstructured audio and video, allowing businesses to extract deeper insights from content such as webinars and customer calls. With this, they can assess customer behavior and seek valuable insights that help them enrich customer profiles and improve service accuracy. 

• AI Tagging and Classification: Using the ML capability, data cloud algorithms identify useful information from unstructured data. Further meta tags or markers are assigned to the information; it is then classified into subcategories and groups, making it easily searchable by the user when required. 

• Real-Time Data Activation: Organizations can now process and act on data instantly, leading to faster and better decision-making.

• Improved Data Governance: Improvements in these policies help control data sharing with Agentforce, and the Private Connect feature restricts the sharing of sensitive information to external clouds. Moreover, customer-managed keys allow businesses to manage their encryption keys that encrypt the data, allowing optimal safety.  

• Expanded Ecosystem: Allows integration of new applications such as Stripe, Google Drive, and Square. 

• Tableau Semantics: It allows businesses to understand data in a standardized way, regardless of how it is written or where it is sourced from. It creates a consistent model for data and its associated data so that users gain a comprehensive view of the same.  

• Community Engagement: A new community formed with the name of Salesforce Datablazers Community allows IT leaders and data tech enthusiasts to share best practices and stay up to date with the latest trends. 

Apart from these new features and functionalities, Salesforce release notes shared new updates and their general availability across the globe: 

• Data Cloud for Industries Enhancements: It allows businesses to leverage various pre-built connectors and data models to power industry-specific AIs. With this, they can train agents better specific to their industry-related tasks. 

• Data Cloud Graphs Enhancements: It allows users to define data relationships without SQL or manual joins. With drag-and-drop tools, fields can be easily adjusted for AI accuracy, and real-time data for graphs can be processed in milliseconds.

• Data Spaces: The introduction of data spaces allows businesses to segregate data based on different compliance needs, giving them a clear view of the needful.  

• Model Builders: It allows businesses to create custom AI models using drag-and-drop, no-code capabilities.  

• Data Cloud Related Lists and Copy Fields: They enhance the overall capabilities of the platform for B2B businesses. With related lists, real-time engagement data can directly be displayed on any Salesforce Object. It enriches leads, contacts, and account records. With copy fields, businesses can directly copy their insight data into their CRM, eliminating complex integrations and development. 

• Improved Service Insights: Through Service Intelligence, service teams can measure their quality of service through AI models, giving them insights into how they can improve. 

• Troubleshoot Flows: With Data Cloud Triggered Flows, any change made in the flows can be tested and troubleshooted before activating them.

Final Take

To stay competitive and make the most of your data, leveraging the ongoing advancements in Salesforce Data Cloud, is crucial. And now, is the ideal time to implement the platform and prepare for future growth. 

Many big names, such as Air India, Kawasaki Motors Corp, The Adecco Group, Aston Martin, and Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, are harnessing the powers of this platform to improve their productivity and strengthen customer relationships.

Similar to these industry giants, do you also wish to embrace the benefits of Salesforce data cloud in your business? Well, to make the most of it, you might need an expert who can guide you better with all its implementation and integrations.

Look no further than Cyntexa. As a leading Salesforce consulting partner, we listen to your unique business requirements and provide tailored solutions. 

Whether you want to implement data cloud from scratch or explore its new and advanced features, Cyntexa is there to assist you in unlocking its full potential.