Salesforce Seals Partnership with Disney Studio

Another good news is around the corner. While it was just in December 2020 when Salesforce acquired Slack, and in March 2021 when Salesforce Marketing Cloud integrated with Whatsapp, now it’s time for another big news of partnership wherein Salesforce stole the thunder as on May 2021. And this time, even the entire Hollywood will listen to this happening news as this is a five-year partnership with none other than Disney Studios. Isn’t this the most happening news that you have heard so far, after the US Elections? So let’s begin with knowing more about these companies and their work in brief.

Salesforce Inc is the world’s best CRM software that deals in providing enterprise software. It is a Software as a Service (SaaS) type of cloud computing company aiming to provide its software to businesses and individuals. Its clients are spread worldwide, and they use the same to manage their data in terms of customers, sales, operations, etc. Furthermore, it empowers companies of every size and industry to digitally transform and create a 360° view of their customers. The foundation of the company was laid back in 1999 and had headquarters in San Francisco, California.

The Walt Disney Studios is a well-established American film and entertainment studio and one of the four business segments of The Walt Disney Company. Disney Studios was founded in 1923, and headquartered in Burbank, California, is best known for its multi-faceted film divisions. Disney Studios Content further involves a big collection of world-class entertainment studios, including Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, and Searchlight Pictures are best known for producing high-quality cinematic storytelling for both theatrical and streaming releases.

Now, let’s move forward with more discussion regarding this exciting partnership news.

Salesforce is entering into a five-year partnership with The Walt Disney Studios’ StudioLAB, its creative production unit, as of 5th May 2021. Disney’s StudioLAB is a unit dedicated to searching and further deploying new technologies for the main purpose of storytelling. Its team comprises mainly software engineers, film producers, theme park designers, and game developers, while its partners already include the likes of Microsoft, HPE, and LG.

While it may seem that Salesforce CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is quite a peculiar fit for a major film-producing company, StudioLAB mostly focuses on being the support system required by the creative operations ongoing in the movies and theme parks.

As Salesforce became a StudioLAB Innovation Partner, both the companies would now be moving forward to search for new and prospective ways to use the technology. This will improve the processes involved in management and scheduling around the content production and the team working towards the same. Moreover, the process will occur while beginning from the earliest ideas in development to make the way clear through post-production and marketing work.

In an interview, Salesforce’s president and CMO, Sarah Franklin said, “For generations, Disney has inspired fans with its creativity, emotional storytelling, and imaginative experiences. As an innovation partner of StudioLAB, we will use our technology to help Disney Studios filmmakers and marketers reimagine how they produce their amazing content to delight audiences.”

The technology that’ll be focused on from now onwards would be Salesforce Customer 360. This further involves industry-leading applications for sales, service, marketing as well as commerce. With this, the partnership will first put its focus on reimagining production by going through the following:

• Evolving the digital workflows that would help manage both the production and marketing of content from Disney Studios.
• Keeping up with the executive decision-making process by delivering a 360 real-time view of the performance as showcased by the media properties of Disney Studios. 
• Distributing simple, mobile-first technologies to support the updates from studio personnel access and ensure collaboration in real-time and that too from any device, anywhere in a quick manner.

In short, this alliance/deal is designed to support a better decision-making process by ensuring it with Salesforce 360 real-time view.

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In another interview, Sarah Franklin shared this exciting news while saying that, “We’re thrilled to kickstart this partnership and marry our technology with Disney’s extraordinary filmmaking capabilities across its world-class entertainment studios, including Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar. Animation Studios, Marvel Studios, and Lucasfilm.”

Salesforce will initially start with its work in Disney by enabling the development and testing of new digital technologies existing across Disney’s media properties. With so many things ongoing amidst this pandemic year, the current work will also reflect the changes that would also force creators and marketers to find better and efficient ways to collaborate while working from a distance.

Salesforce’s pitch to media companies, especially like Disney, is that with the help of Salesforce solutions the automation of full production workflow processes can be done easily, which has become particularly important while these persistent remote and hybrid workspaces are existing.

Sarah Franklin also mentioned in the interview that “Consumer habits have changed in so many different ways this past year in this digital-first world, and Disney has set the standard for engaging fans in this new world. Success for us is introducing innovations that continue to set the industry standard for media production.”

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In an interview with the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of Disney Studios Content, Jamie Voris said that “Salesforce’s platform gives us the ability to accelerate and better coordinate the production process. With Salesforce as our Innovation Partner, we can equip our marketers and storytellers with world-class technology to better deliver against the incredible slate of content we have planned for streaming and theatrical audiences.”

Disney is all set for a powerful finish this year, while a host of films and shows are all set to be released in both cinemas and its streaming platform Disney+. To ensure that this is managed well, the company has secured more partnerships with the world’s largest cloud companies. This also includes a deal with AWS (Amazon Web Services) to ensure Disney+ spreads its presence in more regions across the globe. 

With the onboarding of Salesforce done, StudioLAB would also start exploring the usage of technology to manage and accelerate content production. This would be further done with both the companies collaborating on content starting from its initial conception while going all the way through the post-production.