Salesforce CRM

28.05.25. Salesforce to acquire cloud data management platform Informatica



Salesforce is acquiring cloud-based AI data management platform Informatica for $8 billion. The deal will help Salesforce expand its data management tools, gain greater control over how customers’ business data is managed and used and improve its ability to build AI agents. “Truly autonomous, trusted AI agents need the most contextual understanding possible, which means access to big amounts of data,” said Steve Fisher, president and chief technology officer of Salesforce. “Combining the advanced capabilities of the Informatica platform with our Agentforce platform delivers just that.” This deal with Informatica is Salesforce’s largest acquisition since its $28 billion buy-out of Slack in 2021.


2024. Salesforce acquired an AI-based knowledge management service



Following the acquisition of data management service Own earlier this month, Salesforce is acquiring Zoomin, an enterprise knowledge management platform. Zoomin uses artificial intelligence to search for documentation and create self-service support systems. A powerful data integration engine enables the connection and regular synchronization of large volumes of structured and unstructured data from multiple knowledge repositories, such as Confluence, Google Drive, websites, and content management systems. Out-of-the-box data enrichment pipelines enable the transformation and normalization of information to improve RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) performance. Zoomin also supports easily embeddable interfaces that display complex and hierarchical knowledge sets with high fidelity across various digital platforms and devices. This allows for a consistent and beautiful presentation of the same content across web applications, portals, CRM systems, and conversational assistants.


2024. Salesforce integrated AI tool Tableau Pulse into its CRM.



Salesforce has integrated one of the key AI features of Tableau's BI system into its customer relationship management platform. This is one of the most notable implementations since the company acquired Tableau five years ago. Pulse for Salesforce is an adaptation of Tableau Pulse that will provide CRM users with AI-powered charts and visualizations. Tableau Pulse, which officially launched in February, uses natural language and generative AI to visualize and interpret data. The idea is to provide business users with insights directly as they work, enabling them to make quick decisions. Unlike Tableau's traditional interface, which requires specific skills to work with data visualizations, Tableau Pulse is more accessible and automated. The main goal is to expand Tableau's use beyond its core audience of analysts and data scientists.


2024. Salesforce and Workday integrate their solutions via AI assistant



Salesforce and Workday announced a strategic partnership to create the industry's first unified CRM/HRM platform that integrates HR, finance and customer relationship data. They will also jointly develop an AI employee agent that will leverage human insight to automate time-consuming tasks, provide personalized support, and deliver data-driven insights to help employees work smarter and faster. For cases requiring a more complex approach, the AI ​​agent will delegate the task to the right specialist, preserving all previous history and context for a seamless transition.


2024. Salesforce unveiled first LLM benchmark for CRM industry



In a universe teeming with software, where Salesforce reigns as the galactic emperor of customer relationship management (CRM), it was only a matter of time before they unveiled the world's very first large language model (LLM) benchmark tailored specifically for CRM systems. Crafted by the deep thinkers over at Salesforce AI Research—who, one assumes, drink far too much coffee—this rather clever framework helps businesses navigate the bewildering zoo of LLMs. By testing their mettle in four crucial arenas—accuracy, cost, speed and that all-important trust and safety—it promises to bring order to the CRM galaxy. With its laser focus on sales and service scenarios like prospecting, nurturing leads and summarizing opportunities and cases, it even comes with a public leaderboard for the CRM pros to choose the finest models, all while Salesforce plots future expansions with shiny new use cases and finely-tuned LLMs.


2024. Salesforce adds more AI to call management



Salesforce, the cosmic-sized software giant specializing in turning customer data into gold (or at least tidy spreadsheets), has once again fiddled with its Sales Cloud and Service Cloud. This time, they’ve stuffed them with more Einstein AI and Data Cloud magic in a quest to make sales calls less of a cosmic black hole for productivity. The new and improved Sales Cloud boasts AI marvels like generative updates for Einstein Conversation Insights, Sales Signals and the shiny Einstein Copilot for Sales Actions. Imagine a futuristic sales companion that helps sellers prepare for customer calls, charmingly summarizes them afterward and even chats back using natural language, as if you’re casually texting a friend about quarter-four targets. Einstein Conversation Insights doesn’t just jot down meeting notes anymore—it grabs them by the collar, extracts every valuable insight and action item and sneakily updates the CRM system so humans don’t have to. Meanwhile, the Sales Signals feature swoops in to scoop up data from across customer meetings, helping companies spot new opportunities like a treasure map revealing the next big sale, all while promising to refine those ever-elusive go-to-market strategies.


2016. Salesforce wants to block Microsoft-LinkedIn deal



The friendship between Salesforce and Microsoft lasted only two years. Just a couple of years ago, Marc Benioff and Satya Nadella were photographed together and were considered best friends. But then Microsoft struck back - twice, actually. The first was the announcement of Dynamics 365, a cloud-based system (combining CRM and ERP), which will soon become a direct competitor to Salesforce. The second was the acquisition of LinkedIn, a social network for business. Therefore, Salesforce is now pressuring US and European authorities to conduct a comprehensive antitrust investigation, as the company believes Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn threatens innovation and competition. "By acquiring LinkedIn's unique database of 450 million professional users in more than 200 countries, Microsoft will be able to deny competitors access to this data and thereby gain an unfair competitive advantage," says Benioff.


2016. Salesforce and Zendesk created chatbots for Facebook



Have you come to terms with the fact that your company will need its own chatbot, but don't know how to create one? No problem. You probably won't even have to create one yourself. After all, chatbots will become a common part of traditional customer service systems. At least, this is the trend that has been identified by the global CRM market leader Salesforce and the market leader in customer support systems Zendesk. Together with Facebook, they have implemented Facebook Messenger integration into their solutions. The integration makes it easy to set up your own chatbot, which can communicate with the client automatically or transfer them to a live operator. Salesforce gives the following example: An airline customer is late for a flight, opens Messenger, and sends a request to the company's bot to change their tickets; the bot changes the tickets in the system and sends a confirmation response to the customer.


2016. Salesforce acquired artificial intelligence startup



We recently reported on Terrasoft's development of an Intelligent CRM. Their Western competitor, Salesforce, is also moving in this direction. Today, Salesforce announced the acquisition of MetaMind, one of the most prominent artificial intelligence startups. AI technologies will be integrated into Salesforce's CRM system to (quote) "further automate and personalize customer service, marketing, and other business processes." MetaMind specialized in machine learning technologies for text and image processing and already had a number of paying corporate customers.


2014. Salesforce Introduces Analytics Cloud



At its (world's largest) IT show, Dreamforce, Salesforce (as usual) unveiled several new features. The most important of these is the fifth cloud in the company's product line - Salesforce Analytics Cloud. As the name suggests, this is a business analytics system, and it is distinguished by its simplicity, the ability to customize a personalized interface, and viewing charts on mobile devices. Data can be taken from Salesforce CRM or other systems. This must be a truly valuable system, since it costs a whopping $125/month per user. In addition to the analytics cloud, Salesforce unveiled a new, improved interface, a new builder for creating mobile apps, and the ability to embed one-way video chat for customer support. As for the Dreamforce show program, its stars this year were future president Hillary Clinton and Bruno Mars.


2012. Top 7 Dreamforce stories



At the Dreamforce 12 conference Salesforce presented a lot of new products, but the problem is that most of these new products either had been already presented at the conference last year, or will become live to next year's conference. So, we'll just briefly go over the main ones: ***


2012. Salesforce Communities - service for creating customer and partner communities



Salesforce has introduced a new service - Salesforce Communities. So far, the service has only been launched for a few of the company's clients and is operating in closed mode (it doesn't even have its own website yet - apparently Marc Benioff is currently working on purchasing the community.com domain). The purpose of Salesforce Communities is to create communities of clients or partners. Why is this necessary? For cost-effective customer support (when clients can help each other), for retention and increasing customer loyalty (due to the fact that clients become attached to the community), for increasing sales (because potential clients see real people who are already clients and can communicate with them), and for effective work with partners. The service is based on Chatter and is very similar to Facebook. Its launch is planned for early 2013.


2012. Salesforce acquires social marketing champion Buddy Media



Perhaps, some years ago SAP and Oracle thought on the opportunity to acquire Salesforce, but for some reason decided that it was bad idea. And now Salesforce itself can make big purchases, even bigger than these dinosaurs. Today, Salesforce announced the acquisition (for $689 million) of Buddy Media - the largest social marketing service. Last month Oracle bought a similar (but not so popular) service Vitrue (for $300 million). From the one hand with Buddy Media Salesforce is buying the client base, as Buddy Media has more than 1,000 large customers, including Virgin Mobile, HP, Matte and L'Oreal. In addition, the service is used by 8 of 10 world's largest advertising agencies. On the other hand Buddy Media - is a great addition to another social marketing tool - Radian6, that Salesforce bought last year. Radian6 is used for listening social networks while Buddy Media is a tool for publishing content to social networks and measuring the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns. ***