Actionable Insights

Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough Salesforce IoT Cloud, Powered by Salesforce Thunder

Connected World, Disconnected Data: The Answer? IOT Cloud

The combination of mobile, social, sensor, wearable and cloud technologies has triggered a deluge of data. More than 90 percent of the world’s data has been generated over the last two years. And, with the number of connected devices projected to reach 75 billion by 2020, the volume of data available is expected to grow exponentially. Without making sense of all this data, we just have a ton of nothingness and a lot of talk about possibility. But it’s time for possibility to turn into probability. And that’s what is in store for companies that are looking at the IOT Cloud.

This world of connected devices and digital content presents an enormous opportunity for companies to take advantage of the new data. In a June 2015 report, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that IoT applications may have a potential economic impact of as much as $11.1 trillion per year by 2025. However, businesses have been unable to capitalize on the vast volume of data from the Internet of Things.

Salesforce IoT Cloud, Powered by Thunder—Connecting to the Internet of Customers IoT Cloud empowers businesses to connect data from the Internet of Things, as well as any digital content, with customer information, giving context to data and making it actionable—all in real-time. Thunder, built on a massively scalable, modern architecture, can “listen” to the connected world, ingesting billions of events a day, from any source. IoT Cloud’s capabilities include:

Listen to the World at IoT Scale: IoT Cloud connects everything to Salesforce. In addition to the Internet of Things, connecting to phones, wearables, windmills and industrial turbines and other devices, IoT Cloud connects data from websites, social interactions and more to Salesforce. By connecting the billions of real-time events and digital content with Salesforce, the IoT Cloud brings customer context to transactional data.

Trigger Actions with Real-time Rules: With IoT Cloud, business users can use intuitive, point- and-click tools to define, modify and set rules and logic for events that can trigger actions across Salesforce. A global fleet management company, for example, can enforce passenger safety standards by setting filters for “hard brakes” or “hard accelerations” and defining rules that trigger in-car sensors to log service cases reporting possible instances of erratic driving. Or, a national retailer holding a holiday sale can set rules based on loyalty program status, inventory or sales performance, triggering retail beacons to send discount offers to in-store shoppers in real-time.

1:1 Proactive Engagement through Salesforce: IoT Cloud seamlessly works across the Salesforce Customer Success Platform to surface insights and trigger real-time 1:1, personalized actions for sales, service, marketing or any other business process. For example, a thermostat provider can parse through billions of events gathered from weather forecasts, sensors and temperature settings to proactively alert customers on how to manage their HVAC usage within their predefined budget. Or, a vehicle assistance service partnering with an auto brand can send personalized offers on behalf of local dealers based on sensor data that tracks fluid levels and mileage.

IoT Cloud connects billions of events from devices, sensors, applications and more from the Internet of Things to Salesforce—enabling companies to unlock insights from the connected world. IoT Cloud is powered by Salesforce Thunder, a massively scalable, real-time event processing engine that enables Salesforce customers to personalize the way they sell, service, market… IoT leaders ARM, Etherios, Informatica, PTC ThingWorx and Xively LogMeln join Salesforce’s ecosystem to accelerate IoT Cloud customer success. Companies including Emerson and Pitney Bowes look to connect with their customers in powerful new ways with IoT Cloud.

Marc Benioff, chairman and chief executive officer, Salesforce said, “Salesforce is turning the Internet of Things into the Internet of Customers. The IoT Cloud will allow businesses to create real-time 1:1, proactive actions for sales, service, marketing or any other business process, delivering a new kind of customer success.”

The IOT Cloud is the beginning of making sense of all the data turn information into actionable insights that really move the needle on a businesses growth, revenue, and bottomline. It’s time technology delivered on the promise of yesterday year and that time is now. To see how it can work, check out this video.

@DrNatalie, VP and Principal Analyst, Constellation Research

Next Generation Online Holiday Sales Customer Experience Trends

Wondering what consumers were interested in this year? Wondering what the top gift was? How many millions or billions of dollars of products were bought and where? How social networks played into the shopping equation? This post provides data on all of these topics and more. Adobe released its 2014 Digital Index Online Shopping data for the holiday season. Between November 1 and November 28, $32 billion have been spent online. That is 14 percent more than in 2013. Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday set new sales records with $1.33 billion and $2.4 billion, respectively.

When people talk about sleeping with their phones, it seems that the trend is continuing as mobile devices continue to play a dominant role. For the first time smartphones nearly doubled their share of total online sales on both days. November 11 (“Singles’ Day”) set a new sales record with $1.29 billion and is expected to surpass Cyber Monday in growth this year. The average order value for sales coming directly from a social network was led by Facebook with $114.45.

Wondering how the data was collected? The findings are based on the analysis of aggregated and anonymous data of more than 350 million visits to 4,500 retail websites. More than $7 out of $10 spent online with the top 500 U.S. retailers were measured by Adobe Marketing Cloud. Measuring this amount of data puts Adobe in a unique position to possibly deliver highly accurate, census-based online sales totals, pricing and product availability trends as well as other retail data.

For those companies that want and need this type of data to provide better and next generation customer experiences, this type of data is really important. Companies need to see where their customers are and where and how they make their purchase decisions. Some of the trends that Adobe was looking at are as follows:

Total Online Spend: Consumers spent $32 billion online so far this season, a 14 percent growth year-over-year (YoY). Both Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday saw double-digit growth in online sales, 25 and 24 percent respectively. The increase in sales was driven by brick-and-click retailers, who saw the biggest jump YoY with nearly 30 percent. Online sales conversions also improved. 3.2 percent of visits resulted in a completed shopping cart, up from 3.14 percent in 2013. The average order value was $149 on Thanksgiving Day, and $142 on Black Friday. The number of people choosing to order online and pickup in-store rose to 45 percent above normal on Thanksgiving Day.

Mobile Trends: Smartphones and tablets continued to drive online sales. 29 percent of sales on Thanksgiving Day came from mobile devices, up from 21 percent in 2013. Mobile devices drove 27 percent of sales on Black Friday, three percent more than last year. The share for smartphones rose to 13 percent and almost doubled compared to seven percent last year. The share for tablets only increased slightly to 16 percent from 14 percent in 2013. iOS users drove four times as much mobile sales revenue as Android users, 79 and 21 percent respectively.

Best Deals: Between Sunday and Monday before Thanksgiving the average online price fell 5.5 percent, 0.5 percent more than forecasted, representing the highest price drop in a single day in 2014. Thanksgiving Day saw the lowest prices online with an average discount of 25.2 percent, 1.2 percent lower than in 2013.

Impact of Social Networks: The average order value (AOV) for sales coming directly from social networks was led by Facebook with $114.45. Pinterest came in second with $93.20, and Twitter drove online sales of $90.74 on average. Pinterest saw the largest YoY increase in AOV, up 16 percent. Facebook (seven percent) and Twitter (five percent) also saw slight increases. Two percent ($74.6 million) of purchases came directly from social media sites, which is flat compared to 2013.

Singles’ Day Surprise: For the first time, Singles’ Day let U.S. retailers start the holiday shopping season earlier this year. Online sales on November 11 set a new record with $1.29 billion, a 16 percent YoY increase, and close to online sales on Thanksgiving with $1.33 Billion. Singles’ Day is expected to grow faster than Cyber Monday and become one of the top five days with the lowest online prices this season.

Top Gifts: Social media buzz continued to be an early indicator for top gifts. 4K TVs saw the biggest jump in social buzz month-over-month (MoM) with social media mentions for Sony and Samsung increasing 350 percent. Fitbit led the wearable device category, which had 100,000 social mentions on Thanksgiving and Black Friday while iPhone 6 continued to lead in the smartphone category.

“Consumer use of larger screen smartphones helped drive significant increases in mobile online sales – enough to set records two days in a row,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst, Adobe Digital Index.

This type of data and its use- meaning not just data but insights that are business actionable- are what will make next generation customer experience rock in the coming years. It will be interesting to see how many companies really begin to use “big data” and analytics in ways that end up helping companies gain and retain their customers.

@drnatalie

VP and Principal Analyst, Covering Marketing, Sales and Service To Deliver Great Customer Experiences

Constellation Research