Salesforce Extends Commerce Cloud Einstein -- Delivering Personalized AI-Powered Shopping Experiences

SAN FRANCISCO, May 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today announced new Commerce Cloud Einstein innovations that enable retailers to deliver personalized, AI-powered experiences for shoppers that span web, mobile, social, in-store and more. Additional innovations that further enable retailers to deliver the unified shopping experience that consumers demand include new Order Management features, Mobile Site Reference Architecture blueprints and Google Android Pay integration.

Today, artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way all consumers shop. They now expect a personalized experience and instant gratification with every interaction — from online product recommendations to smarter interactions with in-store associates. However, the technical complexity and resources required to deliver AI is out of reach for most retailers. On top of that, the costly legacy commerce systems that many brands use do not support the entire customer journey and lack the flexibility required to connect the variety of channels consumers use for shopping.

To stay competitive in this fast moving and connected world, brands need a platform that allows them to have more personalized and engaging experiences with consumers on any channel or device. In fact, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF), 86% of retailers plan to implement a unified commerce platform over the next ten years to more effectively sell to connected consumers.

Commerce Cloud Einstein: Now Delivering More AI-Powered Consumer Experiences That Turn Browsers into Buyers
Commerce Cloud already powers more than 2,000 commerce sites in 53 countries that sold more than $16 billion in merchandise in 2016 alone, including at brands like Black Diamond, Ethan Allen and Icebreaker. It has become the leading enterprise cloud commerce solution by enabling the world's top retail brands to unify commerce operations across all points of sale. Customers are already leveraging existing Einstein AI capabilities in Commerce Cloud including Einstein Product Recommendations, which recommend the best products to any consumer on any channel—even if they are shopping anonymously, and Einstein Commerce Insights which empower retailers with data-driven insights for smarter merchandising and store planning.

"The connected consumer is rapidly disrupting retail, creating a new imperative for brands to deliver smarter, more personal shopping experiences everywhere," said Jeff Barnett, CEO, Commerce Cloud, Salesforce. "Commerce Cloud Einstein accelerates this transformation by lowering the barriers of AI for every retailer, empowering them to build consumer loyalty with every interaction and increase conversion across every channel."

Today, Commerce Cloud Einstein is getting even smarter with new innovations that empower every company to become a retail Trailblazer and deliver the predictive and personalized commerce experiences that modern shoppers demand.

• New Einstein Predictive Sort uses machine learning to personalize the order in which products appear in search and category pages on ecommerce sites. Using order history and web behavior, a predictive model is created for each individual shopper. Now, the most relevant products for a shopper are shown first in search results, decreasing the time a customer spends looking for what they want and thus increasing conversion. Brands can quickly embed this capability into their sites with just a few clicks - no coding or data scientists required.
• New Order Management empowers retailers with intelligent algorithms that seamlessly connect customer demand with inventory supply in the most cost-effective way possible, no matter where the customer or inventory is located. By managing and collecting all key order and inventory data across stores, warehouses and dropship vendors, retailers can now support "buy anywhere, fulfill anywhere" scenarios such as buy online/pickup in-store and ship from store.
• New Mobile Site Reference Architecture provides an out-of-the-box mobile website blueprint that optimizes the mobile shopping experience. Commerce Cloud customers see a majority of traffic from mobile devices, and the Mobile Site Reference Architecture provides retailers with clear guidance based on best practices in mobile site design, merchandising and technical architecture, enabling them to create state-of-the-art mobile shopping experiences faster than ever before.
• New Android Pay Integration delivers shoppers the convenience of fast, frictionless, hassle-free checkouts, while merchants benefit from a simple integration, improved mobile conversions, and the security of an Android Pay transaction.

"At Charlotte Russe, delivering personalized experiences across all points of customer engagement is key to our continued growth," said Sejal Solanki, Director of Digital Experience & Product Development at Charlotte Russe. "With our recent move to Commerce Cloud, we are better equipped to connect with our customer throughout her journey."

"We're excited to deliver Android Pay seamlessly inside of Salesforce Commerce Cloud," said Pali Bhat, Global VP of Payment Products, Google. "Android Pay makes mobile checkout easy. Shoppers no longer need to enter their card details, they can just choose Android Pay and authenticate with their device to speed through checkout."

"Salesforce Commerce Cloud continues to be a strong option for retailers looking for an established, highly scalable software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution with market-leading personalization and promotions commerce capabilities," according to The Forrester Wave™: B2C Commerce Suites, Q1 2017. "Salesforce also shows compelling over-the-horizon potential in the realm of artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven decision making with its Salesforce Einstein capabilities."

Salesforce Trailhead: Empowering Retailers to be Their Best
Salesforce is not only democratizing AI for retailers with Einstein, but is also democratizing education with Trailhead, empowering anyone to become a retail Trailblazer. Trailhead is Salesforce's interactive, guided and gamified learning platform, where anyone can develop skills that empower them to land a job in the workforce of the future. Trailhead is providing a direct path for anyone to start learning Salesforce for free, from anywhere. Since launching in 2014, Trailblazers have earned more than two million badges, which directly relate to in-demand job skills. In fact, according to Indeed, two of the top 10 best jobs of the future are in the Salesforce Economy*.

Together, these advancements in technology and learning enable anyone to deliver personalized, AI-powered experiences for shoppers with Commerce Cloud Einstein and achieve new levels of productivity for themselves and their company. With guided education via Trailhead, every retailer is empowered to be their best. Check out the following trails here:

• Discover how Salesforce can help retailers optimize the buying and selling experience through Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/trails/cc-overview
• Learn about how Salesforce is empowering millions of retail Trailblazers to succeed by leveraging AI across the world's #1 CRM: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/

*Indeed: The Best Jobs in the United States: 2017

Additional Information

• Learn more about the Commerce Cloud here: https://www.salesforce.com/products/commerce-cloud/overview/
• The 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce is available here: http://www.demandware.com/resources/gartner-digital-commerce-mq/
• The 2017 Forrester Wave for B2C Commerce Suites is available here: https://sfdc.co/bvwUwC

Pricing and Availability

• Commerce Cloud Einstein is generally available today.
• Commerce Cloud Einstein Predictive Sort is expected to be generally available in July 2017 at no additional cost.
• Mobile Site Reference Architecture is currently available in Developer Preview, and is expected to be generally available in August 2017.
• Android Pay is expected to be generally available in August 2017 at no additional cost.
• Commerce Cloud Einstein Product Recommendations and Commerce Insights are all generally available today and are included as part of a Commerce Cloud license.
• Commerce Cloud Order Management is priced on a per-order basis with a shared success model and is generally available today.

Connect with Salesforce

• Like Salesforce and Commerce Cloud on Facebook: http://facebook.com/salesforce and http://www.facebook.com/commercecloud.
• Follow @salesforce and @commercecloud on Twitter: http://twitter.com/salesforce and http://www.twitter.com/commercecloud.

About Salesforce
Salesforce, the global leader in CRM, empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit: www.salesforce.com.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "CRM." For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com (https://www.salesforce.com/index.jsp), or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Rights of ALBERT EINSTEIN are used with permission of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Represented exclusively by Greenlight.

SOURCE Salesforce

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