Salesforce Introduces Sales Cloud Einstein Forecasting, Celebrates One Year of Salesforce Einstein

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce [NYSE: CRM], the global leader in CRM, today announced the next generation of Sales Cloud Einstein, bringing AI to every step of the sales cycle, from building pipeline and closing deals, to growing the business. With the new Einstein Forecasting, sales leaders gain visibility and intelligence to more accurately predict sales revenue at every stage in the sales cycle. In addition, Einstein Opportunity Scoring automatically prioritizes high-value opportunities and Einstein Email Insights automatically identifies the most important emails, enabling sales reps to sell faster and smarter.

Introducing Einstein Forecasting
From the head of sales to the CFO, Einstein Forecasting delivers a breakthrough innovation that drives business predictability. Sales leaders still rely upon incomplete spreadsheets and antiquated systems to forecast sales projections, resulting in inaccurate forecasts, underperformance and a disconnected business. In fact, less than half of deals close as forecasted, leading to missed quotas for sales teams and revenue shortfalls¹.

Einstein Forecasting is a fully automated, out-of-the-box solution that uses all of a company's historical CRM data to take the guesswork out of forecasting. Combining the art of data mining and science of machine learning, Einstein Forecasting is able to analyze, process and understand key factors like seasonality and historical performance to make highly accurate, individualized sales forecasts. Additionally, Einstein Forecasting combines a unique mix of self-learning algorithms that learn individual and team forecasting behaviors, analyzes whether they are consistently optimistic, pessimistic or on target, and then synthesizes an unbiased analysis for the sales leader. Then, Einstein uses special logic to translate the data behind each forecast into human language so sales leaders know what to expect from the pipeline and why.

With Einstein Forecasting, a regional manager for an insurance company, for example, can quickly view a dashboard to see if his team is on track to hit its sales numbers for the quarter or if any deals are in jeopardy. With foresight from Einstein Forecasting, the regional manager and other sales leaders can take action with their sales agents before it is too late to get the quarter back on track. Additionally, if the CFO of the insurance company is looking to expand the business to a new region but unsure if the company can take on the development cost, she can quickly tap into Einstein Forecasting to predict whether the company will have enough funding that month or quarter to take on the new region.

In addition, Salesforce also introduced Einstein Opportunity Scoring and Einstein Email Insights, ensuring sales reps stay focused on the most important deals. 

• Einstein Opportunity Scoring—Identifies, surfaces and prioritizes the most valuable deals—those with the largest deal size, most executive engagement and more—directly within Sales Cloud. Additionally, Einstein continues to monitor deals in progress to identify any high-value deals that may be in jeopardy, keeping sales reps laser-focused on building pipeline and closing more deals. For example, with Einstein Opportunity Scoring a sales rep no longer has to spend countless hours sifting through opportunities. Instead, sales reps are able to focus on the deals most likely to close and add resources to deals that may be at risk.
• Einstein Email Insights—With Einstein Email Insights every sales rep is armed with their own personal email assistant. Powered by natural language processing (NLP), Einstein Email Insights identifies the most important emails and recommends the best action or response, enabling sales reps and leaders to prioritize their inbox and quickly address customer needs. Proactive action and response recommendations enable reps to keep deals moving, from scheduling a meeting to sending a quote. For example, if a sales rep is returning from a full day of customer meetings to an inbox full of emails, they no longer have to dig through their inbox to find the most important emails. 

Salesforce Einstein Celebrates One Year of Innovation
In September 2016, Salesforce introduced Einstein AI to bring the power of artificial intelligence to every business user. In the months since, the company has infused advanced AI capabilities across the Customer Success Platform to transform customer experiences across every touchpoint. Today, Einstein is delivering more than 475 million predictions daily, enabling trailblazers including U.S. Bank, Room&Board, FareCompare, Silverline and Black Diamond to be smarter, more productive and predictive about their businesses. In addition, Einstein Platform Services empowers developers of any skill level to build AI-powered CRM apps using computer vision and natural language processing—with clicks, not code. Already there are more than seven thousand developers building Einstein-powered apps. As Salesforce Einstein's pace of innovation continues, Salesforce Research is focused on pushing the state of the art in deep learning. Under the leadership of Chief Scientist Dr. Richard Socher, the group has published 10 academic papers in its first year, bringing cutting edge technology to Salesforce customers. For more highlights from Einstein's first year, see here.

New Salesforce AI Innovation Fund to Fuel Next-Generation AI
To fuel the development of new AI solutions, Salesforce Ventures—Salesforce's corporate investment group—today announced the new $50 million Salesforce AI Innovation Fund. Fast-growing AI start-ups Highspot, Squirro and TalkIQ are the first recipients of funding from the Salesforce AI Innovation Fund to accelerate their development of transformative AI solutions on Salesforce. Additionally, Salesforce Ventures has completed an investment in All Turtles, an AI startup studio that partners with founding teams and companies to build AI-centric products. Salesforce will partner with All Turtles to co-create cutting edge AI solutions built on the Salesforce platform.

Comments on the News:

• "Salesforce continues to lead the CRM market, delivering innovation, after innovation," said Adam Blitzer, EVP and GM, Salesforce Sales Cloud. "As we celebrate our first year of Salesforce Einstein, we're excited to introduce the next generation of Sales Cloud Einstein, an unparalleled sales platform. Now, equipped with predictive and intelligent capabilities, Sales Cloud Einstein has cracked the traditionally flawed forecasting model, bringing AI to every step of the sales cycle."
• "Artificial intelligence has the potential to make every company and employee smarter, faster, more efficient and more productive," said John Somorjai, EVP of Corporate Development and Salesforce Ventures, Salesforce. "The new Salesforce AI Innovation Fund will help accelerate the development of transformative AI solutions that extend and complement Salesforce, helping our customers reach new levels of success."
• "At U.S. Bank, we're committed to delivering trust, transparency and a smarter banking experience for the customers we serve," said Bill Hoffman, chief analytics officer and head of CRM at U.S. Bank. "Salesforce provides us with a single platform to empower every customer and employee interaction, and we're excited about the predictive abilities Einstein Forecasting will further deliver."
• "Predictable and profitable business growth is something that every company strives to achieve," said Sheryl Kingstone, Research Director, 451 Research Customer Experience and Commerce. "However, accurate sales forecasting has been a longstanding challenge for many companies. By combining intelligence, pipeline transparency and key sales data, Einstein Forecasting provides a crucial view of sales revenue indicators that helps business leaders correctly predict business growth."

About Sales Cloud
Sales Cloud, the world's #1 intelligent sales platform, delivers an unparalleled user experience—enabling sales teams to sell faster, smarter and the way they want. No matter the industry, role or company size, Sales Cloud arms salespeople with the intelligence and insights they need to navigate and manage the entire sales process, from lead-to-cash. In the first half of 2017, Salesforce continued to extend the Sales Cloud platform with the introduction of Einstein High Velocity Sales Cloud, arming sales reps of all levels with the intelligence they need to achieve new levels of productivity; and Sales Cloud PRM, enabling channel partners to close deals faster than ever. Companies that have deployed Sales Cloud have seen an average 35 percent increase in sales productivity, a 30 percent increase in lead conversions and an overall 25 percent increase in revenue².

Pricing and Availability:

• Einstein Forecasting, Einstein Opportunity Scoring and Einstein Email Insights are currently in pilot and expected to be generally available in the first half of 2018. Pricing will be announced at the time of general availability.

Additional Information

• To learn more about Sales Cloud Einstein please visit: www.salesforce.com/einsteinnextgen
• Discover how Sales Cloud Einstein can help companies sell faster and smarter via Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/modules/ai_sales
• Learn more about Salesforce Einstein's features across the Salesforce Platform via Trailhead: https://trailhead.salesforce.com/modules/get_smart_einstein_feat
• To learn more about Salesforce Ventures, please visit: https://www.salesforce.com/company/ventures/

Connect with Salesforce

• Like Salesforce on Facebook http://facebook.com/salesforce
• Follow @salesforce, @salescloud and @SalesforceVC on Twitter

About Salesforce
Salesforce, the global CRM leader, 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, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

¹ CSO Insights 2017 World Class Sales Practices Study, February 2017
² Salesforce Customer Relationship Survey; 2014-2016

SOURCE Salesforce

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