Artificial Intelligence hits Salesforce platform - but what does that actually mean to your business?

After strategic acquisitions of Metamind, PredictionIO and RelateIQ, and the hiring of 175 scientists, Salesforce has set up an umbrella brand "Salesforce Einstein", where all AI produts live.

Salesforce has often been the first player in the use of newer technologies and were notably one of the first truly in the cloud offering. Salesforce recognised that devices and sensors would be giving signals that its users could collect to understand customers and markets more. 

With Salesforce Einstein, there will be more advanced machine learning, deep learning, predictive analytics, natural language processing and smart data discovery. 

What this means for all businesses using Salesforce is that this tool will be come increasingly important to the point that its hundreds of thousands of users will not be able to look to other systems as they will be so tied to the platform and its stronghold on customer data. For Oracle users, don't be dismayed. This announcement has come just before the Oracle Conference in the US, so it wasn't by accident that Salesforce Einstein tried to steal the thunder. The big issue is who has the best AI outcomes for customer connections and data, and which platform is less likely to hold you over a barrel and raise their prices so that you can no longer afford the platform, but are forced to stay put because all your data is there and you cannot afford to lose it.

Marketing Eye uses Salesforce. Largely because one of my mentors is such good friends with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, and I had the privilege to chat to him when he first started the company in Australia. Having said that, I love most CRM softwares as they all do a good job and some are more affordable for SME's than others.