The Rise of Data Cloud

Salesforce Genie, ergh, I mean Salesforce Data Cloud, is supposedly Salesforce’s quickest growing in-house developed product. Yet, most Salesforce professionals I have interacted with have never touched Data Cloud and do not really understand the use cases. What gives?

Sometime during 2023, Salesforce clearly and decisively made a couple of big bets. If you saw any Salesforce marketing, you probably noticed the “CRM + Data + AI” phrase used again and again. Just like all of the other companies jumping on the AI train, Salesforce made it clear that they were transforming their product with new AI capabilities. Was this just a way to pump the stock price? Was there any depth to what Salesforce was purportedly developing? Well, we will see in time, but I think it is noteworthy that Salesforce has been in the AI game since 2016. This is not just a spontaneous pivot by the CRM giant.

‘I thought we were talking about Data Cloud?’ you may ask. We are. The AI revolution that pounced upon all of us over the past 12 months is why Data Cloud is more relevant now than it ever has been. Data Cloud is definitely helpful when it comes to harmonizing and unifying data in order to segment and send to Marketing cloud for personalized journeys…but it is also a cornerstone in the upcoming uses of AI within the Salesforce platform. The more relevant data that can be leveraged, the better. If AI is here to stay, so is Data Cloud.