Commercial Development: Salesforce Business Intelligence Integration Launches Revenue Cloud, Aims to Help Companies Track Revenue Lifecycle

When Salesforce acquired Demandware in 2016 for $2.8 billion, that’s when Salesforce Commerce Cloud came into action. As more and more industries started getting into e-commerce, Salesforce prepared to expand which is where the idea behind launching Commerce Cloud rolled out. The main aim of the company was to target the major retailers that consisted of Demandware’s customer base. In today’s scenario, more than 680 million unique shoppers joined Commerce Cloud over holidays, says Salesforce. Also, merchandise worth $16 billion sold annually through this platform.

Salesforce is improving Commerce Cloud’s personalization capabilities that are powered by AI with new features and is adding new tools on the platform as well. The major updates on the platform include the latest ‘Einstein Visual Search’ which is a unique image search feature that provides shoppers with the ability to “snap and search” for products with the help of images and not text. There is an Einstein Recommendations API as well that allows retailers to integrate Einstein-driven product recommendations beyond their e-commerce site.

Apart from all this, Salesforce is revamping its inventory availability service, allowing retailers to operate inventory in real-time across distributions centers and stores. This service works as an actual platform service now which can be combined with other services and is aligned adjacently with the remodeled recommendation engine.

For example, a customer’s preference and click path will showcase products that are in stock nearby on location-aware apps, all with the help of recommendations in AI-driven applications. Just with a bit of technical support, retailers using Commerce Cloud can implement these features. “Our customers don’t have an army of data scientists and now they can use services they never had access to before,” says Mike Micucci, CEO, Commerce Cloud. “And they can scale them to thousands of stores.”

There is something for the developers too. Salesforce is offering on-demand sandboxes for developers and a new Commerce Cloud Developer Trailhead and Commerce API Explorer portal as well.

At present, the Commerce Cloud Einstein Visual Search is in the pilot. The feature will be accessible generally in the second half of this year. Whereas, On-demand Developer Sandboxes are in beta and will be available in the first half of this year. There are no details about the availability of Commerce Cloud Einstein Recommendations API (currently in beta). Recently, Salesforce launched Revenue Cloud, a new cloud product designed to give companies a holistic view of their revenue cycle and launch new revenue streams.

“We are helping businesses accelerate growth, whether that means filling the gaps of lost revenue or doubling down on the areas of your business that are doing well,” Salesforce said in a blog post. “No matter the complexity of your deals, business model, or revenue processes, Revenue Cloud can be the single source of truth for customer transactional data.”

Revenue Cloud is part of the Salesforce Customer 360 platform and combines the capabilities from the company’s existing CPQ and Billing, Partner Relationship Management (PRM), and B2B Commerce products into a single offering. It also contains new solutions, Multi-Cloud Billing, Customer Asset Lifecycle Management and the CPQ-B2B Commerce connector.

Multi-Cloud Billing is based on technology from Vlocity, which Salesforce acquired in June 2020 and has since been renamed Salesforce Industries. Multi-Cloud Billing pulls from the industry-specific cloud solutions offered by Salesforce Industries to help businesses build new revenue streams by managing billing and payments within a single system. Revenue Cloud also contains Quick Starts designed to help companies launch new revenue streams.

Customer Asset Lifecycle Management provides a visual dashboard that can help companies track KPIs, like customer lifetime value (CLTV), net revenue retention (NRR), and monthly recurring revenue (MRR) in real-time. Businesses can see a variety of customer information such as purchases, contract amendments, and open balances.

Using the CPQ-B2B Commerce connector, businesses can customize their digital storefront and carts. Customers can add products or services to their shopping cart and then reach out to sales reps if they have questions. And the system will also give sales reps detailed client information, such as existing product history and online interactions.

In Conclusion

Revenue Cloud is the latest addition to Salesforce’s specialized cloud offerings. Earlier this year the software-as-a-service company announced Work.com to help businesses and governments respond to COVID-19, Salesforce Anywhere to improve workforce collaboration and updates to Meetings and Einstein Call Coaching.