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4 Predictions for the Future of Salesforce and Data Collection

By Art West

Branded content with JotForm

Salesforce data collection is more important than ever, with the information you gather not just documenting past interactions, but also predicting future trends.

The data you have, how you collect it, and the way it is utilized is so important – the way these aspects are managed can give you the competitive edge. Let’s delve a little deeper!

1. Unleashing the Potential of AI and Machine Learning

The fusion of artificial intelligence and Salesforce may be a game-changer for your business. While Salesforce are releasing a lot of AI enhancements to their platform, this is not something you should just jump right into. You need to create an AI strategy, outlining use cases for your business and understanding how AI could streamline your processes.

And at the foundation of this strategy is data. To be able to harness AI to its full potential, you need to have an integrated system – AI is powered by data, so having a CRM with unified customer profiles is vital. The more (good quality) data you can feed into your systems, the more accurate the outputs will be. 

Using products such as Data Cloud can consolidate the information you have ‘cross-cloud’, and data collection tools for data that can’t be entered into Salesforce via an integration (i.e. user feedback or survey information).

Once you have the correct foundation to unleash AI, it can ease your workload and therefore allow you to focus more on the important tasks. For example, in a customer service setting, if the customer is prompted to submit as much information as possible about an issue and the machine has complete data on the products a company offers, AI could offer up a solution to their issue quickly and succinctly. 

2. Data Privacy

With all the talk about AI in the ecosystem, there is also the underlying theme of data privacy. Understandably, people are asking: how will AI use your data and is it safe?

To help ease these concerns, Salesforce brought in the Trust Layer. This helps keep your outputs contextual to your organization’s data, without sending that data beyond your trusted boundary. However, this lack of trust is also apparent in areas outside of AI…

It’s becoming more apparent that customers will not interact with companies they do not trust, so this should be at the forefront of your mind. Customers want to be sure that the data they are giving you is safe and that you are being compliant with it – you won’t be able to collect data if you are not trusted. Ensure that you are storing data in the correct ways, as well as complying with the legal framework that applies to you (such as GDPR).

3. Intuitive User Interfaces

Now, let’s talk about simplicity. It’s all well and good having your data in your system and keeping it safe, but it’s not bringing you as much value as it could be without having a way to visualize it in Salesforce.

Salesforce is known for having a pretty user-friendly system, which is customizable and mostly declarative (meaning you can build using clicks instead of code). There are many ways for you to achieve this data visualization:

  • Reports: A list of filtered records. Your users can view the data that is relevant and important to them.
  • Dashboards: A simple way to visualize key data from either one or multiple Salesforce reports in different formats (i.e. graphs, tables, etc.).
  • CRM Analytics: A powerful analytics platform that can take data from any source and automatically analyze it to help your organization answer critical questions in a quick and visually appealing format.

These interfaces democratize data analysis, making it easy for anyone to dive deep into data, gather insights, and make data-driven decisions.

4. Collecting and Utilizing Data

The more data you have, the more thorough the insights you can take from it (and the more you can begin to utilize AI) – but how do you collect all this data? 

Forms are a great way to get the data you want, helping to ensure data quality. And having this data directly in Salesforce makes the whole process much easier. 

Jotform on the Salesforce AppExchange helps to bridge the gap between creating forms and seamlessly integrating data into your org. This integration supercharges your Salesforce data collection with Jotform’s no-code form builder and native automation features, including prefilling, collecting eSignatures, creating shareable apps, generating custom PDFs, and much more.

Essentially, Jotform’s Salesforce forms makes the whole process of collecting and funneling crucial customer data into Salesforce a streamlined and efficient operation – meaning you can have more data at your disposal to use as needed.

Summary

In any company, you want to make sure your data is working for you, not the other way around! From the magic of AI to making Salesforce more user-friendly, there are various ways you can ensure your data is in the best format for both you and your customers.

To experience the power of Jotform for data collection, try out their tool for free!

The Author

Art West

Art West is the Senior Social Media Manager for Jotform. He is passionate about no-code, automation, and educating Jotform users on how to build better forms and workflows.

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