Salesforce has teased a new product suite – “AI Cloud” – to bolster its position in the crowded customer experience AI market.
The announcement is the vendor’s latest move to augment its portfolio with “enterprise-ready AI” – with the emphasis very much on generative AI.
Indeed, it combines the generative AI activities Salesforce launched in April.
These include: Service GPT, Sales GPT, Marketing GPT, Commerce GPT, Apex GPT, Flow GPT, Slack GPT, and Tableau GPT.
Currently, many of these solutions are half-baked, with Tableau GPT not available in pilot until November 2023, for example.
Yet, that has not stopped many big-name businesses from already using elements of the suite, including AAA-The Auto Club Group, Gucci, Inspirato, and RBC Wealth Management.
In addition, those that leverage the AI Cloud may benefit from an Einstein GPT Trust Layer, which is front and center of the announcement.
According to Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce, this provides a benchmark for trusted enterprise AI. He said:
AI Cloud, built on the number one CRM, is the fastest and easiest way for our customers to unleash the incredible power of AI, with trust at the center driven by our new Einstein GPT Trust Layer.
That layer aims to bridge the trust gap many associate with generative AI, as concerns swirling data governance, privacy, and potential risks run rife.
In doing so, the Trust Layer will prevent large language models (LLMs) from retaining sensitive data.
Another core feature of the AI Cloud platform is its “prompt templates and builders”. These allow users to influence the “quality and relevance” of AI-generated content.
To do so, the solution will leverage “harmonized data to ground generated outputs in every company’s unique context,” according to a Salesforce press release.
Finally, Salesforce has committed to an open ecosystem, despite the plethora of GPT-powered products with the suite.
Indeed, the leading CRM vendor has designed its AI Cloud to host LLMs from AWS, Anthropic, Cohere, and many other generative AI innovators, within the Salesforce architecture.
As such, businesses that train their own sector-specific models outside of Salesforce may still draw benefits from the suite.
The $360,000 Price Tag
Last week, Apple unveiled its Vision Pro headset. The move seems promising, yet the price tag left many wincing – as the video below shows.
https://youtube.com/shorts/4swt0pm6K8s?feature=share
Salesforce received a somewhat similar reaction upon its AI Cloud announcement.
Indeed, the starter pack alone will set businesses back a whopping $360,000 annually.
Now, that price point is subject to change, and the vendor will offer a free AI-readiness assessment from Salesforce Professional Services.
Nevertheless, some industry professionals seem disillusioned by the price tag. Reacting on Twitter, Jim Lundy, CEO & Lead Analyst at Aragon, stated:
Our take – Customers are starting to look elsewhere for AI for CRM.
Worryingly for the vendor, there are many other options for these customers too.
While many see Salesforce as the dominant player in the space, it only controls 22.9 percent of the market, according to IDC research.
Now, Salesforce still outsells its nearest competitor (Microsoft) by four to one.
Nevertheless, that only goes to show many vendors occupy small shares of the space, and lots of those will also aim to leverage generative AI to reimagine CRM innovation.
After all, the technology promises to be a disruptor across many pockets of customer experience.
Of course, Salesforce anticipates it’ll allow them to further increase its market share. However, there is also a chance that competitors – such as Microsoft, HubSpot, and SAP – may leverage the technology in a more appealing, cost-efficient way and trouble that perceived dominance.
After recently reporting its slowest quarterly revenue growth in 13 years, Salesforce will hope that is not the case.
