Key Takeaways from Dreamforce 2019
By: Nick Wassenberg
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Last week, members of the Digital River partnerships, sales, marketing and executive teams headed to San Francisco for Dreamforce 2019. The conference drew more than 170,000 attendees – yes, you read that right – from around the world to discuss trends and insights on how business leaders can drive their companies forward.
At the show, Digital River team members focused on the ecosystem around the Salesforce Commerce Cloud, learning more about advancements and investments being made, as well as how our solution complements others in the ecosystem. We caught up with our team to discuss their highlights and what stood out to them from Dreamforce 2019.
There’s a Cloud for That
Salesforce is a unique ecosystem and community making it more comprehensive than commerce alone. Its customers come to Salesforce to solve many business problems in one place, using solutions that work together and build on one another seamlessly. The cross-cloud use of Einstein AI, Tableau Analytics and the new MuleSoft Anypoint platform, along with cloud extension solutions on the AppExchange, are key demonstrations of the customer’s desire to have flexible, end-to-end business solutions.
The show was full of exciting announcements, with a few focused on Commerce Cloud capabilities. Einstein analytics can now be used when designing and updating commerce sites to power personalized experiences for today’s demanding consumers. Customer 360 Truth, which leverages the MuleSoft platform to pull data from diverse sources, offers a single source of truth for brands to further understand their customers’ unique needs.
AppExchange is the hub of the Salesforce ecosystem
Salesforce is supporting their cloud ecosystems by building out their AppExchange and partner community. The Salesforce AppExchange is the world’s leading enterprise cloud marketplace with ready-to-install solutions that span all industries and departments, with new solutions for Commerce, Sales, Service and Marketing.
For both B2B and B2C commerce, the future lies in ecosystem approaches made possible by partner communities. At Digital River, we believe decoupling layers of the commerce stack and combining best-of-breed platforms via open APIs to create a modular, fully-customizable solution for your unique brand allows you to deliver the seamless and superior experiences your customers want.
Apps and Partners and Consultants, Oh My!
With the latest release of AppExchange, customers and Consultants can search not only for the apps (extensions of various Salesforce clouds) that meet their needs, but also the consultants or System Integrators (SIs) that can help them implement those solutions. Consultants, SIs, and partners have their expertise on display, allowing customers to see Trailhead certifications and more held by that partner team in addition to customer reviews.
Along with intelligent recommendations, this will help customers easily find Consultants who have the expertise that fits their business needs and solves their unique challenges. Enhancements are coming that will highlight partners who have completed projects together successfully, giving customers a faster way to choose multiple partners as a “package” for their solutions.
Digital River works with expert SI and Consultant partners to help our customers power global ecommerce. If you’re interested in learning more, contact us today.
A Commerce Cloud AppExchange Story: Avid Technology and Digital River Join Forces
As an inaugural strategic partner on the Salesforce Commerce Cloud AppExchange, we held a session at Dreamforce with Avid Technology and Salesforce to discuss Avid’s B2B Commerce journey and why the company joined forces with Digital River and Salesforce to create a complete ecommerce solution focused on global growth.
Avid made the switch to using Digital River for payments and risk protection and saw their ecommerce business begin to grow rapidly after going from discovery to delivery in four months. This growth was fueled in part by personalizing and optimizing the buying and renewal experience and understanding and reducing subscription churn. Avid is now able to support more currencies, languages, and payment types to increase their global sales and drive conversion rates by providing localized experiences to their customers. There is nothing more satisfying than a customer showcasing how Digital River’s approach to powering global commerce helps them achieve their goals!
Digital River’s unique integration with Salesforce allows brands to create superior online buying experiences with a solution designed to improve customer experience, grow revenue, expand internationally and help protect brands from risks associated with selling online.
Connect with us to learn more about our best-in-class offering for creating seamless online buying experiences and solving the toughest global ecommerce challenges.