IBM, Salesforce Advance Partnership with Joint Solutions

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Generating and gathering predictive insights from Artificial Intelligence (AI) is complex, complicated work. But spreading these capabilities through organizations and industries around the globe can be even more challenging. That’s one of the reasons IBM partnered with Salesforce six months ago.

Together with Salesforce, we have designed and developed joint solutions that will enable an entirely new level of intelligent customer engagement across sales, service, marketing, commerce and more, meeting the goals we set back in February. Below is a snapshot of some of the great innovative solutions we’re making available today.

Unveiling Joint IBM, Salesforce Solutions

At the heart of our moves today is the IBM Cloud Integration for Salesforce, a new version of IBM’s market-leading integration platform that allows customers to directly connect to on-premises and cloud data sources within Salesforce by creating powerful integration flows in minutes.

In addition, IBM’s App Connect, which provides a no-code approach to building integrations that can also leverage AI capabilities such as Watson Tone Analyzer and Natural Language Classifier so that users can build new cognitive solutions, is now available through Salesforce. For example, understanding the sentiment of a customer communication automatically to take an appropriate next step in a business process.

Additionally, IBM’s MQ (enterprise messaging) clients can now process events originating in Salesforce in real-time, enabling secure and rapid message data transport between IBM and Salesforce applications. For example, a wealth advisor can unify client data, such as individual investment and risk profiles, with financial trends and public macro economic information using IBM Cloud Integration directly within Salesforce so they can make smarter investing decisions for her customers. Check out IBM Cloud Integration for Salesforce here.

Driving Deeper Global Consulting Capabilities with New Bluewolf Salesforce Garage 

Bluewolf, an IBM company, is expanding its global professional services footprint with the launch of new global Salesforce customer engagement centers in key markets around the world. The new Bluewolf Salesforce Garage bring additional speed and scale to Bluewolf’s global consulting approach, combining Bluewolf’s deep expertise, strategy and delivery capabilities in Salesforce, with IBM’s leadership in cognitive and design thinking, to drive digital transformation for companies of all sizes.

Powered by Bluewolf’s proprietary tech-enabled approach Bluewolf Sightline, the Garage represents full-time local resources, fully trained and enabled to support new proprietary services, including DevOps support for Salesforce, to deliver a seamless journey for global clients.

Bluewolf Salesforce Garages in Bangalore, Noida and Pune are now open, with global expansion in cities, including Bratislava, Montreal, Beijing and Lille, coming in the next few months. Customers such as T-Mobile, Telus and Wisdom Tree are leveraging integrated solutions from IBM and Salesforce. Learn more about the IBM and Salesforce strategic partnership here and stay tuned for more exciting announcements from us!

Impressing Customers with Key Weather Information

Weather causes businesses to lose more than half a trillion dollars every year¹ — but now, customers can react faster and more intelligently to weather conditions by harnessing weather data from the Weather Company, an IBM Business, right within Salesforce to make smarter decisions, increasing customer satisfaction and increasing efficiency. With Weather Company Data Packages for Salesforce, developers can now build applications and processes that integrate weather insights to make better, well-informed decisions. The three new Lightning components include:

• Weather Focus: With the new Weather Focus Lightning component, customers can visualize how weather may affect a customer within the context of the customer contact or account record. For example, a shipping and logistics company can surface weather forecast data from the Weather Company right within Salesforce and automatically update delivery routes and schedules based on predicted weather conditions.
• Weather Recorder: The new Weather Recorder Lightning component empowers customers to save weather data from a specific date and time to a case record. For example, an insurance agent can save weather info directly in the Salesforce case for a customer who is filing a claim due to damage that occurred during a storm earlier that day. Insurance companies can use this information to assess risk, validate claims, and minimize fraud.
• Scheduling Assistant: The new Scheduling Assistant Lightning component helps customers select the optimal time for an appointment based on forecasted weather conditions, as an enhancement to the standard Field Service Lightning scheduling experience. For example, a team repaving a highway could use Scheduling Assistant to optimize their work schedule based on the ideal weather conditions for roadwork.

Each Weather Company Lightning component offers weather capabilities out-of-the-box, but customers can also purchase several expanded weather data packages for even more actionable weather-based insights directly within Salesforce. Information for developers on how they can leverage the same code that powers the Weather Company Lightning components to jumpstart their use of this expanded weather data is available on Github.

Additionally, we’re making it easy for anyone to learn how to use weather data to enhance their customer experience through the Salesforce Trailhead Project, Incorporate Data from The Weather Company in Salesforce,” which provides developers with the hands-on experience they need to customize Weather Company/Salesforce integrations for their teams.

1. Source IBM – https://business.weather.com/writable/resources/Weather-Means-Business_IBM-White-Paper_FINAL.pdf