Overview
Dreamforce returned to a near-normal, in-person event in 2022 (September 20-22) in San Francisco with 40,000 in-person attendees (compared to 5,000 in ‘21) along with 140,000 virtual attendees viewing the event through Salesforce+. It offered more that 1,400 sessions and was a significant, much-needed economic driver for San Francisco generating $100M+ in economic impact.
Box was a featured Navigator sponsor with a sizable presence including a speaking session with our own Yasser Said, Global Vice President, GTM Strategy & Operations, joining the panel for Slack Connect: Build Loyalty with Every Customer Experience. The Box team maximized our presence at the event with our own booth with a constant flow of traffic, a private meeting space for EICs, utilized our San Francisco Office for partner and customer meetings, and a jam-packed Happy Hour event at the Brixton on 2nd.
The Numbers
Key Announcements & Themes
Multiple announcements were made at Dreamforce, below are a few of the most significant.
Salesforce Genie - Salesforce launched Genie, a hyperscale real-time data platform that powers the entire Salesforce Customer 360 experience. With Genie, every company can make data more easily usable to drive business decisions, delivering seamless, highly personalized experiences across sales, service, marketing, and commerce that continuously adapt to changing customer information and needs in real time, leveraging Einstein. Genie Overview and demo available in these links.
Slack Canvas & Huddles Coworking - Slack was an ever-present theme throughout Dreamforce including specific announcements for Slack Canvas and Huddles Coworking. New Slack Innovations and Salesforce Customer 360 Integrations Unlock Team Productivity, Adding Value to the Digital HQ
Slack Canvas: Next to a Slack channel will be a Canvas. Slack canvases were described as a “surface to capture and share knowledge to access and take action on Salesforce data directly in Slack”. Similar to Quip which has been integrated with Slack. How Slack Canvas Will Transform Productivity and Collaboration
Huddles Coworking: Huddles allow users to jump into quick conversations from any channel and have been enhanced to include video and screen share, pop-out window, reactions, chat in thread, and post-huddle threads. Demo.
Enablement - A part of Sales Cloud, another attempt to deliver increased efficiency and productivity for sellers, mostly focused for onboarding and training for new sales hires was announced. Bottomline, Salesforce has brought Trailhead functionality and Einstein analytics into Sales Cloud to deliver rich media dashboards to enhance efficiency.
Salesforce Flow - Process Automation. Salesforce Flow automates complex business processes, collects data and performs actions in a Salesforce org or an external system. Salesforce Flow provides two types of flows: screen flows and autolaunched flows. It has recently been utilized in Box demos showing content rich use-cases in Salesforce workflows (Sales Cloud) and is expected to be utilized further moving forward.
World’s Largest Enterprise Apps Company - Salesforce projected to reach $31 billion in revenue this year
NetZero Cloud and Net Zero Marketplace - Environmental protection was also a consistent theme throughout Dreamforce. Salesforce has been a leader in developing the 1-1-1 philanthropic model and has dedicated 1% of it's equity, product and employee’s time back to community and social causes since its inception. This year there was a focus on its ocean research program which protects endangered whales and tackles plastics pollution, using AI to monitor oceanic health. It also has focused on a great reforestation program to deliver 1 trillion trees by 2030 with a goal to sequester 200 gigatons of carbon.
Net Zero Cloud: A Salesforce product that helps organizations meet their sustainability goals. Manage sustainability data, automate supplier emissions tracking, and forecast and reduce risk. “What-if Analysis” (powered by Tableau) and Einstein Recommendations also help power the Net Zero Cloud.
Net Zero Cloud Marketplace: Powered by the Commerce Cloud, the Salesforce Net Zero Marketplace will connect buyers and ecopreneurs, offering a catalog of projects alongside a seamless e-commerce experience for purchasing them. The marketplace will launch with 90 projects in 11 countries.