Salesforce CRM Analytics Comprehensive Overview: Capabilities AND Key AI Features

As the demand for accurate foresight intensifies, a new force emerges: predictive analytics. This groundbreaking approach gives organizations the power to forecast future outcomes with uncanny precision, empowering them to make data-driven decisions that fuel growth, innovation, and unrivaled success.

In the latest State of Commerce report, 51% of digital leaders acknowledged their ineffectiveness in utilizing data. Therefore, they are 37% more prone to unpreparedness to handle the surging inflation.

Not utilizing data comes with significant consequences, even for market leaders. Businesses struggle with staying agile online, and harnessing the power of predictive analytics to make your data auctionable is one of the ways to change it.

In this blog post, we'll explore what Salesforce CRM Analytics is, how it's different (or not) from Tableau, and how it can transform the way you build your strategy.

Contents:

Things might get confusing at this point. Let's get the record straight:

Here's a short comparison of use cases:

Tableau CRM has been rebranded as CRM Analytics precisely to avoid the mix-up with Tableau, which is a distinct product in the same Tableau ecosystem. It's important to note that Salesforce acquired Tableau in August 2019 to enhance Salesforce's position in the competitive analytics platforms market.

CRM Analytics allows businesses to view and analyze their data in a structured and meaningful way. Using connectors, including external applications, databases, and data warehouses, you can collect data from various sources and then securely analyze and share it with Salesforce users.

Exploring and visualizing data is a crucial aspect of Salesforce CRM Analytics. The system processes a dataset by exploring its boundaries and shaping and refining the data to focus on important aspects, saves, and shares the findings.

To analyze data, Salesforce CRM Analytics organizes data into datasets, lenses, dashboards, and apps, collectively known as "CRM Analytics assets." These assets represent different levels of data refinement, from raw data uploaded from source systems to highly curated and packaged views.

A Salesforce CRM Analytics dashboard presents data from multiple angles, including key performance indicators, charts, tables, filters, and images. Users can interact with the data, applying filters and drilling it down into specific points.

Salesforce Einstein AI is a comprehensive solution (basically a virtual assistant) for the Salesforce CRM. It has 60+ AI-driven products, including tools for Sales, Marketing, Service, and other platforms. Salesforce CRM Analytics leverages Einstein forecasting capabilities to spot opportunities, predict outcomes, and get predictions.

Here are out-of-the-box AI-powered features of Tableau CRM/CRM Analytics:

In the Salesforce ecosystem, your setup defines the pricing. To choose the proper predictive analytics solution for your business, you should be aware of your technical requirements and possible limitations you can run into.

Tableau CRM is far from being a beginner-friendly solution, and sometimes, there's no need to bring the 'big guns' unless your Salesforce environment hosts multiple orgs and is heavily customized. But, if your business logic is too complex to rely on Salesforce reports, and you would like your insights to be available on-site in your org, CRM Analytics might be a better option.

On the other hand, if you handle too much data, CRM Analytics might be a tight fit. Salesforce warns CRM Analytics users about the limitations the platform has:

To ensure stable performance, it is recommended to roll out the capability to users gradually, and have enough resources in your team to monitor data usage and performance, and stop trending datasets that are no longer needed.

If you still have doubts regarding whether CRM Analytics is a good fit for your business, even if your Salesforce org complies with the possible limitations, consider the tangible benefits you could obtain:

In conclusion, Salesforce CRM Analytics offers a powerful suite of tools and features that enable businesses to harness the full potential of their customer relationship management data.

By leveraging advanced analytics capabilities, organizations can unlock the power of data to identify trends, optimize sales processes, and uncover cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Moreover, the platform provides a 360-degree view of customers, enabling organizations to deliver exceptional service, tailor marketing campaigns, and drive customer loyalty.

However, there are some limitations to consider. The platform may not be beginner-friendly and may not be necessary for businesses with simpler Salesforce environments. Additionally, there are certain data limitations and considerations. Evaluating these limitations and determining if they align with your organization's needs is important before diving in head-first.