Salesforce and Apple are venturing into a collaboration, which will see the iPhone manufacturer helping Salesforce in building Apple’s features like Siri into Salesforce’s mobile applications that are currently being utilized in both the marketing and sales industries.
In return, Salesforce is expected to make software tools in a bid to allow the big enterprises that utilize its back-end technology to run their applications can create better products boasting features that are specific to both iPads and iPhones.
Both Salesforce and Apple have massive ecosystems, particularly those of third-party software developers.
Nearly, 20 million developers develop software for Apple gadgets, whereby many of them focused on consumers, whereas Salesforce boasts nearly 5 million developers capable of tapping into its back-end systems in a bid to create business applications.
Apple has been expanding this business applications market through deals with various companies including Accenture, Cisco, and IBM.
The collaboration entails that a salesperson could utilize Siri after a customer meeting to upgrade the customer’s record, specifically with notes drawn from the meeting as well as identify a customer service problem for a support team to look into it and many other data-entry activities that can consume valuable time.
“If you look at enterprise in general, voice has not been used as much as in consumer. We’re going to be able to provide the sales rep instant access to things using your voice instead of clicks and going through different apps.
We’re changing the way people work, and that’s always been at the heart of what Apple is about — changing things for the better,” Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook told Reuters in an interview.
Salesforce, in exchange, is creating tools to make companies involved in tapping into its back-end systems to utilize better Apple-based features such as Siri.
During the Salesforce yearly customer conference to be held in the course of the week, Marriott International is expected to demonstrate a new system that leverages both Apple and Salesforce tools to allow hotel guests to turn up the heat, make an order for a sandwich or even call for a ride through Siri by using an Apple HomePod available in their hotel room.
In an interview with Reuters, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said that at the next Marriot where the guest will stay, Siri will recall all the guest’s preferences.
“I don’t think I’ve met with a single customer in the world that doesn’t want me to help them do more with Tim’s products,” Benioff said Cook and Apple in the interview.
Salesforce, a San Francisco, California-based cloud computing firm, also operates an educational platform dubbed Trailhead, where it asserts that one out of four individuals who study courses regarding how to develop business applications with Salesforce’s tools ultimately get a promotion or raise.
As part of this remarkable deal, Salesforce and Apple are expected to include extra courses touching on how to create iPad and iPhone apps.
“These people are learning the tech skills that are elevating their careers,” explained the Chief Executive Officer of Salesforce Marc Benioff.
Source CNBC
