CRT-271 plan - Certification Preparation For Community Cloud Consultants Updated: 2023

Salesforce offers a full suite of add-ons available mainly on the SalesForce AppExchange. These optional Salesforce programs include tools to support different needs and industries. Depending on the complexity of those needs, you’ll pay anywhere from nothing to hundreds of dollars for one (or multiple) apps. You can also find add-ons under the “products” tab on the Salesforce website.

Salesforce’s apps come from both first- and third-party providers. They also vary in pricing, often including new tiers that differ from what Salesforce offers. Simple apps, like 360 SMS, start at $7 per month but might cost more depending on how many texts you send. Other apps, like the Salesforce Adoption Dashboard, are entirely free. You also have freemium apps, like JotForm, which are free for the first five forms. 

Each app is different, requiring another knowledge base to learn this optional system. Much like shopping for CRM systems, you must go through testing and adoption phases. Thankfully, Salesforce is a cloud-based SaaS system, meaning you can easily customize it according to your needs. Below, you’ll learn more about some of the most popular add-ons you might consider. 

Pardot Pricing

Salesforce Pardot is a popular marketing automation platform that comes in four tiers. Here’s a breakdown of what those tiers provide:

• Growth: $1,250/mo; focuses on marketing automation 
• Plus: $2,750/mo; provides deeper analytics and personalization features
• Advanced: $4,400/mo; AI support and developer sandbox features
• Premium: $15,000/mo; offers predictive analytics and personalized product support

Pardot supports up to 10,000 contacts, with its higher tier supporting 75,000.

Service Cloud

Service Cloud focuses on the customer support side of Salesforce. It also has identical pricing compared to Sales Cloud (Salesforce’s primary offering). Here’s a breakdown of pricing:

• Starter: $25/user/mo; provides a simple customer case management dashboard
• Professional: $80/user/mo; provides case swarming and computer telephony integration (CTI)
• Enterprise: $165/user/mo; provides AI features and a self-service system for your customer support staff
• Unlimited: $330/user/mo; 24/7 support alongside AI-powered chatbots
• Unlimited+: $500/user/mo; advanced AI support and the ability to better integrate data across Tableau Analytics and Data Cloud

Sales Cloud does not come with Service Cloud. However, you can discuss discounts for integrating both when talking with an account executive. 

CPQ and Billing

Both CPQ and Billing are features you can find under Salesforce’s Revenue Cloud service. 

CPQ (Configuration, Pricing and Quoting) is a flexible pricing system that changes price depending on usage level or optional features. When selling software with add-ons, it can help you simplify billing customers. It comes in two forms:

• CPQ: $75/user/mo; provides limited customization options
• CPQ Plus: $150/user/mo; provides more process control and automated features

Billing is another feature of Revenue Cloud which comes in two forms, although the pricing requires you to call in:

• Growth: Has a built-in invoicing system for scheduling and merging multiple invoices
• Plus: Advanced billing systems based on usage ratings; supports automatic payments

If purchasing the complete sales CRM, some of these features are integrated with advanced plans, meaning you don’t need to pay extra. 

Einstein Analytics

Einstein Analytics is the AI-driven analytics software from Salesforce that comes with the Unlimited plan. Enterprise customers might choose to pay separately, selecting one of the four plans below:

• Einstein Predictions: $75/user/mo; provides simple, automated insights
• CRM Analytics Growth: $140/user/mo; more advanced analytics platform without AI features
• CRM Analytics Plus: $165/user/mo; combines features from Predictions and Analytics Growth
• Revenue Intelligence: $220/user/mo; provides revenue insights as well other features

MuleSoft

MuleSoft is an integration-based platform that connects multiple apps, helps integrate numerous APIs and provides automated systems between those softwares. Another way to look at it: it’s a complex version of Zapier with way more power for programmers. 

MuleSoft’s pricing varies heavily but can cost up to $250,000 per year. You’ll need to call and discuss your unique needs for a quote. 

Customer relationship management (CRM) takes customer service to a whole new level. Modern CRM software uses technology and automation to find and interact with leads and customers. Leveraging CRM software can help a company engage with its customers to build trust and provide necessary products and services.

Editor’s note: Looking for the right CRM solution for your business? Fill out the below questionnaire to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs.

Current CRM certification courses are available through academic institutions, professional affiliates and massive open online courses. syllabus can include CRM optimization, automation, marketing strategies, product management, business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C) and networking. According to certification course provider Simplilearn, IT professionals with one Salesforce certification on their resume can expect as much as a 40% pay increase.

Wednesday, November 15, 2023

The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including Oracle Corp. (ORCL), PepsiCo, Inc. (PEP) and Salesforce, Inc. (CRM). These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.

You can see all of today’s research reports here >>>

Shares of Oracle have gained +47.5% over the past year versus the Zacks Computer - Software industry’s gain of +49.8%. The company is benefiting from ongoing momentum across its cloud business, driven by the strong uptake of Oracle Cloud and Autonomous Database offerings.

Solid adoption of cloud-based applications, comprising NetSuite Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Fusion ERP bodes well. Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud is performing better at a lower cost due to high bandwidth and low-latency RDMA networks. Partnerships with VMWare and Microsoft is helping Oracle win new clientele.

ORCL is launching a generative AI cloud service for enterprise customers. Its share buybacks and dividend policy are noteworthy. However, higher spending on product enhancements, especially toward the cloud platform, amid increasing competition in the cloud domain is likely to limit margin expansion.

(You can read the full research report on Oracle here >>>)

PepsiCo’s shares have underperformed the Zacks Beverages - Soft drinks industry over the past year (-3.2% vs. +5.4%). The company witnessed cost pressures driven by impacts of supply-chain disruptions and inflationary labor, transportation and commodity costs. Adverse currency rates also remain headwinds.

Nevertheless, PepsiCo boasts a robust surprise trend, which continued in second-quarter 2023. PEP’s revenues and earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the sixth straight quarter in second-quarter 2023. It also reported the seventh straight quarter of double-digit organic revenue growth in the second quarter.

The results reflect strength and resilience in its diversified portfolio, modernized supply chain, improved digital capabilities, flexible go-to-market distribution systems and robust consumer demand trends. Resilience and strength in the global beverage and convenient food businesses also aided results.

(You can read the full research report on PepsiCo here >>>)

Shares of Salesforce have outperformed the Zacks Computer - Software industry over the year-to-date period (+66.8% vs. +52.8%). The company is benefiting from a robust demand environment as customers are undergoing a major digital transformation.

Its sustained focus on introducing more aligned products as per customer needs is driving its top-line. Continued deal wins in the international market is another growth driver. The acquisition of Slack has positioned the company as a leader in enterprise team collaboration solution space and placed at a better competitive position against Microsoft’s Teams product.

However, stiff competition and unfavorable currency fluctuations are concerns. Besides, challenging macroeconomic environment might hurt its growth prospects in the near-term.

(You can read the full research report on Salesforce here >>>)

Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include S&P Global Inc. (SPGI), The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) and BlackRock, Inc. (BLK).

Mark Vickery
Senior Editor

Note: Sheraz Mian heads the Zacks Equity Research department and is a well-regarded expert of aggregate earnings. He is frequently quoted in the print and electronic media and publishes the weekly Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview reports. If you want an email notification each time Sheraz publishes a new article, please click here>>>

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Data has long been vital to the success of business initiatives. However, with the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence (AI) data has become even more important. Salesforce, a leading cloud-based CRM platform, in collaboration with Tableau, released its inaugural State of Data and Analytic report.

One of the roadblocks in realizing the full potential of AI is to manage and leverage data for business needs. According to Salesforce Chief Data Officer Wendy Batchelder, “The AI revolution is actually a data revolution, and a company’s AI strategy is only as strong as its data strategy, with trust at its core.” 

The Salesforce report was compiled by surveying over 11,000 information technology, analytics, and line-of-business leaders across 18 countries to discover how businesses are navigating the rapidly evolving AI landscape. 

A Strong Data Foundation Fuels AI

Advances in AI are moving fast, and data management teams are feeling the pressure to supply algorithms and high-quality data. Almost 9 in 10 (87 percent) of IT and analytics leaders believe that the rise of AI makes data management a higher priority.

Over nine in 10 (91 percent) business leaders say generative AI would benefit their organization, however, they are concerned about their organization’s ability to capture generative AI value. Early adopters of generative AI are already seeing positive results such as improvement in customer satisfaction. It’s not surprising that the early success of some organizations has resulted in over three-quarters of business leaders (77 percent) fearing their company is missing out on generative AI’s benefits. 

According to the report, a major roadblock to deriving maximum value for generative AI is the lack of a united data strategy that integrates generative AI into the existing tech stack. Eighty-six percent of respondents believed the AI outputs are only as good as the data inputs. There are also some ethical concerns about the use of AI and uncertainty about generative AI bias that can potentially lead to inaccurate results. 

The report highlights the importance of data maturity as a sign of AI preparedness. Organizations that have higher data maturity have a more positive assessment of their organization’s data quality, technology infrastructure, and AI strategy. 

(Kostyantyn Skuridin/Shutterstock)

Data’s Full Potential Remains Elusive

While business leaders realize that data is the key to getting AI benefits, there is significant misalignment between data strategy and business goals. According to the report, many line-of-business leaders (41 percent) believe that their data strategy has either partial or no alignment with business objectives. Similarly, 37 percent of analytics and IT leaders also see room for improvement. 

The core reasons for this disconnect include the lack of shared KPIs across teams, dealing with overwhelming volumes of data, and security threats. Technical and line-of-business leaders are concerned that integrating new data sources could increase security vulnerabilities. 

The lack of data visibility could be a reason why business leaders are concerned about security threats. Nearly half (45 percent) of analytics and IT leaders say that they have partial or no visibility on how data is used within their organization. 

The teams closest to data, including the analytics and IT teams, have the highest confidence (57 percent) in data quality. This shows an opportunity to instill data confidence across other teams including marketing, sales, and service teams.

The Road to Data and AI Success is Winding

Building confidence in data accuracy is more than just a technical fix – it requires a shift in mindset. There needs to be a collective change in behaviors and beliefs about the importance of data. The good news is that analytics and IT leaders are taking action. Nearly eight in ten analytics and IT leaders plan to increase the budget for data training and development. 

The findings of the report show that data governance can play a key role in buying data trustworthiness with 85 percent of analytics and IT leaders using data governance to quantify and Strengthen data quality.

“Managing data is the most important action a business can take to successfully implement generative AI,” said Batchelder. “To effectively manage data, leaders must use data governance strategically and invest in a strong culture now more than ever.” 

The report indicates that analytics and IT leaders lean on cloud solutions to mitigate data gravity, which refers to the concept that data has mass as the mass grows larger it pulls additional resources making it more challenging and expensive to manage that data. 

Analytics and IT leaders are relying on better infrastructure (44 percent), using multiple cloud providers (41 percent), and employing decentralized or distributed data storage solutions (40 percent) to mitigate the threats of data gravity. 

Looking ahead, companies need to overcome several hurdles to unlock the full potential of AI. The Salesforce report indicates that business leaders are aware of the key challenges and understand what tools can help them succeed in leveraging the power of AI technology. 

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The surprise hit song of the summer came from a Virginia singer-songwriter named Oliver Anthony.

I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay…

…Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground
‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down

“Rich Men North of Richmond” made Anthony the first unknown artist to debut at No. 1. He was singing for a young generation of outsiders with no way to break into the economy—and as an indictment of those profiting off them.

Young Americans are more frustrated than ever at their inability to access good jobs — and the rise of artificial intelligence will only compound the problem. To provide jobs and paths ahead for the largest number of people in today’s cutting-edge economy, the U.S. needs to revisit an old-fashioned way of training workers: apprenticeships.

For over half a century, college was the way for American kids to succeed — a socially accepted path to socioeconomic mobility that worked most of the time. From the 1960s to the turn of the century, America’s colleges were fairly affordable, costing students less than a new car.

In turn, the vast majority of college grads got hired by good companies and learned on the job while making enough to afford a place to live and a car to commute. The cherry on top was that it felt good. The ethos of college — equipping young people to fulfill their potential, whatever direction it might take them — was the ethos of America.

40% of College Grads Have Jobs That Don’t Require a Degree

But starting about 25 years ago, things began to change. Tuition and fees grew annually at double the rate of inflation. Digital technology transformed the economy. The good jobs college grads hoped to land were different than they had been a generation before. According to the National Skills Coalition, 92% of jobs now require digital skills — generalizable only inexactly. Employers want candidates to know how to work on platforms like HubSpot for marketing, Zendesk for customer service, NetSuite for finance, Workday for HR, and Salesforce for customer relationship management.

Few colleges incorporate training on these platforms into degree programs. To top it off, skills aren’t enough anymore. College grads can easily access Salesforce’s Trailhead courses to become certified Salesforce administrators, but not many organizations are excited about hiring a newly minted Salesforce admin without any experience. College graduates are now facing a skills gap and an experience gap, resulting in persistent underemployment; more than 40% of exact college graduates are underemployed — working in jobs they could have gotten without a degree or that don’t require the skills they gained in college.

Because underemployed grads have difficulty repaying student loans, national attention has focused on college’s crisis of affordability and student loan forgiveness. After the Biden Administration’s $400 billion plan to forgive student loans was struck down by the Supreme Court, the president announced a new effort to cancel loans, in addition to changes to income-driven repayment that could cost taxpayers as much as $475 billion. It’s a lot of money to try to mend a broken system.

AI Makes It Harder to Land That First Job

Meanwhile, underemployment is about to get worse. By taking over menial work that entry-level college-educated workers used to do while they learned the job and industry, artificial intelligence will make it harder to get a good first job. IBM has predicted that while AI won’t replace people, people who use AI will replace people who don’t. That’s going to widen the experience gap and further complicate career launches for young Americans.

Think about a exact graduate trying to get a first job in the claims department of a health insurer. Today, new hires learn on the job while doing a good deal of menial work. But once the insurance company implements AI, new workers won’t review every claim. Only claims that trip one or more flags will warrant human intervention, and such work is more likely to involve problem-solving and troubleshooting — skills requiring some level of insurance claims experience.

The same will be true across financial services, healthcare, technology, and logistics — a wide array of sectors where new college graduates are seeking to launch careers.

US Ranks Last in Apprenticeships

The best and most complete solution to this conundrum is apprenticeships, which provide the skills and experience young workers are missing. Apprenticeships are full-time jobs where a company hires candidates with the express purpose of training them — both in a classroom and on the job. Wages are lower at first but rise as apprentices gain skills and become more productive.

There are about 500,000 apprentices in the U.S. today. That may sound like a lot, but represents only 0.3% of the workforce and puts the U.S. last among developed countries. Approximately 70% of U.S. apprentices work in the construction sector.

Meanwhile, in the U.K. and Australia — where there are eight times as many apprentices per capita — it’s common to launch careers in software development, accounting, and healthcare via apprenticeship without a degree. And the Central European giants of apprenticeship — Germany, Switzerland, and Austria — do 10 to 15 times better. Germany has 323 occupations with national apprenticeship standards, including a raft of jobs in healthcare and services, like doctor’s assistant, dispensing optician, and banker.

Begin Shifting Public Funding for Colleges Into Apprenticeships

If the U.S. hopes to catch up, we need to support and fund dedicated apprenticeship programs. Other countries have recognized the central role played by intermediaries: nonprofit, for-profit, and public enterprises that hire and pay students until they become productive.

In the U.K., there are 850 apprenticeship intermediaries like Multiverse, founded by Euan Blair, son of former prime minister Tony Blair, knocking on the doors of virtually every large and mid-sized company to sell apprenticeship programs. (I’m the managing director of Achieve Partners, which invests in Multiverse.) In the U.S., there are only a handful.

Current funding for apprenticeship intermediaries and other programs is a fraction of what we spend on college classrooms: federal, state, and local governments continue to pour more than $400 billion each year into college while total spending on apprenticeship is under $400 million. An apprentice receives about 2% of what taxpayers spend on a college student.

The only way to rekindle the American Dream is to make apprenticeships part and parcel of core educational programs in college and high school. If we don’t want the soundtrack of the Age of AI to be songs like “Rich Men North of Richmond,” let’s begin giving young people work experience while they’re still in school.

About the Author

Ryan Craig is the managing director at Achieve Partners, a private equity firm investing in the future of learning and earning. He is also the author of College Disrupted, A New U, and the upcoming Apprentice Nation. He will speak about Apprentice Nation at the ASU California Center Grand in downtown L.A. on Tuesday, Nov. 28, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. RSVP for this event here.

With connected cars predicted to make up as much as 95% of new vehicles sold by 2030, there’s clearly huge commercial opportunity here for tech vendors. This week sees Salesforce expanding its Automotive Cloud offering, providing real-time views of driver and vehicle data, including location, speed, and in-vehicle apps and systems.

As per the formal announcement, coming early in 2024: 

• Connected Vehicle Visualization, pitched as “a real-time visualization of a vehicle’s connected features and services that will help make it easy for automakers to provide better in-car experiences, like remote assistance, and surface relevant new services to consumers – like notifying them about a free park assist trial”.
• Actionable Telematics - these are intended to help automakers monitor telematics data, like vehicle location, speed, fuel, or battery consumption, and use automation to detect and alert customers to changes in their car’s status. Salesforce cites the example of Automotive Cloud being able to read the data coming off of a vehicle, noting an increase in revolutions per minute (RPMs), or loss of tire pressure, and automatically sending an alert to the driver in their infotainment console to warn them of the potential safety issue.
• More data management - Automotive Cloud taps into Salesforce Data Cloud and as such is positioned as securely connecting data from any source, like telematics and dealership management systems, so automotive companies have a unified, real-time data foundation to build connected vehicle and driver experiences.
• AI - Inevitably there’s an AI angle. Automakers can use Einstein Studio to build and train custom AI models. Using connected car data with custom AI models will enable automakers to deliver predictive insights, such as automakers being able to alert dealers automatically when a driver’s vehicle is about to hit 100,000 miles and proactively pitch new vehicles or offer personalized discounts and trade-in offers.

Opportunities

I confess at this point that I’m not a ‘car person’ myself  (unlike Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff who’s a big EV fan), but this announcement brought me back to the Automative keynote session at Dreamforce a couple of months back, where the company’s thinking around the future of mobility was laid out. 

According to Bart Seidner, Senior AVP Sales for Energy, Automotive and Utilities at Salesforce, while the company has been working with leading players in the automotive industry for over two decades, advances in technology mean that everyone is navigating what he calls “uneven terrain”. Expectations have never been higher, he says: 

Customer experience is a top priority. With the advent of the EV, new vehicle innovations are no longer just about the vehicle itself; it's about the software that differentiates the vehicle. Every vehicle is a connected vehicle. The automotive industry is trying to find new revenue streams, recurring revenue streams. Finally, [there's] sustainability. There's so much happening with sustainability, sustainability with EVs, sustainability in the value chain. Customers are driving sustainability behaviors. 

Seidner also highlights the amount of data that’s being generated by connected vehicles.  According to consultancy McKinsey, a connected car can generate around 25 GB of data every hour - and that’s just today. With further advances in technology, how much larger does that number become? This new stream of data is an opportunity, suggests Seidner: 

We must be smart about how we leverage this data. We can take advantage of AI, automation, analytics. We can leverage this data at scale. I have the opportunity to talk to customers in the automotive industry from all over the world and everybody agrees the opportunity in this industry could not be bigger. Strategic imperatives are changing the way that we operate. We must harness all this data so we can create new experiences to increase customer lifetime value, increase vehicle lifetime value, create those new revenue models, and deliver on the promise of AI.

The Mercedes-Benz journey 

Among Salesforce customers putting this into practice is German giant Mercedes-Benz. Timo Bularczyk, Director of Global Operations at Mercedes-Benz Mobility AG, has a clear vision of  the direction of travel for his industry: 

There's no doubt that the future is is fully electric and fully connected. We have more and more devices where we get data from. It's up to us to make use of that data, to ensure that we can offer the right product at the right time to our customers. 

For a brand like Mercedes-Benz, a key concept is luxury and that extends to the customer journey itself, with consumers expecting a seamless online/offline convergence. That presents two challenges, according to Bularczyk: 

First of all, we need to run this in the most efficient way that you can imagine. The other [challenge] is that it must be very customer-specific. So, two targets that are contradicting themselves. With Salesforce, we have 'out of the box' scalability with standard processes that we can use throughout the globe, and we enrich that with the data that we are getting from all of the different sources to create that luxury journey with unstandard processes. 

Mercedes-Benz's engagement with Salesforce on this transformation dates back a couple of years to when the automotive manufacturer carried out an analysis of where there would be room and opportunity to optimize potential. Salesforce was invited to take part. Bularczyk recalls: 

We saw that there was a lot of potential when we integrate the different Salesforce implementations that we have in Mercedes-Benz. With the replacement of legacy [systems], we could pull data together much better. We started the journey together with Salesforce Professional Services. They came in and they helped us to refine our strategy, gain confidence on the way forward, and ensured that we have the right skills in place to go on that journey together.

The customer experience is at the heart of the Mercedes-Benz transformation, insists Bularczyk:

As the customer, you don't want to understand that sales, after sales, financial services are independent legal entities with different people, different telephone numbers, different call centers. If you have a roadside assistance case with a leased vehicle, the last thing that you want to have to figure out is who you have to call to get assistance. 

Just imagine that you have a single source of truth, of customer data, and the agent has that available at their fingertips - that's where we want to go. That's how we want to integrate our products seamlessly together…So when it comes to the fact that there is a roadside assistance case that we can bring the best customer experience in that special moment.

Automotive Cloud is helping to enable this, he concludes: 

It helps us with the standardization of our data. There's a data model in place. Within Mercedes, we have different opinions on how this should be done, but we want to stick to the standard. We leverage the capabilities of the platform. You don't want to bring new services into every market with legacy software and re-invent the wheel every time.  You want to go on a platform. You want to have easy integration. You want to have the data available. And that's the journey that we're currently on, that we have started with, that we're successful with, and that we will grow. So, Automotive Cloud will have an increasing footprint in our strategy.  

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