Salesforce has announced its Winter ’23 Release preview which is now live. The preview includes hundreds of new features on display before the release becomes generally available on Oct. 17. Salesforce says the release includes innovations that enable companies to automate and scale complex business processes. In addition to personalise customer experiences, and drive growth efficiently.
The company says the release includes a range of new features and enhancements related to Lightning Experience, Salesforce Flow, Lightning Web Component, Apex, Experience Cloud, Einstein Automate, Customer Data Platform, Field Service, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (aka Pardot), Quip, CRM Analytics, Enablement Sites and APIs.
New Sales enhancements
Sales to increase rep productivity with flexible processes and automation. The release includes:
- Dynamic forms enhancements provide end-users more flexibility with fields and sections to display on page layouts.
- Sales cadence screen flows.
- Functionality to expand selling power and automation with admin-enabled screenflows triggered based on cadence step advancement.
Scale service with enhanced communications and equipment management
- Customer service incident management. Broadcast Communication proactively to update customers and stakeholders about an incident by seamlessly broadcasting status updates across digital channels.
- Amazon Connect enhancements for Service Cloud voice. Expand selling power and automation with admin-enabled screenflows triggered based on cadence step advancement.
- Facebook Messenger enhancements to deliver richer conversations while unlocking more automation.
- Preventative maintenance enhancements. Create preventive maintenance plans for assets based on criteria and now usage so your customers never miss a beat.
- Article and Reply Recommendation enhancements measure business value and optimise Einstein Article/Reply Recommendations.
Marketing to build a single source of truth
- Account engagement: External actions register prospects for webinars and send out surveys in the Engagement Studio programmes.
- Engagement: Push enhancements power to all customer messaging with a single platform in real-time.
- Intelligence: Ecommerce Marketing Insights uncover marketing optimisations to enhance eCommerce programmes.
- CDP Connector for Google Cloud Storage. Ingest data from Google Cloud Storage into CDP to better understand and engage customers.
Loyalty management that better engage your loyalty members
- Loyalty Member Badges build a stronger, more loyal community with Member Badges.
- Loyalty Journeys for Marketing Cloud automates member engagement across their loyalty lifecycle.
- Loyalty Management for Media drives subscriber lifetime value by quickly creating and launching a personalized loyalty programme.
- Loyalty Promotions Setup Enhancements make it simpler for business users to manage your loyalty program rules.
Commerce to make every transaction more profitable
- TikTok integration for Commerce drives traffic to storefront and makes social commerce easy with dynamic ads.
- Store Fulfilment empowers store associates to pick, pack and ship products through an in-store app.
- Enhancements to help grow recurring revenue and international business with subscription management and B2B2C enhancements.
- Payments enhancements increase conversions by giving shoppers the freedom to choose their preferred payment method while getting better insights from reports and dashboards
- Order Management enhancements drive revenue and increase operational efficiency with order-on-behalf of capabilities for your service agents and inventory analytics.
Analytics to uncover more insights with a new, intelligent analytics experience
- Einstein Discovery Live Predictions on Snowflake supports predictions in Salesforce powered directly by Snowflake datasets.
- CRM Analytics Home enhancements streamline your analytics assets in Analytics Home.
- Einstein discovery model inspection discovers more about a model than just its predictions.
- UI Enhancements discover more insights through crafting experiences with the new interactions.
MuleSoft connecting data faster from any system
- MuleSoft Robotic Process Automation (RPA) automates repetitive processes and tasks with RPA.
- MuleSoft Composer templates quickly create new integration flows with templates.
- MuleSoft Composer Connectors Integrate apps and data with Salesforce New connectors.
- MuleSoft Accelerators jumpstart top integration use cases with MuleSoft Accelerators for Financial Services, Consumer Goods, Healthcare, Life Sciences, and Manufacturing.
- Anypoint Connectors unlock ways to interface with the Salesforce ecosystem with the new MuleSoft Connector for Salesforce Pub/Sub
Slack brings people, tools, customers, and partners together in a digital HQ
- Huddles Enhancements allow teams to quickly connect, problem solve and co-create in real-time—from wherever they are.
- Permissions and roles enhancements administer Slack at scale with enhancements to permissioning, management, and dashboards.
Enterprise Times: What this means for business.
Similar to previous releases, Salesforce’s Winter 23 release is quite comprehensive and accompanied by detailed release notes. The release covers pretty much all the key components of the Salesforce ecosystem. The company says it provides innovations across the Salesforce 360 Platform to help businesses connect to their customers in new ways from anywhere. Salesforce has built a formidable digital infrastructure, which attracts businesses in all sectors and all sizes. From small medium enterprises to global enterprises with offices in every continent. This infrastructure is still based in Salesforce’s code base. Whereas the winds of change is blowing in technology. Enterprises are increasingly attracted to MACH technology. Microservices-based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless (MACH) to organise superior customer journeys.
Recently, Salesforce announced its own composable storefront, a fully-customisable, headless digital storefront. The development is expected to give online retailers the ability to make site changes with the speed and flexibility needed to increase sales, conversions and basket size. At the same time, the development is expected to help drive down costs. Only time will tell whether this initial innovation is sufficient to enable Salesforce to join the MACH revolution. Otherwise, Salesforce will have to consider making more fundamental changes to how it organises and structure its products and services. This may be reflected in future releases.
