Salesforce-Certified-Business-Analyst mock - Salesforce Certified Business Analyst Updated: 2024

Let’s now dive into a detailed comparison of the two platforms.

Features 

Both Salesforce and monday Sales CRM  have a vast range of features. However, Salesforce is richer in more advanced CRM features compared to monday.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a comprehensive CRM platform that offers a vast range of features, including sales automation, customer service, marketing automation and analytics. It offers lead management, opportunity management, customer service and contact management features. It also comes with a high degree of customization and integration features. This makes it suitable for businesses with complex sales and marketing operations.

monday 

monday is mainly focused on project management. As such, it’s not as heavy as Salesforce in terms of CRM features. However, monday also includes extensive project and team management, human resources, and software development features. This makes it fit for businesses that need an all-inclusive tool for improving sales and customer experience as well as team management.

Winner: Salesforce

Salesforce offers a wider range of features and functionalities to manage customer relationships and support sales and marketing efforts. This makes it the winner in terms of CRM features. However, if you are interested in more than just CRM features, monday is a better option.

Pricing 

Both Salesforce and monday offer a range of pricing options to suit businesses of different sizes.  They also come with a free trial, which allows users to try the tools’ features before committing to them. 

Salesforce

The pricing model for Salesforce is a bit complex and can be confusing. The pricing plans are based on the size of the business. Generally, the pricing plans for Salesforce are much more expensive than those of monday. The following are the four pricing plans that Salesforce offers:

• Essentials: This goes for $25 per user per month paid annually.
• Professional: It costs $80 per user per month paid annually.
• Enterprise: This costs $165 per user per month paid annually.
• Unlimited: It costs $330 per user per month

monday

monday’s pricing plans are considered more affordable than those of Salesforce. These pricing plans are based on the number of features and users. In addition to the free plan, which accommodates up to two users, monday offers the following pricing options:

• Basic: This costs $10 per user per month billed annually.
• Standard: It goes for $14 per user per month billed annually.
• Pro: It costs $27 per user per month billed annually.
• Enterprise: This plan requires a custom quote.

Winner: monday

monday beats Salesforce hands down, as it offers more affordable and simple pricing plans, with the cheapest plan costing $10 per user per month. Although Salesforce has more comprehensive and robust features, monday also offers similar features at more friendly rates.

Customization and scalability

Both sales platforms come with excellent customization capabilities.

Salesforce

Salesforce offers a high level of customizability. It comes with a broad range of customization options allowing businesses to tailor the platform to suit their unique needs. With Salesforce customization options, you can change the platform’s interface, including the colors, logo and graphics, to reflect your company’s identity. You can also alter the dashboards to display important business information as well as create personalized applications using AppExchange. This platform also offers flexible plans to accommodate businesses of different sizes, making it appropriate for both small and large enterprises. This means that it will be able to adapt and cater to your business needs for performance and reliability as it grows.

monday

While monday also provides pretty good customization capabilities, its options are not as extensive and advanced as those of Salesforce. The app comes with a wide range of fully customizable templates designed to suit specific activities. With Salesforce, you can modify the dashboards to suit your specific needs. Generally, monday’s customization options are easy and straightforward, which makes it a good fit for beginners and small companies.

Winner: Salesforce

Salesforce outshines monday, as it offers more advanced customization options. The downside to this, however, is that you may need a highly tech-savvy team to create custom applications and make optimal use of all the features the platform has to offer.

Integrations

Both platforms have impressive integration capabilities, which allow you to connect different tools to enhance your team’s productivity and boost performance.

Salesforce

Thanks to its AppExchange, Salesforce integrates with over 3,000 other business apps. Salesforce integrates seamlessly with apps such as Slack, Stipe, Shopify and Google Drive, among many others.

monday 

While monday’s integration capabilities are not as extensive as Salesforce’s, the platform also has smooth integration with other apps, including project management, marketing and team collaboration tools. It integrates seamlessly with more than 30 apps, including Shopify, Gmail, Outlook, DocuSign, Microsoft Teams and Slack. It also has an Apps Marketplace that allows smooth integration with a range of other apps, for a total of 200 integrations.

Winner: Salesforce

Salesforce wins over monday in terms of integration capabilities, thanks to its AppExchange, which gives access to a wide range of apps.

Ease of use

Salesforce

Due to its vast collection of advanced features, Salesforce has a complicated user interface with various buttons to click, which can be overwhelming, especially to new users. It will thus require some time for users to fully master and use its features optimally. As such, Salesforce is most suited for large enterprises with complex CRM processes.

monday

Compared to Salesforce, monday has a more friendly and straightforward user interface, which makes it favorable for new users. Its vibrant and colorful dashboard allows you to quickly locate all the functions you require. In addition, the platform offers extensive resources to help you get started easily. 

Winner: monday

In terms of ease of use, monday takes the crown. The platform boasts a simple interface and hence has a shallow learning curve. Further, given the platform’s rich resources, you’ll get running in no time.

Customer support

Customer support is a crucial consideration when choosing a CRM platform.

Salesforce

In addition to the various learning resources, Salesforce offers a range of options to businesses to efficiently deal with customer service inquiries, including a 24/7 phone support and an online forum. However, the level of support depends on your plan, with more support avenues available in the higher tiers.

monday

monday offers customer support through various channels, including videos, webinars, articles, a knowledge base and a community forum. It also offers 24/7 support phone support plus a ticketing system and a dedicated customer success manager for enterprise plan users.

Winner: monday

monday is the winner in terms of customer support, as its 24/7 support is available across all its packages, including the free version.

Deep-pocketed investors have adopted a bearish approach towards Salesforce CRM, and it's something market players shouldn't ignore. Our tracking of public options records at Benzinga unveiled this significant move today. The identity of these investors remains unknown, but such a substantial move in CRM usually suggests something big is about to happen.

We gleaned this information from our observations today when Benzinga's options scanner highlighted 24 extraordinary options activities for Salesforce. This level of activity is out of the ordinary.

The general mood among these heavyweight investors is divided, with 33% leaning bullish and 66% bearish. Among these notable options, 10 are puts, totaling $980,886, and 14 are calls, amounting to $619,813.

What's The Price Target?

Based on the trading activity, it appears that the significant investors are aiming for a price territory stretching from $140.0 to $390.0 for Salesforce over the recent three months.

Insights into Volume & Open Interest

In terms of liquidity and interest, the mean open interest for Salesforce options trades today is 930.53 with a total volume of 5,604.00.

In the following chart, we are able to follow the development of volume and open interest of call and put options for Salesforce's big money trades within a strike price range of $140.0 to $390.0 over the last 30 days.

Salesforce Option Volume And Open Interest Over Last 30 Days

Largest Options Trades Observed:

Symbol	PUT/CALL	Trade Type	Sentiment	Exp. Date	Strike Price	Total Trade Price	Open Interest	Volume
CRM	PUT	SWEEP	BEARISH	01/12/24	$255.00	$240.2K	752	1.0K
CRM	PUT	SWEEP	BEARISH	01/12/24	$255.00	$204.2K	752	2.8K
CRM	PUT	SWEEP	BULLISH	01/12/24	$255.00	$144.3K	752	7
CRM	CALL	TRADE	BULLISH	01/17/25	$200.00	$107.2K	1.6K	0
CRM	PUT	SWEEP	BULLISH	01/12/24	$255.00	$88.0K	752	517

About Salesforce

Salesforce Inc provides enterprise cloud computing solutions. The company offers customer relationship management technology that brings companies and customers together. Its Customer 360 platform helps the group to deliver a single source of truth, connecting customer data across systems, apps, and devices to help companies sell, service, market, and conduct commerce. It also offers Service Cloud for customer support, Marketing Cloud for digital marketing campaigns, Commerce Cloud as an e-commerce engine, the Salesforce Platform, which allows enterprises to build applications, and other solutions, such as MuleSoft for data integration.

After a thorough review of the options trading surrounding Salesforce, we move to examine the company in more detail. This includes an assessment of its current market status and performance.

Current Position of Salesforce

• Currently trading with a volume of 2,053,020, the CRM's price is down by -1.15%, now at $253.19.
• RSI readings suggest the stock is currently may be approaching overbought.
• Anticipated earnings release is in 56 days.

What Analysts Are Saying About Salesforce

In the last month, 4 experts released ratings on this stock with an average target price of $307.5.

• An analyst from Wolfe Research has elevated its stance to Outperform, setting a new price target at $315.
• Maintaining their stance, an analyst from Piper Sandler continues to hold a Neutral rating for Salesforce, targeting a price of $285.
• In a cautious move, an analyst from Wells Fargo downgraded its rating to Equal-Weight, setting a price target of $280.
• Showing optimism, an analyst from Morgan Stanley upgrades its rating to Overweight with a revised price target of $350.

Trading options involves greater risks but also offers the potential for higher profits. Savvy traders mitigate these risks through ongoing education, strategic trade adjustments, utilizing various indicators, and staying attuned to market dynamics. Keep up with the latest options trades for Salesforce with Benzinga Pro for real-time alerts.

Salesforce skills and certifications are in high demand in the information technology industry and you’ll be positioned to take your career to the next level with a few certifications under your belt. 

But what’s the best way to prepare for the exam? An online Salesforce certification course is an ideal place to start. Whether you’re new to Salesforce or need to brush up on your skills, we’ll go over several options for you to choose from that go beyond an test guide.

We explored over 100 Salesforce certification courses on the web and come up with our top picks. The featured courses are from LinkedIn Learning, PluralSight, Trailhead and Udemy. While this CRM platform is popular and these names are well-known, you should the platform that make the most sense for your needs.

Here’s a description of each course, who it’s for and the price point. We’ve also categorized the courses by skill level: beginners, intermediate students and advanced students.  

These Salesforce Certification Courses are great for if you’re just learning the ropes.

• Who it’s for: Beginners
• Price: $19.99

Just $19.99 gets you a seat in this bestselling course from Udemy — it’ll teach you everything you need to know to pass the Salesforce Administrator Certification Exam.

When you enroll, you’ll have instant access to 10.5 hours of on-demand video, 17 articles, 2 downloadable resources and 1 practice test. The class begins with a lesson on how to create your own free account. You’ll also learn core concepts of the platform along with the mechanics of deploying the Lightning Experience in Salesforce.

The class is instructed by Mike Wheeler, Salesforce trainer, and Aaron Wheeler, Adobe certified expert. It’s designed for beginners and those who are a bit more experienced who want to take the Salesforce Administrator Exam. 

• Who it’s for: Beginners
• Price: Free 

It’s fun to prepare for your Salesforce Administrator Certification test through Trailhead’s course. 

This 53-hour class begins with an overview of the test so you’ll know what to expect when it’s time to test. It’s followed by an organization setup task in Salesforce. Once you’ve got the foundational work out of the way, you’ll jump right into the first Salesforce Platform Basics module. 

As the course progresses, you’ll be required to complete a series of assignments and projects to demonstrate your proficiency in the subject. The class wraps up with helpful study tools and a practice test. 

Enrollment is free, but you’ll need to sign up for a Trailhead account to get started. 

• Who it’s for: Beginners
• Price: Included with a monthly subscription 

You might want to gain a better understanding of how Salesforce formulas work if you want to enhance your user experience. This 5-star course is worth exploring. The class is a little over 1.5 hours and includes 6 modules. 

Instructor and software developer Dan Appleman covers formulas, data, operators and functions. He also shares real-life examples and testing formulas that can significantly assist you when as you use the platform. 

The enrollment fee for Formula Fundamentals in Salesforce is included in the $29 PluralSight monthly subscription. You can also grab a seat for free by signing up for a 10-day trial. 

Have you mastered Salesforce mechanics? If not, these intermediate-level courses may be a good fit.

• Who it’s for: Intermediate students
• Price: Included with a monthly membership

Taught by Christopher Matthew Spencer, a Salesforce certified administrator, this course is best for those who are ready to start preparing for the qualification exam. 

The 1-hour class touches on the benefits of certification, what’s included in the test and how to register. You’ll also learn which study materials are most useful and the tips you should implement to increase your odds of earning a passing score on the first attempt. 

It’s free to enroll with a $29.99 LinkedIn Learning monthly membership. But if you’re not yet a member, sign up for a free 1-month subscription to access the course for free.

• Who it’s for: Intermediate students 
• Price: $19.99

Learn what it takes to pass the Salesforce Platform App Builder Certification Exam in this bestselling course from Udemy. You’ll also learn how to set up security and access permissions, configure a role hierarchy, build apps on the platform and a host of other useful skills. 

This class includes 19 hours of on-demand video, 11 articles and 6 downloadable resources to supplement your learning. Once you’ve reached the finish line, you’ll receive a Certificate of Completion. 

Enrollment is only $19.99 and it’s best to have a working knowledge of Salesforce before you sign up for the class.

• Who it’s for: Intermediate students
• Price: Free 

You’ll be able to review key concepts that appear on the Salesforce Platform App Builder exam. This class begins with a primer on Salesforce fundamentals and dives into more complex concepts related to app building. 

The material is delivered through interactive modules that include hands-on tasks and projects designed to enhance your experience. After the course, you can work through real-life simulations that apply to concepts featured in the certification exam. Expect to spend approximately 55 hours working through the course.

Make sure you know design, building and implementation of custom application basics before you enroll in the course. 

Do you have extensive knowledge of the platform or are you a Salesforce certified administrator? You may be interested in these advanced courses.

• Who it’s for: Advanced students
• Price: $19.99

Do you want to take your career to the next level as a Salesforce Certified Advanced Administrator? This course, the first of a 3-part series, will give you a sneak peek into what the process entails. You can proceed with the other 2 classes in Udemy if you enjoyed the first.

Test drive this 5-hour course for only $19.99. You can receive your money back within 30 days of enrollment if you’re not satisfied for any reason.

The Salesforce Administrator Certification Credential is a prerequisite for this course and you’ll also need it to sit for the exam. 

• Who it’s for: Advanced students
• Price: $19.99

Are you interested in the Cloud Consultant Certification? If so, you might want to consider taking this class. This Udemy bestseller will equip you with the knowledge needed to pass the exam. Over 1,700 students have enrolled in this comprehensive course to date. 

You’ll be able to access a thorough discussion of the components of the exam. Instructor Mike Wheeler also covers implementation strategies, sales cloud solution design, marketing and leads, opportunity management, sales productivity and a host of other integral concepts. 

You can enroll for $19.99 and have instant access to 11 hours of on-demand video, 13 articles and 7 downloadable resources. 

• Who it’s for: Advanced students 
• Price: $19.99

This bestselling course will prepare you to pass the Salesforce Service Cloud Consultant Certification Exam. It includes 115 lectures condensed into 11 hours of video. You will also have access to 9 articles when you enroll. 

Instructors Mike and Aaron Wheeler offer 11 modules to give you access to essential industry knowledge. You’ll also earn the mechanics of implementation strategies, service cloud solution design, building custom service apps, knowledge management and interaction channels. 

Enrollment is $19.99 and you should have experience working in Salesforce before you register for this class. 

Going beyond a practice exam, you need a certificate course that meets you where you are. The best Salesforce certification programs meet the following criteria

Are you an IT employee? If so, you’re well aware that Salesforce is a sophisticated customer relationship management platform. Make sure you get an instructor who can break down terms, concepts and methodology. Look for a Salesforce trainer who’s well-versed in the platform and understands how to get you through the online certificate program. A Salesforce consultant may know the platform, but make sure they teach in a manner that speaks to you.

You can’t expect to become skilled in Salesforce by studying a multi-page document. For this reason, the course should be interactive and include tasks or projects that allow you to apply the knowledge you’ve learned in the modules. It’s also a bonus if the instructor provides demonstrations for you to reference at a later date if needed. 

Most importantly, the course should include at least 1 practice test to test your proficiency in the material. Otherwise, you won’t know whether you’re prepared to take the salesforce certification test or if you need more time to study. 

Some classes may force you to rush through the material to meet deadlines. As you explore sales Certification courses, confirm that you’re allowed to work at your own pace prior to the Salesforce exam. That way, you can take your time and give yourself the best chance at passing the applicable test on the first attempt. 

Enrolling in a reputable Salesforce certification course is the best way to set yourself up for success. You’ll take the guesswork out of trying to figure out what concepts to focus on and you’ll increase the odds of passing on the first try. 

New to Salesforce? Consider a free course to get acclimated with the platform. Once you’ve mastered the basics, move on to more complex material — enroll in intermediate and advanced courses. 

Confirm that the course is taught by a Salesforce trainer with a stellar track record. The course should also be self-paced so you have an ample amount of time to understand, retain and apply the information shared in the class. 

‘At 500-plus people, we’re probably the largest pure play Salesforce practice that exists, or very close, which we’re proud of,’ Silverline CEO Gireesh Sonnad tells CRN in an interview.

A recently introduced practice around the media and entertainment industry and growth in Canada have contributed to 20-plus percent growth in sales year over year expected by Salesforce partner Silverline, co-founder and CEO Gireesh Sonnad told CRN in an interview.

The growth comes as a result of New York-based Silverline’s acquisition of Canada-based Shift CRM, Sonnad said. And while he doesn’t predict more acquisitions in the near future, growth in Silverline’s future will come from diving deeper into Salesforce’s product portfolio, including recent acquisition Slack.

“At 500-plus people, we’re probably the largest pure play Salesforce practice that exists, or very close, which we’re proud of,” Sonnad said. “And certainly the biggest one that focuses entirely on an industry model. And so we’re going to continue to push on that as hard as we can. And Salesforce is lining straight up with that. Everything that they’re doing now is in the industry vein as well. And so I think that’s the best growth area for us.”

[RELATED: SALESFORCE’S MARC BENIOFF: ‘NO COMPANY IS BETTER POSITIONED’]

Sonnad hopes to hear more from Salesforce on integration with Slack – a collaboration application that rivals Microsoft’s Teams app – as well as its Customer 360 customer relationship management (CRM) platform during the San Francisco-based vendor’s Dreamforce conference, happening in person and streaming online Sept. 20 to Sept. 22.

Looking forward, Sonnad said that if Salesforce decides to work with distributors and indirect partners – such as TD Synnex, Pax8 and Ingram Micro – that could help the vendor grow its partner ecosystem.

Ongoing Salesforce investments in training engineers and workers in Salesforce’s product portfolio – which includes Slack, data analytics software provider Tableau and integration platform provider MuleSoft – is another help to partners such as Silverline, Sonnad said. He’s had success filling open positions by hiring people from health care and other industries Silverline serves as opposed to hiring people from other partner businesses and IT companies.

“The single hardest thing we do is to bring great people on board to serve as our clients,” he said. “And so the more that Salesforce can use some of the weight and the resources that they have to make training easier and better and faster. Or to push even farther into things like university programs – so on and so forth — so that most people come out of the gate understanding who we are that the Salesforce ecosystem is a great place to be, (that) would be super welcome.”

He continued: “In fairness, they’re doing a very good job of it and probably a better job than they ever have been. It’s just an enormous mountain to climb. It’s hundreds and hundreds of thousands of certified consultants that is the gap over the next five years.”

Here’s what else Sonnad had to say to CRN.

How are things going at Silverline?

It’s been going well. We’re having a really, really nice growth year, which we’re excited about.

We’re surpassing the growth of last year, which is exciting. And really feeling like we’re coming out of some of the stickiness that we saw in the last couple of years, if you will, which has been great.

One of the things that has changed for us in the last 12 months is the addition of a new industry. And so around this time last year we acquired an organization (Shift CRM) and started our media and entertainment practice. And that’s been going really well, too.

That’s helped us to actually get some additional offerings out into additional markets and look at ways that we can help companies in different areas.

It’s also helped us to expand geographically. The organization was located in Toronto, and so we’ve been able to push deeper into the Canadian market. And it’s been a great growth vector for us both from the headcount perspective, as well as from a client perspective.

So it’s been really nice to see some of those additional angles play out as we push the growth.

In terms of offerings in the market, certainly everything that we do is still industry focused. And, and for us, it’s even deeper than industry. It’s at the sub-vertical level. Things like our banking and lending practices are doing spectacularly well right now, just because a lot of those organizations are spending money on technology and they’re revamping the way they do things.

They’re looking at ISVs (independent software vendors) like nCino, helping with loan origination. And looking at Salesforce for help with their whole digital transformation initiatives.

So that’s been really positive, and we really like seeing that. In some of the other industries, some of the offerings have been resonating are our ability to continue to integrate and make Salesforce the one-stop shop for all the different information that they might have in their legacy environments, or maybe third-party environments.

And so this concept of bringing in data and information from other information stores that they have in their business has been really helpful to drive the transformation initiative.

One of the reasons for that is actually so that they can do a better job interacting with their clients. And so when they have more of the information from their enterprise structures, they can then use – for example, Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud – to engage with and build better journeys for their clients and connect with them better.

One of the style offerings that we’ve seen an uptick in across the board is all things marketing cloud and all things interacting with our clients’ clients, and how can they do a better job of segmenting the types of communications that they are attending to those folks? That needs a high degree of very sophisticated data in order to do that well.

What’s fueling customer demand for your offerings?

It’s starting at the front and pushing back. So it’s starting at, ‘Hey, we want to do a better job of staying close to our customers. … We want to do a better job of engaging them. And we can’t do that if we’re not digitally enabled. And part of that digital enablement is not just having the tools to do that interaction, but having the data in the right place to help us do that.

And so, if it’s a health care organization that’s trying to do a better job with recall management or doing sort of care coordination – you need data from the electronic medical record (EMR) in order to help you with that. You need some aspect of the clinical data.

Or, if you’re in the financial services world, and you want to talk to a wealth management client about, ‘Hey, you should add a 401(k).’ I need to know what you do and don’t have in order to identify who’s a good fit for this next best purchase type of a thing.

These aren’t revolutionary use cases, but they’re becoming more enabled because of the technology’s ability to talk and Salesforce’s Customer 360 perspective to do that the right way.

Marketing automation has been an initiator of some of these digital transformation projects, whereas in the past, it was maybe an add-on afterwards. So that’s been interesting. But it required some good investment from us or built the teams to do that the right way.

Are you hiring?

Hiring. And for everything. It’s probably a common theme you’ll hear in the Salesforce world.

We’re excited to have just crossed the threshold of 500 people globally. … So we’re a little bigger.

We’ve done a tremendous amount of hiring this year. And we are hiring across the board. For us, being so industry focused, industry certified and industry knowledgeable folks or people who are experienced in Salesforce’s industry clouds are really hot areas for us in terms of recruiting.

I’ll take that tangent as a chance to talk about one of the ways that we’re investing. We’re investing heavily in our people. We’re investing heavily in the experience that we’re building for those folks. We’re investing heavily in finding ways to get back out there and get people connected in person. That hasn’t happened in a long time.

And our 500-plus people are very disparately situated. But how can we keep them connected? And how can we continue that camaraderie that is so important to Silverline and its culture?

So we’re investing a lot in that. In a similar vibe, we’re investing in our clients in the sense of, hey, it’s about time that we go meet them where they are again and build those tighter connections in person.

There’s a great connectivity or camaraderie that gets built when the team project team goes on site with a client team, works through a problem together. It’s hard to reproduce that otherwise.

And so we definitely see that as a place to invest and a great place to do that. Things like Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference will be another example of us doing that as well.

You’ll be at Dreamforce?

We’re sending a couple of dozen people and we’ve got some clients there. … A lot of people are excited about the prospect of it returning and getting a chance to get back together and making it as important and as impactful a thing as you can.

What could Salesforce do looking ahead that would help your business?

We’re always interested in them helping us from a partner perspective with the labor issue.

I mean, good for them, they’re growing at enormous rates. They’re generating tremendous demand for our services, which we’re very obviously very excited about.

But the single hardest thing we do is to bring great people on board to serve as our clients. And so the more that Salesforce can use some of the weight and the resources that they have to make training easier and better and faster. Or to push even farther into things like university programs – so on and so forth — so that most people come out of the gate understanding who we are that the Salesforce ecosystem is a great place to be, (that) would be super welcome.

In fairness, they’re doing a very good job of it and probably a better job than they ever have been. It’s just an enormous mountain to climb. It’s hundreds and hundreds of thousands of certified consultants that is the gap over the next five years. And so where those people are coming from is something I’d like to know.

How are you navigating the talent gap?

Those investments in the people and the experience that I mentioned is obviously a big part of it.

We’re doing a lot of hiring now outside of the Salesforce ecosystem. Especially as an industry-focused player, we’re finding a great amount of success with folks outside of the ecosystem and hiring from an industry.

So maybe you’re not a Salesforce consultant, but you’re a CIO (chief information officer) or manager at a hospital system that’s using Salesforce. ’Hey, maybe you’d like to try this thing out for a little bit.’

So we’re doing things like that. And it’s been really successful. The majority of the hiring that we’ve done in the last 12 months has been outside of the Salesforce ecosystem.

And it’s twofold. It’s that industry-type hiring I talked about, but it’s also this thing that we call the Silverline Academy, which is just what it sounds like. It’s a junior program to bring people in and to teach them.

But it takes investment. It’s a three-month training program with a three-month shadow program. And then after six months, you’re out there as a consultant.

But that takes a tremendous amount of investment – which hurts our profit margins and means we don’t have as much money to spend on other things.

So we love it. We’re big fans of it, and we’re not going to stop doing it. And it helps us to grow the talent. But that’d be one of the things I’d love to get some help on.

Would you like Salesforce to work with distributors?

They’re just now starting to talk about allowing other folks to do that type of distributor resale style model. So it’s just not mature enough yet. … I actually don’t see it as another middleman. I see it as another channel. And I think it’s important.

If Salesforce wants to get to 100 billion (dollars), they’re going to have to start doing that. And part of the reason that Microsoft has it is because they’re got a couple of decades on Salesforce in terms of figuring out this partner ecosystem.

So Salesforce will get there. They definitely will get there. They’re just not there yet. … I think they’re gonna go after the BPO (business process outsourcing) firms. I think they’re going to go for the folks who are already selling Amazon (Web Services) or already selling Microsoft and say, ’Hey, why don’t you sell Salesforce, too?’ And then figure it out that way.

I think it’ll happen in the next couple of years, not the next couple of decades. But it’ll happen.

How’s the investment in Slack?

We’re huge fans of Slack. We were one of the preferred partners in the beginning as soon as Slack launched, which was great.

We’re investing in Slack, and we’re making sure that that is an area that we can continue to play and help our clients.

We’re taking a little bit of a ’crawl, walk, run’ style, approach. Our clients are starting to get the hang of what it means to be Slack. … This Digital HQ offering is one of the things that we’re really excited about. We’re putting it out there for our clients. We’re excited to hear more about it from Salesforce at Dreamforce. And I do think that’s going to be another big part of it.

But the crawl, walk is really about the use cases starting to appear. … We’ve got even got a couple of success stories out there. … With some clients who have used it for better collaboration, better ability to connect their teams.

And we’re really talking to clients now about how it’s an important part of any digital transformation initiative. Not a cool add-on, but a really important part of making it really sing.

But then also looking for specific use cases where, in health care, some sort of coordination activities. Or in financial services, account teaming – or something like that – where that can kind of actually work. That’s something we’re very excited about.

And as we start to walk – where the clients have Slack built in – then we can start to run. What I’m really excited about is Salesforce and Slack’s ability to tightly, tightly integrate. And so Slack becomes even yet another sort of interface in front of the Salesforce data. And they can start to let Salesforce speak to Slack and push things out proactively.

One of the promises or chatter that never really happened was its ability to speak proactively. And I think Slack is going to be a great way to do that when you start to get that moving.

Even then you start thinking about bots and automation. And Slack has such a great tech stack for putting that together. We’re very, very close to that. I would be surprised if we don’t hear a lot more of that at Dreamforce.

You think Slack can overcome Microsoft Teams?

We’re biased because we’ve been a Slack user at Silverline for many, many years. And now we’re a Slack partner.

But it’s just got a better ability to connect to all the different data sources that are out there. And not just Salesforce.

And so that’s what’s great about it versus something like Teams, for example. It’s just an API (application programming interface) driven organization. And so they’re really able to make it do a lot of interesting things.

I sign my documents in DocuSign from Slack. That’s just how I do it now. I wasn’t doing that before. I had to go to DocuSign and log in and do that. So it’s amazing how something which seems as super streamlined and efficient as signing a DocuSign could be made even better.

So anyway, we’re really excited about that. We think a lot of the leading edge offerings will start coming out for us. And again, we’re all very much use-case based. And so it’s making sure that we’re hitting the clients where they have the most need.

Where do you see Silverline growing in the future?

There’s a tremendous opportunity out there across the board at Salesforce. And so it’s really about picking the right place and the most efficient place for us to grow.

The way that I’m thinking about it now – so we’ve just acquired and brought up our third industry practice.

And so I’m excited to let that grow, let that germinate. Let’s find the sub-verticals there while we’re letting the other practices grow. … I think about this in the short, medium and long term.

The short-term growth for us is going to be horizontally, thinking about more parts of the Salesforce platform to help our clients with.

We do some Tableau, but we should be doing more. We really could be doing more on the analytics front, on the data front, etcetera, etcetera. Those types of things.

We do the majority of the Marketing Cloud stack, but we’re not getting into the CDP (customer data platform) and Interaction Studio yet, so we should be doing more of that.

So pushing more horizontally to offer more abilities to offer our clients more consultative-style services with the existing industry is the near term.

With the growth into Canada, we’re going to be doing a better job of covering all of North America from a geography perspective. But I don’t see us growing geographically in the near term or even the midterm.

I do see in the mid to long term, though, using this industry model that we built at Silverline from an operational perspective as that growth engine.

And so it is likely that we’ll find in mid to long term – not in the near term – we’ll look for that growth to happen with additional industries that we snap on to our model and continue to go forward. … At 500-plus people, we’re probably the largest pure play Salesforce practice that exists, or very close, which we’re proud of.

And certainly the biggest one that focuses entirely on an industry model. And so we’re going to continue to push on that as hard as we can. And Salesforce is lining straight up with that. Everything that they’re doing now is in the industry vein as well. And so I think that’s the best growth area for us. And I think within our three industries that we already have, and the breadth of the Salesforce technology platform, we have a tremendous opportunity for growth just within that box.

Has a potential recession affected client spending?

It is being talked about. It’s on people’s minds.

I would be lying if I said a couple of our clients hadn’t decided to hold their breath a little bit and maybe be like, ‘Let me think a little bit more about this.’

We’re not seeing things disappear. We’re seeing things maybe take a little bit more investigation. But it’s still in pockets for us. And the digital transformation initiative or story or need from business isn’t going away.

And so I would echo what Salesforce and (CEO) Marc (Benioff) said at the last quarterly review. It’s not hitting our industry yet, and many companies still need to do this kind of work.

And so if there’s belt-tightening, it’s going to come from other places, potentially. … There’s a lot of people reacting to the fear of recession more so than the fact that it might actually happen.

Have you felt any effects of the supply chain crisis?

Almost all of our clients are services organizations. So financial services. Health care is providing services. And even media for the most part is technology services.

Almost none of our clients deal in hard goods. And so we’re probably not a good person to ask this question, because in a weird way, our industries are growing. Whereas if I’m a guy who does work for the manufacturing industry, and if I talked to some of my friends who run those companies, like they’re actually feeling a world of hurt because those companies have supply chain issues. … It’s interesting to think about how this macroeconomic environment is affecting services-based companies versus product-based companies. And it can be very, very different.

You talk to the product-based companies, and they’re thinking this recession is terrible and it’s crushing my business. And I’m growing more than 20 percent this year. So it’s like – that just doesn’t make any sense.

Google, AWS, Deloitte, CGI and KPMG were among the standout companies at Dreamforce 2023.

Tech giants, solution providers and managed services providers were among the standout exhibitors at this year’s Dreamforce, the annual Salesforce event.

San Francisco-based Salesforce – a vendor for enterprise applications, customer relationship management (CRM) software and more recently generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) – advertised this year’s Dreamforce as the premiere event for AI.

And sure enough, many of the biggest announcements at Dreamforce 2023 – held in Salesforce’s hometown – centered around the emerging technology, as did Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff’s keynote address.

[RELATED: Salesforce Dreamforce 2023: 8 Biggest Announcements]

Salesforce Dreamforce 2023

“We want to build the trusted AI platform for customer companies so that everyone is an Einstein and more productive,” Benioff said this week. “We think that trust is the highest priority here. We want to turn it over to you – but only with trust. We want to make sure it’s integrated. We want to make sure it’s intelligent. We want to make sure it’s automated. We want to make sure it’s low code and no code. We want to make sure it’s open. … This is our life’s work. This is what we’ve been doing for 25 years.”

Salesforce has about 6,000 partners, according to the vendor.

Among the standout exhibitors at Dreamforce 2023:

*Google

*Amazon Web Services (AWS)

*Deloitte

*CGI

*KPMG

Read on for why these exhibitors had attendants talking.

Google

During Dreamforce 2023, Salesforce and Google revealed that they expanded their partnership to further integrate their products.

Salesforce became the first partner to integrate with Mountain View, Calif.-based Google’s Duet AI extensions framework. And Google Workspace is the first extensibility partner for Salesforce Einstein Copilot, according to Salesforce.

Users can bring in context from Salesforce and Google Calendar, Docs, Meet, Gmail and other productivity applications

Google Workspace users gained the ability to generate content in that platform and update records and trigger workflows in Salesforce.

Joint users can also bring PaLM 2 and other Google-hosted LLMs from Vertex AI to Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot Studio to build GenAI products.

AWS

Amazon Web Services’ presence at Dreamforce this year was amplified by an announcement that the cloud giant and Salesforce will pilot a series of integrations next year that promise to enable sharing of data lakes and large language models (LLMs) between the two vendors.

Users of Seattle-based Amazon’s Redshift, EMR, Athena, Bedrock and SageMaker can leverage foundation models within Salesforce with security, according to Salesforce. The process has zero extract, transform and load (ETL) processes, meaning no copying and moving data.

An existing integration between Service Cloud Voice with Amazon Connect allows users the ability to launch contact center services with Salesforce’s agent desktop with Amazon Comprehend, Transcribe and other services to Improve agent productivity, according to Salesforce.

AWS has about 100,000 channel partners worldwide, according to CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs.

IBM

Ahead of Dreamforce 2023, IBM and Salesforce revealed a new collaboration around AI adoption for customer relationship management (CRM) tools.

As part of the collaboration, IBM Consulting professionals will guide clients through Salesforce AI adoption and deployment, according to IBM. These professionals can also combine Salesforce AI tools with IBM’s own Watsonx for more insights.

IBM Consulting’s Center of Excellence for Generative AI features more than 1,000 professionals with experience in enterprise-grade Salesforce, IBM and other vendor technology.

IBM’s AI and Automation practice has 21,000 professionals, according to the vendor.

And the IBM Data Classifier application can help reduce data mapping processes when using Salesforce AI, according to the Armonk, N.Y.-based vendor.

IBM has about 55,000 channel partners worldwide, 12,000 of them in North America, according to 2023 Channel Chiefs.

Snowflake

Although Snowflake recently brought on former Salesforce executive Tyler Prince as its channel chief, the two vendors continue to deepen their partnership for joint users.

Ahead of Dreamforce 2023, the companies announced general availability of Bring Your Own Lake (BYOL) Data Sharing with Snowflake Data Cloud from Salesforce Data Cloud, bridging data within both vendors’ platforms for more insights around market trends, customer behavior, operations and more, according to IBM.

Salesforce and Bozeman, Mont.-based Snowflake plan on launching BYOL Data Federation “in the coming months” for further bidirectional data sharing, according to Salesforce.

OpenText

OpenText’s Apps for Salesforce offering promises users the ability to connect Salesforce clouds to the former’s ware for a variety of enhanced capabilities.

The Canada-based technology vendor conglomerate’s Apps for Salesforce promises users the ability to generate and retrieve relevant communications for improved customer experiences and availability of critical documentation, brand templates and digital assets, according to OpenText.

OpenText has about 20,000 channel partners worldwide, according to CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs.

Veeam

In the lead up to Dreamforce 2023, Veeam unveiled the second version of its Backup for Salesforce offering.

The Columbus, Ohio-based data security vendor’s offering allows administrators to limit single sign-on (SSO) authentication to specific Salesforce domains and support multi-factor authentication (MFA).

A new restore wizard allows sandbox seeding users to specific sources and target Salesforce organizations, according to Veeam.

Veeam has about 37,000 channel partners worldwide, according to CRN’s 2023 Channel Chiefs.

Persistent Systems

Persistent Systems – a Salesforce partner and member of CRN’s 2023 MSP 500 – was on site at Dreamforce 2023.

The MSP’s Salesforce services include end-to-end marketing, sales automation, omni-channel customer service and integration of Salesforce subsidiary MuleSoft, according to Persistent, which has offices in California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia and worldwide.

Over the companies’ 18-year partnership, Persistent has landed more than 6,800 certifications, 150,000 badges on Salesforce learning platform Trailhead and more than 1,400 joint projects, according to the MSP.

Cognizant

Cognizant has a variety of industry-based Salesforce services for clients, including ones for insurance, retail, media and banking.

The solution provider’s insurance offerings include InsurElevate for managing end-to-end policy lifecycles. For retailers, Cognizant offers OmniServe Next for introducing GenAI. SubcriberX promises the ability to grow subscriber bases and increase revenue and customer loyalty.

And Loan Origination Collaboration helps banks settle loans faster, according to the solution provider.

The Teaneck, N.J.-based company – No. 6 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – also has a codeless compliant forms offering available on Salesforce’s AppExchange marketplace.

DXC Technology

Another solution provider heavyweight exhibiting at Dreamforce was DXC Technology.

Ashburn, Va.-based DXC – No. 10 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – has completed more than 500 Salesforce projects and has 10 related global solution centers, according to the solution provider.

Some of DXC’s Salesforce capabilities include expanding digital service centers, improving e-commerce functions, building Einstein chatbots and integrating industry platforms, according to the solution provider.

KPMG

KPMG had representatives at Dreamforce 2023 to discuss the Big Four accounting firm and professional services giant’s partnership with Salesforce.

Representatives of the Netherlands-based firm participated in several speaking sessions, discussing its work modernizing Cisco Meraki’s Salesforce ecosystem and implementing Salesforce at the Department of Defense.

Repeatable KPMG Salesforce services include application security and controls, sustainability reporting, modern enterprise integration and customer due diligence (CDD), according to the firm.

Deloitte

Deloitte Digital revealed a series of new integrations with Salesforce, including bringing Einstein AI to its DigitalMIX platform and new services for biopharmaceutical (BioPharma) organizations.

DigitalMIX gained new abilities for automation, personalization, and analytics across sales, service, marketing and the back-office, according to the global systems integrator (GSI).

Users can leverage more predictive analytics, GenAI and visualizations for productivity, revenue growth and customer relationships, according to Deloitte.

DigitalMIX offers scalable, pre-configured services for multi-cloud finance implementations. The offering already works with Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud and other products.

Although the details were scarce on Deloitte Digital and Salesforce’s BioPharma alliance, a statement from Deloitte promised to “empower BioPharma firms to bring innovative therapies to patients faster” and “the next generation of innovations that help enable the rapid scientific and technological progress of this sector.”

They also promised “new engagement models for healthcare professionals and patients across the entire value chain from clinical to commercial,” according to Deloitte.

CGI

CGI has been a Salesforce partner since 2010, developing expertise across industries and offering strategy, consulting, design, implementation, integration, managed services and other offerings.

The Canada-based company – No. 12 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – has 10 Salesforce centers of excellence worldwide, more than 300 Salesforce customers and more than 400 Salesforce certified professionals, according to CGI.

Among CGI-s Salesforce-related offerings is a collections service for state and local government agencies, a community portal for field service and asset intelligence and a cloud accelerator for manufacturers, according to the solution provider.

Virtusa

Virtusa boasts a eight-plus year partnership with Salesforce with more than 1,800 certification and more than 710 certified professionals.

The Southborough, Mass.-based company – No. 39 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – has Salesforce-based offerings across life sciences, health care, banking, telecommunications and other industries, according to Virtusa.

Specific Virtusa offerings revolve around Salesforce Einstein GPT, Salesforce managed services, transforming contact centers and simplifying appeals and grievances processing, according to the solution provider. A Virtusa vice president even presented at Dreamforce 2023 about a sales-related project at British telecommunication company BT.

Capgemini

Capgemini introduced a Generative AI for CX Foundry offering, built from a Salesforce collaboration, before Dreamforce 2023.

With this new offering, the France-based company – No. 3 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – promises a way to personalize customer experiences and use data to automate customized content creation while abiding by security and ethics standards, according to Capgemini.

The offering should help clients use Salesforce Einstein AI technology with existing IT infrastructure, data models and business processes, according to Capgemini. Joint Capgemini and Salesforce customers include Heathrow Airport.

TCS

One of Tata Consultancy Services’s biggest Salesforce-related offerings involves its Crystallus set of pre-configured industry solutions and composable business applications.

The offering from the India-based company – No. 2 on CRN’s 2023 Solution Provider 500 – can help customers adopt more cloud services and Improve business outcomes, according to TCS.

TCS’ Salesforce practice includes advisory services around cloud and content strategy, adopting development security operations (DevSecOps) and blueprinting, according to the solution provider.

The solution provider can also implement and support multiple Salesforce products, including Data Cloud and MuleSoft. TCS has more than 7,500 Salesforce-certified professionals, according to the company.