Salesforce is the world’s leading CRM system. A CRM connects all available customer information to optimize marketing and sales. The data is stored in the sales cloud and sorted into accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, and many more.
In addition to the wide functionality of Salesforce, Einstein Analytics was added in summer 2017. It is the central hub where all available data can be connected and queried. External data can be imported, and all data can be processed via dataflows and recipes. At the core of this process is the dataset, depicted by a characteristic hexagon in Einstein Analytics. A dataset indicates that data is present in a format that can be further processed. For example, a dataset can be directly visualized in a dashboard and can be used to trigger events or to create a so-called story.
Stories are the built-in version of machine learning. They are a feature of Einstein Discovery using simple regression. This allows the user to find correlations as well as make predictions.
In Summer 2019, Salesforce acquired Tableau. In October 2020, followed the announcement:
Einstein Analytics is now Tableau CRM.
Surprising at first, however, on a closer look, it makes a lot of sense. Tableau is definitely ahead of the current Salesforce Eco System with respect to dashboards and visualizations. A straightforward guess would be that the innovation of dashboards within Salesforce will be limited in the future and the focus will shift towards Tableau. However, the most recent announcements[1] suggest that the focus is a new, shared standard for both. Especially the new Data Manager, as well as the shift from the DataFlow towards Recipes points in that direction. This is a win for dashboard builders and end users alike. At least, if the data connectivity works as well as showcased at the Tableau Confernce-ish[2] in fall. If it is a win for the entire company will depend on the licensing model. Currently, plans indicate that Tableau CRM can be licensed either as a part of Salesforce or as a part of Tableau Plus[3].
From the Tableau point of view, Tableau gets a direct connection to a CRM, thus Tableau CRM. How pressing this is, is open to debate. Tableau has featured quite a few connectors for various CRM systems and databases for quite a while. Furthermore, the option to directly write data from Tableau into Salesforce is not a real revolution. Currently, this can be easily achieved via a local database and an import. What would be very interesting, however, is the possibility to directly modify a Salesforce object from tableau, especially as the Salesforce API can be still quite cumbersome.
Altogether, it will be exciting to see how Tableau will become or will be made a part of the Salesforce Eco System via Tableau CRM.
[1]Announced at the Partner Release Update Webinars February 2021
[2] https://tc20.tableau.com/
[3] https://www.tableau.com/blog/2020/10/bringing-together-tableau-and-einstein-analytics