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Dreamforce in Review: Phase2's Top Takeaways

Santierra Hutson | Earned Media Specialist

December 13, 2019


On November 19, Phase2 Director of Innovation, Mike Mangi, and Director of Business Technology, Tracy Smith, arrived in San Francisco to represent our team as they joined more than 170,000 Trailblazers at Dreamforce 2019. Over four days, Mike and Tracy attended insightful sessions highlighting the Salesforce core values --Trust, Customer Success, Innovation, Equality--  and learned from Salesforce industry experts, visionaries, and fellow Trailblazers.  

With concerts, sessions, keynote talks, and speakers including Former President, Barack Obama, and CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, Mike, and Tracy absorbed an insurmountable amount of knowledge. Here are the top five takeaways they noted while attending this unforgettable event. 

Personalization 

Personalization has been the foremost theme of this event season. During Dreamforce, Mike and Tracy experienced a reaffirming of this particular aspect of digital experience in the marketplace. During the conference, Trailblazers heard from industry experts about taking this practice to the next level with journey mapping, individualized design for users, and personalized interactive emails.  

Mobile is King

Technology is continuously advancing to adapt to the fast-paced world we are living and working in. Businesses are gravitating to more convenient, seamless forms of communication, data tracking, and consumption. As emails, conference calls, and receiving contact information integrate with mobile devices for on-the-go professionals, features such as optical character recognition (OCR) can enhance the digital experience. The need for mobile apps and enhanced AI functionalities to keep up with demand is ever-present.  

“More business work is happening on mobile devices. As workers move from desktop to mobile, it is critical to make sure the back-end systems in your digital experience platform are also mobile-optimized - from your CRM to CMS.” - Director of Innovation, Mike Mangi

Single Source of Truth for Customer Data

On day one of Dreamforce, Salesforce unveiled Customer 360, a software used to consolidate and control data in a single source of truth. With technologies like 360, marketing and sales databases can sync together, eliminating problems like buying a pair of shoes from an eCommerce retailer then, getting a marketing email recommending the same pair of shoes the next day.

“Salesforce Customer 360 will help to solve the problem of out-of-sync customer data by providing a single source of truth, which is critical to personalization, security, and user experience.” - Mike Mangi, Director of Innovation 

myTrailhead Integration

During their time at Dreamforce, Tracy and Mike explored the multi-functional capabilities of Trailhead. As an organization that finds this particular Salesforce feature to be highly valuable, Phase2 is eager to continue implementing this technology to support internal capacities, and external client needs.

“I see a ton of value in myTrailhead internally with onboarding new hires, providing a system for our BuilDesign curriculum, and Phase2 University, and externally as an offering we can use to provide guidance and implementation for our clients.” - Tracy Smith, Director of Business Technology 

The Power of Tableau

When Salesforce President, Brent Taylor, tweeted a poll asking which announcement attendees were most excited to hear about during Dreamforce, Tableau emerged as the clear choice. Tracy had the opportunity to explore Tableau deeply to understand the admin side of the technology. Through attending sessions focused on Einstein Analytics, pulling data, and how to clean and improve our use of Salesforce, Tracy arrived back at HQ with new practices for enabling our leadership team with the tools needed to receive the information needed when needed. 

“I was reluctant to join the Tableau bandwagon. The breakout session “Get to Know Tableau in Depth” hosted by Naisan Geula opened my eyes to many, many possibilities. I think the SF acquisition of Tableau will be a good thing and am excited to see how Einstein Analytics and Tableau converge.” - Tracy Smith, Director of Business Technology 

Our team returned to headquarters energized and ready to implement the things they learned while at Dreamforce. “Dreamforce is kind of like a Salesforce Admin’s New Year, and just being away from the office in that environment helped me to strategize my vision for 2020 and beyond,” said Tracy. As we close out 2019 and prepare for 2020, we are excited to use what Mike and Tracy have learned to propel both our organization and client work forward.   

To learn more about how we are utilizing Salesforce technology to meet our clients’ needs, read our case study stay tuned for upcoming announcements showcasing our work employing this technology and contact us if you would like to explore how Salesforce can help your organization reach its goals.


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