Salesforce extends Wave Analytics for Financial Cloud and B2B Marketing

CRM company Salesforce has extended its Wave Analytics platform to financial services and B2B marketing. The platform was launched in October 2014, and claims to be aimed at helping third-party developers build their custom mobile analytics apps. It seems Salesforce is now eyeing to boost its Analytics offering by adding industry-specific Wave applications to its existing line-up. The ‘Wave’ started with apps for sales, service and marketing analytics. But according to the company, with over 20 new Wave apps in the Salesforce AppExchange, from independent software vendor (ISVs) partners, Salesforce is doing everything it can to bring users (in departments more than one) analytics embedded in an app experience.

Financial Cloud

Salesforce Wave for Financial Services Cloud claims to be embedded directly into the product and will enable advisors uncover client opportunities, maximize their time and take action at the point of insight, claims Salesforce. The idea is to help financial advisors assemble disparate financial data that could be scattered over multiple systems and categorize their clients. Reportedly, it will do so by segmenting clients by age group, activity type, investment area and financial goal progress. Rohit Mahna, General Manager, Financial Services, Salesforce, said:

The advisor-client relationship is no longer just about helping a client to build wealth. It’s about helping the client to achieve life goals. Wave for Financial Services Cloud gives advisors the ability to visualize personal and market data in the context of their client’s goals, helping guide conversations about their investments. It’s all about valuable insights that lead to action.

B2B Marketing

Wave for B2B Marketing claims to enable companies align their marketing and sales teams better with actionable insights on campaign effectiveness. According to the company, B2B marketers can now drill into marketing and CRM data such as lead volume, lead-to-opportunity conversion rates, pipeline velocity and campaign ROI, and combine that data with third-party sources such as Google Analytics and event management platforms to gain insight into how their campaigns are performing. This could potentially ease making quick adjustments to improve outcomes. Bob Stutz, Chief Analytics Officer and CEO, Marketing Cloud, Salesforce, stated:

Wave apps are transforming the way employees make decisions and drive their businesses forwardAnd by extending Wave apps to even more departments and industries, we are making every employee smarter, empowering them with personalized answers, embedded seamlessly where they work.

In another company blog, Shannon Duffy from Salesforce commented, “Wave for B2B Marketing is the only out-of-the-box marketing analytics solution specifically for Salesforce customers that provides marketers with a consolidated view of the marketing and CRM data that matters most to them. She added, “Customers get pre-built dashboards that show high-level metrics for heads of marketing as well as more tactical metrics for front-line marketers, but also have the power to create customer dashboards based on specific roles.” In addition, Salesforce has also announced Wave Dashboard Designer and Wave Dataset Designer to help IT departmnets personalize Wave apps for each role and function internally. It will also combine data from multiple data sources to provide employees with actionable insights and business intelligence. Everis, ThinkLP and Vlocity are the ISV partners under the umbrella of collaboration that hope to further and extend the power of Wave Analytics with Everis ehCOS Wave Analytics, ThinkLP Loss Prevention Analytics and Vlocity Clickstream Analytics.