Get to Know Salesforce Data 360

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Describe what Salesforce Data 360 is and how it works.
  
• Explain how Data 360 helps your teams understand your customer.
  
• Name a few example use cases for Data 360.
  

What Is Data 360?

Companies are collecting more data than ever before about their customers. But this data is collected in silos which can result in thousands of versions of a customer and their interactions with a brand. Many companies have attempted to solve this by investing in a data warehouse, a data lake, or a data lakehouse. An organization might say it has all of their data in Snowflake, AWS, or Databricks. But no data warehouse, data lake, or data lakehouse is the same, which means that the structure of that data and the connectivity of that data to the customer experience is different too.

Data 360 puts all of your data to work for your customers. It’s deeply embedded in the Salesforce Platform, which means any external data lake or warehouse can now take actions and run workflows inside of your CRM. Data 360 is about more than just bringing data together. It’s about bringing entire organizations together around the customer to improve experiences and increase growth.

Data 360 is built on Salesforce’s foundational metadata layer, which provides a common language that integrates all Salesforce apps and low-code platform services including Agentforce, Flow for automation, Lightning for UI, and Apex for deep, pro-code customization.

Uncover and Activate Your Data

Ever since the first algorithms organized our feeds into suggested content, companies have known that data would define success in the modern market. But with so much info out there online, the challenge for many today is cutting through the noise to find the trends and insights that matter.

Data 360 is the solution. It dynamically evolves as it brings in more data about your customers, finds trends and insights as they happen, and creates opportunities for you to act. Data 360 bridges the gap between knowledge and action.

How Data 360 Works

Northern Trail Outfitters (NTO) is an outdoor apparel company. Rachel Rodriguez is one of NTO’s customers. NTO’s data is a disorganized mess across separate systems. When Rachel interacts with each system, NTO fails to recognize her as the same person.

• Ecommerce website: An anonymous user with a “rachel.runs@example.com” email address put a pair of trail-running shoes in their shopping cart but didn’t check out.
  
• In-store retail: Rachel Rodriguez bought running socks.
  
• Customer service: R. Rodriguez asked customer service about a shipping delay on an order for running pants via text message.
  
• External data storage (Snowflake, Databricks, AWS): NTO stores supplier data, such as raw materials, in an external system. The fabric used in Rachel’s delayed pants was part of a supply chain delay.
  

NTO treats these interactions as different people, with separate user profiles in NTO’s system. Since NTO doesn’t know they’re all Rachel, NTO’s interactions with Rachel are disjointed. The marketers send Rachel an email offering a discount on socks she already bought, while ignoring the shoes she actually wants. The service rep can’t explain why her pants are delayed. Rachel is confused and frustrated.

Pia Larson, NTO’s enterprise architect, wants to improve how NTO integrates its data and understands its customers using Data 360.

First, Pia connects data from all of NTO’s different systems and brings it into Data 360. This process is called ingestion.

Pia matches Rachel’s separate profiles into a unified profile using bits of information from each touchpoint, such as email addresses, phone numbers, and name. This process is called identity resolution.

Next, Pia calculates insights about Rachel such as lifetime spending and her favorite sport. This helps NTO’s teams better understand Rachel. For example, Pia discovers that 80% of Rachel’s purchases are for high-performance running gear. Pia can then build a subgroup of customers—called a segment—for serious runners and include Rachel in it.

Now every department at NTO has a comprehensive view of Rachel to help them interact with her effectively. NTO’s service rep can explain why Rachel’s pants are delayed. NTO’s marketers can email Rachel a coupon for the shoes in her abandoned cart. In the future, NTO can also target Rachel with campaigns for serious runners. NTO has a complete view of Rachel, and Rachel is a satisfied customer!

Customer Experience Across Salesforce

Once you connect your data, you can use it to inform all kinds of insights and operations across your business. Data 360 enables any team to create valuable experiences.

Data 360 integrates with strategies and workflows you depend on and enhances them with insights from across all your data sources. In the next unit, discover Data 360 use cases across Salesforce.

Resources

• Salesforce: Data 360
• Salesforce Help: About Salesforce Data 360