Hi everyone! I have been using CRM Analytics since 2016 and I'm now learning Data Cloud. I see a lot of similarities between the two products. Could someone help me understand when someone would choose Data Cloud over CRM Analytics?
So far the things I notice that are different/unique in Data Cloud are:
- Identity Resolution
- Activations
Thanks!
@Randall King MY MAN!! Good to see you on here and I miss working with you!! so the only actual feature we took from CRMA was data prep and we're using that on a feature called batch data transform. It's the non-sql alternative for what used to be the Calculated Insights in CDP feature (basically it used to be a gigantic empty field you could throw super complex SQL commands yikes!).
It's funny because some of our messaging is the same across products (CRMA, Slack, Data Cloud) ie bring data from different places, do something to the data, analyze it, and take action on it (hmmmmm???).
In this case, to add b2c to b2b data in one place (and not just batch but also streaming data) we had to go big with a massive cloud data lake platform (apache iceberg). You know how every IT system has a different version(s) of a lead, customer, and especially an Account? Heck, there are so many duplicates in most Salesforce orgs, much less throwing ERP and other SaaS apps into the mix! To solve that we're using the old CDP Identity Resolution functionality to end up with just one de facto record for each main object in data cloud. So instead of just having a Contact object in DataCloud, we have a "Unified Contact" object..."Unified Lead", "Unified Account", "Unified WIDGET" etc :)
Once that data gets unified, it's way more clean/accurate and you can do all the stuff you did on it before (tableau, crma, data science) as well as action it (not just with CRMA Actions) but also with high volume CDP'ish/B2C'ish things like Activation (facebook, whatsapp) or Data Actions like kicking off a marketing journey, start a flow, kick off any salesforce platform event (pub/sub) etc.
You can see an end-to-end diagram of what happens at each point in Data Cloud on the blog @Rikke Hovgaard just posted this week:
https://www.salesforceblogger.com/2023/10/30/demystifying-data-cloud-concepts/
Now hurry up and learn this so you can come back and work with me again!! :)))
