Salesforce Analytics Wave: 100 Days Later
100 days on from the Analytics Cloud announcements at Dreamforce, it is not clear how successful it has been with customers. Tom Murphy at CMS Wire offers some good analysis on the launch.
Anna Rosenman, director of product marketing for the Salesforce Analytics Cloud: “Initially, when Salesforce announced that this is for everyone and it’s mobile and it’s a platform, a lot of those messages had been used in the past. They were nothing new when it comes to the BI space or analytics space”.
As a result, potential customers were confused about whether Wave was just a discovery tool or something “you could plop on top” of a BI platform.
“That was something I don’t think we expected — that we would have to do a little more education about how broad the capabilities are of the Analytics Cloud,” said Rosenman
Defending Analytics Cloud’s steep pricing Rosenman describes the do it yourself scenario:
… companies would then have to create a process to develop the apps needed by line-of-business users. That typically involves filling out a request to the CIO and waiting weeks or months for the application.
“You shouldn’t have to log a ticket to get visibility into your pipeline,” said Rosenman. “You shouldn’t have to log a ticket to get a view of your entire customer base. You should be able to do all of that on your own.”
Salesforce seems keen to sell directly into business units and be almost competitive to internal IT departments. I think this is contrary to how Salesforce products tend to managed in most enterprises.