Unlocking the Potential of Salesforce Genie (formerly known as Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform or Salesforce CDP)
The significance of data in today’s business world cannot be overstated. From tailoring information to catering to a user’s specific interests to suggesting products/services based on recent purchases, data has transformed industries across diverse sectors. Yet, the challenge lies in collecting pertinent data, and even if achieved, consolidating data sources for a unified view of a customer is paramount. Enter Salesforce Genie (CDP Genie), a tool designed to store real-time data across channels, systems, and streams at a massive scale, seamlessly integrating it into both internal and external product portfolios.
Regarded as a groundbreaking innovation among Salesforce products, Salesforce Genie merges and purges user information from various applications into a unified source. It seamlessly integrates with Salesforce Customer 360 platform products, empowering organizations to deliver cohesive customer experiences across channels.
Understanding Salesforce Customer Data Platform (CDP):
Before delving into Salesforce Genie, it’s crucial to understand its foundation, Salesforce Customer Data Platform (CDP). Salesforce Genie has evolved from Salesforce CDP, which is still actively used. Both platforms are distinct, and the subsequent sections will elaborate on their differences.
Salesforce Genie:
Formerly known as Salesforce Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform (CDP), this tool experienced rapid organic growth. Similar to other Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), Salesforce Customer Data Platform creates a single source of truth for a user’s profile across various touchpoints. The key attributes shared by Salesforce Genie and CDP include:
- Creating unified profiles through fuzzy matching and advanced data linking.
- Aggregating data across channels, tools, and streams into a unified dashboard using data ingestion and Salesforce Mulesoft APIs.
- Leveraging 360-degree customer data for targeted interactions and personalized experiences.
- Enabling collaboration between marketing, sales, service, and commerce teams based on real-time customer data.
Key Features of Salesforce Customer Data Platform:
- Data Ingestion: Matches a data record to a person, creating a single entry by gathering information from multiple sources.
- Identity Resolution: Prevents duplicate entries by stitching disparate identities together into a single customer profile.
- Data Processing: Improves data existing across multiple systems via code to create one person entry in one information.
- Audience Segmentation: Allows segmentation based on various attributes for personalized cross-selling and upselling opportunities.
- Data Syndication & Synchronization: Activates data by sending it from the Salesforce CDP data model to other platforms for further steps.
Salesforce Genie was introduced at Dreamforce 2022 to address the siloed environment of data resulting from Salesforce’s many product acquisitions. Serving as a common layer between tools, especially CRM, marketing, and services, Genie delivers a unified customer view across Salesforce Customer 360 platforms at great speed and scale. It surpasses the capabilities of a simple customer data platform:
- Spans across the entire Salesforce Customer 360 suite, driving insights across Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Mulesoft, Slack, Tableau, and more.
- Encompasses no-code, low-code, and pro-code functionalities.
- Functions as a data lake, allowing real-time structured and unstructured data.
Salesforce Genie vs Salesforce CDP: Key Differences:
- Target Use Cases: Genie caters to the entire Salesforce Customer 360 suite, while CDP is limited to marketing automation platforms.
- Key Features: Genie extends capabilities beyond CDP, offering data unification and identity resolution for real-time insights.
- Underlying Architecture: Genie works seamlessly with all Salesforce Customer 360 products, enabling simultaneous data transmission to multiple cloud products.
- Flow Automation: Genie provides real-time flow automation, whereas CDP does not offer real-time flow automation.
- Einstein AI: Genie includes real-time Einstein AI for data analytics, a feature absent in CDP.
- Hyperforce: Genie is supported by Hyperforce, ensuring data security and regulatory compliance, unlike CDP, which has limited Hyperforce support.
- Zero Copy Architecture: Genie supports zero-copy architecture, allowing secure on-demand access to Salesforce data in external tools. CDP duplicates data into Salesforce when syncing.
- Bring Your Own AI: Genie supports bringing Salesforce data to SageMaker for creating machine learning models, a capability lacking in CDP.
- Integrations with Mulesoft and Tableau: Genie offers integrations with Mulesoft and Tableau, providing enhanced functionality and faster speed.
The Science Behind Salesforce Genie:
When integrated into Salesforce Customer 360, Genie facilitates real-time data storage and processing across all connected systems. Utilizing Salesforce Flow, Einstein AI, Genie Hyperscale Data Platform, and Hyperforce, Genie enables seamless data access, automation, analytics, and data security.
Getting Started with Salesforce Genie or Salesforce CDP Data Model:
Organizations can leverage either Salesforce Genie or Salesforce CDP based on their unique business needs. As a certified Salesforce Partner, Tectonic can offer expertise in evaluating and implementing these platforms. Reach out to our Salesforce Genie consultants for in-depth discussions on the tool and its implementation.