Salesforce, Inc. (CRM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's session, How to Predict Revenue Accurately and Close Faster. And thank you all so much for joining us today. My name is Ariana, and I'm on the corporate marketing team here at Salesforce. And before we begin, I'd like to cover a few quick notes with you about our webinar platform. Today's webinar will be available on demand after we wrap up, and it will be accessible through the URL that you are on right now. Please note the slides will advance automatically throughout the presentation today, and you can enlarge them by clicking the enlarge slide button located in the top right-hand corner of your slide widget. Should you need technical assistance, click on the Help widget located on the bottom left corner of your console. We've also added some additional resources, which are available through the resources window to the right of the slide. There, you can find some additional related content. And lastly, we encourage you to submit your questions at any time through our presentation using the Ask a Question widget at the bottom of your console. We'll do our best to answer as many questions as we can at the end of this presentation. And with that out of the way, I will be turning things over to Connie to get us started.

All right. Hi, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening from wherever you're joining us today. I'm excited that I'm joined by an awesome panel of folks to spend the next hour or so with you to talk all the things around forecasting and pipeline management. So on the agenda today, we'll do a quick sort of recap of what's going on in the landscape, probably a lot of things you all are familiar with, then dive into really the crux of 4 steps where we'll cover best practices and also do a quick overview of how Sales Cloud can help with forecasting and closing pipeline faster. And of course, we'll showcase all of this in a live demo. And right after that, we have plenty of time for Q&A. So as you're going through all of the content and you've got questions, don't hesitate, use that Q&A feature to raise that question. And before we get started, of course, just a friendly reminder. Salesforce is a publicly traded company, so please make any purchasing decisions based on what is currently available in the marketplace. So I'm Connie Dea, I'm on the product marketing team for Sales Cloud. And today, I'm going to be joined with Namrata, who is on our product management team and really specializes and got deep expert on forecasting; and we have Brent, who is from our solution engineering team, and he is going to be the demo master to show you all of this goodness in a little bit. Well, let's just level set a little bit. I think from all the conversations that I have with customers, it's really clear that forecasting is really crucial to driving success for our sales organizations, whether it's helping drive alignment to make sure that you are meeting those targets and achieving your sales goals. And probably very common today, just making the right pivots and adopting your sales strategies so you can keep meeting your number. And for the sales managers that are joining us today, there's a lot of goodness, too, in all the forecasting data that can also be key to help coach and manage your sellers to meet your customers' needs and to meet your targets. And in fact, companies that have and are working with best-in-class forecasting tools are 1.8x more likely to achieve quota. But the ironic part of this is despite how crucial this is, it's actually -- forecasting a pipeline management is actually an area where Gartner's reporting is the area for the most opportunity to get better. And why is that? Well, some of the areas that Gartner talks about is, in general, there is a lack of confidence in just the data itself, right? A lot of this is really starting with good data, quality data. And a lot of times, we're hearing from prospects, they're just spending a lot of time to validate, is this even the right data to be analyzing. Second, just not enough focus on actionability. How do we take that data and translate it into ways to action it so that our sellers can keep selling. And then lastly, just inconsistencies in our data. Depending where you're tracking, if things are tracked in spreadsheets and some other solutions, that lack of standardization is creating inconsistencies that's making it harder to roll up to an org level so you can forecast accurately. So of course, we know and we hear very loud and clear from our customers that there needs to be a new way. To move from operating just within spreadsheets and multiple solutions to doing it more in a streamlined fashion, all on a single platform. We hear from customers they want to move from just going with their gut and leaning on data and AI to be really data-driven in how they're running their forecasting and their selling. And lastly, of course, there's a lot of solutions out there are just sort of a one-size-fits-all type model, and we know that you want to be able to forecast the way that you want and be able to have solutions that are flexible with your business needs. And that is why our teams have been spending a lot of time in investing to bring the best-in-class forecasting and pipeline management tools to you through Sales Cloud. And it will help you with a couple of things. First, we'll help you drive better forecasting accuracy by giving you the ability to run, update and manage all of your forecast in pipe all in a single place within Sales Cloud in real time. We talked about the lack of actionability. Well, with Sales Cloud, you're able to use visual cues and AI, and we'll talk more about this, to be able to spot risks and upsides so that you're able to -- your sellers can know where to focus and from the managers, you know how to coach your sellers. And then lastly, we're bringing a lot of customization so that you can truly forecast the way that you do it to fit your business needs. And for the customers who've been using all of our goodness, they've been seeing a 28% increase in their forecast accuracy and have been able to close faster. And for those of you who are current customers, anybody who currently has Enterprise Edition or up, so that includes enterprise, unlimited and our sales suite, you already have forecasting and Pipeline Inspection with you. So there's a lot of goodness to unlock if you are unfamiliar with our capabilities. So let's dive into the meat of just the crux of more into forecasting pipeline and best practices. I'm going to hand it over to Namrata, who's going to walk us through the first few steps.

Perfect. Thanks, Connie. Hello, everybody. I'm Namrata Rao. I am proud to be leading the forecasting product line here at Sales Cloud. And as Connie rightly mentioned, I'm going to walk you through the steps here for forecasting. So let's kickstart our journey here. What is the #1 step I'm going to start you with? I'm going to kick start here with telling you that it's really important to align your forecast to how you sell. And why is that? The reason is because you know this, too, that there is no one-size-fit-all model, right? Connie just spoke to us about that. And why is that so? That's because every industry and business forecast differs based on how you sell. And that's why we have a whole set of customization capabilities to meet your unique business needs. So let me run through with you on some examples here that you see. So financial services. So for financial services companies, they want to be analyzing based on sales territories. So whether their territories are based on customer segment expertise or even geographic location, these companies can view those forecasts by territory roll-up versus the traditional team roll-up that you see with other industries. Now when you look at a subscription-based business model, which we've usually seen in communications or media industry, then they are looking for a different capability. They want to be able to filter their opportunities based on new business versus the renewals, versus the expansion businesses because they want to be able to forecast on those numbers specifically. But then if we move on to say, manufacturing or hardware business, they are often looking to forecast on a custom date because the way they do forecasting is different. It's looking for forecasting on when the product is shipped. So they want to be able to forecast on a shipping date. And last but not the least, the high-tech companies are looking for forecasting on a custom amount, something along the lines of the ACV or TCV. And the good news here is that all these customizations and much more are possible in Sales Cloud today. So even better is the capability to be adding any revenue metric to your forecast view. Now as you can see here, we've put across a lot of examples. And what do these examples illustrate? They illustrate the fact that you want to be able to see these metrics to clearly understand how close to the pin you are. And this can be done today by using our custom calculated columns feature that allows you to be able to formulate something like how far are my teams in regard to their quota, what is it looking like in terms of our pipeline ratio? These are all important metrics. And the good news is it can be done today to be able to see that in your forecasting view because we do know that having complete visibility is just half the battle. You get all the data you need in one view so that you can confidently forecast. Now don't worry about customizing, right, because we have here for you a low-code tool that makes it possible to customize the forecast page. I'm sure folks like yourself who've been on Salesforce platform have been using FlexiPage. The good news is we brought it to forecasting. And you know what that means. That means you can really customize the layout here to fit again your business needs. And it is truly low code because you can just drag and drop the components that you see on the left-hand side here, the standard and custom components that you're so familiar with, you can just drag and drop them. One example I can give you is that you can simply drag and drop some of those charts that you've been using, bring it directly on to the forecast page. So no more navigating between different tabs. You get everything that you need in one singular forecast view, and you can check and understand week-over-week how the progress is going towards your goals. And that's not all, right? You get to decide that in your organization, who gets to see these charts because again, FlexiPage offers that capability to tell and decide that everybody in the organization needs to see it or certain profiles need to see it because, hey, execs would like to see a bird's eye view; whereas if you're a sales manager, you would like to be able to see all the details. So why not give different views? And then when needed, provide the transparency so that you can have alignment across the organization. And that is not all. I am excited to share with you that you've been asking for this one, and so we are extremely excited to be delivering this to you. You, our customers, will be able to forecast on product splits. And why is this important? This is important because we do recognize that you have complex go-to-market motions. Need to credit forecast for different roles involving really deal by deal, you need to be checking for products. For example, we here at Salesforce sometimes have 2 sets of AEs who need to be credited for selling a given product, a core team and a specialist team. Now with this feature, you can split that revenue credit in the back end so that if there is Valerie and Vanessa working on these product deals, then they each get 50% ACV forecast credit, and that can be done using this view. And that's not all. We have another new innovation, and that is the ability to bring in external data into your forecast view. That's because we know that you are looking at driving accurate forecast. And at that point, you do refer to a large amount of data. Not everything sits within Salesforce. So we want to make it easier for you. And that's the reason why with this capability that's coming out, you will be able to bring in those external data and see it again all in a single pane of glass without having to navigate between different applications. Now let's go to the second step here. You want to be able to build a collaborative forecasting process. And how can that be done? And why is that important? It is important because you need to be able to look at your forecasts through a number of lenses, so that you feel confident at the end of the day when you call out that number. And that involves comparing sales rep forecast to AI predictions to historical data sitting within your own system or even other sources because you need to be arriving at that number through different estimates. And triangulation is the key piece here because it makes it possible for you to have that very important conversation during your forecast reviews so that you can get to what your reps are thinking and reduce the bias that is involved there. And we all know this, right, that your forecast is only as good as the data that feeds into it. There is important information that is sitting across different spreadsheets causing errors and delays. And we, at Sales Cloud, want to allow you to manage your forecasts in one single place, right from where your reps do the work. So with all your data in one place, you know that you're analyzing the most up-to-date information. So if there is an instance where opportunity was updated right before you got into that leadership forecasting review, you know it because it has happened in near real time. And the simple visual cues that you see on the screen here, such as progress bars, the change signals, they are all making it easy for you, as a sales leader sitting in that forecast review, to quickly understand how that updates have happened and how they add value, and especially in today's market, you do need that. You do need that most up-to-date pulse on your forecast, and this view provides that for you. Now with Einstein Forecasting coming into the picture, we do want to make sure that we give you the power of artificial intelligence. And this is where Einstein Forecasting, first and foremost, is using self-learning, evolving algorithms to predict accurate forecast that you can certainly rely on. And it shows you accurately the capability to predict those forecasts so that you know what to expect from your pipeline. We don't want to just give you a number. And that's the reason why you're seeing the side panel there, which is telling you that how Einstein forecast is using machine learning to explain to you how exactly are those predictions are being made. So it is telling you the logic, the business trends. That means it's giving you insights into that potential pipeline and sales process gap so that you can address the challenges that you didn't know may have existed before. So this is, again, something you've been asking for, and I'm really excited to present this to you. Organizations do need at a high level overview of the forecast performance. And they need visuals to be able to talk to that, to understand it. And this is where Sales Cloud Enterprise Edition and above is coming up with these charts that will be available natively within forecasting because these charts are going to help you make those informed decisions. As you look at these charts, they are telling you what are the recent changes that have been done because when you look at them, you identify risks. And what if you want to look at historical trends? We are providing that, too, because these historical trends are going to show you the forecast help against the previous periods. So that way, you can again make those very important forecasting decisions. So there you have it, folks. You triangulate on real-time metrics, AI and external data in your forecast views because that is going to encourage that conversation and collaboration that is required for greater forecast accuracy. So now with these 2 steps, now that you've understood about our forecast, I will turn it back over to Connie so she can help us inspect our pipe. Over to you, Connie.

Awesome. Thanks, Namrata. All right. Let's talk about inspecting your pipeline. So often, there's a few buckets we've heard from customers when we've been chatting with them around how they're driving pipeline on areas where there's often a lot of mistakes. One is often that teams are tracking the wrong metrics. This could be a combination of maybe different teams or different reps are tracking different sets of KPIs. Perhaps there's also just different definitions of different types of KPIs. So that has been driving the right alignment. Second, we often hear there's a lack of actionability. There's a lot of KPI tracking, but has there ever been discussion across sales teams on who was going to action on what? And then lastly, with a huge focus on making sure you're meeting your business goals and meeting your sales targets, we know it's an often a common strategy to lean on focusing all of the biggest deal sizes first. But often, that might be an area where may not be most likely to close, and the team is spending a lot of time churning on all of those deals and losing time on other deals that could close faster. And that's where Pipeline Inspection can help. I'd like to think of this as really the new view to view all of your opportunities. So reps and managers have a single view to see how your pipe is going at both a macro and micro level. You'll have everything all in one place. And we're even introducing new visualizations like this embedded waterfall chart to give you a really quick way to assess your pipeline health really fast. And we know that often when we talk about making sure that we're tracking the right deals, and I always focus on the big ones, there's a lot that Sales Cloud brings with Pipeline Inspections to give AI and data to make sure your reps are focusing on the biggest impact -- the deals with the biggest impact. They can track how deals are moving with weekly change signals so they know which deals are being pushed out or being pushed in closer, so they can focus on those. There's visual cues to give a quick peek into what the health of each opportunity has looked like. And with the help of Einstein, reps get a quick score so they kind of know which opportunities to prioritize in their pipeline. And then lastly, we know that often you always want to take a quick moment amongst your sales teams to run actionable pipeline reviews. To start, just a quick -- a few set of best practices on how to run these pipeline reviews. We know often today, a lot of times, we want to be able to show by example, show how other teams are doing it. We'd actually like to recommend to do more one-on-one pipeline reviews instead of doing it in sort of a big team setting so that each rep can really get actionable feedback that is relevant to them and sort of their progress. And as you do these pipeline reviews, make sure they're staggered also with just the one-on-ones you do often to check on general progress or career development conversations to really make sure those conversations are focused and that you leave those reviews with really clear action items and a clear priority list so your reps can move faster. And to help with all of this, Pipeline Inspection has this awesome panel on the right we like to call the Deal Insights panel. This has everything that you need to know about the deal in a single place. So if you wanted to get a better understanding of how this deal is doing, you can get a sense on how many days in stage has this deal been in. What are the options and the things that need to be paid attention to as well as other insights like changes in leadership or other changes with the customer that are really key to close this deal. And then within the same panel, we also have additional insights to start to kick off action to start closing this deal all within the context of where the reps are working. You can see who is currently involved in the deal. So you can make sure that you -- sorry, to make sure that you're working with the right folks in the organization. You can also see all the recent activities related to the deal. So if you haven't seen that a meeting has been scheduled most recently, you can take that action right away. And as you prep for that next meeting, the Deal Insights panel also pulls in insights from all those previous engagements, whether it's calls, e-mails, video meetings, all right here. So if I'm going to go prep for that next meeting with that customer, I can see quick highlights of which competitors are coming up, maybe this customer is really concerned about pricing, so I can make sure I'm prepped for that next conversation with the customer. All right. We walked you through the 4 steps on how to take care of forecasting and how to manage your entire pipeline. But I know like the slides have been awesome, but you want to see this live. So I'm going to turn it over to Brent Healy, who's going to show you all of this in action.

Thanks, Connie. Thanks, Namrata. I'm excited to show this to you. While I start sharing my screen, I just wanted to share that I'm a former customer and have also helped implement this for customers. And so I'm so excited to see what the product team has been working on and can't wait to show it to you. So here we go. First, as Namrata was showing you, we can see here that the forecast screen for Elliott, the sales leader, it is customized now. We have this report chart embedded so we can see the overall view of Elliott's forecast. We can see how the forecast changes by segments and by close month, and we can see how his renewals are forecasting against the goal. And so having that data right at our fingertips is really helpful. I'll also point out in the upper right-hand corner, we have a custom forecast range set by the fiscal year that we want to focus on. And this is really, really helpful because if we run an off-calendar fiscal year, like Salesforce does, for example, we can program that into our forecasts and make sure we're seeing it based on the months that matter to us. We also have some flexibility on sharing the forecast as well as some display options on what we actually want to see in our view. Lots of flexibility. Now as we scroll down the page, you'll notice that the forecasting elements that you're familiar with are here, but they have some additional flavors. Specifically, we can see how a forecast is changing over time, and we can also see any adjustments that are being made by the salespeople. This is really, really helpful because at a glance, we can see are we on pace? Are we behind? Are we improving? All at a glance with colors, the bar charts and the indicators as you see here. In addition, we have a calculated column telling us how much of our pipeline we've actually covered with the forecast so far. Now that's not all. As we expand out by quarter, we can see how each individual team member is doing. And don't forget, we have that Einstein prediction at the -- ready for us, so we can see what Einstein actually thinks of our forecast. Now this is helpful because we can see why Einstein thinks we're doing the way we think we're doing. We have all of that data available at our fingertips so that we can see it and make decisions on it. As we scroll across the Pipeline Inspection, this helps the salesperson and the manager get the most out of what's going on. Now we also have these arrow indicators with colors. We can see how things are changing over time. And let me tell you, when we roll this out at Salesforce, our sales teams loved it because they knew what changed from yesterday, last week, last quarter and how our deals were moving around in our cycle. But we've also added this chart, as we saw earlier in the slides. This chart helps us visually understand what did we start with at the beginning of the period and what did we end with? So we went from $1.9 million to $1.3 million. And all along the way, we've seen some new deals get added, some deals move out, some that have decreased and some that have gone into the lost column, unfortunately. And this is a clickable column. Now I'm not demo magic. It works that fast in real life. I promise you. We can see the deals that make up that moved out category, for example. So as we're having a one-on-one with our team, we can see exactly what's going on with our business and act on it while we're in the meeting together. Very easy to stay organized and focus on what we need to do to keep the business moving forward. In addition to that, we can see important things like opportunity metrics, what does Einstein think of the likelihood to close of a deal. That's at our fingertips. We can see close date changes, next steps, and that red clock reminds our salespeople, go ahead and update those next steps, just like they're always forgetting to seem to do. And so lastly, I wanted to show you the activity panel here. So as we come over to another view of Pipeline Inspection, I can simply click on this activity insights panel. And as Connie just told you, we can see things that might be important to us as a salesperson, things like open cases, we may want to follow up on, make sure the customer is getting the attention that they need from our support departments before moving forward on the deal, but also activity across the entire company. This new who's involved component is telling me the other employees here at the company that are actually speaking with contacts at this customer. Really helpful for understanding how recent was the activity, who was having that activity and what kind of activity was it, having it all right at my fingertips. And then internally, Sam has had a couple of meetings and calls. I can see his role here in the opportunity and see exactly what's going on. In addition to that, as I scroll down, as Connie mentioned, any meetings, phone calls, video calls, presentations, tasks, they're all right here, too. They're categorized for me. And even my Einstein Conversation Insights call out important mentions that occurred during that call. With one click, I can review what happened on that call as well. So there you have it. Customized forecasting panels that can be updated with clicks, not code, to show the graphs that we need to see, the information we need to see with forecasting and adjustments. We also saw pipeline inspection with these beautiful waterfalls to help us understand what's going on with our business, and that activity metrics side panel that helps our sellers know exactly what's going on with their deals and how to keep them moving forward. With that, back to you, Connie and Namrata.

Awesome. Great demo, Brent. Thanks for showing also the goodness. And with that, we're going to go ahead and do a quick wrap up. Namrata, go for it.

Absolutely. So that was a great demo. And I know I'm already seeing that folks are so excited with everything that we have to offer here. So we want to make sure you continue your journey. And this is where we are going to share with you these resources. You can, of course, join our Salesblazers community. You must have heard about this in all our announcement. This is our new community where we want all of us to learn, connect and grow with best practices so that we can look at driving that sales excellence in our organization. So make sure you join the movement here. Secondly, if you like what you see, you've seen that forecasting has so much and so many different flavors, then I would highly recommend you get started today with these amazing implementation and coaching resources that we have for you. So I would say you can access these links to get to that. And last but not the least, Pipeline Inspection is also looking great. And the good news is it is available with Enterprise Edition and above. And if you would like to be able to explore this for even other Sales Cloud Editions today, I would definitely recommend that you talk to your AE.

All right. That's a great segue into our Q&A portion of our session and we've got a lot of great questions coming in. Namrata, actually, let's go to this first question since we just talked about pricing and sort of how you can get all the access to all of this goodness. One question we have is, I hear the Forecasting is available for Sales Cloud without additional cost. Is it a customizable module or a standard one? So maybe I'll just quickly kick it off. I think, just like Namrata mentioned, currently Forecasting and Pipeline Inspection is available within Enterprise Edition and up. So that includes also unlimited edition as well as our newly launched sales suites. But Namrata, perhaps you go into more detail on some of the other nuances that might be helpful for the audience.

Absolutely, Connie. I think for Forecasting, specifically, I would say that everything that you saw in the demo today or even the basics of seeing the roll-ups and having the capability to be able to forecast on all different types, that is available today across all the editions, starting from Professional Edition, Enterprise Edition, all the way up to Unlimited Edition, too. But within that, the nuances for you to note is the fact that you saw me talk about charts coming out in the summer release. Now that is something which will be available only for Enterprise Edition and above. So I'd highly recommend you checking on that. There are certain pieces that we've made available across certain editions. But to answer that question around, hey, is it a standard module? Is it a customizable module? I believe your question is targeted towards the FlexiPage feature that we showed you where you can customize your forecasting feature. The good news there is that, that is available for us across all the editions, which I said as before is also across Professional Edition, Performance Edition, Enterprise Edition and everything. So that is part of our basic, and you will be able to customize it.

Awesome. Brent, here's a question for you just off of your demo. Are these customizable panels populated by default? I'm wondering if it's referencing perhaps Deal Insights panel and others.

Yes. Let's cover both. So in the beginning of the demo, we showed report charts that were embedded into forecasting. And Namrata was talking about how those can be customized and brought in. And if you are admin or have used Salesforce before, it's a drag-and-drop component, right, where you can take that report chart, place it right where you want it inside the tab, and it's there for the users that have the visibility of those report charts. As far as the Deal Insights panel that we showed at the end of the demo, those are pre-populated. So based on the different components that we have there, you saw things like cases, you saw things like e-mails and other types of activity, those are going to be populated based on what you're capturing with your activity panel, but that's all available out of the box, and it's functional when your users are using Pipeline Inspection and you turn that on for your users. So if we have existing customers that are watching this and haven't seen this before, you have to enable Pipeline Inspection in the admin settings. So make sure you go ahead and check that out. And as we said before, if you are Enterprise or up, that is included with your subscription to Salesforce. So make sure you check it out and activate it, and then you'll see those activity metrics.

Awesome. One more related question to the Deal Insights panel since we've been talking about it. How does the system know about things like leadership changes? Is it pulling from D&B Hoovers? Or are these bringing manual updates from the account? Open for either of you.

I can probably take a pass at it. I think right now, what we do say is that the Deal Insights includes 2 primary things. Everything that has been logged in the CRM, so any CRM-logged activities, are captured to be shown in the Deal Insights. And the second one is our EAC-captured activity. So anything that comes through with the Einstein Activity Capture, those activities are also included as part of Deal Insights. Brent, do you want to add anything more to that?

Yes. We do have an add-on functionality called Account Insights that does crawl the Internet for different stories about contacts in Salesforce that will also show up on the account record. When we're looking at Account Insights, that's an additional functionality that you'll be hearing more about in future releases. But yes, we're crawling the greater web and you can actually seed your Einstein crawler tool that's built into Salesforce with the sites you want, it's a pay attention to as well and you can rate those insights accordingly. So that is some functionality. It wasn't the topic of today's discussion, but are available as well. So talk to your account executives if you're interested in alerting your reps about what's going on within the account based on news that's available on the Internet.

Awesome. One more related question to Pipeline Inspection and we'll pivot more forecasting ones. My company uses a custom-built forecast solution due to business complexity. If we are not using the Salesforce-native forecasting tool, can we still use Pipeline Inspection?

I can take that one. So yes, the short answer is yes. You can still use Pipeline Inspection by itself. The advantage that you would have, if you were to use our forecasting with Pipeline Inspection, is definitely, as you saw in the demo, that all your opportunities and your forecasting are working together to give you that holistic end-to-end view. So that's the advantage you get if you use both together, but that is not stopping you from using Pipeline Inspection by itself.

One more related question that just popped up is related to another how we're surfacing all of this activity in Pipeline Inspection. How are meetings set up and recorded so that they appear in the Insights panel? Do you have to use Salesforce to organize and join meetings so that this all shows up?

I can take that. So Einstein Conversation Insights, which is included with Einstein -- with Salesforce Unlimited Edition as well as the Sales Suites will automatically transcribe the call whether -- when it's made with Zoom. That's our primary connector. We also have a pilot for Teams. So if you're interested in joining that, please let us know. We're working on other connectors as well throughout the summer that are coming out. So stay tuned on that. But specifically, no, you don't have to arrange the meeting through Salesforce. You connect to Zoom one time per user. And then if the individual you're having the meeting with is in Salesforce, that meeting will automatically be brought over. Now phone calls will also be analyzed through the same platform. And for that to work out of the box, our launch tools are a dialer, which is a sales dialer, lightning dialer that we offer through Sales Cloud as well as our baked-in voice product, called Service Cloud Voice, which can be used for sales. And then we have several other voice products that also send those voice calls to Einstein Conversation Insights for that analysis. So it's a big answer to a simple question, but there's a lot of ways these calls and e-mails get analyzed by Salesforce, by Einstein Conversation Insights. I'll also say that Enterprise Edition users can add Einstein Conversation Insights as well. So there's a couple of different ways to get those meeting insights into that side panel on the deal insights and activity metrics side and so Einstein Conversation Insights is the product that you're asking about and it's available in a few different ways, as I said.

Awesome. All right. Let's pivot. We've got lots of questions on forecasting. Let's start with this one. Can forecasting be based on opportunity product deals, like a product family. There's a lot of questions on the possibilities of what you can forecast. So maybe Namrata, if you want to just start with diving a little deeper there.

Absolutely. So I would probably start with this in kind of simpler terms because we do support so many different combinations. But let me start with this. When we say we support forecasting across different types, what do we mean by that? I'll start with this. First, you can forecast on 4 objects that you have within forecast -- within opportunities. That is, you can forecast on opportunity object, you can forecast on opportunity product object that I think will answer the question that was asked. You can also forecast on opportunity schedule, opportunity line item schedule. Then you can also forecast on opportunity splits object. And the good news is coming in Summer '23, like I showed you, you can also now forecast on opportunity product splits object. So this is just at the object level. But the different or n number of combinations associated with this, which I can briefly tell you is that you can also based on which object you select then be able to forecast on either standard amount or custom amount. So that's where the custom field comes in and our custom measure forecast that we spoke about ACV versus TCV comes in. Then there is the whole group by product family. So you can forecast on opportunity product and then see the forecast by product family to say, hey, what is network or services, different product lines, how is that forecast going? And then 2 other things that I will bring up here is that, one, based on which date matters to you? So is it close date? Is it custom date that we spoke about, the shipping date? Or is there a product date which works for you? Or is there a scheduled date that works for you? You can use that combination, too. And last, but not the least, is the hierarchy itself. If you are an organization that uses role hierarchy, then you can use that in forecast to be able to emulate that. Or you can say that it can be also done to territory hierarchy. So you can do there. I think the one thing -- I see a question coming up on limitations for all these forecast types. I would just say yes, we provide all these amazing combinations for you. Our guidance and best practice is that, yes, we provide you the entire world, but the best practice here is that we say that -- we are saying that you can have 4 of these combinations active in your organization at any given time. It can be extended to 7 on customer use file as support ticket. We can extend it to 7. The only reason we are doing this is because it's a best practice from our side to say that there is a difference between forecasting and reporting. Do you really want to be forecasting or you just want reporting to inform to executives on how the whole picture is looking? Because reporting is unlimited. Reporting is really you can do how much of the reports you want. But when it comes to forecasting, there are some best practices, and that's where we are saying 4 is out of the box. You can extend it up to 7. And if we need to go beyond that, then it needs to be considered separately.

Awesome. I feel like you covered a lot of questions with that -- all that great context, Namrata. But I did want to follow up on one that was related to manufacturing since you mentioned it as one of the many possibilities of how customers can forecast. In a manufacturing setting, we look at ship dates to recognize revenue. At the opportunity stage, we can enter expected ship dates. At some opportunity slide, is there a way that the expected ship dates can slide as well so we don't have to update every expected ship date in every opportunity as they slide out?

So I think I would need to get into a little more detail here for them -- for me to better understand the context. But at a high level, what I would say is these 2 things. If you are updating the -- you can, first of all, if expected ship date is what you want to forecast on, that would come in very easily when you're setting up the forecast to say I want to forecast on this custom date. Number one. That is what you would start with. Now second, to your question on, hey, the opportunity slips, then what happens to my forecasting, I believe, is your question, if that is the case, that's where I was talking about the advantage of having your pipeline inspection opportunities tied to our forecasting. Because yes, if the expected ship date is slipping and if you've updated it on your opportunity record, and because our forecasting is directly taking in all the information real time from that opportunity, it will automatically be updating the forecast, too. So for example, if your expected ship date was end of April and if it slipped and went to May, then the good news is you don't have to manually go and move anything on forecasting because forecasting being tied to opportunities will automatically move that number to me.

Wonderful. All right. Next one is around our top factor signals. Can you manage them? Can I define what insights would surface based on predefined parameters within forecasting?

I think the short answer there for the current capability is one I want to answer in the next is the future capability, of course, forward-looking statement, right? But firstly, what we offer today. The good news there is that when you want to tell Einstein what factors needs to be considered in its modeling, there is some I would say, flexibility where when you're defining that Einstein forecasting, you can tell Einstein that, hey, how do I want the opportunities to be segmented. That is one of the criteria, if you will, based on which you can tell Einstein how to do that prediction. The second piece is just to give it the -- to have you the flexibility to say which custom fields should be considered when Einstein is doing those predictions. So currently, we have these criterias by which you can tell Einstein how it should be looking at that prediction so that it would then show up as a result in your top factors because you've defined it in your settings on what opportunities and what segment of opportunities Einstein should consider. But long term, we want to be able to provide you more customizability. I think that was what the question was alluding to that. Exactly I want -- I want to be able to see which factors to consider. That is more long term. That is in our road map. But again, forward-looking statement, it's in long term. But today, we still have some feasibility and flexibility for you to say which opportunities to be considered for Einstein.

I would like to jump in and say that real quick, Connie, that even though the current customizability is somewhat limited, Einstein will rebuild the data model based on your performance to the forecast based on what it predicted. So keep in mind that we're rebuilding the data model based on your data and your performance to the forecast on an automated basis, right? So the system is continuing to get smarter. As each month goes by and each forecast is either met or missed. And some of the nuance that goes into an individual forecast by salesperson can be the behavior of that individual salesperson. So even though we don't give you a ton of control over the inputs right now, the system is still learning based on how you perform to the forecast. So keep that in mind as you think about the configuration of the forecast.

Awesome. This is a great segue to the next question, which is, is there a plan to expand the AI forecasting to future months? Currently, the AI forecast is only current month.

Yes. So we -- currently, that's right. It's restricted to the current month. We are looking at it. Again, it's a forward-looking statement. We are looking at what best we can do when it comes to future months, but I think teeing off from Brent's point here, I think the idea here is to make sure that we are looking at that historical data, the seasonality. Always, the more information in the system, the better the modeling is, the better the prediction is. So definitely, that is something in the tracks for us. But I would say it starts from the place where there is enough data in the system for Einstein to then be able to work on it so that you can get those predictions. Because even today, if you want to see it for current month, our advice is make sure you have enough data in the system for Einstein to mine and give you the right prediction. So that's why getting in data, getting the right data and keeping it all in one system within Salesforce is so important.

All right. We've got 2 more questions, and then we'll wrap up. The next one, I'm going to combine a few around just what is available in what license. So I'm going to do a little combo question. One, there's a question if FlexiPage is part of UE license? And then broadly, everything that we showed, is this or what parts are available in Financial Services Cloud?

I think I can speak to the FlexiPage piece here. I think for FlexiPage, like I mentioned before, the good news is it is available across all the editions that Forecasting is currently available on. So starting from Professional Edition onwards all the way up to Unlimited Editions, we do have FlexiPage across all of this. On the Financial Service Cloud, do you want to take it, Brent?

Sure. I'll take that one. So I'm actually an industry SE. I'm a comms and media SE. And across all of our industry clouds, it does not matter which one you have. It's the benefit of our industry cloud is that as long as the Salesforce Edition that you have is Enterprise Edition or above, you get the features that we showed you today. So whether it's Enterprise Edition, Unlimited Edition, or it's the bundles that we're now offering, it doesn't matter what industry cloud you have, health care, financial services, comms cloud, media cloud, automotive cloud, manufacturing cloud, you will have access to what we showed you today. That's really important and a competitive advantage, I think, of the platform.

All right. And to wrap this up, Brent, maybe you can start with this. And Namrata, feel free to chime in anything else. If you're brand new to Salesforce Enterprise Edition and you want to implement Sales Cloud and forecasting, where is the best place to start? Of course, Namrata covered a bunch of resources right before we dove into Q&A, but anything else to share with this audience.

Yes. Great question. As I said at the top of my presentation, I used to implement Salesforce for our customers before joining the company and was a customer myself. And so I've been through that question and lived it myself. And so I would suggest that you start slowly, you leverage the guides that we make available to you, and also be familiar with the trail mixes on Trailhead. There's a lot of free content that Salesforce offers that make it very easy for you in a step-by-step way to practice in playground environments that are just sandboxes essentially. So you can try it out before you actually do it for real life in your own or yourself. And then reach out on our Trailblazer community groups. Chances are there is a Trailblazer community group in your city that meets on a regular basis with lots of Salesforce experts that are more than willing to jump in and help you hands on. So that would be my advice. In addition to the links, check out Trailhead. And also join the Trailblazer community group and get involved locally, you'll be surprised how much free advice you can get from our community out there in your local town.

Yes. I think Brent covered it all. I would just add a little bit more to say that, yes, there are these resources. There's our community. But I would also like look back at the series like this that we've done before, like we had done a webinar also last time around where we had gone through the steps in more detail. We do have a lot of these videos and series within our own ecosystem, too, where we've done sessions, done deeper dive. So I would also go looking for that. Again, starting from the community because we had those linked up there and then deep dive. And of course, I think this I say in the best practices piece in another session, but it all starts first from the part that you know the -- you, of course, are the expert in your process. You know what your organization needs. And having a buy-in and a very straight or rather a very clear idea of what your organization is doing and how you want us to come and help you there, I think that's where it starts. And then when you start looking at the resources we have, then I think it's extra helpful to then say that, okay, this is what I need, and this is what is being provided in the application, and how can I put 2 and 2 together. So I would just say, going through that line and plus using resources community is the best way to get started. It might look a lot daunting, but trust me, it is not. Once you get started, of course, biased, but it's a lot of fun to get in there and play around with it.

Wonderful. Thank you Namrata and Brent. Lots of great resources, whether it's our Trailblazer community, our brand-new Salesblazers, Trailhead and of course, your AE and your sales team are also there to help you. And with that, we're going to close today. Thank you so much for joining us today. We hope this is really helpful, and we hope to see you potentially in some of our events coming to your city very soon. Thanks.

Thank you.