Salesforce Enhances AppExchange for Partners
New features of company’s marketplace make it easier for customers to connect with consultants and integrators
Setting up, operationalizing, and optimizing Salesforce accounts and their associated applications isn’t easy, and usually requires the talents of third-party experts. Salesforce is making it easier for customers to find and engage consultants and integrators through enhancements to its AppExchange marketplace.
The Lowdown: The AppExchange enhancements are a recognition by Salesforce that customer experience matters in cloud application engagements. By making it easier for customers to identify and engage partners, Salesforce is facilitating relationships that create more productive user engagements with faster, tangible returns on investment.
The Details: Salesforce approaches consulting enablement on two levels, connecting to customers and leveraging analytics for better partner engagement.
Through the Consultants on AppExchange program, Salesforce added a Consultant Finder feature to AppExchange that makes it easier for customers to search and connect with experts that can help with their CRM and connected applications. The new Expertise Tab gives customers the ability to find partners with specific domain knowledge and capabilities to help with digital transformation issues. The consultant listing and connection tabs on AppExchange are live.
On the partner intelligence and enablement side, Salesforce added AppExchange Marketplace Analytics, a new reporting and analysis tool powered by Einstein Analytics; it provides independent software vendors, consultants and other partners in the marketplace with insights on how customers are engaging with their lists. AppExchange Marketplace Analytics will help partners better understand customer considerations and improve their ability to attract new accounts.
Another new feature is AppExchange Marketplace Analytics, a reporting tool that gives ISVs and consultants insights into the adoption and utilization rates of the applications they sell and enable through the marketplace. The intelligence provided through the analytics includes everything from how customers are buying add-on apps to what features are least and most popular.
The analytics features will become available to partners this summer.
The Impact: Salesforce currently has more than 65,000 certified consulting partners in its channel ecosystem. Salesforce plans to swell that number to more than 250,000 by 2022 as it seeks to meet the growing need for professional support in the implementation of its own cloud-based applications and those of its partners.
The Buzz: “As the Salesforce economy and customer demand continue to grow, our customers and partners must have the right business solutions and technology experts at their fingertips,” said Woodson Martin, general manager of Salesforce AppExchange. “AppExchange is bringing consulting partner services and technology solutions together in one marketplace while enabling all of our partners to harness data to power customer success like never before.”
“Magnet360 has long been dedicated to ensuring our customers can succeed on the Salesforce platform, and as the Salesforce economy grows, so has the demand for implementation expertise,” said Matt Meents, CEO of Magnet360, a Salesforce Platinum consulting partner. “With nearly 90 percent of Salesforce customers using at least one AppExchange app, making our consulting services available and easily searchable through AppExchange opens the door for us to help more companies with their Salesforce needs.”
“Knowing exactly how customers and prospects engage with our solutions fundamentally changes how we innovate,” said Simon Ejsing, director of analytics at FinancialForce. “Being able to uncover trends from our entire user base sheds light on how we can build solutions based on what customers actually want — not what we think they want.”
