IBM and Salesforce have joined forces to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into the business decisions companies make every day, the two announced this week.
The partnership will leverage IBM Watson, an AI platform for business, and Salesforce’s Einstein AI, which powers the world’s top customer-relations management platform. The two will be combined into a seamless system that will enable customer engagement across sales, service, marketing, and commerce.
The partnership, according to a statement from the two companies, will bring new insights from Watson directly onto the Salesforce Intelligent Customer Success Platform, combining deep customer insights from Salesforce Einstein with Watson’s structured and unstructured data across various sources and industries.
“Within a few years, every major decision – personal or business – will be made with the help of AI and cognitive technologies,” says Ginni Rometty, chairman, president, and chief executive office of IBM. “This year, we expect Watson will touch 1 billion people – through everything from oncology and retail to tax preparation and cars. Now, with today’s announcement, the power of Watson will serve the millions of Salesforce and Einstein customers and developers to provide an unprecedented understanding of customers.”
The partnership will feature:
- The integration of the IBM Watson application programming interface into Salesforce to provide predictive insights from unstructured data, inside or outside an enterprise, combined with customer data delivered by Salesforce Einstein. For example, combining local shopping patterns, weather, and retail industry data from Watson with customer-specific shopping data and preferences from Einstein, a retailer will be able to send personalized and localized email campaigns to shoppers
- The incorporation of IBM’s Weather Company, which will power a new Lightning component for the Salesforce AppExchange to provide weather insights that inform customer interactions and business performance
- The release of the IBM Application Integration Suite for Salesforce, which will allow customers to bring together on-premises enterprise and cloud data with specialized integration products for Salesforce, pulling data within the Salesforce Intelligent Customer Success Platform. A wealth advisor, for example, may be able to unify client data like investments and risk profiles
“The combination of Einstein and Watson will make businesses smarter and our customers more successful,” says Marc Benioff, chief executive officer of Salesforce. “I’m thrilled to form an alliance with IBM – no company’s core values are as close to Salesforce’s as IBM’s It’s the best of both worlds.”
The integrated platform should be available in the second half of 2017. The IBM Application Integration Suite for Salesforce, however, will be available by the end of March.
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