Salesforce Bulks Up AppExchange With Cross-Cloud Solutions

Salesforce is bulking up its AppExchange marketplace with many new apps and packages built by partners in line with the company's Customer 360 strategy.

A few weeks before the Dreamforce conference kicks off, the CRM leader on Thursday added solutions to AppExchange aiming to help customers take advantage of a massive and increasingly integrated ecosystem, Charlie Richey, vice president of product management for Salesforce AppExchange, told CRN.

The new solutions span Commerce, Sales, Service and Marketing clouds "as the Customer 360 strategy grows through organic development and acquisitions," Richey said.

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New AppExchange products include several billing apps and CPQ options, Einstein Bots and Robotic Process Automation, and a few AI-powered marketing solutions leveraging last year's acquisition of Datorama.

Richey took over the AppExchange division a few months ago after working on building the company's Financial Services Cloud.

The value proposition across those and all other Salesforce divisions has always been platform customization, extensibility, and "the assumption that things just work together" across all Salesforce services, he said.

That's been a driving force of the Customer 360 evolution, which implements a platform built from MuleSoft that allows Salesforce users to connect data across Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce clouds.

"Making it so you can treat the customer, B2B or consumer, as one individual entity has always been what they're coming back for and screaming for," Richey said.

The latest upgrade to AppExchange expands that vision across the ecosystem, he said.

For example, the new DocuSign eSignature for Salesforce CPQ feature allows customers to capture payment information during the eSignature process in whatever Salesforce Cloud they are using.

The Einstein Bot and RPA packages, also built by partners, can be triggered across Salesforce products. And the Datorama solutions integrate Salesforce with Facebook Ads, social media platforms, or Google Analytics.

It's all a boon for consulting partners, as it "represents an ability to take a bigger piece of the enterprise software spend," Richey said.

"I encourage every consultant out there to study up and get trained and certified on everything on the AppExchange that they can, because it represents a growth opportunity," he said.