In March, we announced a landmark global strategic partnership with IBM. We've been hard at work with the IBM team over the past 6 months and we're thrilled to deliver the first set of new joint solutions that empower our customers to make smarter decisions, faster than ever before.

IBM Cloud Integration for Salesforce

IBM Cloud Integration, IBM's market-leading integration platform, now allows customers to directly connect to on-premise and cloud data sources within Salesforce. These new integrations empower customers to surface data directly within Salesforce and create powerful integration flows between data sources in minutes. For example, a wealth advisor can unify client data, such as individual investment and risk profiles, with financial trends and public macro economic information using IBM Cloud Integration directly within Salesforce to make smarter, more informed investing decisions for her customers.

Check out IBMCloud Integration for Salesforce here.

Global Expansion through New Salesforce Garage

Bluewolf, an IBM company, is expanding its global professional services footprint with the launch of new global Salesforce customer engagement centers in key markets around the world.

The new Salesforce Garage brings additional speed and scale to Bluewolf’s global consulting approach, combining Bluewolf’s deep expertise, strategy and delivery capabilities in Salesforce, with IBM’s leadership in cognitive and design thinking, to drive digital transformation for companies of all sizes. Powered by Bluewolf’s proprietary tech-enabled approach Bluewolf Sightline, also offers clients new proprietary services, including DevOps support for Salesforce.

Weather Company Insights for Salesforce

Weather causes businesses to lose more than half a trillion dollars every year — but now, customers can react faster and more intelligently to weather conditions by harnessing weather data from the Weather Company, an IBM Business, right within Salesforce to make smarter decisions, increasing customer satisfaction and efficiency.

The Weather Company is now powering three new Lightning components on the Salesforce AppExchange. These new offerings deliver weather insights that inform customer interactions and improve business performance directly within the Salesforce interface for the first time:

• Weather Focus: With the new Weather Focus Lightning component, customers can visualize how weather may affect a customer within the context of the customer contact or account record. For example, a shipping and logistics company can surface weather forecast data from the Weather Company right within Salesforce and automatically update delivery routes and schedules based on predicted weather conditions.
• Weather Recorder: The new Weather Recorder Lightning component empowers customers to save weather data from a specific date and time to a case record. For example, an insurance agent can save weather info directly in the Salesforce case for a customer who is filing a claim due to damage that occurred during a storm earlier that day. Insurance companies can use this information to assess risk, validate claims and minimize fraud.
• Scheduling Assistant: The new Scheduling Assistant Lightning component helps customers select the optimal time for an appointment based on forecasted weather conditions, as an enhancement to the standard Field Service Lightning scheduling experience. For example, a team repaving a highway could use Scheduling Assistant to optimize their work schedule based on the ideal weather conditions for roadwork.

Each Weather Company Lightning component offers weather capabilities out-of-the-box, but customers can also purchase several expanded weather data packages for even more actionable weather-based insights directly within Salesforce. Information for developers on how they can leverage the same code that powers the Weather Company Lightning components to jumpstart their use of this expanded weather data is available on Github.

Additionally, we're making it easy for anyone to learn how to use weather data to enhance their customer experience through the Salesforce Trailhead Project, “Incorporate Data from The Weather Company in Salesforce,” which provides developers with the hands-on experience they need to customize Weather Company/Salesforce integrations for their teams.

Customers such as T-Mobile, Telus and Wisdom Tree are leveraging integrated solutions from IBM and Salesforce. Learn more about the IBM and Salesforce strategic partnership here and stay tuned for more exciting announcements from us!