Salesforce Foundations opens up marketing, ecomm features

Salesforce has released a bucket of new features for its Enterprise Sales and Service users, collectively known as Salesforce Foundations.

While the name "Salesforce Foundations" does not appear on the updated interface, users will notice a new left-hand menu containing marketing and e-commerce tools. These integrated features will be available on a freemium model, according to Kris Billmaier, Salesforce's senior vice president of self-service and growth. Initially, users will have access to 2,000 marketing campaigns per month.

The broader significance of Salesforce Foundations lies in the company's overarching strategy of encouraging customers to use "Salesforce core" apps, including CRM, service, marketing, e-commerce, Tableau and Experience Platform, and run them on top of the Data Cloud. The integration of these applications will allow users to quickly create autonomous bots on the upcoming Agentforce platform, set to be released at Dreamforce this month.

Agentforce helps users tap into Salesforce applications and build autonomous bots. Employees can use it to access data from the core clouds to complete tasks or assist customers through self-service.

Rebecca Wettemann, founder of technology research firm Valoir, sees potential for Salesforce enterprise users to utilize Agentforce bots through a chat interface, with Slack being the most logical choice. Eventually, Agentforce bots will have the ability to integrate with other enterprise applications outside of the Salesforce platform. An early example of this will likely be HR bots with the Salesforce-Workday partnership.

Salesforce will also allow free trials of various partner tools from its app marketplace with Foundations. This not only expands Salesforce's reach into data stores beyond its own platform but also gives partners immediate access to a generative AI bot-building engine that they don't have to develop themselves.

"Agentforce is grounded on CRM data and everything else Salesforce," Wettemann said. "But it's also potentially for the companies like Workday that don't necessarily want to invest in building their own smart agents, at least not now."

The idea for Salesforce Foundations came out of Salesforce Starter Suite and Pro Suite, small business products that Billmaier helped bring to market. Enterprise customers wanted a way to tap into some -- but not all -- Salesforce marketing and e-commerce features without commissioning complicated, sometimes costly integrations just to do one particular task, such as collecting payments from customers.

Foundations also allows for the aggregation of data across the Salesforce platform and integrates it in ways that are more user-friendly for administrators.

Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.