A Salesforce Admin's Guide to the New Google Cloud Integrations

During the annual Dreamforce event, where Salesforce meets with partners to share the latest and greatest developments behind its platform, Google and Salesforce announced a partnership predicted to transform the cloud race.

The first-of-its-kind partnership between Salesforce and Google will connect the popular commerce platform with Google Analytics and cloud to develop more comprehensive collaborative experiences for customers. As two growing cloud-native companies, Google and Salesforce come together to deliver an exceptional opportunity to leverage the full value of sales, service, and marketing data.

Besides integrating with G Suite, Salesforce will also be using the Google Cloud Platform for a range of core services, as part of its internal infrastructure. The teams will continue to work closely together moving into the future, to develop the very first cloud-native platform that helps admins tap Salesforce within everything from Gmail, to Calendar, Docs, drive, and Hangouts Meet.

The Power of Combining Salesforce and Google Cloud Platform

Salesforce Admins are champions for productivity and efficiency in the workforce. This means that they need access to the very best resources, all the way from intelligent apps to next-level workflow solutions. By creating solutions to make Salesforce users happier, and businesses smarter, Salesforce Admins drive innovation and growth within a company.

Now, with the industry-first collaboration between Google and Salesforce, Admins will be able to seamlessly bring together marketing, advertising, and sales data within the Salesforce cloud, using Google Analytics 360. With this holistic integration, experts and c-level professionals will have full access to consumer information that allows them to drive smarter engagement, all the way throughout the sales cycle.

Within the marketing cloud, experts will be able to design and implement custom audiences within Analytics 360, which can then be pushed through to the marketing Cloud for activation throughout direct marketing channels like mobile and email. Additionally, Analytics 360 data will be available throughout the marketing cloud to provide admins with a more comprehensive collection of easy-to-access data.

At the same time, sales data within the Salesforce cloud will be available within Analytics 360, to ensure better targeting for growing businesses. Admins will be able to help companies create strong audience segments, complete with smarter optimization features and deeper solutions for transforming prospects into customers.

How Can You Take Advantage of the Salesforce/Google Experience?

As a Salesforce Admin, it's up to you to ensure that your team can take advantage of everything that this new collaboration has to offer. Google has launched an offer that means Salesforce customers can use G Suite for up to a year with no additional cost, to help drive adoption for the new collaboration. The idea is that the partnership and deal should help more companies to take advantage of everything the cloud has to offer.

By connecting Salesforce with G-Suite and the Google Cloud, Admins should be able to make the most of impeccable customer intelligence, while accessing countless other advanced features, including:

• Salesforce Lightning for Google Sheets and Gmail:  With Salesforce Lightning features available, you'll be able to tap into all the CRM data you need within Gmail, or connect to interactions directly through Gmail to ensure that you can give customers the best possible experience. Admin should be able to pinpoint high-priority emails and deliver next steps based on content intelligence. The same is true for Google Sheets, which can be embedded anywhere within Salesforce. You can even use a single click to push Salesforce reports and records into a new sheet, which will automatically update to keep everyone up-to-date with the latest information.

• Live Quip Apps for Google Calendar and Drive. The Quip Live Apps that Salesforce Admin use on a daily basis will now integrate directly with Google Calendar and Drive, allowing Admins to access huge amounts of information in a diverse cloud environment. You can embed any manner of Drive files into the experience, including Google Slides, Sheets, Docs, and your Google Calendar, all within the Quip system. This should create an alternative to many legacy services for intranet content.

• Salesforce for Google Hangouts "Meet":  Finally, Admins will be able to give companies access to a full range of relevant account and customer details, alongside service histories and in-depth data from the Salesforce CRM, within the Hangouts Meet platform. This should provide experts with more information on the communications platform to improve their sales conversations.

Why Combine Google and Salesforce?

The Google Analytics system processes billions of connections between customers and businesses every month. At the same time, the Salesforce marketing cloud is sending billions of emails, with countless opportunities and leads in the Salesforce Cloud. The new integrations between Salesforce and Google should give Admins an opportunity to upgrade marketing and sales strategies for their business.

Now with Combined Salesforce and Google Cloud:

• Campaign data from Google Analytics 360 will be available in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud
• Sales data from the Sales Cloud will be available in Analytics 360 for use in attribution, audience creation, and bid optimization
• Customer interactions recorded in the marketing cloud will be available in Analytics 360 for use in creating audience lists
• Audiences created in Analytics 460 will be available in the Marketing Cloud for activation in SMS and email.

Salesforce customers can have the G Suite promotion either instantly added to their quote or order by their Salesforce Account Executive while existing customers can visit salesforce.com/google to receive their trial. Salesforce will continue to invest money and development time into their own data centers, while utilizing their Google collaboration across international markets to bring their infrastructure online faster, and more efficiently.

When Can You Start Your Salesforce/Google Journey?

For Salesforce Admins keen to tap into the possibilities that Google has to offer, there are already several integrations available in the market, including Salesforce Lightning within Gmail, and various integrations through Google Drive and Calendar. Ongoing integrations are expected to begin in 2018, and the Quip Live Apps collaboration with Google Drive should appear during the first half of 2018.

Google has confirmed that qualified Salesforce customers will receive G Suite for up to one year with no additional cost, and this promotion will be available for Salesforce customers, per certain restrictions. The integrations between Google Analytics and Salesforce should arrive during the first half of 2018, with no additional cost to admins.