Google will integrate its G Suite office productivity software tools and Google Analytics 360 technology with Saleforce’s core Customer Relationship Management platform under an expanded agreement between the two companies.
The integration will allow organizations to use Google’s Gmail, Sheets, Drive and other G Suite tools to view and interact with CRM data from across the Salesforce Sales Cloud. They will also be able to connect and run analytics on sales, marketing and advertising data from Salesforce’s Marketing and Sales Cloud using Google Analytics, the two companies stated in separate announcements Nov. 6.
“This integration delivers complete consumer analytics to drive smarter engagement—from awareness all the way through to conversion and retention,” Salesforce executive vice president Ryan Aytay said in a statement announcing the partnership at the company’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week.
As a result of the integration, organizations can create customized audience data and campaigns in Analytics 360 and make it directly available in Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud or on direct marketing channels such as email and mobile. Organizations will also be able to take data from Salesforce’s Sales Cloud and make it available in Analytics 360 where they can create more targeted ad campaigns, Aytay said.
Google’s head of global technology partners, Nan Boden, described the planned integration as giving organizations an opportunity to more easily turn marketing, service and sales data from Salesforce CRM into actionable insight.
Connecting G Suite with Salesforce CRM will give organizations a completely cloud-native collaboration platform, Boden said in a blog Nov. 6. “These integrations will enable companies to surface powerful intelligence about your customers from Salesforce directly within Gmail, Sheets, Calendar, Drive, Docs and Hangouts Meet.”
The new partnership between Google and Salesforce more deeply integrate Gmail with the Salesforce Lightning app development framework. This will enable users to interact with Salesforce CRM data from within Gmail and to pull customer interaction data from Gmail more easily into Salesforce.
The integration will also enable users to more easily identify high-priority emails, and receive suggestions for follow-up action based on the content within emails, which help improve customer service, the two companies stated.
Integrating Salesforce CRM with G Suite will also give users a way to more easily push data from within Salesforce Records and Salesforce Reports directly to Google’s Sheets spreadsheet software. Users will be able to update the data bi-directionally meaning data from Sheets can be fed directly into Salesforce Records and Reports as well.
Salesforce’s Quip Live Apps will integrate with Google Drive and Google Calendar as well. As a result, sales teams will be able to list Google Docs, Slides, Sheets and other Google Drive files inside Quip to enable access to data in an easier and more collaborative fashion.
Google will give qualified Salesforce customers free access to its G Suite tools for up to one year when they sign up with Salesforce. To qualify for the one-year deal, the organization will need to be new to G Suite and have at least 350 employees.
Smaller organizations are eligible for the free offer as well but only for a period of up to three months. The number of free G Suite seats they receive as part of the promotional offer will be equal to the number of Salesforce seats for which they sign up.