In today's digital age, data security has become a critical concern for businesses across all industries. With the increasing amount of sensitive information being stored and shared online, organizations need to prioritize the protection of their data to maintain trust with their customers. Salesforce, as one of the leading customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, has recognized the importance of data security and compliance. In this article, we will explore why it is essential to hire a SOC-2 certified Salesforce developer to ensure data security and compliance.

The Importance of Data Security in Salesforce

Salesforce is a powerful CRM tool that enables businesses to store and manage their customer data effectively. However, with great power comes great responsibility. As organizations rely on Salesforce to handle their sensitive information, it becomes crucial to implement robust security measures to safeguard against potential threats. Data breaches can have severe consequences, including financial loss, reputational damage, and legal implications. Therefore, businesses must take proactive steps to protect their data within the Salesforce platform.

Introduction to SOC-2 Certification

SOC-2 (Service Organization Control 2) is a widely-recognized certification that focuses on the security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of data. It provides an independent validation of an organization's commitment to meeting high standards of data security and compliance. SOC-2 audits are conducted by certified public accountants (CPAs) who assess the effectiveness of an organization's controls and processes. By obtaining SOC-2 certification, businesses can demonstrate their dedication to protecting customer data.

Benefits of Hiring a SOC-2 Certified Salesforce Developer

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When it comes to data security and compliance in Salesforce, hiring a SOC-2 certified developer can provide numerous benefits. Firstly, a SOC-2 certified developer possesses a deep understanding of the security controls and best practices required to protect data within the Salesforce environment. They are well-versed in implementing encryption, access controls, and monitoring mechanisms to prevent unauthorized access or data breaches. Secondly, hiring a SOC-2 certified developer instills confidence in your customers, as they know their data is being handled by professionals who prioritize data security and compliance.

The Role of a SOC-2 Certified Salesforce Developer in Ensuring Data Security and Compliance

A SOC-2 certified Salesforce developer plays a crucial role in ensuring data security and compliance within the Salesforce platform. They work closely with organizations to design and implement robust security measures tailored to their specific needs. This includes configuring user permissions, implementing two-factor authentication, and integrating data loss prevention mechanisms. Furthermore, SOC-2 certified developers regularly conduct security assessments and audits to identify vulnerabilities and address them promptly. Their expertise in data security and compliance allows businesses to stay ahead of potential threats and maintain a secure environment for their customer data.

Trust and Confidence in Custom Development with a SOC-2 Certified Salesforce Developer

Custom development on the Salesforce platform often involves handling sensitive data and implementing complex workflows. When businesses engage with a SOC-2 certified Salesforce developer for custom development projects, they can have trust and confidence in the security of their data. SOC-2 certified developers follow industry best practices and adhere to stringent security controls throughout the development process. They prioritize data protection from the initial design phase to the final implementation, ensuring that all custom solutions are secure and compliant with data privacy regulations.

How to Find a SOC-2 Certified Salesforce Developer

Finding a SOC-2 certified Salesforce developer can be a challenging task, but it is essential for businesses that prioritize data security and compliance. One way to locate certified developers is by reaching out to Salesforce consulting partners who specialize in security and compliance. These partners often have a team of certified developers with extensive experience in implementing data security measures within the Salesforce platform. Additionally, organizations can leverage online platforms and forums dedicated to Salesforce to connect with certified developers who offer their services independently.

Best Practices for Maintaining Data Security and Compliance in Salesforce

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While hiring a SOC-2 certified Salesforce developer is crucial, it is equally important for organizations to adopt best practices for maintaining data security and compliance within the Salesforce platform. Some best practices include regularly reviewing user access permissions, implementing data encryption, conducting security assessments, and providing ongoing training to employees on data security protocols. It is also advisable to stay up-to-date with the latest security patches and updates provided by Salesforce to address any potential vulnerabilities promptly.

Wrapping Up

In conclusion, data security and compliance are paramount considerations for businesses using the Salesforce platform. By hiring a SOC-2 certified Salesforce developer, organizations can ensure the implementation of robust security measures and demonstrate their commitment to protecting customer data. SOC-2 certification provides an independent validation of an organization's data security practices and instills confidence in customers. To get started on enhancing the security and compliance of your Salesforce environment, reach out to Relay at info@relayco.io.

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Running a property management business is no easy feat, given the array of intricate tasks, from tenant screening to lease administration and property maintenance. However, with Salesforce and custom Salesforce-integrated web portals, property management companies can significantly streamline operations, reduce errors, and increase efficiency. Here's how:

1. Streamlined Property Marketing and Advertising

With Salesforce, property managers can effectively streamline their marketing efforts. The CRM's robust features allow for efficient tracking of marketing campaigns, measuring their success, and adjusting strategies based on data-driven insights. Coupling Salesforce with a custom web portal allows potential tenants to browse listings, schedule viewings, and even apply online, dramatically reducing administrative work and speeding up the leasing process.

2. Efficient Tenant Screening

Salesforce can store and manage all prospective tenant data, making it easier to keep track of applications and carry out tenant screenings. By integrating Salesforce with a custom web portal, the tenant screening process can be digitized and automated. Applicants can upload necessary documents directly to the portal, eliminating the risk of lost paperwork and speeding up the approval process.

3. Simplified Lease Administration

A Salesforce-integrated web portal allows for digitized lease agreements that tenants can sign electronically, reducing the need for physical paperwork and in-person meetings. Moreover, Salesforce can track lease renewal dates, alerting property managers in advance and ensuring no lease falls through the cracks.

4. Automated Rent Collection

With Salesforce, property managers can automate rent collection reminders and notifications, reducing late payments. Tenants can pay rent directly through the web portal, creating a seamless payment process and immediate updating of payment records in Salesforce.

5. Streamlined Property Maintenance

Tenants can log maintenance requests directly through the web portal. Property managers can then manage, assign, and track these requests in Salesforce, ensuring timely completion and enhancing tenant satisfaction.

6. Optimized Financial Management

Salesforce provides comprehensive reporting and analytics tools, helping property managers track income and expenses more efficiently. By integrating with the web portal, all financial transactions from tenant payments to vendor invoices can be automatically recorded in Salesforce, ensuring accuracy and up-to-date financial records.

7. Ensured Regulatory Compliance

By storing all necessary documentation and maintaining detailed property and tenant records, Salesforce aids in regulatory compliance. A custom web portal can provide tenants with easy access to required legal information, enhancing transparency and compliance.

8. Improved Tenant Relations

With Salesforce's communication tools and a custom web portal's interactive capabilities, property managers can easily manage tenant complaints, provide updates, and foster a positive tenant-landlord relationship.

In conclusion, Salesforce and custom Salesforce-integrated web portals offer a powerful solution for property management businesses. By automating and streamlining key operations, these tools can reduce errors, increase efficiency, and ultimately enhance tenant satisfaction. Ready to revolutionize your property management processes? Contact Relay today to see how our custom Salesforce solutions can help.

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In an industry where the client experience is paramount, leveraging technology to streamline operations and deliver personalized service is key. For real estate and property management businesses, the right technology can transform workflows, improve client satisfaction, and ultimately, boost the bottom line. At Relay, we specialize in developing custom Salesforce solutions that achieve just this. Today, we share the story of Pathway Homes, a client that experienced firsthand the transformative power of our Salesforce-integrated solutions.

Pathway Homes: A Unique Approach to Home Ownership

Pathway Homes stands out in the real estate market with their unique rent-to-own business model. They enable first-time homebuyers to gradually build up savings towards purchasing a home, bridging the gap between renting and owning. However, their unique approach also presented unique challenges, especially when it came to managing the property lifecycle and the renting-to-owning journey. That's where Relay stepped in.

The Challenge

Pathway Homes needed a comprehensive solution that would streamline their property management process, offer an efficient way to manage listings, and provide a seamless experience for potential homeowners applying through their portal.

The Relay Solution: A Salesforce-Integrated Custom Portal

Recognizing the power of Salesforce as a centralized hub for all property information, Relay designed a custom solution tailored specifically to Pathway Homes’ needs. We integrated Salesforce to manage the entire property management and listing lifecycle. This allowed Pathway Homes to optimize their lease process, capture key metrics for all units, and ensure efficient property acquisitions and renewals.

To enhance Pathway Homes’ online presence, Relay developed a custom website integrated with Salesforce. The website featured a dynamic listing search, allowing potential homebuyers to easily browse available properties.

But we didn't stop there. Recognizing the need for a smooth application process, we also developed a custom applicant portal. This portal seamlessly guided potential homebuyers through the application process, capturing necessary information, and feeding it back into Salesforce.

The Result: Streamlined Operations and Improved Client Experience

The custom Salesforce solutions developed by Relay transformed Pathway Homes' operations. By automating many previously manual processes, we freed up their team to focus on what mattered most - providing a superior client experience and helping first-time buyers realize their dream of owning a home.

The Power of Custom Salesforce Solutions in Real Estate

Pathway Homes' success story illustrates the power of custom Salesforce solutions in the real estate industry. By centralizing information, streamlining processes, and creating seamless customer experiences, businesses can truly set themselves apart.

At Relay, we're proud to be a part of this digital transformation. With deep industry knowledge and a strong foundation in Salesforce CRM consulting, we're prepared to help other businesses like Pathway Homes revolutionize their operations. If you're ready to enhance your real estate or property management business with Salesforce, Relay is here to help. Contact us today to learn more about our custom solutions and how they can transform your business.

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Salesforce is a powerful platform that offers a wide range of out-of-the-box solutions for businesses of all sizes. However, not every organization's needs can be fully met by off-the-shelf offerings. That's where custom development in Salesforce comes into play. By tailoring the platform to your specific requirements, you can unlock a host of benefits that will help drive your business forward. In this article, we will explore the advantages of custom development in Salesforce and why it is worth considering for your organization.

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Enhanced Flexibility and Scalability

One of the key advantages of custom development in Salesforce is the enhanced flexibility it provides. With custom development, you have the ability to build features and functionalities that align perfectly with your business processes and requirements. This allows you to tailor Salesforce to fit your unique workflows, rather than adjusting your processes to fit within the limitations of a standard solution.

Furthermore, custom development enables scalability. As your business grows and evolves, your Salesforce platform can grow with you. Custom-built applications and solutions can be easily expanded and adapted as your needs change, ensuring that Salesforce remains a valuable asset in supporting your business's growth trajectory.

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Streamlined Workflows and Processes

Custom development in Salesforce allows you to streamline your workflows and processes by automating repetitive tasks and integrating disparate systems. By leveraging the platform's robust development capabilities, you can create custom applications and integrations that connect various parts of your business ecosystem, enhancing collaboration and eliminating manual data entry.

For example, you can integrate Salesforce with your existing CRM system, accounting software, or project management tool, enabling seamless data flow and eliminating the need for manual data transfers. This not only saves time and effort but also reduces the risk of errors and improves data accuracy.

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Increased User Adoption and Satisfaction

One of the challenges organizations face when implementing new software or systems is ensuring user adoption. However, with custom development in Salesforce, you can create a user experience that is tailored to your team's specific needs and preferences. By designing intuitive and user-friendly interfaces, you can increase user adoption and satisfaction, leading to higher productivity and efficiency.

Custom development also allows you to address any pain points or bottlenecks that your team may have encountered with off-the-shelf Salesforce solutions. By building custom features and functionalities, you can provide your team with the tools they need to work more effectively and efficiently.

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Improved Data Accuracy and Reporting

Accurate and reliable data is crucial for making informed business decisions. With custom development in Salesforce, you can ensure that your data is captured, validated, and stored in a way that aligns with your unique business requirements. Custom-built data validation rules and workflows can help enforce data integrity, improving the accuracy of your data.

Additionally, custom development allows you to create customized reports and dashboards tailored to your organization's specific metrics and KPIs. This enables you to gain deeper insights into your business performance and make data-driven decisions that can drive growth and profitability.

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Competitive Advantage and Differentiation

In today's highly competitive business landscape, gaining a competitive advantage is essential for success. Custom development in Salesforce can give you that edge by enabling you to build unique features and functionalities that differentiate your business from competitors.

By leveraging the full potential of Salesforce's development capabilities, you can create personalized customer experiences, innovative product offerings, and efficient internal processes that set you apart from the competition. This not only helps attract and retain customers but also positions your organization as a leader in your industry.

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Why you need a custom Salesforce Developer

Custom development in Salesforce offers a variety of benefits for organizations looking to maximize the value and effectiveness of the platform. From enhanced flexibility and scalability to streamlined workflows and processes, increased user adoption and satisfaction, improved data accuracy and reporting, and a competitive advantage, custom development can transform Salesforce into a powerful tool that aligns perfectly with your business goals.

If you're considering custom development for Salesforce solutions, our agency has a team of experienced developers who can help bring your vision to life. Contact us to learn more about how custom development can help you unlock the full potential of Salesforce for your organization.

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Introduction:In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, it is essential to harness the power of technology to stay ahead of the competition. Salesforce has emerged as a leading platform that enables organizations to manage their customer relationships effectively. However, to fully unlock its potential and address your unique business challenges, off-the-shelf solutions might not suffice. This is where custom development comes into play.

At Relay, we specialize in crafting tailored Salesforce applications that align precisely with your business requirements. Our team of expert architects and developers combine their extensive knowledge of Salesforce and AWS to create innovative solutions that help you solve the most complex problems. In this blog post, we will explore the benefits of Salesforce custom development and how it can revolutionize your business.

1. Tailored Solutions for Your Unique Needs:One of the most significant advantages of custom Salesforce development is the ability to build applications that are tailored specifically to your business processes. Unlike generic applications, custom apps integrate seamlessly with your existing Salesforce CRM, utilizing the data you have painstakingly collected. By aligning the application with your workflow, you can enhance operational efficiency and gain a competitive edge.
2. Supercharge Your Operations:Custom apps have the potential to supercharge your operations by providing specialized functionalities that address your organization's unique pain points. Whether you require an internal tool to streamline processes or a product to sell that runs on the Salesforce platform, our experts can transform your vision into a reality. By leveraging the power of Salesforce and AWS, we ensure that your custom app is powerful, scalable, and future-proof.
3. Expert Guidance at Every Step:Embarking on a custom development project can be daunting, but with Relay by your side, you can navigate the process with confidence. Our Salesforce developers and consultants will guide you through every stage, from concept to execution. We bring a wealth of expertise and experience to the table, ensuring that your custom application not only meets your business needs but also provides long-term value.

Conclusion:In today's dynamic business environment, staying ahead requires innovative solutions that are tailored to your specific needs. Salesforce custom development offers a powerful avenue for transforming your operations, streamlining processes, and unlocking new opportunities. At Relay, we are passionate about helping businesses thrive by creating custom Salesforce and AWS applications that empower and drive success.

If you're ready to take your Salesforce project to the next level, contact our team of expert architects today. Contact us to get in touch and embark on a journey of transformation.

Remember, it's not just about having a custom application; it's about having a valuable app that meets your business needs. With Relay as your partner, you can confidently navigate the Salesforce custom development process and achieve remarkable results.

Contact us now and let us help you unlock the full potential of Salesforce for your business.

You may be asking this exact question as you’re reading this post. We’re glad you're searching for answers when it comes to working with a custom Salesforce developer. We know you’re most likely curious about what we at Relay can offer your company. Throughout this post, we’ll be answering your questions, and so much more.

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Why Salesforce Development is Growing More than Ever Before

Salesforce is a great tool and can be used for almost any industry or use case. You can use it right out of the box, get a license and start entering your data. But if you want to get the most out of Salesforce and use it to its fullest potential, consider custom development so you can set it up for your workflows, use cases, processes, and things you and your business find most important.

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What is Custom Salesforce Application Development?

Custom Salesforce application development is quite simply what it seems to be: a customized approach where an app is developed to accomplish specific tasks or processes unique to the goals within your organization. At Relay, we have worked with numerous industries to best leverage their Salesforce environment. Through our combined years of experience, we have learned rapidly what works and what does not work.

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Clean Up Your Data Sets

When working with a custom Salesforce developer, you want to make sure your data is tidy and well maintained. If there is one thing that can push a project back is messy, unhinged data. When we create a custom Salesforce solution for your business, we set it up in a way which makes sense to your users, collects key data and doesn’t overwhelm them with un-necessary fields, pages, rules and clicking. We will arrange pages, required fields and validations to collect the required data with the least hassle. Possessing clean data and utilizing that clean data is what will help you stand apart from your competitors.

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Truly Custom Platforms

The beauty of customized Salesforce platforms is that it’s catered towards your every need as a company. The integration possibilities are there for the taking, the workflows can be modified to meet your needs, and the processes involved within data analysis can be anywhere from granular to macro-level. We can help integrate with back-end systems, setup a mobile app, or integrate your email. It’s completely up to you how far you want to take everything and what your end goals are within the overall custom Salesforce development experience.

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Self-Serviced Applications

One of the advantages of working with a custom developer is being able to fine-tune and create self-service apps for your organization. Self-service apps allow you to blend customer interaction with your organization's features and services; all the while not having to place extra stress on your customer support team. It’s an ideal way to go if your team is small and rely on efficiency.

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Salesforce Development Services We Provide Here at Relay

Below is a brief overview of the custom Salesforce development services we provide here at Relay and what you can expect when we work together. With so many features and customizations available all throughout the world of Salesforce, we’ve realized the best way to determine which route to take is to ask you where you want to see your organization thrive. From there, we will often apply the following in some way, shape, or form.

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Custom Salesforce Development

Here at Relay, we want a custom Salesforce development to enhance your organization, not drag it down with unnecessary features. We’ve optimized our workflow to improve your workflow. This means we’re able to precisely identify which features and customizations for Salesforce will work best for your organization, and your organization only. A truly customized Salesforce approach is defined as truly customized to your organization, exclusively.

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Mobile Development

A key part to any successful Salesforce implementation is mobile development. You staff is mobile, their CRM should be as well. With a mobile-first development strategy whether users are in the office or on the go, they will have access to the info they need, when they need it. We address any and all factors within the development process to further optimize your mobile-first experience for your users. Additionally, nearly all of this can be built upon your existing digital infrastructure in most cases.

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Lightning Enterprise Development

Automation, integration, and customization are the main components of Salesforce Lightning Enterprise Development. Lightning helps us bring your Salesforce to the here and now. You users aren’t on Blackberries anymore, don’t hold them back with an old out of date CRM. Through Lightning, we’ve elevated many organizations to new heights by customizing solutions which focus on the user-experience and your experience.

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Salesforce Integration & Migration

Do you need to integrate orders from an on-prem system? Do you want to get current pricing from your SAP system? We can integrate those. Just need to see your Gmail conversations in Salesforce? We can help with that too. Integrations big and small, we’ve done them. Are you new to Salesforce and have data here, there, and everywhere? We can help migrate that data from the old databases into Salesforce.

Choosing Relay for Your Custom Salesforce Development

Feel free to contact us using the form below and we’ll be sure to respond to your message as soon as possible. We look forward to hearing from you soon and working to help your company grow, achieve, and succeed!

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Let's get in touch!

By now most people know "Salesforce" or at the very least they are aware of the San Fransisco-based tech behemoth. But depending on who you ask, the answer to "What is Salesforce?" could be drastically different. Yes, it is the #1 CRM (customer relationship management) platform that enables organizations to work in tandem to serve their customers. But that's really only the tip of Salesforce's capabilities. Salesforce is capable of being the backbone of any industry, no matter how large or small. To serve specific industries, Salesforce has released a variety of "clouds" that can be purchased ad-hoc to be added to the core of Salesforce's CRM platform.

Now the offerings can get a bit confusing and some features overlap, but we are going to run through the benefits of each so you know exactly how each cloud can serve your business' unique needs.

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Financial

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Salesforce's Financial Services Cloud takes the capabilities of Salesforce and reimagines it to address the specific needs of those in the financial industry. Whether you are a financial institution, insurance agency, or wealth management firm; Salesforce Financial Services Cloud gives you a 360-degree holistic view of your client's history. If you're in Investment Banking, you can manage customer pipelines and collaborate with deal teams without ever leaving the platform. If you're in the Insurance industry, you can unite insurers and policyholders like never before. Offering a comprehensive view of each policyholder, the Salesforce Financial Cloud enriches service reps with customer information so they can spend more time assisting instead of searching for information.

Manufacturing

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If you're in the manufacturing industry, you guessed it, Salesforce has made a cloud custom-tailored to you. Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud allows business to take their antiquated systems and modernize them with AI-powered automation. Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud includes prebuilt objects and processes that allow you to start utilizing it straight out of the box. Since manufacturers often work with external suppliers and dealers, Manufacturing Cloud allows you to easily communicate and collaborate with the vendors straight from the platform. Countless manufacturing companies rely on the Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud to operationalize their business and the platform is only gaining in popularity.

Health Care

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Perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of Salesforce's power are those in the healthcare industry. Consistently named the #1 healthcare CRM, Salesforce Health Cloud allows healthcare providers to get a 360-degree view of their entire organization; from the back office to their patient's journey all existing on one platform. Additionally, simplified onboarding and personalized experiences allow providers to connect to their patients in a way they never have previously. Salesforce Health Cloud allows you to connect all your disparate health data sources into one unified system that allows providers to do what they do best, provide help to those in need.

Nonprofit

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Salesforce's Nonprofit Cloud takes the CRM and reimagines it to cater to the unique demands of nonprofits all over the world. From fundraising to marketing to grantmaking, the Nonprofit Cloud allows nonprofits to innovate on one platform that provides a single source of truth for their entire organization. Organizations on Salesforce's Nonprofit Cloud have seen a 110% increase in Total Online Giving, 400 additional calls served every month, and 62% decrease in client intake time.* This allows for increased flexibility and catering to those who need it most. 

Automotive

When we say that every industry can benefit from Salesforce, we truly mean every single industry. That includes the massive automotive industry with Salesforce's Automotive Management. A platform that unites both dealers and customers, it allows manufacturers to streamline the journey from OEM to the aftermarket. This allows dealers to offer a simple buying solution as well as track ownership history, vehicle issues, vehicle recalls, and warranties to ensure that’s their customers are always informed. Having one centralized platform allows for increased customer retention and gives OEMs a glimpse into emerging growth opportunities.

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That's really the true power of the Salesforce platform. The same platform that allows for streamlined hospital patient intake also allows for automotive manufacturers to keep track of their customer's vehicle warranties. So if you're asking — "Which industries can benefit from Salesforce?" The answer is very clear; all industries.

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* https://www.salesforce.org/nonprofit/

We’ve been amazed by the power, both good and bad, of technology over the past few years. It’s revolutionized culture and society in such an indelible way that often we struggle to reign it in. But no app has made our collective jaws drop like ChatGPT and led to a lot of strong reactions internally, both positive and negative. Simply put, you can look at this as the start of the AI revolution and when it went from “maybe one day” to “it’s really here.”

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What is ChatGPT

ChatGPT is the brainchild of the OpenAI research laboratory founded in 2015 by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Wojciech Zaremba and John Schulman. You may be familiar with a few of their other products such as DALL-E, which produces images based on user text input and GPT-3, an autoregressive language model that produces human like text based on deep learning. ChatGPT is basically an amalgamation of the two and wraps it in one of the oldest widgets of the internet, the chatbot. ChatGPT can produce human-like text responses, ask followup questions, admit mistakes and challenge incorrect premises. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

Now to be fair we’ve seen other tools that “promise” results such as this, so naturally many of us were skeptical. But let’s look at how ChatGPT is different:

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Years and years of deep research went into the building of ChatGPT so the foundation is strong, but closed lab testing is different than the real world. We all know that. How does it fare? Well let’s show you…

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Question 1

Let’s start out simple by asking ChatGPT to tell a story. Since we live and breath Salesforce, we’re going to give it a decidedly different spin. We’ll ask it “Tell us a story about how Salesforce was founded, but make the main character bears.”

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So far, so good. We took a nonsensical premise and ChatGPT produced a legible, realistic although absurd story of how Salesforce was created. It got the main characters names correct (Marc Benioff), it got small details correct such as what Salesforce does and most importantly it made the story about bears.

We were impressed, but we’ve seen tools such as Jaspar.ai produce similar results, although nowhere quite as good or as human-like.

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Question 2

We’re going to get a little more specific for the next question and try to push one of the key capabilities of ChatGPT; the ability for that platform to write workable code. In Salesforce, you have to write formulas for buttons and fields all the time. It’s not very difficult, but if you don’t know the syntax it can get a bit confusing. Let’s see how ChatGPT fairs when we ask “Write a formula for a button in Salesforce that updates the opportunity to Closed Won when clicked”

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Now at first glance, everything looks believable and more importantly logical. Beyond that, it even generates step-by-step instructions on how to use the code using the natural language. Astounding. But let’s see if these instructions make sense and if the code works.

This is where the facade started to wear away a bit. Now if you were only going to follow these instructions, you would be in a bit of trouble. The step-by-step instructions are missing some key parts such as go to Object Manager first, then to the object. But once you do find the “Buttons, Links and Actions” option and then try to create a new button, you will quickly see that there is no “Formula” dropdown for “Content Source.” Then even if you were going to use “URL” instead of “Formula”, copy over the code, add the new button to your layout (which it doesn’t tell you to do) and then test it, you would be presented with this:

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What initially looks very promising, turns out to be quite broken in practice. We were disappointed but we wanted to keep testing.

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Question 3

For the last experiment, we want to really challenge the platform and ask ChatGPT to write an Apex script that will save user profiles to a CSV file. This is the exact moment we knew that everything really changed.

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Producing a formula is interesting, but a formula can be used by numerous applications. Apex is Salesforce’s proprietary scripting language and we were shocked to see that not only did it produce something logical, but it produced something that would work.

The loop is wrong as you would need to initiate a list first, add the changed records into the list and then update outside of the loop. But for 20 records or so, this script would amazingly work.

The beauty right now of ChatGPT and OpenAI is that it gives you a tremendous jumping off point to start your code, but by no means is it the final code.

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Our Take

Internally we have a lot of strong opinions about ChatGPT, OpenAI and the future of AI. There are an abundant amount of moral, ethical and privacy related concerns regarding not only this platform but AI in general. First, AI such as this is full of privacy concerns - where are they sourcing this data? What are the biases or factual inaccuracies in the data sources used to train the models? Has society been contributing to this project without their knowing consent? How is it being used by advertisers to monetize consumers without them knowing?

Second, what is the ethical boundary of people generating AI content without the user knowing? Should the user know that what they are consuming is produced by AI and not a human being?

Beyond that there is the very real chance that misinformation can spread like wildfire if AI picks up on misleading facts. It’s almost a self-feeding system that if misinformation is put in then in turn, misinformation is spouted out. ChatGPT is supposed to filter out biases and untruths but we’ve seen numerous offensive examples of it failing miserably.

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Conclusion

There is no doubt about it, ChatGPT is powerful. Both in it’s power to create complex material based on a simple input and what it portends for the future of technology. What does it mean for developers that produce scripts day in and day out? Can ChatGPT and it’s future platforms be used for harm such as creating malware on demand? The amount of questions that storm into your head as you use the platform is staggering, but the biggest question that can’t be answered right now is: what comes next?

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