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Salesforce and Teams integration - cooperation or competition?

#Teams and #salesforce tags in one post?

It is fully justified, because from today Salesforce functions as an application, integrated with the Microsoft Teams platform, although both parties still cautiously call it “pilot”.

It’s hard to talk about a surprise here, because previously the CRM software vendor chose Microsoft Azure as the cloud provider.

The integration will be offered to Sales and Service Cloud customers in Enterprise or Unlimited versions at no additional cost.

What is this integration for?

For many teams – including sales teams present in multiple organizations – there is no more critical data than customer data, typically stored in a customer relationship management application. The cooperating companies hope that the close connection between information about customers (managed in Salesforce) and conversations around them (which is the MS Teams domain) can increase productivity.

By connecting Salesforce CRM with Microsoft Teams, our joint customers can now benefit from a close connection of the chat and workspace capabilities of Teams alongside key information and actions from Salesforce – which makes team collaboration more focused and effective – says Doug Camplejohn, Sales Cloud Executive Vice President and General Manager, Sales Cloud, Salesforce.

Sales teams are to gain:

  • easier connection of the activities of sales teams,
  • a platform for discussions on leading clients (which took place in corporate open spaces before the pandemic), thanks to the “revitalization” of the work environment,
  • work acceleration and effectiveness – team members can work with  the same “view” and save time by not having to switch between applications.

How does it work?

It is possible to place key information about contractors directly in the chat, keeping the details in the context and next to the conversation in which, for example, topics related to sales funnel management are discussed. Extensive customer data is displayed as part of a wider chat stream. Administrators can also choose and define the level of visibility of this information – whether details can be shared within a secured team or require logging into the Salesforce system.

Client information can be pinned as a tab on the channel, thus creating an integrated workspace. We can view and update data on suppliers, related contacts and view updates on activities in relation to customers. This facilitates the workflow and the overall management of all aspects of the relationship.

How to integrate?

The integration is available to Microsoft customers with Teams licenses and Salesforce customers with paid Enterprise licenses or higher.
To start using Teams and Salesforce together, please contact your customer success representative or account executive, so that they can integrate into Teams. Then, as the owner of a specific team, you can add the Salesforce app to the team through AppSource.

A surprising plot twist

When the first new ones are familiarizing Salesforce within Teams platforms, Microsoft is just launching CRM software on the market, which is to be a competition for Salesforce.

The software giant, in the MS Dynamics 365 environment, created the C3 AI CRM system. Two other companies cooperating with Microsoft also contributed to the creation of C3 AI CRM:

    • Adobe – which to share the marketing cloud,
    • iC3 – which provide artificial intelligence tools.

The software will be sold by all three companies and has the ability to access a range of data from the customer’s products as well as external information such as social and regulatory sentiment. In this way, it will be possible to predict future revenues or the demand for new products.

Microsoft, the world’s leading software developer, has been trying to catch up with Salesforce, a leading provider of customer relationship management platforms, for over 15 years. The latter in 2019 was enough to drive 20% of the market share, which proves that it is fragmented, and in turn creates real chance for Microsoft, C3 and Adobe.


Marcin Kapuściński – Transition Technologies – Managed Services