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Salesforce Einstein Analytics is a sophisticated business intelligence and data visualization platform built natively on the Salesforce platform. With its strong analytical capabilities fueled by artificial intelligence, Einstein Analytics empowers organizations to explore data, uncover insights and make smarter data-driven decisions.
What is Salesforce Einstein Analytics?
Salesforce Einstein Analytics, formerly known as Wave Analytics, is Salesforce‘s business intelligence and analytics offering. It allows you to import, prepare and connect to both Salesforce and external data to perform advanced analysis.
Key capabilities include:
- Data exploration and visualization
- Predictive modeling and machine learning-powered insights
- Customizable dashboards and reports
- Storytelling with data-driven narratives
- Mobile analytics
Analytics Architecture
Einstein Analytics has a multi-layered architecture to handle the entire analytics process – from connecting to data sources to exploring, visualizing and sharing insights.
As seen above, key components include:
- Connectors – For connecting to Salesforce CRM as well as 130+ external data sources like Google Analytics, AWS S3 etc.
- Data Manager – For importing, shaping and enriching data from all sources
- Datasets – For storing transformed and query-ready data
- Lens – User-defined queries to analyze dataset data
- Dashboards – To visualize analyzed data using charts, metrics, tables etc.
- Stories – Guided narratives to communicate data analysis and insights
Together, these layers empower users to handle the full lifecycle of data analytics on the Salesforce Customer 360 platform.
Key Capabilities of Einstein Analytics
Let‘s look at some of the key capabilities of Salesforce Einstein Analytics:
1. Data Connectors
Einstein Analytics can connect directly to Salesforce object and field data for analysis. You can also leverage 130+ pre-built connectors like Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, AWS S3 etc. to import external data.
This enables creating a unified Customer 360 data view across all customer interactions – web, mobile, social media, email campaigns and more.
2. Data Preparation
With Einstein Analytics, you can shape and enrich connected data for analysis using the cloud-based Data Manager. This includes cleansing, transforming and augmenting data.
You can append computed fields, create data relationships, merge data and more within Data Manager through an intuitive, code-free interface.
3. Datasets
Datasets are custom data containers optimized for interactive analytics by Einstein Analytics. You can load prepared, analysis-ready data from various sources like Salesforce objects, external files or apps into datasets.
This data can then be immediately analyzed using Einstein Analytics without replication delays or performance lags. Incremental sync options also load latest data automatically.
4. AI-powered Insights
Einstein Analytics delivers predictive insights on key metrics through Einstein Discovery – an AI-powered automated discovery capability built into Analytics Platform.
It auto-analyzes dataset data to detect trends, patterns and predicts future outcomes through machine learning algorithms. The predictions and prescriptive recommendations can provide valuable business insights.
5. Interactive Exploration with Lenses
Lenses allow you to interactively explore dataset data by creating custom queries using an intuitive visual interface. Without coding, you can apply filters, aggregations and logic to analyze data.
Multiple lenses can be created to analyze data from different angles. Salesforce Admins and Power Users can create lenses in just clicks.
6. Impactful Data Visualization
Einstein Analytics enables visualizing analyzed dataset information into interactive, customizable dashboards containing charts, metrics and tables.
You can showcase key trends, track KPIs and compare categories, measure period-over-period progress through data visualizations. The visualizations auto-update when underlying data changes so insights are always current.
7. Storytelling from Data
Stories enable weaving analyzed data into easy-to-understand visual narratives targeted to business executives. Storytelling simplifies complex data analysis through engaging, interactive slideshows.
Use Cases of Salesforce Einstein Analytics
Let‘s look at how Einstein Analytics powers smarter decisions across key business functions:
Sales Analytics Use Cases
For sales teams, Einstein Analytics unlocks insights like:
- Sales performance trends
- Sales forecasting and pipeline analysis
- Customer lifetime value trends
- Sales representative effectiveness
- Product performance analytics
These metrics visible through interactive reports and dashboards help sales leadership make better decisions on pipeline management, territories and quota planning, sales enablement and training.
Service Analytics Use Cases
For customer service teams, insights delivered by Einstein Analytics include:
- Customer case analysis
- Service agent productivity
- Query and case assignment trends
- Customer satisfaction (CSAT) metrics
- Resolution time tracking
These insights help service managers enhance customer support quality through improved case assignment, agent coaching and query resolution processes.
Marketing Analytics Use Cases
For marketing professionals, Einstein Analytics delivers vital insights on:
- Campaign performance
- Lead generation channels
- Visitor engagement metrics
- Content consumption trends
- Marketing ROI
These analytical insights help optimize marketing budget allocation, fine-tune lead nurturing processes and boost campaign effectiveness.
Getting Started with Einstein Analytics
Here are a few tips to help you get started:
- Signup for a Trailhead Playground to access Einstein Analytics demo org
- Try out interactive Trailhead tutorials to familiarize yourself with key concepts
- Start by analyzing Salesforce CRM data before ingesting external data
- Leverage pre-built templates and sample apps
- Take it slow – start small before expanding analytics scope
Also, leverage expert help from Salesforce implementation partners if needed.
Pricing and Licensing for Einstein Analytics
Einstein Analytics comes in 3 pricing editions suitable for different use cases:
As seen above:
- The basic Einstein Predictions plan focuses mainly on predictive insights.
- Einstein Analytics Plus plan adds data connectivity, preparation, exploration and dashboarding capabilities on top of predictive.
- The most advanced Einstein Analytics Growth plan includes all Plus features plus Einstein Discovery analytics.
All packages are available as add-ons to Salesforce CRM licenses priced at per-user-per-month rates billed annually. Special pricing exists for non-profits and educational institutions.
Free trials, discounted licenses etc. are also available through Salesforce ISV partners.
Wrap Up
With its artificial intelligence and machine learning-led analytics, Salesforce Einstein Analytics enables deeper insights for smarter decisions. Its native Customer 360 integration, predictive recommendations and customizable dashboards accelerate data-driven business growth.
Einstein Analytics is the future for actionable, intelligent analytics within Salesforce. It is a must-have for Salesforce power users ready to unlock the real potential of data.