Dreamforce 2021 has already come and gone! September 21–23 went by in an exciting flurry of transformative announcements, inspiration to do more good, and change the world through innovation. A limited number of people were able to attend in person, but the vast majority of Salesforce Trailblazers and customers participated in Dreamforce 2021 from the comfort of their own homes, screens, and pajama bottoms with four streaming channels, 150 sessions, and 124 hours of content to personalize their experience with. 

So while this year’s Dreamforce was again quite a contrast to the massive, in-person takeover of San Francisco we’ve grown to love, we still had an incredible week of connecting with the Salesforce ecosystem, celebrating our achievements, and paving the way for ongoing innovation in the future. We wanted to share just a small recap of some of the thought leadership from Simplus and our partners that took center stage at Dreamforce 2021: 

 

Power Up for Dreamforce Party

Before Dreamforce eve began, Simplus was getting the party started. Simplus brought back its annual Power Up for Dreamforce Party this year, but this time we took it to the virtual stage for an all-out bash. From special performances by Desert Noises and comedian Ben Price to swag and prize giveaways every ten minutes, we had a blast ushering in this year’s Dreamforce with colleagues, friends, and family. 

With Infosys President Ravi Kumar, Simplus CEO Ryan Westwood, and entertainment icon Marie Osmond as our co-hosts, the one-hour virtual award show raised over $105,000 for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Our incredible sponsors—including Salesforce, MuleSoft, Copado, Talkdesk, OwnBackup, Prodly, and KBMax—matched every dollar generously given during the party. We can’t thank everyone who contributed to this event enough. With great entertainment, a great cause, and great friends to share it with, it was certainly the Dreamforce party of the year.

 

Marc Benioff’s Keynote: Welcome to the Trusted Enterprise

In his keynote address at the very start of Dreamforce, Marc Benioff inspired a hybrid crowd of millions to be Trustblazers—an evolution of Trailblazers that sees all of the crises facing the world and works to address each one. The world is already in the middle of a fundamental change, as Marc noted, and that change is pushing organizations all over the world to become trustworthy enterprises. Since business is the greatest platform for real societal change, Marc shared his five-step playbook for the trusted enterprise in his keynote.

• Trust: Companies must stay focused on their core values to foster trusting customer relationships. 
• Customer-first: Direct, personalized relationships with customers at every touchpoint is crucial to building a trusted enterprise. 
• Digital HQ: Having a digital hub has superseded the traditional importance of a physical HQ for building your enterprise’s reputation of trust. 
• Health and Safety: Companies must prioritize the physical wellbeing of their customers and employees to create long-lasting faith in the organization. 
• Sustainability: Building a future of more sustainable practices for future generations will fall largely on private enterprises. Salesforce is leading the charge and announced it is now both carbon net-zero and renewable as of this year. 

 

Live MuleSoft Session: Integrate Everything, Automate Anything

MuleSoft’s primetime Dreamforce session looked at how today’s technology can alleviate the ever-increasing workload placed on IT and create more sustainable automation practices by working smarter—not harder. Between three tools—MuleSoft’s Composer for Salesforce, MuleSoft Robotic Process Automation, and the MuleSoft Slack Connector—organizations can unlock true end-to-end automation across all their technologies. 

To showcase this incredible future state, MuleSoft shared a case study of the work it’s done with AT&T. AT&T uses API management and the tools from MuleSoft to compose automated workflows as they move their customers from 4G to 5G. Employees can use the MuleSoft RPA bot to record processes and repeat them on future occurrences, streamlining the number of people doing manual work. Best of all, it can be seamlessly configured with clicks rather than code. 

MuleSoft also took some time to announce new industry accelerators it’s releasing in the coming year: the all-new financial services accelerator, an updated SAP accelerator, and an updated healthcare accelerator. 

 

Live OwnBackup Session: Protect Yourself from 99 Percent of Security and Data Loss Incidents

Another Simplus partner, OwnBackup, delivered a fantastic session during Dreamforce focused on the data protection responsibility businesses have and how to do it better. OwnBackup likened data protection to playing a team sport—if the different stakeholders aren’t in sync, it’s not going to create a win for anybody. Between IT, Salesforce Admins, centers of excellence, executives, and DevOps, there are many different departments with a vested interest in data protection, but different concerns and motivations at play. If any one player goes rogue and forgets the team at large, everyone loses as data security weakens.

OwnBackup suggests SaaS security posture management as an approach to mediate everyone’s concerns and obtain truly secure data assets. This means careful data analysis and classification based on the different levels of security different fields can have and what types of personas/roles can access each type of data. Once these priorities are assigned to the appropriate fields and objects with the help of a proven Salesforce consultant, the alerting and reporting functions will give users real-time monitoring of what specific users can access what, streamlining complexity for your admin team and making your most precious business capital—your data—more secure. 

 

On-Demand Simplus Session: Industry Trends and Manufacturing Digital Transformation Journeys in 2021

One of the on-demand sessions available to all Dreamforce viewers was done by Simplus’ Alyssa Suchy, David Rivas, and Jim Nader with help from loyal customers Komatsu and W.R. Grace. This impressive panel of manufacturing industry experts discussed the trends at the forefront of the manufacturing revolution and how digital transformation journeys for manufacturers during the pandemic have changed for an even more revolutionary future ahead. 

Live Simplus Session: HLS Industry Trends and Digital Transformation Solutions

On Thursday, September 23rd, Simplus’ Jayneel Patel and Amy Cook were joined by Amit Shukla of Infosys for a live Dreamforce session on healthcare and life sciences digital transformation. The session focused heavily on how industry-specific accelerators and solutions coupled with Salesforce can provide top-of-the-line care, whether in-person or virtual, and sell more products/services in a new dynamic environment. This session also looked at how HLS organizations can partner with each other while supporting staff to innovate.

 

It was an incredible year for Dreamforce, and we want to thank all of our customers and partners who support us as agents for ongoing transformation all over the world.