Cisco and Salesforce join forces for sales, service and IoT solutions

Salesforce Logo on wall of office Reception

Salesforce and Cisco have joined forces to offer enhanced sales, service and IoT services to both sets of customers to improve productivity.

The two companies will tie up on both Salesforce and Cisco products to offer enhanced capabilities in Salesforce's Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, Salesforce IoT Cloud and Cisco’s Unified Contact Center Enterprise.

Helping organisations collaborate better, Cisco and Salesforce's first announcement will see Cisco Spark and WebEx integrated into Salesforce's Sales Cloud and Service Cloud via the Salesforce Lightning Framework. It will help colleagues communicate better via chat, video, and voice without leaving Salesforce.

Salesforce's Service Cloud will also be developed with Cisco’s Unified Contact Center Enterprise, enabling businesses to take advantage of both companies' expertise when it comes to managing customer service. The joint effort will feature enhanced contact routing, call treatment, network-to-desktop computer telephony integration and multichannel contact management to make it easier for customers to connect with end users.

The final update is the unification of Cisco Jasper and the Salesforce IoT Cloud to provide a wider suite of IoT management services, helping organisations keep on top of their IoT implementations and making experiences more relevant for customers.

“Cisco wants to deliver simple, magical experiences. Our goal is for technology to fade into the background so people can get their best work done,” said Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM of IoT and Applications Groups, Cisco. “Cisco and Salesforce coming together to form a strategic alliance can eliminate the friction users experience today so they can become more productive.”

The results of the strategic alliance will begin to filter out from the second half of 2017, although integrations between Cisco’s Unified Contact Center Enterprise and Salesforce’s Service Cloud are already available, the two companies said in a statement.

“Nothing is more important than making our customers more successful,” said Ryan Aytay, EVP of Strategic Product Alliances, Salesforce. “We’re thrilled to announce this strategic alliance with Cisco, which will simplify the customer experience across sales, service and IoT and empower our mutual customers to be far more productive.”

Clare Hopping
Freelance writer

Clare is the founder of Blue Cactus Digital, a digital marketing company that helps ethical and sustainability-focused businesses grow their customer base.

Prior to becoming a marketer, Clare was a journalist, working at a range of mobile device-focused outlets including Know Your Mobile before moving into freelance life.

As a freelance writer, she drew on her expertise in mobility to write features and guides for ITPro, as well as regularly writing news stories on a wide range of topics.