Welcome - We Are All Trailblazers: Customer Success in the Fourth Industrial Revolution | Salesforce
Marc Benioff opens the Dreamforce keynote, thanking customers, employees and partners and framing attendees as "trailblazers." He presents numerous customer transformation vignettes (Kone elevators, smart tires, Louis Vuitton, Coca‑Cola coolers, Marriott, Ducati) to illustrate how next‑generation technologies (cloud, 3D printing, CRISPR, robotics, autonomous vehicles, sensors, AI/vision) are driving a Fourth Industrial Revolution that changes businesses and customer relationships. He expresses optimism about attendees shaping the future while acknowledging worries about inequality, societal impacts and technology dividing people. He closes with an overview of Dreamforce sessions and notable speakers.
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Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome chairman and CEO Salesforce Marc Benioff. Welcome, everyone. Welcome. Welcome to Dreamforce. How's everybody doing today? Are you doing all right? Wasn't an incredible opening. Thank you to Danny and Ana Kaka and the incredible John Kaimekawa Hlau from Molokai. Thank you to all of you guys. I love Dreamforce. I love today. And I'm going to tell you why in a second. As you know, I'm up on this stage. I'm here to entertain you. I'm here to inspire you. I'm here to motivate you, here to excite you. And I'm here to love you. And the number one thing I'm here to do today is to thank you. To thank all of you, our customers and all of our employees and all of our partners for all that you do for us every single day. We just don't say thank you enough. And from the deepest depths of our hearts, we want to thank you for everything that you do for us. We know this whole company is created by you, and we are deeply grateful for all that you do for us. Thank you very, very much. I love today. I love being with all of you. It's like a family reunion, isn't it? Isn't it great to be back together? And Dreamforce is just more and more magical each and every year. You know, we're truly all trailblazers. We have been on a tour all over the world on this keynote. You may be watching us on social media and you know that we're out there talking about what we're gonna present and we're talking about some of our new ideas, and we're getting your feedback and trying to understand what you, our customers, want from us. And we're listening deeply to you and trying to understand where we're all going together and through all of that incredible feedback. Well, here is this beautiful keynote. So thank you to everyone who has participated in this amazing tour and for all of you who have participated in giving us everything we need to make this so successful today. So thank you very much. Now, that deserves a hand. I mean, we have had some just incredible people. Incredible. Touched by so many people all over the world. So thank you. You know, we are going through this incredible fourth Industrial Revolution. There's just no doubt about it. And you all know that. You can all see that what's happening every single day. It's all around us, this fourth Industrial Revolution. And as I've been on this tour, I've seen that. I've seen that with our customers. I hear it in your stories. I hear what's going on in your hearts. The good parts of it, the bad parts, the excitement and the highs, the stresses, the worries coming out of all of this has really been driven by these amazing next generation technologies that we see that are all around us. Not just the cloud computing that we've been talking about at this conference for 15 years, but incredible new next generation technologies like 3D printing and biotechnologies like CRISPR, amazing next generation robotics, autonomous vehicles, all these things make up the fourth industrial revolution. And this fourth industrial revolution is really grabbing us. I can feel that more than ever as I go around and talk to all of you. I get that. I understand that. And what I'm most inspired about and probably the slide that I love the most in this presentation is right here. It's all the work that you're doing, all these incredible new products and services that are coming out of your amazing companies. I love that. We started out Dreamforce in the pre show with Kone and the elevator. You know, the connected elevator that the elevator is talking to us. Isn't that amazing? Elevators are talking. Didn't know elevators could talk, but they are. And that means that they're able to predict is the elevator going to fail. And that's important because let me tell you something, nobody wants to be in a stuck elevator. So Kone is more connected to their elevators than ever before. And they're connected to their customers. But before, Kone was a B2B company, and now they're connected directly to their consumers as well. So they become a B2B2C company. It's transformed Kone. That's why Henrik, the CEO is here. Isn't that incredible? Also, look, there's a tire up on the screen. Like, why is there a tire up on this slide? One of the most amazing stories that I had was just a couple of weeks ago in Miami and I was with the CEO of one of the largest tire companies in the world. He's saying, hell, do you know about the next generation of tires? No, I don't know about the next generation tires. Oh, let me tell you about the next generation of tires. It's the fourth industrial revolution. Composite materials. Incredible. But it's not just that. It's also all the sensors that are in the tires and it's that the tires are on the network. It's amazing what's happening with tires. I'm like, tires? Yes, tires. Smart tires. And I'm like, we're going to be able to do incredible things. Today, if the tire blows, nobody knows. But in the future, if the tire blows, everybody knows. Well, that transforms his whole company. Before he was a B2B company. Now he's directly connected to the consumer as a B2B2C company. And that is amazing to me. He has to interface with the autonomous vehicle to let that vehicle know, hey, the tire's about to blow, move to the side of the road. And he's transforming his whole company around that. One of the cool customers that we have is Louis Vuitton. They even made this cool suit that I'm wearing. They even put some cool clouds in my suit. Who doesn't like clouds in their suit? You know, they even made this cool watch, really great watch. And it has a cool app built on our Heroku platform. So they're connected to me right now, Louis Vuitton. And then I walked inside their store and their sales rep came up to me. And holding the phone was like, Mr. Benioff, great to see you. Hey, how's that suit working out? Is it fitting all right? Has the watch. They knew everything about me. They're connected in a way that I never thought they would be and that they never thought they would be. That a luxury brand company would want to be so deeply connected to their customers. And on and on and on. As we go around the world, we see these amazing stories of transformation with these customers. Coca Cola is another great story. Here's Coca Cola. They have these incredible coolers. Everybody see one of those coolers before they're in retailers all over the world. I think they have 10 or 15 million coolers. But the coolers today are not very smart. They're kind of dumb. They're plugged into the wall. They're cooling the Coca Cola. But we have a new next generation cooler, and it's got a little camera inside it. And now with object detection and Einstein vision, it knows when I take the Coca Cola out, it knows if I put something in that's not a Coca Cola. It knows its inventory in real time. We're able to roll those trucks right to those retailers to replenish their capabilities. That's amazing. Coca Cola is connected to their customer, the retailer, in an incredible new way. They're going through huge transformation using this amazing technology. And everywhere I go, it doesn't matter if it's a product company or even a service company, I see this transformation. I recently stayed in an amazing Marriott hotel and I was part of their loyalty program. But you know what? Loyalty's dead now. What they have is a whole community of all of their customers. And we're all on these incredible journeys together, retention journeys and onboarding journeys. And they've kind of abstracted me. They know where I am in their community and they're even able to give me my key right on my phone now. I love that they really know when I'm in the hotel and make sure everything goes well in my onboarding into a new city. Make sure I get that key amenity in my room. It's an incredible next generation service from one of the most amazing service companies in the world. And I hear these stories on and on and on and I have to remember over and over and over again, it's why we come to Dreamforce. It's why we come to Dreamforce. That behind all these things, behind these elevators and behind these hotels and behind these watches and these suits and everything, every behind everything is a customer. And that's what all of us do. We're working to connect with our customers in an incredible new way. I was even in the new customer success forum. How many of you have seen the new connected motorcycle from Ducati? Isn't that amazing? Have you seen that? Built on Salesforce, Ducati is connected to me in a whole new way. It's a next generation customer experience built on our platform. This is the fourth industrial revolution. We're connected to our customers in new ways with all these amazing next generation technologies. It's incredible. It's incredible what's happening. But I'll tell you something else about the fourth industrial revolution that has also worried me a little bit. And I felt this very much in my heart as I talked to so many customers, hundreds of customers, especially over the last month. There's definitely some worry. There's definitely a feeling is this technologies, are they uniting us or are they dividing us? Are we more connected or are we somehow less connected? Or is there more equality in the world? Or is there less equality in the world? I've been feeling that and talking to customers about that. That's definitely the worry that's out there that there is this division happening, this kind of stress created by this fourth industrial revolution. Yes, we have this promise of this new connected world, but what is it doing to us? And what are other actors doing around the world using these technologies? Are they changing our society? Are they changing our elections? What are they doing with this technology? And that's why I'm inspired about Dreamforce. That's why I'm inspired about Dreamforce. I'm inspired about Dreamforce because Of all of you, our trailblazers. I was walking around the campus today and I'm sure you had the same experience that I had as I walked to the Customer Success Showcase and over to Trailhead in Moscone West. Have you ever all been over there? It's amazing what's going on over there. And I look into all of your eyes and it's my inspiration. My inspiration comes from all of you, our trailblazers. You are the innovators. You are the disruptors. You are the shapers. You're shaping this future. I'm trusting this future with you. I know that you are going to make it great. You have all these new tools at your fingertips, these incredible new technologies. But you are doing some amazing things in the world. You are changing your companies. You are steering this technology in the right direction. I'm so confident in who you are. I'm so confident in what's in your hearts and where we are all going. And we have designed this whole amazing conference around you. Well, first of all, we have 2,700 sessions over the next four days. 2,700 sessions over the next 4 days. I expect you to go to every single one of them. Lot of hard work. So please, all 2700. We are going to have some incredible discussions around the future. We of course have this amazing keynote. We just had an incredible discussion with Ashton Kutcher, did a great job over the Yerba Buena center. Tomorrow we have Michelle Obama is here. She herself is an incredible trailblazer, an incredible change maker. Amazing discussions on the future of our oceans and artificial intelligence. We've got our dream pitch. We have our UCSF benefit. Got Lenny Kravitz and Alicia Keys here tomorrow night. We're going to talk about the age of equality. We've got an incredible customer coming from Italy. Brunello Cucinelli is going to be coming here. Pretty awesome. Talking about the future and his vision for the future. And Ginny Rometty, the CEO of IBM, one of the great companies in the world, one of the great CEOs in the world is going to be here to talk about Watson and to talk about artificial intelligence, to talk about their incredible cloud platform. Then we're also going to. Well got Natalie Portman here. That's pretty amazing. Who doesn't love Natalie Portman? Lorene Powell Jobs Will I am is going to be back. The incredible artist JR Carlos Watson, the Bush sisters. We have an incredible panel on Thursday on Resilience with Adam Grant and Larry Brilliant. And all the monastics are back from Plum Village. Thank you to the monastics. Where are the monastics? Are they here? Where are the monastics? I don't know where they are. I hope they're in the room. Are they over here? Well, stand up and be recognized. Monastics, thank you for coming all the way to teach us about mindfulness. Thank you to all of our monastics. Thank you very much.
