Salesforce is in the news again! As digital transformation spend continues to heat up and the race for cloud-based / digital everything ingratiates its way into every facet of our lives, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Salesforce has entered the fray in a big way.

Like, $28 Billion big. 

With a monstrous $200B market cap and roughly $20B in annual revenue, it’s no surprise they are looking for ways to expand their business and compete against other enterprise players like Microsoft. For companies of this size that have a dominant position in their market, it’s difficult to move the needle organically, so vertical and horizontal acquisitions play a major part in fueling growth as companies mature. 

To expand in the enterprise application space, Salesforce has been active, to say the least. Its notable acquisitions include Buddy Media (social media marketing), ExactTarget (Marketing Cloud), DemandWare (Commerce Cloud), Quip (application productivity software), MuleSoft (integration software), Tableau (data visualization), and now Slack. It’s clear combining Salesforce’s core CRM technology with its incredible salesforce (no pun intended) gives SFDC the leverage to scale these businesses quickly given how embedded it is with businesses globally.

Of course, a $28B covid-related acquisition is going to be front-page news. Those don’t happen very often. There is also a high probability it leads to additional acquisitions in the cloud-based landgrab (cloud-grab?) we’ll watch unfold over the next few years. 

But while everyone is focused on the shiny new toy Marc Benioff just scooped up, we’re focusing on a much less talked about, much less splashy move Salesforce made last year. 

That move was entering the insurance space. 

Salesforce, Financial Service Cloud, Slack, and why we’re excited…

Taken directly from a Salesforce press release, “The insurance industry is experiencing a revolution. Leading insurers are leveraging innovations in digital, data, and cloud technologies to drive profitable growth, distinctive customer engagement, agent productivity, and innovative new business models. At the same time, many of these leaders are still challenged by legacy processes and systems as well as fragmentation between siloed businesses and functions. They are further challenged by a lack of an end-to-end digital strategy and the talent to execute.”

Basically, if insurers aren’t revamping their core systems and adopting a digital-first approach if they’re not in trouble yet, they’re going to be.

“Now, more than ever before, the insurance industry is working towards delivering more relevant and engaging experiences at every stage of a customer’s life,” said Ayan Sarkar, Global Head of Insurance, Salesforce. “By leveraging data and AI and digitizing touchpoints, we can now help insurers deliver distinctive experiences. We’re thrilled and excited to partner with insurers on this journey to transform the industry with new insurance innovations for Financial Services Cloud.”

Insurance Innovations in Financial Services Cloud

Salesforce launched a few insurance-specific out-of-the-box capabilities the details of which you can find here.

But between the continual product launches/upgrades and the growing list of clients (Pacific Life, Amica, and TMNAS to name a few), it’s clear that they have big ambitions. 

Unlike Amazon, for instance, Salesforce is taking a slightly friendlier approach to their new neighbors by partnering with them (i.e. iPipeline and Guidewire) or acquiring them (Vlocity). 

Selfishly, this is exciting news for us. 

Introducing…ForMotiv <> Slack Real-Time Signals

See, we have also approached the insurance space amicably, forging strategic partnerships with the iPipelines and Unqorks of the world, integrating with many others such as Guidewire, Duckcreek, and Salesforce, and building our solution API-first to make collecting, analyzing, powering, or delivering behavioral intelligence data easier. 

And while we think that a Salesforce <> Slack deal is certainly newsworthy, we’re even more excited about the Salesforce <> ForMotiv <> Slack integration. (ForMotivSlack? SlackMotiv? Flack? We’ll think of something.) 

That’s right – you’re looking at Slack’s newest integration partner! And just because our announcement won’t make the cover of Forbes doesn’t make it any less exciting, not to mention the timing could not be any more perfect. 

So much of what separates ForMotiv from everyone else is our primary focus on making behavioral data instantly available. Analyzing past behavioral data can certainly be helpful, but moving from reactive to proactive behavioral intelligence is the future. It allows companies to move from static experiences to dynamic ones. From one-size-fits-all customer journeys to digital experiences tailored to the individual customer. From reactive risk & fraud assessments to real-time predictive risk scoring. But there is so much more to be done before we even get there. 

And Slack is going to help us do this.

Using the ForMotiv <> Slack integration, companies can operationalize ForMotiv Signals (real-time rule-based signals) by allowing for tangible actions. Behavioral signals of users can be sent to specific Slack channels in your organization. 

A push-based integration process brings on a whole new dimension of operational functionality. Think of it like this…previously behavioral signals were viewed and analyzed after the fact. You’d view reports or log into a SaaS dashboard. Now with Signals, data is pushed in real-time so you can interject and drive the outcome you want.

So if your underwriting team wants an alert any time someone changes an important question, or your digital marketing team wants one anytime someone hovers over the submit button, that can all happen inside of Slack and more broadly across systems like Hubspot, Twilio, and online chat products.

When dealing with any new, cutting-edge technology, there is always a learning curve, use cases take time to develop, and customer adoption is slow as it moves from innovators/early adopters to laggards. We’re seeing that now with Behavioral Intelligence. 

I’m guessing we’re somewhere between the “innovators” and “early adopters” stage currently, but as more and more InsurTech companies go public, even legacy carriers are paying attention to the constant mention of new-age data and digital behavioral analytics. 

While most have bought into the concept and value of collecting digital behavioral data thus far, actually operationalizing it is a different story. ForMotiv is already changing the game with its real-time “MotivScript” behavioral signaling capability and this new Slack integration allows us to get it in a lot more hands, faster. 

Let me know if you’d like to learn more! Email woody@formotiv.com