Salesforce is offering an innovation for retailers that combines lightning components, business logic and customer data for market success.
The customer relationship management firm introduced Lightning Bolt Thursday, a new framework that allows companies to develop personalized customer experiences from many technology devices. Lightning Bolt provides businesses such as Accenture and Deloitte the ability to create communities, customer-facing websites and next-generation portals that work with Salesforce CRM in a more seamless, time efficient process.
Following the release of Lightning Templates for Community Cloud last year, Salesforce decided to take consumer communication to the next level with the establishment of Lightning Bolt. Instead of only being able to establish connections, companies are now able to form industry-specific solutions by enabling businesses to keep up with consumer demands via digital experiences.
For instance, Accenture created Store Operations, a platform that provides sales associates with current customer, merchandise, promotions and operational information. Meanwhile, Magnet 360 established Retail Audience Engagement, which allows retailers to connect with customers, partners and employees on a rules-based chatbot. Along with the new framework launch, Salesforce debuted a new lightning bolt category on its AppExchange, so Salesforce ecosystem partners can market new solutions.
“The new Lightning Bolt framework enables the experts in our partner ecosystem to create tailored Salesforce Bolt solutions to meet the specific needs of virtually every industry,” said Mike Micucci, Salesforce Community Cloud general manager and senior vice president. “Now, companies will be able to leverage Salesforce Bolt solutions to deploy robust, next-generation communities, portals and more with just a few clicks, making it easier than ever to connect with customers in new ways.”
Salesforce’s Lightning Bolt framework will be available to companies in October 2016. Salesforce ecosystem developers will also be able to distribute solutions with the AppExchange in January 2017.