Salesforce Canada

Over the next few days, 160,000 registered attendees and media from around the world will be learning about Salesforce’s customers, solutions and vision at Dreamforce. But for 70 international journalists, the event started a day early with an exclusive tour of some of San Francisco’s most innovative and revered companies.

Some people count the days to the start of hockey season. Others count down the shopping days before the holidays hit. But for the more than 150,000 people who make the trek to San Francisco from 78 countries around the world—and another 10 million who join via live streaming—the countdown is on for Salesforce’s Dreamforce, the largest software conference on Earth.

A few weeks ago, the Financial Post published a story that spoke directly to a potential threat facing many Canadian businesses. In “How to stay one step ahead of disruptors in the app economy,” the newspaper looked at how companies like Uber are competing with the taxi industry, and Airbnb is shaking up the hospitality sector. The Post suggested the stakes are high if Canadian firms don’t want to get left behind.

Amid the day-to-day challenges of running a company, like trying to grow sales and delivering customer service, it may be easy to forget how cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) can help contribute to key business outcomes. In that sense, there’s no time like now to look at what the business community has learned about CRM and cloud computing, and then apply it to your organization. Think of it as a grown up version of practicing your A, B, Cs.

The Internet is filled with advice on how to help parents and children adjust to the back-to-school transition. Some of these tips make just as much sense for those selling products and services as it does for those learning the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic.