Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

These are the questions we hear a lot, and you’ll find the answers below. But if you have others, please don’t hesitate to contact us — we’re here to help.

CRM Analytics FAQ

CRM Analytics (formerly Einstein Analytics) is a revolutionary customer and business analytics platform that’s optimized for mobile use and brings flexible customer analytics to your CRM. It works with any data, from any data source, and it will change the way your company answers critical questions. CRM Analytics allows you to explore data in powerful, contextual ways:

  • Connect directly to your CRM data and execute on insights directly in Chatter.
  • Automatically analyze millions of rows of data and get predictive analytics with Einstein Discovery.
  • Explore data quickly and automate actions with prebuilt apps.
  • Use your mobile device to act, whether you're on Android or iOS.
Einstein Analytics is now called CRM Analytics. All the great functionality you've come to rely on is now part of CRM Analytics.

CRM Analytics is part of the broader Tableau portfolio of products. Together, CRM Analytics and the Tableau Platform create the world’s leading analytics solution when used together. How we leverage these products is based on one simple question: Where do your users need to see their insights?

  • Tableau offers an end-to-end analytics platform serving a broad range of enterprise use cases. If you are looking for an enterprisewide business intelligence solution, Tableau is the right product for you. 
  • CRM Analytics is ideal for your team members who need their analytics deeply integrated throughout their Salesforce CRM, providing actionability and AI-driven insights natively in the platform. If you are looking to augment Sales Cloud or Service Cloud with insights to drive productivity in the CRM workflow, CRM Analytics is the best product for you.

 

  • Reports and Dashboards in Sales Cloud and Service Cloud provide an instant snapshot of the metrics that matter to your business, including team performance, lead volume, and conversion rates. It looks and behaves like CRM Analytics, but provides very different functionality.
  • CRM Analytics is designed for self-service data discovery. It extends beyond Reports and Dashboards to give you new views into your pipeline, end-to-end customer insight, and historical analytics to help you plan your next best step. It can also help you find trends and make discoveries you weren’t specifically pursuing, making it a much stronger choice for data-driven decision-making.
  • CRM Analytics is designed to bring true business intelligence to every CRM user in every industry: from sales reps to service reps to business users and beyond. It is 100% mobile — not just for tablets and not as an afterthought.
  • It also allows you to maintain control of your data. With analytics from Salesforce, you can ensure that critical company data stays in your CRM system and isn’t exposed through substandard security.
They’re a series of purpose-built analytics apps for different lines of business to simplify setup and onboarding. They are designed to put relevant answers in the hands of every member of your team, across every line of business, while adapting to your ongoing business needs. With CRM Analytics Apps, everyone can explore data, uncover insights, and instantly take action from any device.
  • All you need to do is get your data into CRM Analytics. Once it’s in the system, anyone with the right permissions can begin slicing and dicing data, and building dashboards.
  • CRM Analytics is as close to plug and play as any analytics solution on the market. There are two ways to load Salesforce data: You can write the data flow yourself, or use a simple visual wizard to create your initial datasets. Many of our customers set up their initial Salesforce datasets within a few minutes or hours.
  • Getting third-party data into CRM Analytics is relatively easy thanks to our integration partners. Depending on the volume of the data, this can take a few hours.
  • Most of your setup time will be spent identifying use cases and thinking strategically about which datasets make sense and what dashboards need to be built.
  • Nope. Unlike legacy business intelligence, CRM Analytics is designed for every single person in your organization.
  • Legacy analytics solutions are difficult to use and require specialized expertise. Even simple questions are sent into an overburdened service bureau, causing a backlog. This kind of system makes it difficult for analysts to deliver timely insights that drive strategic business decisions.
  • CRM Analytics is different. It’s designed to be used like a search engine, and enables you to explore and share data from every angle, on the fly. You no longer have to log tickets to ask a simple question — now you can get insight on your own.
  • Absolutely. One of the key features of CRM Analytics is the dashboard creation and editing capabilities, so you can build them out as you like.
  • We don’t believe in discriminating against data sources. CRM Analytics is open to any data, including structured CRM data in Salesforce, financial data in SAP, or inventory data in Oracle. And CRM Analytics works with the overwhelming amount of new data being created all the time, including semistructured data from machines, sensors, mobile apps, and websites. We manage the data in Salesforce CRM apps, AppExchange apps, and Force.com custom apps directly. For other data sources, you can use any popular ETL tool to move data to CRM Analytics, or leverage its public API to load data.
  • All of the data you have in Salesforce is available to you in CRM Analytics. If you want to bring data directly into Einstein Analytics from another system, you need to upgrade to the CRM Analytics license.
  • At Salesforce, trust is at the core of everything we do. Over 150,000 companies trust Salesforce to keep their cloud data safe. Our multilayered approach to security protects the integrity of your information — and our applications are always improving. Individual users are restricted by authentication, session limits, and audits that provide control and visibility. Organizations receive a unique identifier that makes data inaccessible to anyone outside the company.
  • Learn more about all the ways Salesforce keeps your data secure at trust.salesforce.com.