did Booking.com unlock
massive B2B growth
with Salesforce by
connecting and activating
sideload data? So
let's see how they did
it. I'm Soledad O
'Brien, and I'm joined by
Gita Gidwani, Product
Marketing Director at
Salesforce, and Avril
Jain, Marketing Manager
at Booking.com. Nice
to see you both, and
Avril, we'll get to
you in just one moment,
but I want to start
with Gita, if I may. So
you're relaunching
Data Cloud as Data360.
Tell me about the
relaunch and how
does Data360 help
customers right away?
Yes, thank you so much
for having us here.
Really excited and
thanks for the question.
And one of their
biggest data
challenges is
activating data. And
so this is where
Data360 helps.
So as you mentioned,
we've renamed
DataCloud to Data360
because it better
represents how we
help customers and how
our product has
evolved. So Data360
helps activate trusted
data everywhere.
And there's three
major use cases that we
unlock. So the first is
that we help marketers
fuel real-time
personalized experiences.
The second is that
we ground agents
with trusted data
and context. And the
context is very
important. And that's
thanks to our
metadata framework.
And the third is
that we help every
business connect
their teams with one
complete data
source so they can
deliver connected,
seamless journeys.
So I like to think of
Data360 as similar to
the Customer360
concept, right? It helps
activate data across
every app, every agent,
and every experience.
Excellent. All right.
So then let's turn
to the customer, if
we can, Avril. What were
the biggest business
challenges or maybe
even the biggest
potential opportunities
that you were seeing
that you were hoping to
address with Data360?
Yeah. So as Booking
.com, our model is to
support our accommodation
partners with a
lot of high touch support
and advice so that
they are successful on
our platform. However,
because of our hyper
growth, what we saw
was it became just
impossible for us to
continue providing that
high touch support.
We were interacting
with millions of
partners on a daily
basis and we needed some
platform that could
scale with our needs.
What we also saw
was because of a
lot of organic
growth, we created
a bunch of different
internal tools
which did not talk
to each other.
So we had like
multiple data silos. We
had experiences to the
partners going from
different tools and
different platforms.
And our teams were busy
with just maintaining
these tools with no
time for innovation.
So this was
literally the biggest
problem that we were
trying to solve. And
it sounds like it's
a typical problem for
an organization. What
you're describing
is not sort of an
individual problem.
It's across the board.
So then how did Data360
address those
challenges, the silos,
scaling as fast as you
possibly can? Yeah.
So the way we introduced
Data360 in our
organization, the first
step we took was to
integrate and connect
it with hundreds of
data streams from our
data warehouse. So with
the zero copy, we
were able to do that
super quickly. and we
were able to create
very deep and rich
profiles of our partners.
What this led us to
do was we were able
to change our
communication. Just as an
example, in the past,
we would communicate,
activate a long stay
rate, for example. But
now we are able to
add a lot more context
into that and we are
able to say, hey, a lot
of travelers in your
locality are searching
for long stay rates.
It's more than 30% of
the total searches. So
our advice to you is
to implement long-stay
rate. This gives our
partners a lot of
context and also a lot of
reasons to trust us and
implement our advice,
which we also know is
successful for them.
There's obviously a
lot of competition out
there. Why did you go
with Salesforce Data
360? What was right about
the product for your
company? Yeah, so we
primarily broke it down
into three operating
principles as such,
right? First, we wanted
to focus on building
the core products
ourselves, products that we
as an organization can
do better than anybody
else, but by enterprise
technology, right?
So that was one of
our principles. The
second principle was
speed was of the essence.
course, changes
quite quickly.
We wanted something
which could keep up
with our speed. And
the third part was
millions of partners
depend on our advice
every single day.
So the cost of
failure was massive
and Salesforce at the
end fit all three
checkbox, all three
of our principles with
their data 360 and
marketing cloud
solutions. Excellent.
So, Gita, last question
to you. What is a
data 360 innovation
that you are excited to
share to help companies,
Booking.com and many,
many others that's
coming down the pike?
Yeah, that's a hard
question to answer.
We're innovating
all the time. I was
going to say, that's
a long answer, many.
I know, we're
releasing new features,
new capabilities
on a monthly basis.
You know, based on
what we were just
talking about, one
that really sticks
out for me is
that we're putting
agents to work
across the data cloud
journey. So from
everything to setup,
to unifying data, to
activating data, you
can now do it faster
with agents working
alongside you. So
we just talked about
speed to value being
really important.
I think this
will help ******
.com and other
companies realize
business results
even faster.
Excellent. So nice to
chat with you guys.
Really appreciate it.
And congratulations
on what has been
obviously an excellent
partnership. Geeta and
Averill, thank you.
To learn more about
Data360, you can
scan the QR code that's
on your screen or
just go to salesforce
.com slash data.
