by Jim Lundy

Salesforce is once again trying to innovate and you can't fault it for that. Yesterday, it announced Salesforce Anywhere, its new embedded collaboration service that goes into beta later this year. This blog discusses this new offering and Salesforce's past attempts at collaboration.

What Is Salesforce Anywhere?

Salesforce Anywhere is a new mobile-enabled collaboration application that is all about group collaboration with team members and, potentially, with customers. It offers

• Embedded chat
• Alerts on deals
• The ability to update Salesforce records
• Share video with team members
• Training recommendations from Trailhead

Salesforce Anywhere looks like a mashup of other Salesforce products and concepts. It looks like it has taken capabilities from Quip and Einstein Voice and blended them together. Einstein Voice, announced two years ago, looks to offer similar features and is not yet available.

With Anywhere, Salesforce has a chance to improve its positioning in the collaboration market.

The Son of Chatter—Will Salesforce Finally Succeed in Collaboration?

Salesforce has a history of dabbling in collaboration. Salesforce Chatter is still available in the Salesforce platform. However, today, the reality is that nearly all collaboration in the enterprise is done with virtual collaboration tools.

Salesforce Anywhere looks like a good concept, however, today, Salesforce has not been committed to the collaboration platform market. Enterprises need to look at Salesforce Anywhere versus the current office collaboration tools they have to determine if those tools can be integrated with Salesforce and be more effective than just using Salesforce Anywhere.

Beta Is Coming

Salesforce has a habit of announcing products before they are available. Salesforce Anywhere has a better sign-up, and the beta is supposed to start in late July. General availability is expected in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Bottom Line

Salesforce Anywhere is a new push from Salesforce to gain market share in the enterprise collaboration software market. While the Salesforce CRM is highly successful, the provider has not been fully committed to the mobile collaboration market in the past. New tools like Anywhere may be what it needs to elevate its market position.