Salesforce Debuts Analytics Mobile App

Salesforce has introduced the first mobile app for its Wave Analytics platform.

Select iOS users are piloting Sales Wave Analytics, which Salesforce will release to the public at an undisclosed date.

The app will connect to other services on Salesforce’s CRM platform to derive data and provide “actionable insight.” Features include sales-accelerator templates, historical analysis and a task-creation and deployment option called Sales Wave Actions. Partners might find it useful.

“We are … combining intuitive analytics with business processes in Wave Analytics Apps,” said Alex Dayon, president of products at Salesforce. “So every business user can not only see performance in real-time, but also take actions directly within the apps.”

Salesforce has not announced the monthly per-user price of the app.

Company CEO Mark Benioff told Dreamforce 2014 conference attendees in October that the company would enter the analytics market. He touted Wave as a cloud analytics platform “designed for business users, not just analysts.”

“The Wave Analytics Cloud eliminates the painfully slow, complex and unintuitive legacy approaches that have long separated business users from their data,” Dayon said in October. “Finally, there are analytics for the rest of us.”

451 Research Director Sheryl Kingstone notes that although that vision has taken a long time to manifest itself, it shows potential.

” …there is always a market for easy-to-use analytics, especially considering roughly half of businesses have done very little to deploy analytics for mobile devices,” she said, commenting specifically on a FirstPost article.

Kingstone noted that the app hasn’t truly launched and Salesforce has only announced plans for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Sales Wave Analytics only supports English.

“Hopefully, by the fall, the company will share customer success stories across multiple languages and devices,” she said.