Connect Teams and Data with the New Salesforce Foundations

As Salesforce Admins, you’re well-versed in delivering Salesforce features to your users and stakeholders. Now, we’re making it even easier for you to get the most out of Salesforce by adding cross-department features built into your existing CRM.

The exciting news from Dreamforce ’24 is Salesforce Foundations, which brings built-in, key features to Sales Cloud and Service Cloud—at no additional cost. This gives every organization with Enterprise, Unlimited, or Einstein 1 Edition Editions with Sales Cloud and/or Service Cloud access to:

Foundational features from Sales, Service, Marketing, and Commerce Cloud, including deal management, case management, marketing email campaigns with targeted segmentation, and secure payment links
Data Cloud auto-configured to centralize and harmonize customer data into unified profiles
Improved user experience with updated left-navigation and customizable Home page
New, extended free trials and functionality from 25+ top partners on AppExchange

Admins now have even more opportunities to utilize Salesforce to drive efficiency and innovation (and even move to a multi-cloud setup!). In this blog, we’ll dive into which features are available to your organization and how you can start taking advantage of them to bring more teams into Salesforce and set them up for success.

What is Salesforce Foundations?

Salesforce Foundations gives you access to key Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, and Data Cloud features, as well as an enhanced user interface (UI).

Service Cloud Admins now have access to foundational Sales features, such as:

Leads, Opportunities, Sales Quotes, and Forecasting: Service agents now have visibility into in-flight deals and access to quoting tools to process upsells and add-ons, when appropriate. Sales users can work out of Service Cloud with lead management, quoting, and forecasting.

Sales Cloud Admins now have access to foundational Service features, such as:

Case Management, Knowledge, and Macros: Sales users can now keep opportunities on track with insights into service cases. Service teams can resolve cases faster in Sales Cloud with case resolution tools like Knowledge and Macros.

Sales and Service Admins now have access to foundational Marketing, Commerce, and Data features, such as:

Email templates and email campaigns: Marketing teams now have email tools directly in Sales or Service Cloud. With 2,000 sends per month included at no cost, Sales or Service reps can now add customers to marketing-created nurture campaigns to increase customer loyalty directly in your CRM.
Targeted segmentation, powered by Data Cloud: Marketers can launch personalized campaigns using highly-targeted segmentation lists created with Data Cloud.
Commerce Pay Now secure payment links: Sellers can quickly collect payment on closed deals with secure, direct payment links, now easily generated on opportunity records.
Data Cloud: Once enabled, Data Cloud runs automatically, centralizing your data into unified profiles, including data that may have been previously inaccessible or not centralized within one system.

Sales and Service Admins can choose to turn on an improved UI, including:

Streamlined left-hand navigation that makes it easy for users to find the apps they need
New Home page with customizable out-of-the-box home cards that provide a snapshot into a user’s top priorities, like open cases, open opportunities, and recommended tasks

What does this mean for admins?

If you want to move your company to a multi-cloud setup, you might feel like you’re facing an uphill battle. This has historically required a large investment of time, budget, resources, and integrations. Salesforce Foundations alleviates those concerns by making it easier (and free!) to get started with multiple clouds. These new features are built directly on core, so there are no integrations or technical implementations needed—a real time-saver for busy admins!

Access to Salesforce Foundations means you can use your existing knowledge of Salesforce to help teams be successful across your organization.

Help sellers prospect faster with email campaigns and secure payment links.
Help service teams get insight into open deals and purchase history.
Help marketing teams set up automated email journeys with email templates and workflows.
Help IT teams innovate faster and extend Salesforce with new free trials of top partner apps.

Salesforce Foundations helps lay the groundwork to get started with the Agentforce platform. Admins are being tasked at a growing rate to implement artificial intelligence (AI) solutions while integrating with more sources of data to tie back to their Salesforce integrations. With Data Cloud now running in the background as part of Salesforce Foundations, you’re able to take action on your data and enable trusted AI solutions grounded in contextualized data.

No matter how you plan to use the products in Salesforce Foundations, you’ll be helping your teams work faster and ready to integrate AI into various workflows.

What does it mean to use Salesforce Foundations?

Salesforce Foundations gives you access to a complete, all-in-one CRM suite, including Marketing and Commerce. This is the perfect entry point for orgs that don’t yet have solutions for Sales, Service, Marketing, or Commerce. Salesforce Foundations will be available to Sales Cloud and/or Service Cloud Enterprise Edition or higher customers later this fall.

You can now also extend Salesforce with free trials of 25+ apps on AppExchange. These Salesforce Foundations launch partner apps—including Docusign, Highspot, and RingCentral—increase productivity, adoption, and cost savings with key functionality including document generation, contract management, collaboration, surveys, sales tools, telephony, and video conferencing.

Explore Salesforce Foundations today

Can’t wait to try out these solutions? Salesforce Foundations is generally available (GA) now, as of Dreamforce ’24. Reach out to your Account Executive today to get access to Salesforce Foundations and follow the documentation to get started. Check out the below resources to get hands-on with these great features soon!

Stay tuned for even more features coming soon, including Agentforce Agents, which will be available to try in your org with Salesforce Foundations later this year.