Salesforce has upgraded its core CRM product with the launch of Salesforce Lightning.
The re-imagining of the platform includes the Lightning Experience, the new tool, Lightning Design System with Lightning Components, a customisation engine, and Lightning App Builder, which allows the user to build apps on top of the CRM tool.
It adds an activity feed, which provides data on what has happened in an account and what they need to do next. It also features contextual hovers, allowing users to view information about a customer without going to a different page in the application.
In addition, it features an opportunity board, providing a complete view across all deals, allowing the user to drag and drop deals from stage to stage. This comes alongside customisable dashboards, providing up to nine columns.
"Our initial focus in designing Lightning Experience was to improve the core sales features sales people use everyday," wrote Mike Rosenbaum, Executive Vice President Sales Cloud at Salesforce, in a blog detailing the release.
"We’ve talked to thousands of salespeople and they told us what they want most: tools that can make them more productive and drive their business forward faster. We set out to build an application that has a point of view on sales and drives new levels of efficiency, versus just a database for tracking contact information."
Eric Berridge, CEO of Bluewolf, the business consulting firm, applauded the upgrade.
"With the new Lightning Experience, Salesforce is making headway to unify both the mobile and desktop experiences. No matter what device or form factor a user chooses to use, now there is a version of a page that makes contextual sense specifically to the user."
Lightning will become available October 17th with the release of Winter ’16.
