Lightning Bolt – New Format For Salesforce Communities
This year is especially important for Salesforce and its customers.
Salesforce will release so many new exciting products this autumn – Winter ’17 Release is coming, 51st release for Salesforce, which is called the most significant for the company.
One of the greatest improvements is related to Community Cloud. It is called Community Themes. With that new feature it is possible to create a customer community with the look and feel of your company brand.
Recently Salesforce has announced about so-called Lightning Bolt – a common project of Salesforce and its biggest partner companies, like Accenture and Deloitte. We can say that Lightning Bolt brings a new format of Communities.
Salesforce allowed more than 10 partners to create Salesforce Bolt solutions (read “community templates”) for the most popular use cases across various industries. It is easy now for developers to create flexible and fully customizable community templates. There will be no more restrictions for layouts and design of the templates. And it will be easy to share ready templates with others via AppExchange.
So what are current Lightning Bolt Solutions?
- Community for Insurance Agents (by Accenture). New self-service capabilities and data-rich dashboard features in mobile-friendly portal for insurance companies.
- Store Operations (by Accenture). A one place for associates to look for all the information about customers, stores, departments etc., (plus mobile version).
- Retail Store Collaboration (by Appirio). Retailers can collaborate effectively thanks to real-time info about consumers, and provide feedback faster.
- Lightning B2B Commerce (by CloudCraze). Allows sales reps configuring and deploying multiple purchasing scenarios.
- Banking Collaboration Accelerator (by Cognizant). Allows to shorten loan application process greatly. Accessible via mobile device.
- FastLean for Manufacturing (by Deloitte). Good for manufacturing companies that are eager to bring sales and service efficiency and effectiveness to the new level.
- Patient Community (by Huron and Cancer Treatment Centers of America). Ready for use community platform with all necessary tools for patients of healthcare facilities.
- Retail Audience Engagement (by Magnet 360). One of the option retailers have to connect with customers for better experience.
- Me Health (by Silverline). Real-time scheduling for clinics and hospitals to see the doctor when needed.
- Retail Clienteling (from Traction on Demand). Community for retailers to quickly access customer info, preferences and purchase history.
- Retail Store Operations (by Cadalys). Provides communications and task management, recalls and holds, space and fixture management.
- PartnerFirst (by 7Summits). Community that provides collaboration tools for companies and partners.
AVAILABILITY
Quite soon (October 2106), Lightning Bolt category will appear on the AppExchange. All solutions will also be available as a part of Community Cloud license starting October 2016. Creating and distributing new Lightning Bolt solutions via AppExchange will start in early 2017.
Lightning Bolt is a new way for Salesforce to create personalized customer experience.
