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Salesforce drives customer transformation in the Middle East with latest AI, Data and CRM tools Salesforce, the global leader in customer relationship management (CRM), is experiencing strong growth in the Middle East and enabling customer-focused transformation across the region, with new Artificial Intelligence-powered solutions helping organizations to boost productivity and improve customer service and personalization, according to Thierry Nicault, Area Vice President – Middle East and North Africa, Salesforce, speaking at the company’s Salesforce World Tour Essentials Dubai event today. Salesforce brought together more than 3,000 delegates in person, including customers and partners, to the event, which was held at the Madinat Jumeirah Conference Centre, Dubai. The event saw keynote speakers including Thierry Nicault, Area Vice President and General Manager, Salesforce Middle East, share insights about Salesforce’s Middle East strategy and how its latest innovations across Artificial Intelligence, data and CRM are helping customers
transform, while providing Salesforce partners with opportunities for growth. Fifteen Salesforce customers from various sectors including real estate, energy, banking, and telecoms joined the sessions, offering attendees key insights into how Salesforce Customer360 is helping them deliver success and transform their operations in the field. The event was Salesforce’s first opportunity to present its newest innovations in the Middle East. Among the solutions it demonstrated were Einstein GPT, which creates personalized content across every Salesforce cloud with generative AI to make employees more productive and customer experience better; and Data Cloud, which aggregates and harmonizes data from multiple sources to provide a single profile of the customer. Data Cloud, which is essentially the intelligent heart of Customer360, transforms the ability of organizations to understand their customers, deliver personalized activations, and raise efficiency.
Thierry Nicault, Area Vice President Middle East and North Africa, Salesforce
Gartner survey finds CEOs cite AI as the top disruptive technology impacting industries A recent survey of CEOs and senior executives by Gartner, Inc. revealed that artificial intelligence (AI) was the top technology that CEOs believe will significantly impact their industry over the next three years, cited by 21% of survey respondents. The 2023 Gartner CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey was conducted from July through December 2022 among over 400 CEOs and other senior business executives in North America, Europe, Asia/Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and South Africa, across different industries, revenue and company sizes. Despite the impact of these economic headwinds, half of CEOs cited growth as the top strategic business priority for the next two years. Technology also remains a top focus area for CEOs, closely followed by workforce issues. In fact, mentions of environmental sustainability rose 25% over the previous year’s survey, which was the first time sustainability ranked
among CEOs’ top 10 priorities. Gartner predicts that by 2026, environmental sustainability will be a higher CEO strategic business priority than the technology-related category. Inflation was ranked as the most damaging business risk by 22% of CEOs, and nearly a quarter cited greater price sensitivity as the biggest shift in customer expectations they anticipate this year. However, increasing prices is still the top action that CEOs are taking in response to inflation (44%), followed by cost optimization (36%) and productivity, efficiency and automation (21%). When asked about the impact of various risks on the business, 26% of CEOs cited the talent shortage as the most damaging risk for their organization. Attracting and retaining talent is, by far, CEOs’ top workforce priority. Concerns about compensation are the biggest shift in employee and prospective employee behavior that CEOs anticipate, followed by a desire for greater flexibility and remote or hybrid work.
Mark Raskino, VP Analyst at Gartner
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