Chapter 1: What Is CRM Analytics and Where Can You Use it?

CRM Analytics (CRMA), formerly known as Einstein Analytics, is the business insights and data analytics platform that Salesforce launched in 2014. With a powerful framework to action insights directly in CRM and a variety of native connectors to ingest data from external sources, CRMA is a unique offering in the world of Business Intelligence (BI).

As you can infer from the title, this chapter will introduce you to CRMA – what it is, how it works, and what it can do. We will begin by discussing data analytics from the perspective of CRMA and investigate what makes this platform different. As there are a great many BI platforms out in the digital world, you need to understand the unique place of CRMA in the data landscape and the Salesforce ecosystem.

Once you have completed this chapter, regardless of your current understanding of CRMA, you should have a good initial grasp of the platform. Whether you are a business analyst, a Salesforce administrator, or an advanced business user, this chapter will help you succinctly communicate the essentials of CRMA to your colleagues.

In this chapter, we are going to cover the following topics:

• The importance of data analytics
• What is CRMA?
• What is CRMA used for?
• How can you excel at data analytics with CRMA?