Microsoft and C3.ai have partnered with Adobe on a new customer relationship management (CRM) system for enterprises. The C3 AI CRM is an industry-specific platform that enables customers to unify customer data into real-time profiles for cross-channel journey orchestration. The move is seen as the company’s latest bid to better compete with Salesforce.
This new venture takes Adobe’s CRM technology further into industrial applications. This deal is a powerful affirmation of Adobe’s Digital Experience as partners discuss their next-gen ambitions for digital cities and data-driven design.
The partnership uses the common data model of the Open Data Initiative (ODI), which is a combination of the Adobe Experience Cloud, the C3.ai Suite, and Microsoft Dynamics 365. According to the companies, the goal is to ultimately integrate data to increase predictive insights across the entire revenue supply chain.
C3.ai is the company of customer-software pioneer Tom Siebel, who commercialized CRM in the 1990s with Siebel Systems. Following the partnership, Siebel said, “The next generation of this is clearly about applying AI to CRM. If we look at McKinsey Global Institute, they predict that the largest impact of AI will be on sales, marketing, and customer service, delivering up to $3 trillion in economic benefit a year. So clearly, this is the next generation of CRM.”
So how does this offering compete with Salesforce? Simply put, the three companies hope to rival the work Salesforce does as it pairs its SaaS with Mulesoft and Tableau to deliver more capable solutions across verticals customers. “This really is C3.ai, Adobe, and Microsoft working to leapfrog Salesforce on capabilities and effective AI use,” writes analyst Daniel Newman.
The platform on offer is pre-built and configured for industries spanning financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, oil and gas, manufacturing, utilities, aerospace, automotive, public sector, defense, and intelligence.
This isn’t the first time C3.ai and Microsoft have teamed up. In March, the two companies joined to launch a new research consortium dedicated to accelerating the application of artificial intelligence and speed the pace of digital transformation in business, government, and society.
The companies plan to build a dedicated sales teams to target enterprise accounts across multiple industries and take advantage of networks already in place through agents and industry partners.
