Salesforce straps sales analytics to Apple Watch

Graphs and notifications of opportunities coming to your wrist in a few weeks

Never one to miss out on a bandwagon, Salesforce is trying to point out that the Apple Watch is not just a fanboi fashion accessory but is also a cloud-powered analytics and deal-closing wristputer for the modern entrepreneur.

The cloudy CRM concern has let it be known that it will soon emit “Salesforce for Apple Watch, designed to bring the personal technology of wearables to you, the business user.”

The package has three components:

• Salesforce Analytics Cloud, which pumps graphs into the Watch so that bearers “can drill down into original datasets to see where teams are selling the most product [or] how your performance matches up to forecasts”;
• Salesforce1, to deliver “personal notifications” to the Watch so that “Digital marketers can be alerted when a marketing campaign surpasses a goal. And employees can receive updates on key topics they follow in their communities,” among other scenarios;
• Salesforce Wear Developer Pack, to get coders building Salesforce-centric apps for the Apple Watch

There's a bit of bandwagoning and a bit of vapourware here: Analytics for the Apple Watch is “expected” to land in April 2015, Salesforce1 notifications “are expected to be generally available the third quarter of this year.” The Developer Pack looks like it is ready to roll.

Salesforce reckons this stuff will be worth it because it found an analyst report in which Forrester put its name to the factoid “ 68 percent of executives call wearables a 'priority' for their companies”. That kind of statistic is enough to support some marketechture. Is it also enough to get businesses spending $500 on watches, on top of the cost of a phone and a data plan?

Apple doesn't seem to be betting on that outcome, if the very consumer-centric launch of its Watch is anything to go by. ®