The days of heading over to the IT helpdesk to resolve tech issues in person are becoming a thing of the past. Automation and self-service options like chatbots and knowledge articles have been on the rise for some time, and now 51% of employees have shifted to work-from-home since the pandemic began. This puts IT departments under incredible strain, with more complex workloads and an increasing volume of service requests—BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) issues, critical software patches— flooding in as employees adjust to working remotely. But with this remote workforce, IT now has the opportunity to not only further automate routine tasks, as well as deliver an employee experience that keeps employees engaged, connected and productive. To do this, IT needs visibility into employee assets and incidents to help ensure all devices on the network are stable and secure.

Today Salesforce is announcing a partnership with Tanium, the leader in endpoint management and security, to develop an employee service solution for the new all-digital, work-from-anywhere world, giving IT teams visibility and control of employee devices and services on their network. This Salesforce solution will include: a help desk that gives employees a one-stop shop to self-serve, submit, track and resolve service requests or incidents; a service dashboard for IT managers to view all their assets, configurations and employee incidents in one central location; the ability for IT to build workflows using the Salesforce platform to further automate common tasks; AI recommendations, powered by Einstein, that will prioritize incidents and recommend actions for IT managers to take; and secure endpoint management capabilities for IT to monitor, collect data and take action on endpoints in near real-time, from directly within their dashboard.

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“Walmart is a company of 2.3 million associates in 12,000 stores across the world,” said Doug McMillon, president and CEO, Walmart Inc. “When the pandemic hit, it was incredible how our employees responded, and also how our technology enabled that response, especially our transition to new ways of working virtually. What we found out as we started working from anywhere was that it helped us focus on the things that had the greatest impact for our customers. We didn’t just get by working virtually, we actually thrived, and I’m glad we had partners like Salesforce and Tanium who helped our tech teams make that possible in a secure way.”

Giving IT the right tools to empower everyone across the organization

The employee service solution will:

• Help employees access support from anywhere across devices and channels, including AI-powered bots and mobile self-service sites.
• Maximize IT productivity with integrated help desk, asset management and custom workflows that help IT automate and resolve incidents fast.
• Accelerate incident resolution by empowering IT with a complete view of every employee coupled with AI-powered productivity tools to drive proactive resolution.

Executive quotes

“With the shift to an all-digital, remote workforce where employees are using personal internet connections to connect to company networks, it’s even more critical that IT can ensure employee devices are secure, patched, updated and compliant,” said Sarah Franklin, EVP and GM, Platform, Trailhead and AppExchange at Salesforce. “Companies need to invest in the right IT infrastructure to ensure their technology assets are stable and secure. I’m excited to be partnering with Tanium to build an employee service solution that will accelerate IT automation and empower employees to do their best work.”

“Many IT departments are struggling to manage the new IT reality: highly distributed, collaborative, remote and agile. They’re finding that their legacy tools weren’t designed for the environment they now face,” says Orion Hindawi, co-founder and co-CEO, Tanium. “With Tanium and Salesforce’s strengths, we’re uniquely positioned to deliver an end-to-end enterprise grade endpoint and service management platform that fits perfectly with our customers’ new, work-from-anywhere world.”

More information

In related news, Tanium today announced a new round of funding led by a strategic investment from Salesforce Ventures.

The Salesforce employee service solution will be available in beta later this year. To receive the latest updates, sign up here.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase Salesforce applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit https://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.