Salesforce Launches: Data Cloud Consultant Certification

Just shy of a week ago, Salesforce announced that the Salesforce Certified Data Cloud Consultant will be available as of September 6, 2023. This has been exciting news for Salesforce professionals, who can now become credentialed in (arguably) Salesforce’s hottest product.

Why this certification is a big deal is two-fold. Firstly, the demand for Data Cloud skills is heating up, now that Data Cloud has become the foundation that speeds up the connectivity between different ‘clouds’ across the platform. We’ll be sure to hear plenty more advancements at Dreamforce, which is taking place next week. Secondly, this credential was previously an accreditation (exclusively for Salesforce partners). Now a certification, the opportunity is open to any Salesforce professional.

Data Cloud Consultant Certification

The official Trailhead exam guide describes the ideal candidate as:

“Consultants who have experience implementing and consulting on enterprise data platforms in a customer-facing role, including designing, configuring, and architecting solutions.” (Source)

When you hear the term ‘consultant’, you will immediately think of those working for consultancies. Sure, this is true, but there are many other roles whose work is consultative, who recommend the optimal way for Salesforce to be enhanced for their organization. Therefore, this certification has applicability to administrators and other roles – so long as you can “meet maintainable and scalable customer business requirements” using Data Cloud; in other words, you can build Data Cloud to cater to both the immediate-term and long-term needs of the company.

In terms of recommended experience, this is what’s suggested in order to pursue the certification:

• Two or more years of implementing and working with data strategy and data modeling, including building multiple solutions across Salesforce clouds (broad knowledge).
• Experience (typically) in development, strategy, business analysis, presales solutioning, or architecture.
• Knowledge of Data Cloud capabilities and terminology.

This multifaceted skill set reflects our predictions for what certified Data Cloud professionals should be skilled at (including data management skills, developer skills, business analyst skills, and more).

The exam outline – which points you in the right direction to question topics while studying – can be summarized as follows:

• Solution overview (18%)
  • Business value, use cases. 
  • Data Cloud lifecycle and its dependencies (what needs to be in place before its implementation).
  • Data ethics.
• Data Cloud Setup and Administration (12%)
  • Permissions. 
  • Data stream types and data bundles. 
  • Data spaces use cases and their creation. 
  • General administration.
  • Data Explorer, Profile Explorer, and APIs.
• Data Ingestion and Modeling (20%)
  • Transformation capabilities (streaming and batch). 
  • Data ingestion from different sources into Data Cloud. 
  • Define, map, and model data for identity resolution.
  • Inspect and validate ingested and modeled data. 
• Identity Resolution (14%)
  • Matching and rule sets. 
  • Reconcile data and rule sets. 
• Segmentation and Insights (18%)
  • Segmentation use cases and maintenance.
  • Analyzing segment membership. 
  • Calculated versus streaming insights.
• Act on Data (18%)
  • Activations use cases and troubleshooting. 
  • Attributes and related attributes. 
  • Timing dependencies. 
  • Data actions use cases. 

View the full outline here.

The cost to take the Data Cloud Consultant certification is like the other consultant certifications at the $200 price point, and is to be booked via WebAssessor.

The main ‘jumping off’ point for your study is the Trailmix Prepare for Your Salesforce Certified Data Cloud Consultant Credential. Another more in-depth module will follow soon, also to be hosted on Trailhead.

Summary

If you’ve been following the news, you will have noticed a pattern of Data Cloud receiving the limelight. This is because Data Cloud has become the foundation that speeds up the connectivity between different ‘clouds’ across the platform.

Especially in 2023, the advent of GenAI innovations on the Salesforce platform (like Einstein GPT) has been reliant on the connectivity provided by Data Cloud to improve the outputs surfaced from user prompts (such as the ‘next best action’ users should take). This is the magical trifecta AI + Data + CRM that Salesforce have been advocating.

Register for the exam now via WebAssessor.