Google LLC stole a march on its public cloud rivals last year when it announced it was teaming up with Salesforce.com Inc. to help customers get more actionable insights from their marketing, sales and service data.

One of the major aspects of that partnership was that Salesforce would integrate its marketing, sales and advertising data with Google’s G Suite productivity services, allowing their joint customers to get access to Salesforce data within Gmail, Google Sheets and other G Suite products. The collaboration also saw Salesforce integrate its Marketing Cloud with Google’s Analytics 360 platform.

In a blog post today, Kevin Ichhpurani, Google Cloud’s corporate vice president of global business development, said the company is expanding on the initial partnership with further integrations that are all about “enhancing productivity, driving intelligent customer experiences and deepening customer insights.”

Specifically, Google is making its Data Connector for Salesforce generally available after a successful beta testing period that began earlier this year. Data Connector for Salesforce is essentially an add-on for Google Sheets, which is the search giant’s spreadsheet software. The add-on enables users to import data and reports from Salesforce directly into Sheets, and then send any updates made in Sheets back to Salesforce.

“For example, your finance team can use the Data Connector to create an in-depth forecast on current deals in pipeline by pulling relevant data from Salesforce reports into Sheets, and analyzing the data with powerful Sheets features like Explore or intelligent pivot tables,” Ichhpurani said.

Meanwhile, Salesforce has introduced a new Lightning Object Creator that allows users to create “custom objects” based on Sheets’ data, giving them a more holistic view of data that’s stored in both Sheets and its customer relationship management software. Salesforce also unveiled Google Sheets for Salesforce, which is a “pilot feature” that enables Salesforce List Views to be connected to Sheets.

Google is also collaborating with Salesforce in the “internet of things” by making it easier to obtain insights from IoT device data. The companies are making it possible to connect Salesforce’s IoT Explorer Edition to platforms such as Google Cloud IoT, providing an easier way for sales teams to obtain IoT data.

Image: Google