There had been a significant surge in terms of cloud computing and data technologies in recent times, and Salesforce is one major CRM ( Customer Relationship Management ) platform that leverages to benefits of these advanced technologies the most. Here in this article, we are trying to introduce the newbie business administrators and workforce into Salesforce to get them to know more about Salesforce and its uses. Why are companies in constant hunt of Salesforce experts to streamline their business processes?
The history
Before the introduction of the Salesforce suite, CRM, or Customer Relationship Management solutions, were locally hosted on the company’s own servers, and a customized management practice was followed by each organization. However, doing so demanded a lot of time and effort from the in-house administrators as well as users in order to ensure the effectiveness of the CRM solutions. It also used to take many months or years and a large investment for the organizations to set up a fully functional CRM.
So, the need of the time was to build a lighter, but more functional CRM software which could deliver everything online. This was the major drive behind the idea of Salesforce. It had started as a SaaS (Software as a Service) provider and had now grown into the fifth-largest among the leading software companies across the globe.
Cloud computing is the backbone of Salesforce. The platform was not a cost-effective alternative for the existing CRMs, but it was meant to fully replace the existing ones who needed a very long installation process and to move everything from offline to online. Salesforce changed the entire business model in terms of CRM administration. There was no need for huge up-front investment, no long-term contracts, or the need for any expensive licensing. Anyone, regardless of the size of your business or industry, could now get on to Salesforce by spending as low as just $50 per month as a subscription.
There are many stats, and research studies to act in favor of Salesforce. As of late year, Salesforce had more than 150,000 users across the globe. In the CRM world, Salesforce now has a market share close to 20%, whereas its immediate competitor has only 9% of market share. Now, the AppExchange of Salesforce consists of about 2700 applications featuring about three million installations. About 70% of the Salesforce customers tend to use these applications, which are listed on AppExchange for various purposes. Many companies are also making use of the Salesforce DX platform to build enterprise applications or to try and migrate to Salesforce with their existing projects. This has largely increased the demand for skilled Salesforce developers as well as Salesforce administrators.
Why companies prefer Salesforce?
As we have seen already, Salesforce is an all-in-one solution that could offer a quicker and cost-effective path from your ideal to the app. The developers can concentrate on the construction of your app by using the Salesforce tools than building the entire infrastructure and also developing the tools all on their own. Getting such support could actually save many hours for the developers, and for organizations, it could be saving millions of dollars altogether.
The three major reasons as pointed out by Flosum.com as to why Salesforce is accepted widely by the customer are:
- It’s fast – Conventional CRM applications may take a year or more to get deployed, whereas Salesforce could be deployed in a matter of weeks.
- It’s easy – Compared to other CRMs available, Salesforce is much easier to use, and one can also spend much time into using it than compared to the time usually spend on figuring out the CRM applications.
- It’s effective – As Salesforce is so easy to use and could be customized based on the business needs, users could find Salesforce much effective and user-friendly.
Addtionally, Salesforce is in the cloud, and your team could access it from anywhere in the world over the Internet. If you are running a business which is rapidly growing, or even if you are a seasoned business with a steady revenue for many years, Salesforce is instantly scalable to any extent based on your business growth.
Integration to other apps
Along with the above benefits, Salesforce could also seamlessly integrate with any third-party applications. For example, you can even do Salesforce integration with Gmail, or if you want to integrate with social media, it is also very easy. On the other hand, if you need to integrate it with another accounting software you are used to or to an existing employee attendance management system, Salesforce could mingle with it all. Integration is usually tough with many other existing CRMs, but for Salesforce, it’s a breeze.
Salesforce cloud
The major cloud services offered by Salesforce are:
- Salesforce sales cloud – Sales Cloud from Salesforce is a customer relationship management platform that enables the users to manage their sales, marketing, and customer support processes. If your enterprise is into B2B or B2C businesses, then Sales Cloud would be your actual need.
- Salesforce marketing cloud – Marketing cloud is another solution by Salesforce, which is a mighty digital marketing platform. Organizations and marketing teams could use this platform to manage the potential customer journey, mobile, email, social media marketing, as well as content creation, web optimization, content management, etc. through this.
- Salesforce service cloud –Service Cloud is aimed at customer service and support. IT offers some features like social networking and case for analytics and customer conversation. Doing so will not only help the agents to resolve user issues faster but could also give them access to better answers.
- Salesforce community cloud –If you are looking for a social to connect to more users and facilitate engaging communication, then Salesforce Community Cloud is an ideal service to avail. You can also use this cloud platform and storage to keep data or images and also share them in real-time.
- Salesforce commerce cloud – It will let the organization to offer seamless customer support independent of their location. It also offers customers with data integration so that they get a better experience. If you are aiming at providing a positive and engaging user experience, then Commerce Cloud is the best way to proceed.
Apart from the above, you can also leverage the benefits of analytics cloud, app cloud, Salesforce IoT cloud, etc. to take your business processes to level next.
Author Bio– Sujain Thomas is a writer and SEO expert. Nowadays Sujain manages and writes for Flosum.com. Her primary focus is on “Salesforce DX”. She is responsible for building content that helps IT professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.
