14 Benefits of Salesforce: Why It’s the Best CRM for Your Business?

Posted on July 06, 2023

 

It is a known fact that Salesforce and its services are the best in the market. The features that stand out, third-party tools, its ability to integrate with other platforms make it the most chosen CRM platforms out there.

Let us take a look on what other features makes it the #1 CRM platform in the world.

ACCESSIBILITY

The convenience of Salesforce being able to be operated from anywhere as it provides the functionality of running on mobile phones makes it easier for the personnel to be connected to the customers at all time. There may be the times when the officials are travelling or unable to come to office for some other reasons and hence they are able to stay updated at all times.

INCREASED REVENUE

Salesforce eliminates the need of manual storing and sorting of data hence saving their productive time and its feature of automation as explained above save them from repetitive tasks.

The productivity of the personnel is increased hence driving greater revenue and resulting in the expansion of the business.

 

 ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT

Salesforce provides the benefit of managing the accounts of each customer separately and segregation of the accounts according to the needs of the staff.

They are able to store the information about the customers like, their name, purchase history with the business, past interactions, etc. at one single place under accounts.

 IMPROVED TEAM COLLABORATION

 

Salesforce enables smooth collaboration between the teams of an organization as it enables communication channels. Hence different departments like sales, service and marketing can work together.

For example, marketing department can impose new marketing and sales strategies, let the sales reps know and they will follow the same, effective immediately.

REPORT GENERATION ON DASHBOARD

Salesforce collects and make use of the consumer data in many ways. Apart from keeping the personnel updated on the history of every customer, it generates reports and insights determining the performance of the business in a particular period of time and simultaneously makes you aware of the trends in the business, increase or decrease in revenue, and the marketing team can revamp the strategies according to that report.

AUTOMATION

Salesforce is known for its feature of automation where it streamlines the workflow by automating the repetitive tasks that the staff has to perform on a daily basis.

This saves personnel from wasting their productive hours and actually utilizes them towards achieving their personal target and organizational goal.

TRACKING CUSTOMER ACITIVTY

Salesforce Marketing Cloud provides the feature of tracking customer activity across different platforms to know about their interest and requirements and keep record of this data in the form of reports to provide the business and help it to form informed decisions.

ANALYTICS AND INSIGHTS

The report on the customer activity tracking help produce analytics that shows customer’s transaction history, their preferences all at one place and hence helps the business to form marketing strategies and campaigns that are customized personally according to each customer’s needs and want.

 

EINSTEIN

Sales Cloud Einstein is an additional Salesforce Sales Cloud feature that uses AI to identify and analyze your data and make recommendations based on that analysis.

Hence with its implementation we enable your team to work on the best opportunities and processes to achieve maximum results.

DATA MANAGEMENT AND SECURITY

Data and its management are the most crucial part of running an organization smoothly; it should be managed in such a way that it is not lost or corrupted, or stolen through malwares and viruses.

Salesforce ensures accurate segregation of data and obstacle-free management.

DATA SYNCING

Data Syncing refers to combining or merging the data from different Salesforce and simultaneously deleting or eliminating data which is duplicate and have no original root source.

LIVE CHAT AND OMNICHANNEL ROUTING

Salesforce Service Cloud and Salesforce Sales Cloud mainly specialize in providing the feature of Live Chat, i.e., interacting with customers on real-time.

Whenever a customer is online and wants to talk to a sales or service agent, based on the requirements of the customers gathered with the help of the chat-bot, a qualified personnel who is ready and available is assigned that customer to provide good user experience. This is known as Omnichannel routing.

APP BUILDING

Salesforce force.com provides the users a platform to create and deploy their apps. AppExhange enables them to either choose from a wide variety of tools already available on the platform or create custom apps and tools to meet the demands of the business they are working with.

INTEGRATION

Salesforce can be integrated or merged with other CRM platforms that a business might be operating on to ensure smooth customer experience; and data at one place for the service agents.

EASY COMPREHENSION

While a business becomes onboard with Salesforce the members of an organization that are directly affected by it, are provided training of the working of the CRM, which makes Salesforce an easy to comprehend software.

KNOWLEDGE PORTAL

Salesforce service cloud provides the feature of creating a knowledge portal which stores the data needed by the personnel from time to time, so that they don’t have to waste their time in searching for the information from piles of data.

In conclusion, Salesforce is a powerful CRM platform that offers numerous benefits for businesses of all sizes. With its cloud-based architecture, it enables organizations to streamline their sales, customer service, and marketing processes, resulting in improved efficiency, increased productivity, and higher customer satisfaction. The platform’s customizable nature, combined with its vast ecosystem of integrated solutions, ensures that businesses can tailor it to their specific needs. In addition, Salesforce provides robust data analytics and reporting capabilities that help organizations make data-driven decisions. With its user-friendly interface, extensive resources, and active community of users, Salesforce is an excellent choice for businesses looking to enhance their sales, customer service, and marketing efforts.

 

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Is Salesforce a SaaS or PaaS? – Understanding the Cloud Model

 

Salesforce is the leading CRM software and is considered one for a long time now. It is software for customer relationship management, providing a variety of services for the same purpose, hence acting like Software as a Service (SaaS).

But with force.com, a part of Salesforce that acts as a platform for users to create and deploy apps like a Platform as a Service (PaaS), it has been under scrutiny whether it shall be considered as a SaaS or PaaS.

 

WHAT IS SaaS (SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE)?

Software as a Service is a product that we download in our system, and it contains a variety of services to fulfill the needs of operations of a business, hence the name, software as a service. And the biggest example is cloud computing or Salesforce.

SaaS proves to be a great option for data storage and management as it saves businesses from hardware costs and storage thereof, with its feature of maintaining data on a server of software providers and there is no need to physically download and store the updates as it is done while the software is functioning with the help of server storage.

Since SaaS does not require any physical buying of the updated software and its installation, and the risk of losing data between transfers or under any cyber attack, the business becomes more efficient as a lot of time and energy is saved with access to data and its management while the updation is in progress.

 

WHAT IS PaaS (PLATFORM AS A SERVICE)?

Platform as a Service or PaaS is a platform that enables businesses to build and deploy apps with the convenience of not having to maintain servers, upgrades, etc. with the facility of securing their data.

The in-built tools, environments, and servers allow businesses to create the apps efficiently without incurring the costs to create the said tools from scratch.

Without any infrastructure issues and problems, businesses can make apps faster than ever.

 

FEATURES OF A GOOD SaaS AND PaaS-KEY POINTS

 

 

WHY SALESFORCE IS A SaaS?

The following arguments or points are similar between Salesforce and a SaaS that make it possible for us to say that Salesforce is a SaaS:

SCALABILITY

Salesforce grows when the business grows. It facilitates the addition of new users, and integration with more third-party tools so that the growing needs of a business are met in the fast pacing environment.

EASY ADAPTATION

The knowledge of Salesforce like any other SaaS requires a little initial training and documentation of the personnel and hence it is convenient for new users to become onboard with its services.

EVOLUTION AND UPDATES

Salesforce ensures simultaneous updates while the software is up and running on a real-time basis so that the business does not face any obstacles in operations with time.

DATA ACCESS

Salesforce presents data in a centralized manner and hence the teams of an organization have access to the updated data in one place.

SECURITY

Salesforce’s data encryption and management ensure the data is not lost in transfer and is well maintained while being secure from cyber attacks.

ANALYTICS AND REPORTING

Salesforce after the analysis of the data present provides a detailed insight and report for determining the performance of the business and helps in making informed and data-driven decisions.

 

WHY SALESFORCE IS A PaaS?

EASY INTEGRATION

Salesforce proves to be an easy platform for integration with other platforms so that the users can work efficiently with access to each one of the software already prevailing in the business.

REAL-TIME INFORMATION

It enables developers to connect with their managers in real time and gain feedback to make the process more efficient.

EASY MAINTENANCE

Like a PaaS, the platform force.com is looked upon by a vendor i.e. Salesforce so the users need not worry about the maintenance of the servers and can focus on their apps only.

ACTIVE COMMUNITY

Salesforce provides a platform for hosting an active community of developers and users so that everyone can reach out to solve their problems within themselves through others’ support.

 

CONCLUSION

From the above analysis, we can determine that Salesforce is both a Service and a Platform, as Force.com which is itself a PaaS, is a part of Salesforce that operates as the platform for app creation and deployment. However, Salesforce mainly focuses on being a Software as a Service providing sales, service, and marketing management along with other cloud services.

Some may consider Salesforce as an IaaS too, but that is not possible as Salesforce does not facilitate storage services to consumers for networking and connectivity. Some examples of IaaS are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, etc.

 

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What is Salesforce? – Understanding the Leading CRM Platform

Posted on July 06, 2023

 

Before Salesforce, a company had to manage the customers by introducing a CRM of their own which cost a lot of time, money, and effort, as there was no effective channel of communication with and management of the customers.

Hence very few companies were able to provide close to satisfactory customer support under those circumstances.

And then Salesforce came into existence saving businesses and changing the customer relationship market forever.

WHAT IS SALESFORCE?

Salesforce is a SaaS and PaaS for Customer Relationship Management. Along with it, it provides a load of other features to keep a company on top of a B2C as well as B2B market.

It aims at improving the relationship between the business and the customer by providing one-to-one channels for communication and provides consumer insights and records for improving the functionality and operations of the business.

FEATURES OF SALESFORCE

Lead Management

Forthcoming leads (as in interested customers or potential customers) are managed in Salesforce based on their priority.

Account Management

Customer Account Management that they create for providing customer feedback and filing grievances is managed effectively with all their previous data.

Contact Management

It eases the burden of the staff personnel dealing with customers with contacts management, along with the call history, order history of customers, and much more.

Opportunity Management

Opportunity refers to the later stage of a lead when it is converted into an opportunity and requires a follow-up.

Salesforce enables it by keeping track of the interactions with the customer throughout the process.

Integration

Large businesses can operate on one or more platforms. Thus they need to integrate the platforms.

Integration means merging the data of the platforms to save the time and efforts of the staff of a business to search through different places for particular information and hence it improves customer satisfaction.

POPULAR SALESFORCE PRODUCTS

Salesforce offers a variety of products for different purposes and industries in a business named Cloud Platform mainly including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Analytics Cloud.

Sales Cloud

Salesforce Sales Cloud, as suggested by the name, is used by the sales team of a business for purposes like managing the sales to customers, segregating the orders by an order number, and keeping an entire history of purchases of a customer.

It also helps in tracking the performance of the sales reps by the management team to determine their productivity and if the business needs any changes in operations to enhance the same.

Service Cloud

Once the Sales process is over and done with, the process of support starts.

It may include providing after-sales services like help with the usage, or any issue that the customer might be facing.

It provides the history of purchases of the customer with the business to give the assigned personnel an idea about the customer they are dealing with.

Marketing Cloud

Before even the sales and service processes start, it all comes down to marketing, which is managed by this Salesforce product.

Lead management, opportunities management, consumer and visitor insights, along with analytics and reports on audience engagement is provided as a feature in this cloud platform.

Commerce Cloud

A business operating to sell their products online i.e. establishing and running trade and commerce whether offline or online can use this cloud for providing the best customer experience there is.

Analytics Cloud

All of the Salesforce Cloud platforms provide insight into customers’ presence, but Salesforce offers a completely different product to record the reports and keep track of visitors to your business’s website.

SALESFORCE IN DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES

Salesforce is a multifunctional platform and the wide variety of products that it offers is suitable for every industry that goes on. Whether it be retail, health sciences, manufacturing, or even logistics and transportation, Salesforce is the one-stop shop for most businesses.

Let us take a look at some of these industries and their utilization of Salesforce for their benefit and expansion-

Salesforce for Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry uses the Salesforce platform for updating patient data along with their medications and treatments so that the physician assigned to them can access their whole history and treat them accordingly.

Salesforce for Manufacturing

Keeping track of goods manufactured, quality assurance checks they have gone through, the orders packed, and information about the workers working on a particular good on a particular shift is what Salesforce enables a business involved in manufacturing to enjoy.

Salesforce for Retail

Salesforce enables businesses to respond to customer orders quickly and effectively along with efficient data management of the stocks and purchases leading to smooth selling and buying experience for both, the business and the customers.

Salesforce for Consumer Goods

With the Salesforce Consumer Goods Cloud, Businesses involved in dealing of the same like, apparel, footwear and accessories, health and beauty, home durables, and some other fast moving consumer goods can manage their data and boost their sales.

Salesforce for Communications

With Salesforce solutions for Communication, reps can access all the information about their customers, and helps the company to remain connected with the customers to understand their needs better.

Salesforce for Media

Salesforce products offer companies a platform to deliver content that appalls the customer as it is based on their interests and hence help the businesses to develop a community among their customers. Financial Times is a flourishing example of using Salesforce for media for their operations.

Salesforce for Government

Yes, even the government tends to prefer Salesforce for operations like digital service delivery, managing regulatory agencies, health and human services etc.

Salesforce for Transportation and Hospitality

Salesforce facilitates keeping data records of shippers and consignees along with effective engagement to attract more shippers to engage with the business dealing in the same. It combines, research, market, sales, and support altogether for an effective user experience.

Salesforce for Automotive

Like every other industry, Salesforce is utilized in the automotive industry to drive customers, convert more leads and deliver an enhanced experience to customers.

Salesforce for Non-Profit

Non-Profits utilize Salesforce to Keep track of all the members involved, raise more resources, customize communication among each of the groups in a non-profit and work better together overall.

Salesforce for Education

Salesforce for education provides its services to help institutions connect with their students across their whole student cycle. It provides two solutions- one for K-12 and the other for Higher Education.

SALESFORCE APP EXCHANGE

AppExchange is an online store service hosted by Salesforce on Force.com that enables third-party software vendors to deploy their apps on the platform for other users to download and improve the functionality of their device or cloud service.

It also helps in the process of configuration of Salesforce as it contains third-party tools for automation, synchronization etc. and hence proves to be a useful platform for businesses and other users.

WHY USE SALESFORCE EXACTLY?

 

Customer-Centric

It personalizes the experience for the customer by tracking a consumer’s activities once they are on the website and then displaying or suggesting personalized products, and it has been proven that the customer is likely to spend more when they have advertised products according to their previous needs or wants.

Maximized Conversions

An e-commerce website with a responsive design, ease to navigate through the products offered by a business and unique design tends to convert more customers as they find the website user-friendly and have an overall good experience.

Automation

Salesforce enables creating workflows for repetitive tasks and hence it saves time so that they can utilize it on achieving an organizational goal and resolving the issues of the customers. It includes many tasks that can be automated.

Analytics

It provides an in-depth analysis of positive and negative interactions with customers, the performance of service agents, and the feature of monitoring the activities so that the company can find the gaps in operations and work towards improving the particular area.

CONCLUSION

You must keep in mind that after all the above advantages of Salesforce; implementing it is still a very complex and time-taking process. And also, it requires expertise and in-depth knowledge of the platform as well as the process. And hence you must always consult an expert before diving into it to know the needs and wants of your business and what is best suited for it.

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