Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that helps businesses with growing data generation. It aligns companies with their customers via tools of marketing, commerce, and sales. Salesforce solutions are used by startups to Fortune 500 companies.
Why is Salesforce Used?
In the past, employees used to manage data manually by jotting down information and storing them in files. Thus, they were not able to make use of all the available data. Slowly, as years passed and companies started using computers, Excel sheets and docs became popular for storing data. Nevertheless, the approach turned out to be time-consuming and ineffective while dealing with huge volumes of data.
There was a need to efficiently handle and analyze large amounts of user data by all the employees in the organization. That was when CRM or customer relationship management was introduced. In the beginning, CRM solutions were hosted on the server of organizations. This turned out to be expensive and time-consuming and using such CRMs was also challenging. The idea was to create a cost-effective and affordable CRM and provide it as a service online. This was what led to the creation of Salesforce.
An insight into Salesforce
Salesforce equips businesses with tools that help them in discovering more prospects, close more deals, and provide better service to customers. It is an American cloud-based software company that provides businesses with CRM services and is a popular tool for sales, marketing, and support teams across the globe.
Salesforce solutions make businesses utilize cloud technology to effectively connect with customers, potential customers, and partners. By using Salesforce CRM, businesses can efficiently market to customers, track customer activity, and many more services. A CRM platform helps you in going deeper with your data and metrics. You can also create a dashboard that depicts your data in a visual manner. Along with this, you can have customized outreach with automation. Another important advantage is that a CRM platform can improve the ability of customer service to assist customers or the outreach efforts of a sales team.
Salesforce Architecture
Let’s understand the different layers of the Salesforce architecture:
Data gets stored by Salesforce in a single database schema. There can be a unique instance of a software server with multiple tenants. In a multi-tenant architecture, there is a unique shared application service to different clients which makes it cost-efficient. Whereas, in a single-tenant architecture, the cost of development and maintenance is owned by one client.
- Application Programming Interface (API)
Salesforce offers a string source of APIs. This helps develop and customize the Salesforce1 Mobile App. All the features of Salesforce are planned, designed, and implemented in a precise manner.
Salesforce utilizes a metadata-driven development model. This way developers get to only concentrate on building the application. The metadata-driven model makes scaling up and customization easy.
Different services of Salesforce
Salesforce offers the following services:
- Software As A Service (SAAS)
This service allows you to directly get access to the built-in Salesforce software for use.
- Infrastructure As A Service (IAAS)
IAAS is not widely used in Salesforce development, however, it plays important in it.
- Platform As A Service (PAAS)
With the help of PAAS, Salesforce provides you with the right platform and framework to build your apps and websites.
Different Salesforce solutions
Here’s a look at the most common Salesforce solutions:
Marketing Cloud
Marketing is of utmost importance when it comes to running a business. Salesforce marketing cloud allows you to run campaigns, manage messages, emails, data analytics, content management, social media, and more with the help of a tracking system.
Sales Cloud
The Sales Cloud is the most vital product of Salesforce. It allows you to manage the sales of your company along with the distinct customer support and marketing aspects. Sales Cloud helps sales executives by providing them with the status of the lead.
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Analytics Cloud
This cloud allows users to design a visually appealing dashboard of the available data. Users get to receive an in-depth understanding of the data and analyze the business, trends, and lots more.
IoT Cloud
The IoT Cloud of Salesforce is used when your company has to handle the Internet of Things (IoT) data. The platform is able to take huge volumes of data generated by multiple algoal to offer real-time responses.
Salesforce Service Cloud
This cloud helps Salesforce serve your customers. It is a service platform for the support team of your organization and provides features like social networking plug-in and case tracking.
Salesforce App Cloud
Salesforce App Cloud is used for developing custom apps that run on the Salesforce platform.
The above-mentioned are some of the top cloud services provided by Salesforce.
Owing to the diverse options provided by Salesforce, companies use the CRM platform to receive help with analysis, marketing, and sales.
Salesforce partners
There are 3 types of Salesforce partners in the Salesforce Partner Program. These include independent software vendors (ISVs), cloud resellers, and consulting and integration partners.
Independent software vendors (ISVs) design innovative apps on the CRM platform that help customers in solving critical business challenges. The apps help in tackling challenges across application scenarios like document generation, developer apps, and automation. On AppExchange, ISV partners equip their customers with more than 7,000 ready-to-install and pre-built apps.
Salesforce partners bring with them their industry expertise and help businesses and their employees configure Salesforce according to their business needs. The consulting and integration partners as well as digital agencies bring about tangible results by managing the coding, development, user training, integration, and configuration of Salesforce products within the operating systems. Also, cloud resellers provide specialized capabilities and knowledge in local markets and are vital in helping Salesforce cater to new markets. Cloud resellers support the complete customer lifecycle and are trained to provide customers with the same level of service as Salesforce.
Applications of Salesforce
Let’s understand some of the most important Salesforce applications:
Understanding customer data
Salesforce solutions help you a better understanding of the customer data and better identify their interests. You get to re-engage and locate inactive customers and boost sales by following customer interaction.
Flexible data reporting and analysis
Salesforce permits flexible data reporting and analysis. Sales representatives get to design their reports to analyze the accounts they haven’t considered in a while.
Customizing data
With the help of Salesforce, you can handle and customize distinct kinds of data. It allows you to track real-time analytics and boost customer experience.
Excellent customer service
Salesforce offers top-notch customer service from any part of the world. This helps in resolving customer issues faster and quickens support agent response time. With Salesforce, you can unify email, chat, phone, and social support and manage all the channels from one view.
Important advantages of Salesforce
The top benefits of Salesforce solutions include the following:
Best accessibility
Being a cloud software, Salesforce is accessible anywhere and everywhere where you have internet access. Salesforce App ensures that the CRM can be accessed on a smartphone, laptop, or desktop. This helps business owners and team members travel frequently, within the cities, and nationally or internationally.
Since Salesforce can be reached through the protected cloud from anywhere, it becomes easier to get access to crucial files and stay updated on customers/clients. It becomes easier to secure sensitive information on Salesforce than on a local server or file cabinet.
Effective time management
Time management is the chief advantage of Salesforce and one of the vital methods that help a business grow. With the help of planning resources and all-inclusive customer information, businesses get all that they need in one place. Thus, the time spent searching through files and logs for important information is saved.
Businesses get to prioritize work for their clients with the help of relevant customer data and by streamlining the sales funnel. Thus, leads are easily transformed into customers. Salesforce is also equipped with a calendar feature by which you can easily plan meetings, projects, phone calls, and a lot more in one place.
More revenue
With the help of Salesforce solutions, businesses save a lot of money. If on a day, your team produces huge amounts of data, you don’t have to worry about manually sorting through the data as Salesforce will automate the process for you. Thus, you get more time to improve your business, boost profits, and develop connections. As the CRM takes over administrative and other important duties, you get to focus more on your business and increase profits.
Trustworthy reporting
With the huge amounts of data being utilized by a business, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Salesforce helps you in the proper organization of relevant data and also helps you understand the new data via reporting. You get to keep track of all the data collected by your business from website analytics, social media, business software, app information, and more. Reporting takes this large amount of information and makes it more usable via sorting and analyzing. The accuracy of Salesforce technology ensures that your numbers are always correct and the readings can be counted on.
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Enhanced customer satisfaction
Customers feel more satisfied while interacting with a business that understands their needs and the value of their relationship with customers. With the help of Salesforce, you can ensure that you don’t have to spend a lot of time on administrative duties and spend more time on catering to your valued customers via a common platform.
The highly effective CRM platform of Salesforce ensures that you get to serve your customers effectively by having faster access to their information, purchase history, preferences, and accounts. This helps you improve your relationship with your customers and sets you up for new customers as well. When you establish a good reputation with your customers and keep them happy, those customers become your ambassadors and share your business with others.
Better team collaboration
Team collaboration is another vital benefit of Salesforce solutions. The CRM allows you to connect and communicate with your team members from anywhere via its ‘Chatter’ feature. This allows you to get in touch with groups or individual team members and chat about your clients and their information or topics related to work like service/product details. When you are aligned with your team, your business becomes more cohesive and operates effectively. Thus, sales targets are achieved and deadlines are met.
Easy account planning
It is easy to create plans for accounts with the help of Salesforce. With the help of readily accessible customer information, you have an easier time placing that information into the right accounts. This helps you devise plans for the accounts to generate the best results for customers.
You get to equip your customers with services/products that are tailored to their needs. This helps you stay organized and adjust your time efficiently for your clients. By the creation of the accounts, you get to form stronger connections with your clients by solving their problems and meeting their needs.
Summing up
Salesforce is one of the most efficient CRM platforms providing great opportunities for businesses of all sizes and types. Owing to its incredible features and tools tailored to multiple business aspects, Salesforce has become a leader in the SaaS market. More than 50,000 small and big organizations have utilized Salesforce to improve their business and increase sales.
