As data generation continues to increase, businesses need a platform to effectively utilize their customer data, and Salesforce serves this purpose well. Salesforce is employed by companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 corporations. In this Salesforce tutorial, you will explore what Salesforce is and its benefits.
Let’s walk through the following article to learn more about Salesforce.
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform designed to help businesses manage customer data, sales activities, and marketing campaigns. It offers a wide range of features and tools that enhance customer relationships, such as customer segmentation, data management, and support services.
Additionally, Salesforce supports numerous integrations with third-party applications and services, making it a robust and flexible CRM solution.
6 Benefits of Salesforce
#1 Increased Revenue
Without Salesforce, managing a business today can be costly. Your team generates a significant amount of data daily, which needs to be stored and managed. Without Salesforce, this data is likely sorted manually, consuming valuable time that could be spent building customer relationships.
When your time is consumed by administrative tasks, you have less time to focus on improving the business, making connections, and increasing profits. By automating these administrative duties and more, Salesforce frees up your time to dedicate to the business, ultimately leading to greater long-term profitability.
#2 Enhanced Time Management
Time management is a significant advantage of Salesforce and one of the key factors that allow a business to grow and succeed. With comprehensive customer information and useful planning tools all in one place, you no longer waste time searching through logs and files for important information.
With extensive customer data readily available, you can efficiently prioritize tasks and streamline the sales funnel, quickly converting leads into customers.
Additionally, Salesforce offers a calendar feature that simplifies project, meeting, and phone call planning, keeping you informed about upcoming events and deadlines.
#3 Simple Account Planning
Salesforce simplifies account planning. With easy access to all necessary customer information, you can efficiently organize this data into the correct accounts and create plans for optimal customer outcomes.
Customers receive products or services tailored to their needs while you stay organized and manage your time effectively for each client. As these accounts are established, you build stronger connections with clients by meeting their needs, solving their problems, and tracking trends.
#4 Trusted Reporting
With the influx of data into your business, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. Salesforce helps by organizing essential data and providing reliable reporting to make sense of new information.
You can track data from social media, website analytics, app information, business software, and more. Salesforce’s reporting capabilities sort, analyze, and make this vast amount of data actionable. With the precision of Salesforce technology, you can trust the accuracy of the numbers and the insights they provide.
#5 Improved Customer Satisfaction
Like increased revenue, it’s safe to assume customers are more satisfied when interacting with a business that understands their needs and relationship status, thanks to a CRM tool. By spending less time on administrative tasks, you can dedicate more time to catering to your customers through a unified platform.
With an efficient management system, you can better serve your customers by quickly accessing their information, accounts, purchase history, and preferences.
This Salesforce benefit not only enhances your relationship with existing customers but also helps attract new ones. Satisfied customers are more likely to become ambassadors for your business and recommend you to others.
#6 Enhanced Team Collaboration
Lastly, Salesforce significantly enhances team collaboration. The “Chatter” feature allows you to connect and communicate with team members from anywhere. You can chat with individuals or entire groups about various topics, including client information, territories, and product or service details.
When everyone on the team is aligned, your business becomes more cohesive and operates more efficiently, ensuring deadlines are met and sales are completed.
Read more: Understanding Salesforce Pricing: A Simple Breakdown
What Made Salesforce an Instant Hit?
Salesforce became an immediate success upon its launch in 1999 as it was the first customer relationship management (CRM) software delivered over the Internet. This innovation enabled businesses of all sizes to use the software without the need for server installations.
Salesforce transformed traditional CRM software by making it cloud-based and browser-independent, and it introduced a new pricing model based on usage, appealing particularly to small business owners with limited IT budgets.
Additionally, Salesforce was among the first to offer a comprehensive range of features and services, including customer service, marketing automation, and analytics. Its exceptional and responsive customer service further facilitated easy access to help when needed.
Consequently, Salesforce quickly became the leading CRM application and remains one of today’s most popular business applications.
Salesforce Platform Services
Salesforce’s features are designed to support businesses in multiple ways. A key benefit of Salesforce lies in its platform services, which are user-friendly and accessible even to those without technical expertise. The developers at Salesforce have ensured that the platforms are easy to navigate and use.
#1 Salesforce Customer 360
Introduced in 2018, Salesforce Customer 360 is a unified CRM platform that brings together a comprehensive suite of services, technologies, and APIs, including mobile, AI, blockchain, and security. It is designed to seamlessly integrate Salesforce applications and data across an entire organization, delivering personalized and connected customer experiences.
Salesforce Customer 360 achieves this by:
– Utilizing MuleSoft to connect various data sources both inside and outside the CRM, consolidating them into a single view.
– Applying Einstein AI to automate tasks and provide predictive analytics.
– Using Tableau for data visualization and deriving meaningful insights.
#2 Salesforce Digital 360
Launched in 2020, Digital 360 is a component of Salesforce’s Customer 360. It merges Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Experience Cloud into a platform to unify all customer interactions, providing a comprehensive view through integrated marketing, commerce, and online experiences.
Salesforce Digital 360 features:
– Customer 360 Audiences
– Commerce Cloud Payments
– Experience Cloud
These sub-cloud services simplify customer management and offer deeper insights into each client’s needs.
#3 Salesforce Einstein AI
Einstein is an AI technology integrated into the Salesforce Platform that enhances customer experiences with its predictive analytics capabilities. Its readiness for data, modeling, and production saves users time and simplifies data preparation, making it a seamless fit for any organization or development project. Einstein is now available across Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, App Cloud, Analytics Cloud, IoT, and Experience Cloud.
#4 Salesforce Lightning
Salesforce Lightning is a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) that empowers developers to create add-on applications seamlessly integrated with the main Salesforce.com application.
The Lightning experience offers built-in tools for automating business processes, developing custom business logic, customizing the user interface, integrating with third-party applications, and creating dynamic layouts, making it easier to build responsive applications for any device. Additionally, businesses can enjoy a smooth migration process if they decide to switch platforms.
The Salesforce Lightning Platform includes:
– Lightning Components, providing a client-server framework for streamlined development and enhanced app performance.
– Lightning App Builder, enabling the rapid design of custom user interfaces without the need for coding.
#5 AppExchange
Salesforce AppExchange is an online marketplace providing cloud-computing applications and consulting services for third-party apps running on the Lightning Platform. It allows users to create, publish, and install apps and extensions for Salesforce.
The marketplace offers both free and subscription-based applications. Additionally, AppExchange helps customers find cloud consulting partners to assist with implementing Salesforce technology in their organizations.
#6 Tableau
The Tableau platform, an integral part of the Salesforce ecosystem, offers a comprehensive suite of products designed to enhance Business Intelligence analytics and data visualization throughout data management processes.
This suite includes a range of solutions tailored to different business operations, such as Tableau Prep, Tableau Desktop (within Tableau Creator), Tableau Server, Tableau Online, Tableau Public, Tableau CRM (integrated with Salesforce CRM), Tableau Data Management, and Embedded Analytics.
These tools are built for dynamic interactions and visual analytics, enabling organizations to easily derive insights from their data. In essence, Tableau simplifies data usage across the board.
What Is Salesforce Cloud?
With Salesforce cloud computing, users can access software and applications hosted in the cloud from anywhere. The data is securely stored, automatically upgraded and effortlessly scaled. Salesforce cloud applications are highly secure and reliable, providing users with numerous benefits:
– Reliability
– Security
– Adaptability
– Scalability
– Multitenancy
Salesforce Cloud Services
Below is an overview of the Salesforce cloud services that will be discussed in this tutorial on what Salesforce is.
- Sales Cloud: This is one of Salesforce’s most popular products. It is a CRM platform that helps manage your company’s sales, marketing, and customer support functions. Sales Cloud provides lead status updates that are beneficial for sales executives.
- Marketing Cloud: enables you to run campaigns, manage emails, messages, social media, content management, and data analytics using a tracking system.
- Analytics Cloud: This service allows users to create visually appealing dashboards from available data, providing in-depth understanding and trend analysis for businesses.
- IoT Cloud: The IoT Cloud is designed for handling Internet of Things (IoT) data. It can manage large volumes of data generated by various IoT devices, offering real-time responses.
- Salesforce App Cloud: This service allows you to develop custom applications that run on the Salesforce platform.
- Salesforce Service Cloud: This is a service platform for your organization’s support team. It offers features such as case tracking and social networking plug-ins to help serve your customers.
These are some of the top cloud services provided by Salesforce, highlighting its diverse options that assist companies with sales, marketing, and analysis.
The Bottom Line
Salesforce is a groundbreaking tool. It offers a unified platform that integrates sales, commerce, marketing, service, and development, enabling the management of an entire enterprise with minimal effort. While automation and unification are not mandatory, they significantly simplify building client trust and delivering outstanding experiences through Salesforce’s solutions, platforms, and clouds.
As a Salesforce consulting partner, CMC Global assists clients in optimizing their Salesforce implementations by providing tailored solutions, expert guidance, and seamless integrations. Their services enhance business processes, drive efficiency, and maximize the return on investment in Salesforce technology.
If you want to learn more or have any questions, feel free to contact us.
