Salesforce is the world’s number one Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, and is used by companies across a wide range of industries. If you’re new to, or interested in Salesforce and how it can benefit your business, look no further: this article will answer any questions you might have and give you a little more insight into which Salesforce product is right for you.
For any further help with Salesforce, including implementation and partnership, contact Purus and find a Salesforce consultant today.
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a comprehensive, fully cloud-based CRM platform. Because of the various different products Salesforce offers, it can be tailored from business to business. For both small and large companies, it provides a way to:
- generate sales
- generate leads
- implement and oversee marketing campaigns
- interact with customers
Before Salesforce, companies relied on self-hosted CRM solutions. These were often expensive by virtue of their unique design, took an extremely long time to map out and build, and required significant training and understanding to use because, after all, they were unique from company to company. Salesforce changed the game by introducing a fully cloud-based CRM platform, completely eradicating the need for any installation requirements and moving everything onto the internet.
What Does Salesforce do?
In a nutshell, Salesforce caters to all aspects of a B2B or B2C business with the products that fall under the Salesforce umbrella.
Every business has some element of sales, marketing or customer service focus. Salesforce have created specific products for these focuses, along with a range of other services and platforms that aid other businesses tasks and objectives.
Because all Salesforce products are cloud-based, they can be easily integrated. Integration with other applications like email and social media is also possible, enabling businesses to fully customise Salesforce according to their needs.
What Products are Offered by Salesforce?
Designed to work independently as well as collaboratively, Salesforce have a range of products, namely:
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Sales Cloud is one of the most popular Salesforce products. As you might expect by the name, this CRM platform is geared towards sales and allows businesses to identify and sell to new and existing customers. The Salesforce Einstein AI module tracks where your leads are coming from as well as their quality, and uses this and other relevant information to offer these leads applicable products and services.
Ideal for B2B or B2C companies, Sales Cloud provides excellent sales data visualisation in the form of a streamlined desktop dashboard and a user-friendly mobile app.
Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Developed to build and track customer journeys, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is one of the world’s most powerful digital marketing platforms. Companies are able to manage not only the customer journey but also content creation and scheduling across email, social, and web and mobile ads.
As with all Salesforce products, data-driven insights are achieved through integration of the Marketing Cloud platform with other Salesforce services.
Salesforce Service Cloud
Service Cloud exists to let any business support any customer, anytime and anywhere. The world’s number one customer service solution, this product helps your agents respond to customers faster and more efficiently by equipping them with tools such as knowledgebase and multichannel support features. Service Cloud also focuses on self-service portals, whereby customers can resolve issues without the help of agents.
Salesforce Field Service Lightning
Field Service Lightning is an extension of Salesforce Service Cloud. Designed to manage all service appointments, Field Service Lightning makes scheduling and call-out coordination a breeze. Through an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, dispatchers are able to send job locations, information and requirements to field technicians.
Salesforce Experience Cloud
More relevant now than ever, Community Cloud is a platform that gives companies the opportunity to reach and engage with everyone involved in their operation, from customers to employees and partners. Build a community, enhance your customer service and increase your employee productivity by sharing data, images and information in real time.
Salesforce Health Cloud
Built for health IT organisations, this CRM platform manages doctor-patient relationships and records. By drawing on data from a number of different data sources, Health Cloud enables these organisations to enhance the quality of care offered.
Salesforce Analytics Cloud
As indicated by the name, this is a business intelligence platform offering companies enormous data sets in the form of graphs, charts and other visual representations. It is optimised for mobile and, of course, can be integrated with other Salesforce products.
Pardot
Pardot, now known as Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, is a B2B Salesforce product that helps marketers improve conversion rates, prospect leads and automate marketing and sales processes. Using AI to track, nurture and rank the quality of leads, Pardot makes it easy and practical to deliver a smart and personalised B2B customer experience.
What are the Benefits of Salesforce?
- Fast implementation. More traditional CRM platforms can take months upon months to get off the ground, where Salesforce takes a fraction of the time. In this regard, for the best Salesforce consultants around, look no further than Purus.
- Ease of use. Salesforce is designed to be extremely intuitive with user-friendly desktop and mobile dashboards.
- Highly effective. Because of the detail to which Salesforce products can be personalised, they are exceptionally functional platforms for both companies and customers.
- It’s completely scalable. Catering to both small and large corporations, Salesforce is able to accommodate (and drive) business growth.
- Access it anywhere. Salesforce is cloud-based, meaning it can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection.
- It’s affordable. For what it offers, Salesforce is reasonably priced, and is used by small businesses and startups.
- Third party app integration. Connect Salesforce with your Gmail, Dropbox, social media channels, QuickBooks and more. For any integration assistance, consult a Purus Salesforce integration consultant.
What are the System Requirements for Salesforce?
Because Salesforce products are cloud-based, there are no specific hardware or computing system requirements.
However, Salesforce does require internet connectivity and it is worth noting that compatibility is only linked to Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Apple Safari.
How Can Salesforce Help Businesses Grow?
At its core, Salesforce is a conversion tool. It exists to increase sales, and all Salesforce products ultimately point back to this.
Through Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud, both a higher volume and better quality of lead is generated. Intelligent marketing ensures the customer is targeted at a time most likely to convert, and once the sale is made Salesforce can use that data and information to further optimise and dictate upcoming marketing and sales opportunities.
Customer satisfaction and retention is easily achieved with the Service Cloud platform, whether through customer self-service or consistently excellent customer service from agents.
Added to this and by extension of, Salesforce improves employee productivity. By constantly streamlining processes, Salesforce makes it easier and faster for staff members to fulfil their roles, boosting output and minimising time spent on non-critical job functions.
Is Salesforce Easy to Implement?
This can be a difficult question to immediately answer. It can depend on whether the business has an existing CRM platform, the quality and quantity of their source data, and if they require a plug-and-play Salesforce solution or something more tailored.
Many companies opt for a Salesforce implementation and consultation partner to help with the challenges and mapping out before anything goes live. At Purus, our Salesforce consulting services include:
- Salesforce implementation
- Salesforce training
- Salesforce development services
- Salesforce support and advice
For assistance with any Salesforce products or services, speak to a Purus Salesforce expert today.
How Secure is Salesforce?
As data is one of the most valuable assets in the modern day, the security thereof is critical and companies owe it to their customers to keep their data as safe and private as possible. Salesforce recognise and reinforce this, and security is built into every layer of the platform.
All Salesforce products come with backup, replication and disaster recovery plans, and network services utilise encryption and advanced threat detection. Further, as a contractual obligation, Salesforce has implemented MFA (multi-factor authentication), a hyper-secure method of proving a user’s identity when logging in.
In Closing
Salesforce is not the number one CRM platform in the world without reason. It offers businesses of varying sizes and industries a comprehensive yet agile platform to build on their successes and see improvements in areas that otherwise might be limiting.
With constant adjustments to their existing products, and a focus on making customer relations even easier, there has never been a better time for your business to harness the power of Salesforce.
Interested in speaking to a Purus Salesforce consultant? Speak to an expert!