2019 is the thirteenth year in a row in which Gartner has named Salesforce as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for CRM. With an impressive performance in 2016 and Q1 of 2017, Salesforce continues to dominate the CRM market. These 11 Reasons are just the glimse of the full picture that Salesforce offers for your business.
Before we explain the reasons, we need to explain what Salesforce means.
What Is Salesforce?
The company was a pioneer in launching a CRM on the cloud. Today, Salesforce is the world’s leading developer of CRM solutions based on cloud technologies.
The platform offers a variety of tools and services not only for relationship management but also for custom app development, targeting both small businesses and large industries. With Salesforce, you can discover insights into customers, better understand their needs and treat them as if you are personally acquainted.
The range of Salesforce products includes:
- Sales Cloud — helps find more customers, accelerate sales productivity and close deals faster.
- Service Cloud — helps support customers from anywhere and hold a seamless conversation.
- Marketing Cloud — includes tools to unite marketing and sales on one platform and to engage with clients via different channels.
- Commerce Cloud — helps create a personalized shopping experience.
- Community Cloud — builds communities for employees, partners or vendors to improve engagement.
- Quip — a collaboration platform to organize your team’s work.
- Salesforce Platform — a unified platform that allows you to customize solutions, build your apps, add security levels, etc.
Salesforce software products are used by thousands of enterprises of all sizes, covering multiple industries and various geographic locations. The company’s key areas are financial services, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, consumer goods, communications and media, and automotive. Among the most prominent clients are Aston Martin, American Express, Canon, Puma, L’Oreal and more.
Why You Should Start Using It?
Your business can develop at a rapid pace with the help of Salesforce. If you have a look at the Salesforce analytics, you would come across the following benefits of using Salesforce:
1. Ease of Use
You don’t have to be an IT expert to set up and manage apps. You just need to log in and start blazing trails to your customers in a completely new way. Salesforce provides a complete view of the client, so you can make decisions easier. The intuitive interface, clear navigation and collaboration options make the work process smooth and seamless.
2. Implementation time
Being a Cloud Platform, the implementation time for Salesforce is much lesser than standard solutions, thereby lessening the Go-Live timeframe. The feature-rich solution can be configured easily and even if any customization is required, it can be incorporated in a systematic order easily.
3. Rich Functionality
The default Salesforce platform comes with a wide array of features and functionalities which cater to most organizational needs. During the implementation process, the Admin can make point-and-click alterations via the Force.com builder to configure the solution as per your business process.
4. Customization
Another area where Salesforce scores major points amongst its competitors is its ability to be highly customizable. While a majority of requirements can be handled through configuration, sometimes there is a need to add/extend the existing functionalities to accurately reflect your business needs. In addition for Salesforce customization, technical expertise is required on Apex Code and Visualforce pages. Also many users, the greatest strength of Salesforce is its customizability – custom fields, objects, 3rd party Salesforce extensions, integrating your apps, etc. to provide you a complete solution.
5. Scalability
The platform is able to grow as the business expands, adapting to all new specifications and providing enough storage space.
6. Cloud-based PaaS Model
Salesforce launched the first cloud-based CRM and also established the Platform as a Service ( PaaS) market with Force.com to support the complex real-world business models. With no capital expense involved for the setup, Salesforce charges are based on user licenses.
7. Effective Pipeline Management
From the Opportunities view, Sales Reps have a consolidated view on all potentials and stages, presented visually, and it helps them to focus and prioritize on the current deals.
8. Analytics
Sales representatives have the possibility to track customer activities, analyze them and anticipate customer needs. The system creates reports, graphics and dashboards that help measure performance, find the critical points and improve upon them.
9. AppExchange
Salesforce understands that other applications can be used in addition to Salesforce for enhancing customer engagement. For that reason Salesforce introduced marketplace and named it AppExchange , which is business app store with 2800+ apps ( free + paid ). With Lightning App Builder, customers and partners can build/customize parts of an application or page themselves.
Check out these Top Salesforce AppExchange Apps!
10. Community
Salesforce undergoes continuous improvements and takes advantage of innovations. With a dedicated team and large-scale community always take user feedback into consideration and release new features three times a year, building up a good reputation for the product.
11. Track Customer Lifecycle
The solution has been built for customers and sales reps to track the potential and customer lifecycle – Sales Cloud for channeling sales activities, Service Cloud and Desk.com to anticipate and cater to customer needs, Marketing Cloud and Pardot to build 1-o-1 customer journeys and drive sales, Analytics to deliver customizable insights and gain deeper understanding of your team’s performance, etc.
Conclusion
Salesforce has carefully worked for the last 20 years to build a brand name while successfully demonstrating growth.Retaining customers with service and value, and creating a sense of collectiveness amongst customers and stakeholders. Making it a brand to be reckoned with in the CRM space.
If you are using or working with Salesforce, feel free to share your experience down in the comments.
If you are a non-profit and wants to start using Salesforce, check out our blog 10 Salesforce Benefits That Every NGO Should Know
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