What is Salesforce?
Often times when we tell people that we partner with Salesforce they scratch their heads. They look even more confused when we tell them it is a CRM platform. Check out our latest article ‘What is CRM.A quick guide to success.’ These terms are still not widely known and we want to change that. For those who find themselves reading this article with a full understanding of the Salesforce, standing ovation my friend! If you are like the masses who still don’t have a clear understanding of the CRM platform keep reading.
Quick overview and History:
Salesforce has become one of the largest Saas(Solution as a Service), Cloud Computing platforms in the world. They consider themselves to be the Worlds #1 CRM tool and this isn’t just a tagline, it’s a fact. Businesses like Amazon, Spotify, Toyota, The New York Post, Macy’s and hundreds of thousands of others rely on the power of Salesforce everyday.
Before Twitter, Gmail, Facebook and dozens of other cloud based platforms Salesforce was quietly and humbly growing in a San Francisco Apartment. In 1999,Marc Benioff, founder, chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce decided to leave his career at Oracle ( A computer software company), along with software developers Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff, and Frank Dominguez. It was during this time that Salesforce began.
Flash forward to 2019, per their annual report (2017) there are roughly 150,000 Salesforce customers and this number is growing daily.
So what exactly is Salesforce?
According to Salesforce.com, Salesforce is a customer relationship management solution that brings companies and customers together. It’s one integrated CRM platform that gives all your departments — including marketing, sales, commerce, and service — a single, shared view of every customer.
Think about what your company currently uses to track your CRM information. If you are envisioning spreadsheets, post-it notes or on-premise software you are not alone. 15 years ago CRM software was all the rage, but it came with hurdles. Having a dedicated IT staff managing the infrastructure of the CRM software became costly and with time ineffective. Not to mention the amount of space this software took up on computers. Salesforce quickly realized this pain point and began to brainstorm.
Present day; Salesforce allows companies to run at peak efficiency, without the need to manage software infrastructure. Beyond that, Salesforce has addressed a number of pain points and eloquently provides solutions that scale with your business. Salesforce lives in the cloud, which means your data is uploaded on a secure org that houses all of your companies information.
Salesforce works with all functional areas of your company. They call this Customer 360, this allows you to have a big picture view of your customers on an individual level. You are able to respond faster, personalize touchpoints, anticipate purchases, all while building trust and long-lasting relationships.
Scratching the Surface:
There are a number of products that Salesforce has near perfected. These products help maintain, engage and enhance the customer experience. Products like:
Marketing Cloud allows you deep dive your marketing efforts. You are able to create personalized customer journeys across all channels and devices. Create beautiful email templates that are fully customizable. Marketing Cloud includes integrated services to manage the customer journey, email creation, social media, advertising and so much more!
Commerce Cloud allows you to deliver B2B and B2C experiences that connect to marketing and sales and service. With out-of-the box commerce solutions you can easily build websites with best practices. Providing your customer with and optimized user experience.
Sales Cloud allows you to convert lead more quickly, close more deals all while giving you a big picture overview of your company’s performance as well as the performance of your employees. Giving you the chance to adjust your strategy quickly and easily.
App Creation is another amazing feature that Salesforce has integrated into their platform. Quickly create low-code apps. If you have a team of developers, that know a thing or two about coding, great! Build sleek apps with coding language that your team is familiar with. Enable collaboration across your entire company.
Third-party Applications, Salesforce is dedicated to making your life easier. With the option to integrate Third-party applications you are able to implement applications created by people who exclusively focus on optimizing them. Meaning that with a few clicks your B2C you can use Third-party integration that specialize in payment processors, ratings and reviews, tax processing and more.
