The question, “What is Salesforce”, is a question that is often asked by people from all sorts of businesses.
Once the Salesforce CRM basics – and I really mean the basics – have been explained, you can literally see a light bulb going off in the person’s head as they visualise a number of immediate business benefits.
The next question is usually, “What is the Cloud?” And why wouldn’t these questions be asked?
Businesses have been using technology in a completely different way for decades now.
What is CRM?
CRM is the acronym for Customer Relationship Management and its primary function is to help businesses manage their data and information.
A CRM allows you to store customer (including partner and prospect) contact information, accounts, leads and opportunities all in one place. Many organisations initially use Excel to manage this early in their business but as their organisation grows and becomes more complex the importance of maintaining their data in one place more efficiently and securely significantly rises.
This is what a CRM system does at its most basic. CRM systems really have undergone a radical change in the past couple of decades and according to Gartner’s predictions, CRM will eclipse Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) market as the largest enterprise software market by 2017.
What is the Cloud?
Very simply cloud computing means storing and accessing your data and your programs over the internet instead of via your computer’s hard drive. This is how the computer industry functioned for decades and, in many cases, this is how many organisations still operate today.
But things are changing quickly with more and more businesses, whether small or large, moving to the Cloud for a multitude of reasons. The Cloud does not need a costly dedicated hardware server in residence nor stores data on an office network and you can access your information anytime, anywhere and on any device!
What is Salesforce CRM?
Salesforce CRM is an application developed by salesforce.com built utilising the Salesforce1 platform. Salesforce CRM can provide your business with a comprehensive view of your customer. Since its inception, salesforce.com has grown its offerings significantly which are now broken down into a number of broad categories including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, Salesforce Analytics, and Salesforce1.
But that’s not all when you partner with salesforce.com there are unlimited applications to run your entire business via the Salesforce Appexchange. Salesforce.com has helped over 100,000 customers across all industries and of every imaginable size.
Why Salesforce CRM?
Salesforce CRM is available in the cloud and can assist you to run your business on its secure Salesforce1 platform. Salesforce.com delivers three major upgrades per year which are immediately available to every single client. There are no expensive upgrade paths or complicated integrations that need to be undertaken.
Salesforce is a cross-divisional application providing complete transparency across your organisation and can scale as your business grows. Salesforce.com spends a significant amount of money in R&D which guarantees its customers a leading solution and security in their investment well into the future.
Gartner has awarded salesforce.com as the #1 Cloud Computing solution in 2014 and the #1 CRM provider for the past eight years. For four years running, Forbes has awarded salesforce.com as the most innovative company worldwide.
Why Do We Need Salesforce CRM?
The digital era has redefined the way in which people do business. Customers have information at their fingertips making customer engagement the single most important focus for every business that wants to not only continue to exist but also to continue to grow its business in a very competitive environment.
Salesforce CRM is enabling businesses to evolve from focusing solely on acquisition to being able to measure customer retention, cross- and up-selling, and customer satisfaction. Simply speaking, Salesforce CRM enables you to measure customer engagement across the entire customer lifecycle.
As a Salesforce CRM customer, there is no need for costly technology investments onsite and your solution can scale as your business grows and evolves. Salesforce.com has provided many of its customers a jump on their competitors.
How Do We Start?
The best way to start is to do a 30-day free trial to see how Salesforce CRM can assist your business aim for improved efficiency and productivity. There is no software downloads or installations that you need to undertake. Remember, Salesforce CRM is in the cloud and delivered to your business via the internet.
If you decide to continue and become a salesforce.com customer, we at SalesFix can assist you with your Salesforce CRM configuration and implementation. SalesFix has local configuration and developers that can assist you to customize and integrate your Salesforce CRM.
SalesFix is a Salesforce.com Silver Cloud Alliance Partner with over 10 years experience configuring, integrating and supporting Salesforce CRM. We drive operational efficiencies and deliver business process improvements to varying sized organisations across all industries.
We have a Salesforce.com Certified team with all our development and configuration done in-house. We are business people! We know what tasks make a difference to the bottom line, and we get results quickly.
