Salesforce has become one of the most powerful customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, helping businesses streamline sales, marketing, and customer service operations. With customizable dashboards, automation tools, and cloud-based accessibility, it enables teams to manage client interactions efficiently from anywhere. Beyond tracking leads and closing deals, Salesforce provides data-driven insights that enhance decision-making and growth strategies. Understanding its key features and integrations is essential to unlocking its full potential for business success.
What is Salesforce?
Headquartered in San Francisco, California, Salesforce is an American cloud-based software company. The company offers customer relationship management (CRM) services and several enterprise applications.
The software’s vast capabilities are suited for businesses of all sizes from startups and small businesses to medium-sized and large businesses. The applications help to support customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development.
What Does It Do?
Salesforce provides original “classic” services centered around four clouds: the sales cloud designed to help with client management, the marketing cloud to create one-to-one marketing campaigns, the service cloud to support online customer service on any device, and the commerce cloud to help companies build online shopping experiences.
Salesforce has a variety of other services including a development platform for building Salesforce-powered apps, online forums connected to CRM data, and more. The company continues to innovate products and services. For example, the newer Salesforce Lightning software offers an improved interface with additional features that make it easier and more engaging for users.
Lightning vs. Classic Versions
Both versions, Lightning and Classic, offer Events, Calendars, and customizable dashboards. However, Lightning includes news, key deals, and a performance chart on the homepage.
Lightning also has a timeline to help users track their activity history for each account or for each lead. In addition, Lightning allows users to design new types of pages (the App Page, Home Page, and Record Page) while Classic offers one basic type of page. A comparison chart explains the features of each version in more detail.
Pros
- Easy to use – integrates with third-party apps and can be used anywhere provided you have internet.
- Effective – customized to meet business and customer needs.
- Fast implementation – deploy the software in a short time (in a matter of weeks and months) rather than taking years with traditional CRM software.
- Saves time and money – concentrate on building your app using Salesforce tools instead of building the infrastructure and tools yourself at an affordable price.
- Scalable – freely add and change services as your company needs change.
Cons
- 100% dependent on a reliable internet connection.
- Must use Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, or Apple Safari.
- Data storage limits.
- The variety of additional products often cost more in comparison with other advanced CRMs.
- With the demand of Salesforce, there’s a squeeze on customer service so live support is limited.
- New Salesforce releases often change the layout.
Pricing
The upfront costs of Salesforce vary depending on the plan selected and the number of users. You can get a direct quote from the company that best meets the needs of your business. Plans range from $25 to over $350 per user monthly depending on the services purchased.
Is Salesforce a Good Fit For Your Company?
Without a doubt, Salesforce can help support complex business processes. Specifically, the software has the potential to play a significant role in increasing the productivity of sales, customer service, and marketing teams.
However, spend some time thinking about you company needs and budget. Consider directly contacting Salesforce to request a demo and discuss what products they offer that might answer a problem your team is having.
What is the Difference Between Salesforce and its Competitors?
Salesforce CRM is not a unique concept. Many of their competitors offer similar services and products in sales, marketing, and customer service solutions. The most notable difference is that Salesforce is entirely cloud-based. This makes it easier to navigate remotely, use on mobile, and integrate with third-party products.
Another distinguishing feature is the market for independent software vendors with available Salesforce integrations. With increased popularity and performance, training is in high demand for Salesforce app builders, architects, consultants, developers, marketing, and specialists.
Learn More About Salesforce
Salesforce is the one-stop shop for businesses to manage, maintain, communicate with, and grow their customer base and revenue streams. More and more companies are developing their applications on the Salesforce platform, as the company continues to innovate and release new features and products.
It is well worth the time to explore Salesforce products and services to see how they can meet your current business needs and those you anticipate the future.