Likelihood to Recommend I believe GoldMine is well suited to keep track of customer contact automatically, so your customers needs are met. I also like keeping track of my emails and customer contact notes, this way I always know what they need quickly. I like to keep reminders on certain customer request or pricing for certain items. We use GoldMine in unison with Traverse for placing orders . I would love GoldMine more if they had the abilities to place orders through the app , rather than using an additional tool.
Read full review Sales Cloud is very well suited for the daily leads and opportunity pipeline management as well as user management. Sales process automation are very helpful for repetitive tasks. It integrates well with other platforms. It's easy to customize and report on data. Sales Cloud can be pricey so is only open to larger org's that need complex CRM. User adoption is slow to any new users that have no prior experience.
Read full review Pros Flexibility to use different views of the data very easily and establish functional views by user or department requirement. Ability to categorize contacts by group(s) or actually have them in separate databases. As much or as little automation as you wish to implement. We implemented Goldmine ourselves after making sure the Server Operating System was configured appropriately. Read full review Logging notes: SF makes it easy to log notes in the timeline or static notes that live in an easy-to-see spot for longevity. Logging activities: It's easy to post a call, text, email, etc. API data: Once connected, SF is critical to automation, such as website activity, login activity, pages visited, etc., which saves the Customer Success side time in understanding account activity. Custom fields: you can add custom fields to really personalize your experience. We use quite a few and it's brilliant. Read full review Cons Of course, there are always areas that could be improved, in my view the Report generation tool, hasn't really changed in the last 10 years at least, whilst other CRM products have more powerful and easy to use and customise Reporting tools, although there are plenty of Reports to choose from The Database schema has stood the test of time but is quite restrictive in certain areas and what you can do with it Integration with other system unless you are a developer is not easy as there are only one or two areas to show/bring in information Read full review I have hard-coded the auto-update of the phone number format and state format from some codes shared by the community, but I do not know where to do it. I cannot reset it either. It is unclear what functionalities each version has. We use the enterprise version, and it seems we can only have one design of the pipeline. But different business segments would have very different sales cycles, and hence, pipeline tracking would be different. It would be nice to have this available in our version. It seems I cannot create a report to pull notes logged at the account levels. Read full review Likelihood to Renew If there were a product that would mean less on-site support/maintenance with comparable or not much more cost, I would seriously consider switching. Furthermore, going to a more mobile, paper-less application process would tip the scales in the favor of a competitor. I'd also like something that integrates web forms so that data entry is more stream-lined as is response time
Ryan Spear Associate Director of Admission Operations
Read full review There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.
Read full review Usability Personally, perhaps I should give it a higher rating, but I do genuinely think it was very easy to pick up and run with, but I did have a full training session and of course was keen on using it. In my previous marketing role many years ago, I 'd tried to create an MS Access database and this has taken ages, so being introduced to the power of GoldMine really impressed. People have comments on it, but my opinion is its still fast and a great workhorse
Read full review Salesforce has been designed on the basis of "Clicks, not code". So anyone willing to learn the Salesforce user interface (which is quite good as far as management software platforms go) is able to become a Salesforce user or even a Salesforce administrator. You don't have to know coding language to work in the Salesforce environment. Also, Salesforce has one of the best software training resources (Trailhead) that I have ever encountered. It is free to all, easy to use, and most importantly it is interactive. No scrolling through endless text in a user manual. There are hands-on modules and related videos interlaced and through it all you earn points and badges to display your level of learning.
Read full review Reliability and Availability For me, its always been there, no worries here about downtime or the internet being down or switched off. Having it on a laptop as well with Goldsync means I'm always able to updated my notes and then synchronise. This to me is one of the benefits of purchased on-premise software, it cant simply be turned off!.
Read full review Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.
Read full review Performance Pretty good, Yes, there are occasions when i may think there should be an easier way to do things, but over the years, I've always found a way to get the information out that i want, sometimes just needing a bit of help from the technical team. Day to day,. it works for me very well.
Read full review Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day." Points per Salesforce - 1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs. 2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers. 3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years. 4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed. 5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale. 6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com. 7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements. 8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training. 9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure
Read full review Support Rating Their customer support is spot on! We never feel like we're being made to wait, and when we email, they respond and offer assistance very quickly. It's the same response I'd expect from an in-house IT team down the corridor. Some support teams you know you're talking to the first line support chap who probably doesn't know how to resolve your issue, and you have to wait until they give up and pass it, but GM support people seem very knowledgable
Read full review The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.
Read full review In-Person Training I was originally trained by the UK distributor and then subsequently trained my self and had access to GoldMine consultants. In the long run, this saved me a lot of time really since I knew the product on an advanced/administrator basis and able to perform day to day tasks. Some things, still needed the consultants. The trick was with the training, I knew when I was out of my depth
Read full review I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person. I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business
Read full review Online Training I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training. We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this
Read full review Implementation Rating As I said earlier, to me now with all this experience, it is ensuring that you focus on two things:- 1/ Ensure core customisations only are required until you get users started and embedded in using the system. 2/ Ensuring users get some good level of dedicated training time, internal or external, but I feel this is best done in a group rather than at your own speed. Afterall, no one really customises their MS Word or MS Excel each time, they just ignore the bits they don't need or ask if they do need them
Read full review Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.
Read full review Alternatives Considered GoldMine is a better overall product based on scalability, ease of use and cost effectiveness. All of the customization in GoldMine was beyond the other applications we tested and considered. Overall we believe we made the right choice based on how quickly we saw results. Our sales staff has used this tool extensively to become more agile.
Read full review Salesforce Sales cloud is well integrated with a lot of other marketing and sales technology SAAS products that we use within our business, which is a big part of why I enjoy using it. Compared to NetSuite, it is a lot more user friendly, a modern platform that provides better visual understanding of sales pipeline and contains more useful data across the customer journey.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.
Read full review Scalability GoldMine, when maintained well has always been pretty reliable and in over 10 years, I don't think we've ever lost a day or more than an hour or so when we cant use it. Occasional a 'blip' will happen and you will have to log out, the only thing to bear in mind, which I'm not good at is ensuring you keep the mailbox to less than 2000 mails in your inbound box, I hover around 1800 and need to streamline this to get rid of my junk or notifications from LinkedIn groups for example when i mean to read, but never get round to it
Read full review I don't think there is a limit to Sales Cloud's scalability; at least, I haven't encountered one or heard of one. My data is not enormous, so perhaps some companies might encounter lags, but nothing from my end. I think I'll be able to use Sales Cloud from now until infinity.
Read full review Professional Services Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.
Read full review Return on Investment Our company prides itself on its responsiveness to customer requests. As a consequence of that, we need to be able to follow up consistently on issues until they are solved and goldmine helps us do that. Because of its ease of use and wealth of information, it allows us to react to customer queries quickly and with a familiarity that instills confidence in our customers. The lag on the other hand, since we have kind of choked it with too much information, slows us down. I understand we're using it for more than it was designed for, but as businesses grow and customer demands increase we need our technology to improve at the same rate. Read full review All tools we've implemented with Salesforce had a pretty quick positive ROI with the exception of CPQ & Billing. That was a very large project that I would only suggest for businesses with many SKUs that tend to be packaged together. Read full review ScreenShots Salesforce Sales Cloud Screenshots