Salesforce's Advantage: Flexibility & Community
January 30, 2015
Salesforce's Advantage: Flexibility & Community
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Enterprise
Modules Used
- SalesCloud
- Force.com
- Chatter
- Data.com
- Partner Portal
- Content
Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce.com
The entire sales and marketing team uses it. All new customer inquiries come in as leads, as do new users of the product, and lists from events. so from the top of the funnel we are using Salesforce and then data is tracked all the way to the end of the funnel when leads are converted to contacts/opportunities/accounts. Salesforce is the source of truth within the company for all questions of ownership of leads or accounts. We have really utilized Salesforce as a platform, and many other tools are connected - our customer billing database is connected for revenue tracking, our marketing automation system is connected, we have tools for email tracking, outbound lead prospecting, a click to call dialer, integration with our customer support system, and contract management. It is the tool that our sales and marketing teams run the business on.
Pros
- Flexibility. We have a developer who can make Salesforce do anything we need to. It is never a question of if we can do something, just is it worth the time and resources.
- Out of the box it does 90% of what you need. So even if you don't have the development resources, you can still do most things you would need to for a medium sized business just with the out of the box modules, workflow rules, validation rules, approval processes, and third party apps from the app exchange
- Excellent community makes it easy to find answers to issues. By searching in google for any salesforce issue, I can usually resolve it myself. If not, the premium support from salesforce can help me out pretty quickly.
Cons
- One very specific complaint is about the reporting limitations. When building reports, only numerical or boolean fields can be manipulated in formula fields. Date fields should be available too. Currently, you have to build an actual field to calculate the time between two date fields. It would be great if that was available in formula fields in reports.
- The activity object is confusing - some fields are activity fields but activities are also either tasks or events. I think it makes reporting very confusing.
- The lead conversion process should be more customizable. For example, the ability to add a validation rule tied to the conversion process would be great. In other words "Do not allow conversion to take place if XYZ is true"
- Increased efficiency, especially when using automated email tracking tools through gmail
- Increased visibility into pipeline for sales management
- Increased ROI for marketing due to making smart marketing spend decisions based on data from salesforce
Microsoft CRM, Sugar CRM.
Salesforce is better because of the infinite power of the platform/ecosystem/network of people building amazing solutions on it.
The customer service is the best, and the community is active. It is familiar to everyone who has worked in sales.
It seems that Salesforce is most poised of any CRM to continue to innovate and provide a world class product for years to come.
Salesforce is better because of the infinite power of the platform/ecosystem/network of people building amazing solutions on it.
The customer service is the best, and the community is active. It is familiar to everyone who has worked in sales.
It seems that Salesforce is most poised of any CRM to continue to innovate and provide a world class product for years to come.
Comments
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