Salesforce is a rock solid CRM solution.
March 11, 2015

Salesforce is a rock solid CRM solution.

Brian Boggs | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Unlimited

Modules Used

  • SalesCloud
  • Chatter
  • BMC Remedyforce
  • Pardot
  • Cloudingo
  • CRM Tech Labs GoToWebinar
  • MapAnything

Overall Satisfaction with Salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is being used by our call center, IT, and marketing departments. It also has executive users. It is utilized in the call center for it's CTI with NewVoiceMedia to deliver calls and place calls within the U.S. and other countries such as GB, AU, ZA. We match records in Salesforce based off of the incoming calls at the Account and Contact level and display three fields to the call center representatives if a record matches that helps identify the caller for easier record listings. The Technical Support team uses BMC RemedyForce for its Incident and knowledge management and IT utilizes RemedyForce for incident, knowledge, and change management. Marketing uses Salesforce for reporting and Pardot for Marking Automation. Our executive users receive scheduled reports and dashboards of sales and prospect data in a more timely manner than our previous method of manually running reports from the ERP. Salesforce overcame the communication barriers that often plagues medium sized businesses that are finding their footing and growing into large enterprises. This gave the small business feel with the resources of big data at our fingertips.
  • Reporting.
  • Custom fields/objects to meet an almost unlimited set of business models.
  • App Store has apps that will plugin to Salesforce and deliver everything from electronic contract signing, data deduplication, to icon sets that can be displayed as field values to enrich the experience of users.
  • Salesforce1, the mobile platform seamlessly integrates the mobile environment with the custom apps and records housed in the CRM. Better than any I have used before.
  • More ability to generate custom rollup summaries beyond the current maximum of 15 fields. Without perfect foresight into future needs of objects that you create, you could find yourself without the ability to create what you need without resorting to APEX coding classes and triggers.
  • Reporting integration with their B2B company Pardot and B2C company ExactTarget, both owed by Salesforce.
  • Scheduling of joined or multi-block reporting.
  • Standard Order and Products objects having the ability to be fully integrated with Accounts object (A full One-to-Many relationship) including master detail relationships.
  • Much higher business intelligence and awareness.
  • Better customer service for call center employees and management.
  • ROI may take a few years to realize depending on use case and adoption rate.
  • Marking Automation is an A+!
Salesforce applies industry leading functionality for medium to large companies. Cost is always a factor, and Salesforce does have per user licensing for differing versions that increase the capabilities of the CRM depending on business needs. I would suggest that a company consider whether third party applications will be important or whether they have internal resources to create custom solutions that may be outside of the "box" implementation. If the need for apps is necessary and internal resources are low, Salesforce has all that you could ever ask for in terms of apps from the best partners. The next priority question is around use case. For customer cases, lead management, and information sharing, you will find that Salesforce is ready for you out of the box. If you need to use it with your call center, consider the costs to implement a CTI into your decision making process. Finally, the marketing applications for Salesforce are nearly endless. It has the built in ability for email templates and mass emailing of your contacts and leads!

Salesforce Sales Cloud Feature Ratings

Customer data management / contact management
10
Workflow management
8
Territory management
8
Opportunity management
9
Integration with email client (e.g., Outlook or Gmail)
Not Rated
Contract management
Not Rated
Quote & order management
9
Interaction tracking
10
Channel / partner relationship management
Not Rated
Case management
10
Call center management
10
Help desk management
10
Lead management
9
Email marketing
9
Task management
8
Billing and invoicing management
Not Rated
Reporting
9
Forecasting
Not Rated
Pipeline visualization
8
Customizable reports
10
Custom fields
9
Custom objects
9
Scripting environment
5
API for custom integration
10
Role-based user permissions
9
Single sign-on capability
9
Not Rated
Social data
Not Rated
Social engagement
Not Rated
Marketing automation
10
Compensation management
Not Rated
Mobile access
9