Salesforce Sales Cloud reviews

My best sidekick!

Opmerkingen: The design of the product that enables the team to gather all the customer's data in one place makes it one of a kind. Created and managed lots of marketing campaings with Salesforce as well.

Pluspunten:

I cannot think of a day without Salesforce Sales attached next to me as it is my greatest helper! By Salesforce we managed to build such relationships and managed to grow revenue and cannot think of other product. The activity management is such a professional way to maximise productivity. Clients also use Salesforce and it makes effective communication and collaboration with stakeholders, suppliers and customers.

Minpunten:

Some customer interactions may fail if they are not using the same version of the product. It constantly asks for updates to the latest version otherwise some features may not work properly. Customer service needs to action as soon as possible with any queries.

Eerder overwogen alternatieven: monday.com en Zendesk Suite

Redenen om over te stappen op Salesforce Sales Cloud: Tried several demos a couple of years, but decided to go with Salesforce.

Does everything, but doesn't do anything better than competitors

Opmerkingen: Overall, it's been a great experience. Salesforce is much more costly than some other options out there, but the issue is once you have it set up. It is difficult and pricey to go to another alternative. That's how they get you hooked, as soon as you're set up. Even if you have headaches with the system, you'll have more headaches trying to leave.

Pluspunten:

Salesforce can do absolutely everything. If you can get an intelligent salesforce administrator, you can customize Salesforce in any way you like to work exactly how you need for your organization.

Minpunten:

Making organizational changes to the system is sometimes needlessly difficult. To have an efficiently run Salesforce database, you must employ or hire an administrator to make major changes for you. If you're looking to alter major things within the system, oftentimes, you must rely on Salesforce's help, and often that takes a long time and is sometimes difficult to understand their service reps.

Eerder overwogen alternatieven: Pipedrive, SugarCRM en HubSpot CRM

Redenen om over te stappen op Salesforce Sales Cloud: At the time, we were able to negotiate an amazing deal with Salesforce. 2 years later that deal disappeared and the prices hiked astronomically

Robust Customization Meets Steep Learning Curve

Opmerkingen: Salesforce Sales Cloud has proven to be a robust and comprehensive platform, offering a wide array of customization options that cater to varying business needs. The ability to tailor the platform, coupled with a rich set of features, significantly enhances relationship management with clients, prospects, and partners. However, the steep learning curve and complexity of the platform can pose challenges, especially for smaller companies or those with limited technical resources. The pricing, being on the higher side, might deter smaller organizations, although the value delivered could justify the investment for larger enterprises. Despite minor technical issues, the platform's industry leadership and extensive learning resources like Trailhead provide a supportive environment for users to grow and maximize their utilization of the platform.

Pluspunten:

Salesforce Sales Cloud is highly praised for its robust customization and configuration capabilities, allowing users to tailor the platform to meet their specific operational needs, which is invaluable for managing various relationships including those with prospects, clients, and partners. Another strong suit is the provision of learning resources through Trailhead, a free learning platform that facilitates user acceptance and empowers users to maximize the benefits of the platform. Users commend its comprehensive management features that serve as a robust backbone for organizations, enabling seamless management of marketing leads and other crucial business operations at scale. Being recognized as a leader in the CRM space, Salesforce Sales Cloud's reliability and extensive feature set are seen as essential for business success, reflecting a high level of satisfaction among its user base on Capterra.

Minpunten:

Salesforce Sales Cloud, despite its extensive capabilities, presents a steep learning curve, particularly for new users, necessitating time and training for proficient usage​​. The platform's complexity, while beneficial for customization, can be overwhelming especially for small companies, posing a challenge for those with limited technical expertise​​. Additionally, the cost factor is a notable concern among users, as the pricing might be substantial, potentially forming a barrier for smaller organizations or those with tighter budgets​​​​. Moreover, some users have pointed out minor technical issues, like the challenge of sorting line items in a quote, indicating room for improvement in certain functional aspects​​.

Salesforce is one of the best and most reliable CRM system

Opmerkingen: Using triggers, workflow rules, and approval processes, this software streamlines otherwise time-consuming activities for its users. It's also a fantastic hub for efficient data administration.

Pluspunten:

Customers' inquiries and purchases can be monitored in real time. Users may efficiently manage their own or their company's unique perspectives by creating custom fields, processes, validation rules, etc. I doubt that I could be as productive as I am now without Salesforce. If you want to target the right people at the right time, you need a system that lets you stay on top of things and see things from your prospects' points of view.

Minpunten:

However, its complex price structure and the fact that businesses need modification and integerations make it too expensive for start-ups and smaller enterprises.

Lead brand in CRM and growing rapidly..

Opmerkingen: The system is great and the out of the box features of the Campaign object is great.

Pluspunten:

Easy to configurate without the need to learn code or hire consultancy.

Minpunten:

Focussed on the use of leads while a non-profit mainly uses contacts.

Eerder overwogen alternatieven: Dynamics 365

Redenen om voor Salesforce Sales Cloud te kiezen: Less dependent on expensive consultancy.

Redenen om over te stappen op Salesforce Sales Cloud: Trailhead is a great free learning platform available for users/admins which makes it easy for user acceptance.

Very powerful software but with a steep learning curve

Pluspunten:

The platform is really customizable, you can adapt the tool as much as you want to your company process

Minpunten:

If you don't have anyone in your team with experience in Salesforce is really difficult to get started and understand how to customize all the features it has. It's also expensive so I would only recommend for big companies (200+ employees)

Eerder overwogen alternatieven: Pipedrive, Freshsales en HubSpot CRM

Redenen om voor Salesforce Sales Cloud te kiezen: Zendesk is good for customer service but it doesn't have enough features to use it as a B2C CRM

Overgestapt van: Zendesk Suite

Great platform but only good if you use it

Opmerkingen: it was good, as long as its used its worth it.

Pluspunten:

Very easy to use and nicely laid out.

Minpunten:

not real estate centred rather all sales.

Salesforce is the dedicated CRM for Sales

Opmerkingen: We've been able to log more information about calls, which has helped us make sure different personnel aren't calling the same clients. We fixed a problem where different salesmen were calling the same new leads, and we made it possible to assign specific goals to individual workers.

Pluspunten:

For our company, Salesforce has been a godsend. It helped tremendously with planning ahead and scheduling calls and follow-ups. Connecting Salesforce and Outlook has been really helpful for me because it streamlines my tracking and allows me to go back and add any missing details from my day.

Minpunten:

It's usually more expensive than competing CRMs, but you may offset that by buying extra licenses for users, whether they're on the platform or not.

Automated Nofications

Opmerkingen: once I used it every day, I was able to move through updating records and inputting information easily.

Pluspunten:

ease of use once trained to use the product.

Minpunten:

it times out often and it should be fixed in an update.

BEST VALUE CORPORATE CRM

Opmerkingen: I liked it a lot and it was easy to learn to manage it according to my needs, to take advantage of them and save me time.

Pluspunten:

It is a CRM, quite complete and professional, easy to understand for anyone and what I liked the most is the tools with which you can help yourself so that you do not forget a task and remind you of them.

Minpunten:

Disadvantages, definitely not customizing or adjusting it according to the tasks that each person performs.

This CRM Can Do Anything

Opmerkingen: I wish I had known about it's capabilities a long time ago because we would've switched to it for onboarding much sooner. I didn't realize you could create custom objects that could tie to an account record and setup virtually as many fields as you needed.

Pluspunten:

Our onboarding team uses Salesforce for onboarding new customers. It allows us to track communications, activities, mark task that have been completed and create reports and dashboards to show how accounts are progressing through the onboarding process. Salesforce is the best in class tool when it comes to customization and trackability. We can setup whatever fields we need and collect whatever data we need based on various workflows. You can also create automated tasks.

Minpunten:

Salesforce is a bit clunky and slow at times. We had to have training by a Salesforce expert to implement the systems we needed, so I wouldn't say it's very user-friendly (but that's expected when you have such a robust system).

Eerder overwogen alternatieven: monday.com

Redenen om voor Salesforce Sales Cloud te kiezen: We looked at Trello for project management for awhile, but it didn't have the reporting and automated tasks we needed. Wasn't very customizable.

Overgestapt van: Trello

Redenen om over te stappen op Salesforce Sales Cloud: We looked at Monday.com for project management, but due to the fields, workflows, automated tasks and overall functionality we were looking for, Salesforce was much more customizable for our needs.

Best CRM ever made!

Opmerkingen: Since transitioning to Salesforce Sales Cloud, we have been able to build and automate complex processes to reduce redundant tasks, mitigate error, and provide an exceptional customer experience for our constituents.

Pluspunten:

Before using Salesforce's Sales Cloud, we used another CRM that was as deficient as it was clunky. Salescloud has literally revolutionized how we do business and manage our constituents. And the fact that you can customize and configure the system to work exactly as you need/want it for your specific use case is by far its greatest strength and the thing I love most about this software.

Minpunten:

I wish the app-exchange was more vastly populated with solutions like Apple or Android. It can be somewhat challenging at times to find the right solution or app provider OTB, this forcing you to take the route of custom development or third party integrations.

My experience is positive regarding this software because it is very practical and offers security

Opmerkingen: I must say that this software has given me several benefits starting with the price-product ratio. The cost is low if we consider how powerful the software is. In turn, the savings in time and money that means being able to work from anywhere is something very positive. Sometimes I travel outside the state and the fact of having this work tool prevents me from having to buy a ticket, take a plane and return to a meeting. Simply from any platform (in my case a laptop) I can sit down in the lobby of the hotel where I am staying and share documents, modify them, work online with my project colleagues in the company and the other companies that make up the institution for which I work. This product has simplified my work and my life. I owe him 3 promotions since I usually excel in the assigned projects. My experience has been very positive in that sense and I have a lot to thank for this product.

Pluspunten:

One of the aspects that I value most about this software is the possibility it offers me to work from anywhere. My work demands to travel continuously and the fact of being able to access the cloud from any laptop, tablet, smart phone or table computer and sharing information and tasks with my co-workers is very positive. And the best thing is that this software gives me total security that others do not guarantee me. Knowing that my data, my projects and my documents are well protected, generate me a lot of confidence, so I totally recommend it

Minpunten:

Although it is a very powerful software, its use is sometimes complex with respect to the tools to segment and automate my marketing campaigns since working with well-defined social strata in the communication area would be a great collaboration to do it from the same software and not manually Simpler steps that allow processing all the information and then classify it. It would be very helpful because of the complexity that sometimes is made for those who are beginning to use this software.

Salesforce is a Dream!

Opmerkingen: I use it daily. I live in salesforce and I'm in marketing. I use it to keep up with my team and to try to use chatter to highlight what is working and showcase certain accounts. I also like to follow the wins and losses to try to get a feel for where we can improve.

Pluspunten:

Everything. I love salesforce. I love its ease of use, navigation, walk-me, training, integration, features, functionality, you name it. Chatter is my favorite feature and once adopted by organizations you see the whole organization migrate to making salesforce their homepage. I love the adaptation the teams have to it and that you can customize your dashboard so sales, marketing, integration, and other teams can all use it as they need to.

Minpunten:

The cost, and sometimes Salesforce does not do a good job of showing the interoperability it has. There are so many features that make it a one-stop-shop for companies large and small, but it seems if the product is sold as a sales tool, it remains that way instead of showing the integration options for marketing and other teams.

Eerder overwogen alternatieven: HubSpot Marketing Hub en Zoho CRM

Redenen om voor Salesforce Sales Cloud te kiezen: features and functionality

Overgestapt van: HubSpot CRM

Redenen om over te stappen op Salesforce Sales Cloud: I went to dreamforce and was sold!

SalesForce is astounding for the most part at what it does, however can be hard to adjust to specifi

Opmerkingen: It monitors our hopefuls and customers discourses over some stretch of time which causes us return from where the last discussion had finished. A decent record data also with 360-perspective on data. Devices work quite a bit of some acclaimed person to person communication destinations and could be considered as a simple exploring stage.

Pluspunten:

A stage that offers deals the board, client administration, showcasing robotization and accomplice relationship the executives. It is a c cloud-based CRM arrangement, Salesforce gives you anyplace, whenever, access to your business information, even from cell phones. This stage helped us streamline our procedure and logged our discussion with every one of our customers/applicants monitoring the discourse history and knowing where we left at. It has a decent contact the board framework that enables the clients to store significantly more data like record/customer subtleties, addresses, other accessible data which permits a decent record information review. The Dashboard is adaptable and can fit to what their customer needs and requires for the particular procedure. It's a simple to explore programming particularly for the individuals who had been into cloud-based stage previously.

Minpunten:

The multifaceted nature of its highlights here and there are not being depleted/augmented by little scale organizations and could get overpowering now and again. Evaluating might be somewhat high for a little organization particularly on the off chance that they need something that is progressively adaptable. For our group, it took us some time to explore the stage completely and consider was on the most proficient method to tweak the stage dependent on our necessities. Recognizing what is as of now accessible for us and what can be considered for what's to come is something that we get to profound plunge through the span of months and a great deal of cooperation and discussion with the group. Announcing issues may be somewhat hard as far as realizing who is responsible for certain specialized glitch if its Salesforce people themselves or some application that connects to it.

Salesforce is Most Capable Platform

Opmerkingen: Overall experience has been great. We have grown as a company at 30% percent since adopting. We launched on the Lighting UI and I highly recommend the same for anyone that is looking to launch the product. There are a ton of resources that will help with implementation which is great!

Pluspunten:

The best part and worst part of being on the Salesforce platform is the ability to customize the tool to your needs. If you have a specific process, permission, security that you need to be able to accommodate, you will always have the ability on the platform. The mobile app is great and is used most of our users. There are some areas for improvement, but overall great. Salesforce also does a great job of implementing new features and changes based on their community feedback. The Ideaexchange is an amazing tool and SF does a great job basing their changes on wheat the people want. Finally, TrailHead is the best in the business. The ability to self teach is amazing and SF does a wonderful job keeping all the moduels up to date.

Minpunten:

The same thing why Salesforce is great with flexibility and customization also make things very difficult. The best way to describe this is Salesforce is a like a beautiful house on the outside. They give you the roof/doors/walls, BUT what you put in the house and how you arrange is all your own doing. This makes it difficult if you need a specific issue taken care of, you will need to reach out to a developer to accomplish unless you have one in-house. Also the App exchange although very great, can get very expensive. A lot of companies make a living taking a Salesforce idea and perfecting, then selling on the app exchange. This can come in handy, but also at a cost.

Salesforce is one of the best programs that you can integrate into your company.

Opmerkingen: It is incredible how this program has the ability to offer you a wide variety of options for the descent of a company and get many more sales that contribute to the business, Salesforce is one of the best programs that you can integrate into your company, from an excellent admiration and control of all your data until the management and correct interaction with all your clients, this program will reinforce the weaknesses that your work operation may have and will improve them to be your main virtues, in my work there is no other program more complete than Salesforce, Since there are so many possibilities that are achieved with the help of this amazing software, it makes my job much easier and more effective when starting.

Pluspunten:

This program presents a totally simple interface to work with and that each of its users can concentrate on increasing the sales of their business and the entry of new clients to the company. This program is an administrative space where all the processes and procedures can be built. with the purpose of the constant growth of the company, one of the best things that this program has is the control and domain that each of its users acquires at the moment of implementing Salesforce in their workplace, as well as being a program that focuses on the management of advertising and marketing of the company with the same purpose of generating many more sales and new relationships for the business, it is by far the best CRM that has a host of options and benefits for the company and for my development .

Minpunten:

Without a doubt, the area and all the marketing functions can improve, we understand that it is not a program that focuses only on this area, but it can improve a lot in each of the new updates, this in order to reach more places and clients who are interested in our services and on the other hand it could be a bit complicated due to the amount of information to integrate certain contents multiple ways, in general I work very well and I like the performance of the program.

Great for reporting, but not an easy platform to learn.

Opmerkingen: If you or your team does not have the time to fully invest in training and learning the platform to a deep extent, than this software would be a waste for you. I would recommend speaking with a SalesForce consultant about the different reporting, campaigning, sales, etc. capabilities before making the investment. Though the Customer Support side of SalesForce, in terms of issue resolution, have not been helpful, the SalesForce sales team is very knowledgeable and give honest opinions on what different functions, plans, etc. they would recommend to fit your specific needs. The sales team has actually saved us money by showing us how to more efficiently manage our plan with them.

Pluspunten:

The reporting capabilities of SalesForce, especially now that they have switched over to the new Lightning experience, are a great asset for companies looking to track business development activities. Sales funnel reporting, gain-loss reports, call/meeting/email recaps, project lists, budgeting and customer contacts - SalesForce is your "one stop shop" for all of these reporting functions! My team has also loved having the ability to sign up for monthly emails that are based off of reports they have set up within SalesForce. This allows them to track any progress, trends or issues that need to be addressed upfront. My team has also enjoyed the email campaign tracking, which works in conjunction with the Pardot platform.

Minpunten:

SalesForce is not an intuitive software to use and is not easily learned by all members of my team. This is what I like least about the software. Beyond that, customer support has been less than helpful. My team and I have often had to do our own research on Google and YouTube for solutions to problems the SalesForce Customer Service could not help us with. This platform takes a considerable amount of training to really be able to grasp its reporting and data entry capabilities. Beyond that, this product is not cheap! It is worth the investment for larger organizations, but I am not sure it is worth the cost for smaller companies.

Jack of all trades in the CRM world, yet, imperfect and expensive.

Pluspunten:

It's a very complex and versatile piece of software, there's a lot to like about it: - it can be used for Sales and Service - it is cloud-based and can be used by teams scattered around the whole world - it can be customised to suit all business types, from selling companies to clinics etc. - it has a very rich marketplace, if you did not find what you were after baked in, you will probably find it in the AppExchange - it has a lot of integrations, e.g. email, CTI - it is cross-platform, you can use it on phones, tablets, MacOS, iOS, Android, Windows, Linux - it is very secure and has a very granular security options - you have access to all your data, you can export raw data anytime you need it for security and migration purposes - it has an insane deal of automation, you can apply a lot of automatic jobs, workflows, processes that will automate your daily tasks, allowing you to focus on the most important tasks for your business cutting down on the admin for the regular users

Minpunten:

- first of all, it is quite expensive, on the other hand, building and using an in-house CRM can be even more expensive, before purchasing, however, make sure if you need all the bells and whistles, as you might just as well get a competitor's CRM that will suit your needs and will be cheaper - complexity has its price, to configure all of this, you will need a bunch of well trained certified and experienced admins, employing incompetent admins will expose your business to unnecessary downtimes - competent and experienced admins, on the other hand, are also very expensive and not necessarily easy to find - Salesforce can be very fragile to changes, making a small change can sometimes cause a chain reaction immobilizing your business, every change has to be thoroughly tested in Sandboxes Before deciding to use Salesforce I recommend doing a research to make sure your business will benefit from Salesforce's features. It is a great tool and can really help your business provided there is a good justification. Otherwise, you might be better off with something simpler.

Justifying high dollar prices with tedious features and extensive training to use

Opmerkingen: Over-priced, too much detail, not user friendly or intuitive. Wrong incentives. This app manages to do more than any other CRM and simultaneously prevent you from doing more than any other CRM out there. If you want your reps to fake activity to satisfy your unnecessary reports that you'll feel the need to generate to justify the enormous cost of this software, then you're in the right place.

Pluspunten:

I suppose if I were a President of Sales for North America Region for a multinational corporation, maybe I would want to use Salesforce. At some point, I will bet it is more secure than other CRMs, I just can't see that mattering very much to a small business. At some point, I would imagine that I would want to be able to show a board of directors all of the "helpful" information that can be tracked via this CRM. I just can't see any of that mattering on the level of directly managing sales reps, or even managing their managers. If your sales department costs you millions of dollars in operating costs, then this kind of expenditure is probably justified for security and data.

Minpunten:

I truly see no reason to track all of the things this software tracks. It is tedious. Entering even a single new prospect is so time consuming and takes so much training to learn to do, that I can literally train someone to sell and watch them sign a new client before a rep has learned how to properly enter leads and track a pipeline in Salesforce. I've worked at a corporation that used Salesforce, as well as a small business. In both cases the employer spent so much on their CRM that it incentivized the employers to run weekly meetings with reps about the number of entries into the CRM that they made. Let that sink in. The job the reps are hired to perform has now become one of data entry rather than sales. In both companies, the minute the manager left the room, reps explained to me how to fake entries in order to keep those numbers up. "I like to log around 90 calls before noon, then take a break so no one gets suspicious." -This is an actual quote from an inside sales rep I trained with at a corporation who used Salesforce. Now, one could argue that was poor management, and not a poor CRM. It's true that Salesforce does what it says it does. You can generate some very detailed reports about your team or individual reps. You can store a ton of information. At some point though, it does too much. It asks too much. It changes the very nature of the sales rep's job into one of satisfying CRM requirements to justify one's job rather than selling. It is, despite it's bells and whistles and presumably unmatched development budget, still not as intuitive as other CRMs. I would rather train a rep on their CRM in an hour and get them into the field or on the phone to talk to prospects than train them for a week on the CRM before they talk to a soul. In the time I'd spend training them and answering questions, I could generate my own more detailed reports if they were truly necessary. I assure you, they are not.

Solid CRM That Can Do a Lot

Opmerkingen: Overall it has been great for me. As I said, once you get your salesforce process setup up, it's really easy to use, and the crashing that occurs is very minimal: it really only happens when your Salesforce admin tweaks with something. I can't speak to the cost (As I'm just a user), but from my perspective I would recommend it if you're looking for a solid CRM.

Pluspunten:

Once you have your Salesforce process setup and streamlined, it's great to use. It's easy to access leads and opportunities and manage data inside them with relatively few issues. I also like the dashboard feature which allows you to see a lot of data from different reports in an aesthetically pleasing manner. I have never used the Zoho CRM, but I know my company switched over and has been using it for over 2 years now.

Minpunten:

The setup process can be difficult and might require some degree of coding logic. Like all software sometimes features won't work and you'll have to contact the salesforce administer within your company to fix it. Also, the reports can kind of be tricky to set up. My biggest complaint is that no two people can edit a file at the same time. There have been times where I've spent 15 minutes inputting information in a file and tried to click save only to see an error message saying that someone else has edited the file. So I wish it would allow for real-time editing amongst co-workers or at least allow me to refresh the page while saving all the data I have already typed up. I'm also not a fan of "lightning mode", which is the new UI that they are trying to push. Salesforce classic is just so much easier to use, and you can see so much data at one time when looking at leads/opportunities.

Flexible, extensible, and powerful. Salesforce is incredible.

Opmerkingen: Salesforce is terrific and only getting better. Adding to the existing strengths of incredible depth and flexibility, recent updates have streamlined some of the processes and made some high-use pages and interfaces easier to navigate quickly. It still takes a bit of work to learn how to effectively use the many, many tools available in Salesforce, but extensive documentation and free online training make it easier to do.

Pluspunten:

Salesforce can do (almost) anything and integrate with (almost) any other platform. The platform is incredibly deep and extensible. If there’s a thing you’d like a cloud-based database to do, Salesforce can do it. It also integrates well with a huge range of other platforms.

Minpunten:

Sometimes, the depth makes the interface a slog to navigate, or makes it challenging to figure out how to implement the customization you’re looking for. For administrators and developers, the learning curve can be steep. It’s also not always immediately apparent what you can do from within Salesforce, and what requires an additional integration.

Eerder overwogen alternatieven: HubSpot CRM

Redenen om voor Salesforce Sales Cloud te kiezen: Salesforce offered us better functionality, more stability, and cloud/mobile access.

Redenen om over te stappen op Salesforce Sales Cloud: More functionality and depth for the price.

Extremely dissapointed and frustrated

Opmerkingen: If you are looking for a good project management platform, this is not for you. Maybe this works for people who deal strictly with sales, but every single other aspect of this product is severely lacking and it is not nearly worth the amount of money you would need to invest to get this working like you want. Watch out for licensing scams too, because they will easily lure you into a 3 year contract you can't get out of with licenses you can't use, and you will be stuck having to pay even more to upgrade those, and to pay even more for all the third party apps to actually provide usability for the product.

Pluspunten:

The demo the Salesforce reps presented made everything look nice and easy to use. But that is about all it did. Realistically, the only Pro of this program for our company was the integration between Quickbooks and Salesforce.com, and we are having trouble getting even that part to work.

Minpunten:

First off, Salesforce has two current user interfaces, classic and Lightning. The Classic interface looks like it was made in 1999. It is not at all visually appealing. Every single aspect of the process requires multiple repetitive and time consuming steps (for example, to access a Project Task, you would first need to go to "Projects" tab. You have to then hit "go" or otherwise all the projects would not show up. You find your project, and click it. Then scroll alll the way down to "Milestones" and select the correct milestone. You have to know off the top of your head which milestone your task will be in, or else you have to start all over. Click the Milestone, and scroll all the way down to tasks. Well, that list only shows 10 tasks. You have to CLICK YET AGAIN to either show 10 more or go to the list of tasks. Thats 6 clicks to get to one project task. To mark that task as complete, you have to double click, then click in the box, then click save. 4 extra clicks just to mark a task as complete). The whole process is riddled with these backwards time consuming ways to do things. On top of that, Salesforce takes zero responsibility for their product and has horrible customer support. Since we began this process about 6 months ago, they have cycled us through 3 customer account representatives. Each email needs to be sent to them two or three times before we receive an answer. They do not give out their phone numbers and they do not answer the phones if you do happen to get a phone number. We ask to schedule a meeting or call and are ignored. Additionally, none of the integrations that we were promised would 100% work, actually do what they are supposed to. Quickbooks does not sync still, after five separate calls with them trying to get it to work. Salesforce always gives the answer of "Oh, well thats not in our scope of work". They referr us to third party companies, who then tell us the issue is with Salesforce, but SF says the issue is with the third party. Additionally, we were specifically lied to my salesforce. Our company has a total of 40 licenses; of those, 10 are Enterprise edition, but 30 are apparently Force.com licenses. We do not know what the Force.com licenses are and no one has been able to explain to us what the difference is, but its a difference of over per user per month per license. They promised us that the Conga third party would work with these Force.com licenses, but is does not, so now they are trying to say that everyone who would need Conga would need to be upgraded to the Enterprise licenses, which would almost double our monthly license fees. We have been asking them for a clear list of differences between these two licenses for the past 3 weeks, and when they did send us a list, Force.com licenses were not on the comparison. Long story short, this company and product greatly falls short of expectations. For what we were trying to use it for, the Lightning experience, which actually looks useful and decent, does not work at all, because most of the company is more project management related than sales.

You can do a lot with Salesforce

Opmerkingen: You know when you interview someone and you ask them for their weakness and they turn a positive into a negative ("I'm a perfectionist!") Well, that is the issue with Salesforce. It is so configurable that you can get yourself into trouble! There are layers and layers of security and configurations - you get to choose how complex your org will be. How you set up objects and relationships will greatly impact on how you can later get out your data. Take the time to engage a Data Architect to review the design before you release to the hordes! And while yes, the data structure and reporting tool inhibit reporting and analytics, it collects the data relatively well. Best bet is to get a copy of your data and get it into a data warehouse or even a couple of simple reporting tables. Get your users used to using other tools for reporting whenever possible.

Pluspunten:

It is easy to get up and running with a very simple and basic sales/CRM configuration with Salesforce. Creating custom objects (tables) and fields is pretty simple and convenient. The platform also offers easy to use, off the shelf APIs that make integrating outside sources and systems pretty straightforward. And, if designed properly, it can scale and adapt fairly well. Extremely configurable and can ultimately do most things asked of it.

Minpunten:

I have two issues with Salesforce. The first is the way it stores the data. Because it is an object oriented database, it stores more in columns than in rows. The User Interface is based on the structure of the objects and on the relationships of those objects. What ends up happening is that data starts to "spread" via triggers and workflows so it will be visible. Traditionally, there has been a lot of copying of data between Salesforce objects. The second issue is an extension of the first - Reporting. Reporting is inherently difficult to begin with because of the structure of the data. In order to create a report, a "report type" has to be created which pre-identifies the objects and fields. It makes ad-hoc reporting difficult and time consuming. But the reporting tool itself is clunky and difficult to use. To be clear, this is basic Salesforce reporting - not Einstein or Wave. You can't rename columns on the fly, can't create non aggregated calculations, and the user interface is just plain outdated.

Salesforce doesn't lack the power, but suffers in process flow and visuals

Opmerkingen: Interactions with Support at the time were forced. In terms of Ease of use: I believe the tool was fairly simple to follow when used consistently. The lead and contact managment elements of the tool were very strong and nuanced. From generating new leads, connecting them to an email campaign, nurturing the leads to the next stages of the cycle and then converting the leads into customers. For us, selling software, converting them to clients and then using Salesforce to track the implementation and consulting component was crucial. Salesforce did a wonderful job and reducing duplication. I definitely was able to handle more volume of prospects with Salesforce and direct my attention and activities to the highest value. And that is the point of the Sales side of a CRM.

Pluspunten:

Salesforce is a fantastic option for larger businesses that need powerful sales and service functionality within an integrated environment. I was just one team member of many, but I believe the tracking ability of a robust pipeline of prospects and the tools available to capture, recall, execute and update records through an elongated sales process allowed me to be more effective and efficient with my client time. Salesforce brags on its sales, marketing, and analytics toolset and in general these did not disappoint. The drill-down capabilities from the analytics dashboards were useful. Also, the ability to tie your email correspondence with prospects to quickly recall your last interaction was critical.

Minpunten:

The internal tools for messaging and communication appeared archaic to me and almost always circumvented in favor of our own favorited instant messaging and posting platforms. The design of the data input screens was oddly spaced and placed. It wasn't the best flow when capturing info. However, admittedly, the platform allowed for great automation in the workflow and setup of custom fields. I don't believe my company spent the time evaluating the best use of the tool. And so my advice is to get a good definition of your processes and standards so that you can utilize Salesforce to the fullest.