Salesforce is the #1 ranked CRM platform in the world. But what exactly makes Salesforce stand out from other solutions?
Salesforce is an industry titan for boosting customer relationships through unified processes. In today’s data-intensive world, having a single source of truth is more important than ever. As a result, Salesforce enables you to streamline team efforts, elevate experiences and improve profitability.
Here we’ll take a tour of Salesforce and highlight why it’s a leading CRM software platform. We’ll look at its main features, best use cases and the advantages of choosing Salesforce to support your business.
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What does Salesforce do?
At its core, Salesforce is a CRM platform, supporting businesses in managing and fortifying customer relationships. To achieve this, Salesforce provides key functions:
- Workflow automation: Salesforce has an array of automation tools that can reimagine your processes. Cut out manual tasks and streamline areas such as lead follow-up emails and customer self-service features.
- Collaboration efficiency: The Salesforce platform is designed to make it easier for departments to collaborate. Unify your business efforts with one source of data and boost cross-team efforts for sales, marketing, IT and beyond.
- Customer relationship nurturing: Get a 360-degree customer view via Salesforce. Here you can bring together all customer information across your touchpoints and create personalized messaging, services and campaigns that earn you loyalty.
- New customer pipelines: Salesforce bolsters your processes, enabling new pipelines that help identify and attract leads. It’s also outstanding for providing stronger support and uplifting brand recognition. In turn, this can increase customer engagement and result in more sales.
- Data management: Salesforce is the ideal solution to merge your data into a single source, allowing every business area to excel with better information to take strategic actions.
Overall, Salesforce is an exceptionally robust solution that includes 16 core areas tailored to different business needs. For example, Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce and more come with their own suite of features.
Why is Salesforce used?
Salesforce is a cutting-edge solution for businesses with complex or multi-level requirements. Here’s why companies across diverse industries are choosing Salesforce software to elevate their efforts across sales, marketing and more.
- Single source of truth: You can bring together all your data into one place with Salesforce, which helps maximize cross-team efforts and glean better insights. In this way, you can improve services and win over more customers.
- Customization: Salesforce is extremely flexible, letting you customize its robust features according to your unique KPIs. Though you may need a Salesforce partner to make the most of the technical set-up, it has top personalization potential.
- Expandability: As your business evolves, so does Salesforce. It has excellent expandability so you face no limitations as you grow and need to handle new business functions on Salesforce.
- Integrations: Salesforce has a sterling reputation for ready-to-go integrations. Beside the 4,000+ pre-integrated apps on its marketplace, Salesforce boasts of a service called MuleSoft that enables easy integrations across your most popular tools, such as G Suite, Slack, QuickBooks and more.
- New features: Salesforce is continually rolling out new features that meet the moment. Take its latest AI-powered feature Einstein, which includes sales content generation, personalized outreach, chatbots, customer self-service, data analysis, products recommendations and more.
- Innovation: Salesforce is ideal for getting ahead of the competition. You can pursue innovative set-ups by starting with built-in tools. For example, drive transformation through features such as predictive analytics, data unification, embedded video/chat and more.
- Cloud and mobile access: The Salesforce platform is specifically designed for anywhere access, so your teams have endless possibilities to collaborate in real-time. As a cloud-based solution, you can log in from anywhere, including the mobile app which cites a 40% boost in productivity for users.
- Reporting: With all your data in one spot, Salesforce has a wealth of analytics and reports available. In addition to dashboard-style real-time data, you can schedule ongoing reports for fluid monitoring and analysis.
- Security: Salesforce is cloud-based, giving it strong security advantages for businesses. What’s more, it incorporates built-in cybersecurity practices for trusted data and privacy.
- Use of ease: Although Salesforce is a veteran of the industry, it has kept up with fresh designs and user-friendly interfaces. You won’t need a degree in computer science to find your way around Salesforce features.
- Strong community: Salesforce had one of the largest followings, with 2.3 million users. This strong back-up is great for jumping off ideas and leveraging pre-built features.
The benefits of Salesforce
At the end of the day, the greatest advantage of the Salesforce platform is that it helps you achieve your KPIs. Companies that implement Salesforce tend to attain outcomes including the following.
- Attracting new customers: Salesforce enables personalized outreach, innovative products and smarter marketing campaigns. This high caliber of interactions means you’ll earn more customers in the long term.
- Improved customer engagement and loyalty: The better your service, the more likely customers will stick around. Salesforce raises the bar so that your customers stay engaged and loyal to your brand.
- Enhanced team productivity and overall efficiency: Salesforce links your teams for smoother collaboration and fewer manual processes. Just consider that 39% of Salesforce users saw an increase in productivity.
- Operation-boosting integrations: The sheer number of built-in integrations means you can ramp up your solution quickly and cost-effectively. Salesforce has countless options for hooking up your tools and getting business-critical data streams in place.
- Better data management: Salesforce sets up clear data pipelines that meet the strictest guidelines for data collection. At the same time, having clean, unified data helps boost insights.
- Data-driven decision-making: Once your data is flowing into the Salesforce platform, you can leverage it to build a data-driven strategy. Doing so is critical for crafting data-first strategies that get results.
- Ability to grow business: Salesforce is limitless when it comes to extending function. As your business expands, you can enable new set-ups in Salesforce to cover your bases.
- More revenue overall: By boosting your team workflows and customer interactions, you’re well on your way to increasing your bottom line. Not only can you automate tasks and better allocate resources, but also capture new leads and achieve more sales.
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Salesforce best use cases
The versatility of the Salesforce platform can’t be overstated. No matter your industry or business area, you can tailor Salesforce to your requirements. Let's take a closer look at the best use cases for Salesforce today.
Salesforce for sales
As the name suggests, Salesforce software has deep roots in delivering solutions for sales teams. It has top functions for your entire sales cycle, so you can build a winning pipeline and automate workflows for greater productivity. In turn, this will strengthen relationships with customers and result in more revenue.
Sales Cloud features
- Prospecting automation
- Lead management
- Opportunity tracking
- Pipeline management
- Sales forecasting
- Upselling/cross-selling
- Just-in-time sales notifications
- Agentforce SDR
- Agentforce Sales Coach
Salesforce for customer service
Customer service is at the core of successful business in any industry. Salesforce empowers your teams to better understand your customers and deliver the resolutions that they need. At the same time, you’ll make workflows more efficient and cut resource costs.
The Service Cloud supports full case management across all channels by automating key interactions, setting up self-service portals and making personalized recommendations for tough customer cases. In this way, you can provide five-star service, reduce churn and earn a loyal base.
Service Cloud features
- Support ticketing
- Case management
- Knowledge bases
- Self-service portals
- Agentforce Service Agents
- Real-time recommendations
- Proactive customer outreach
- Onboarding journeys
- Billing dispute management
- Customer data and feedback
Salesforce for marketing
Salesforce is an impressive solution for crafting marketing campaigns that activate your leads and current customers. You can implement marketing automation, including drip emails, product recommendations and personalized content. Using Salesforce data, you can also build customer profiles and target audiences across your channels. Overall, sales service marketing tools can raise your customer lifetime value by 31%.
Marketing Cloud features
- Target customer profiles
- Dynamic personalization
- Customer journey tracking
- User-friendly segmentation
- Product offer and recommendations
- Campaign performance
- Cross-channel outreach (web, social, email, etc.)
- Content generation
- Real-time analytics
Salesforce for B2C and B2B shopping and commerce
Boosting the online shopping experience is essential in our digital-first world. The Salesforce platform simplifies this process with tools aimed at creating robust storefronts and meaningful shopping interactions.
In addition, you can unlock merchant efficiency by streamlining inventory, order, payment and pricing management for all your touchpoints. Salesforce also enables AI-powered insights for customer behaviors, so you can tailor your store to capture more sales – and grow your revenue by 29%!
Commerce Cloud features
- Storefront management
- Payment and transactions
- Shopping experiences
- Inventory management
- Order management
- Customer behavior insights
- Pricing management
- Commerce alerts
Salesforce for analytics
Salesforce has a suite of analytics features that drive business outcomes. Tableau is a dashboard-style interface that helps visualize and analyze your data for smarter customer experiences. It harnesses insights automatically, so you can set up workflows, forecasts and visualizations that are actionable. With Tableau, it’s easy to take the pulse on your business metrics and market trends.
Tableau features
- Scheduled reports
- Forecast insights
- Data mapping
- Data visualization
- Workflow automation
- Revenue intelligence
- Rep performance
- Tableau Prep Builder
- Tableau Prep Conductor
- Tableau Desktop
- Tableau Online
- Tableau Server
Salesforce for IT
Although there’s not a specific IT cloud, Salesforce is well-equipped to assist IT teams. No matter which Salesforce cloud services your business is leveraging, you can develop leading apps, processes and more.
Salesforce can be combined with your favorite development platform to streamline tasks and maximize latest trends. For example, the Heroku development tool connects directly with Salesforce and allows for ease of coding. At the same time, Salesforce for IT is focused on:
- Top system integrations
- Workflow automation
- Data security and compliance
- Integrating AI, IoT and voice
Salesforce for integrations
Salesforce is at the frontlines of integrating with your full business ecosystem. It easily links with in-demand third-party tools and systems through its MuleSoft platform. As a result, this generates business efficiency and added value.
With MuleSoft, you don’t have to worry about technology silos. MuleSoft seamlessly integrates with your tech stack and data streams, so you can bring together your systems. It’s known for unifying integrations, automation and API management. In fact, it achieves a 49% reuse rate for integrations and API.
Beyond MuleSoft, Salesforce also connects with key apps such as G Suite, Slack, QuickBooks, MailChimp and more. It boasts of an AppExchange market with thousands of pre-built apps. You can easily extend function with this diverse array of ready-to-go features.
CTA: Read our past success stories.
Salesforce customization and extensibility
Although the Salesforce platform comes with countless built-in features, it’s highly customizable. It’s excellent for ramping up your solution in stages, so you can meet minimum needs and scale at your own pace.
Salesforce is also future-proof, giving your business room to grow with new features. Over time, you can extend functions without worrying that the technology will become outdated or irrelevant to your needs.
AppExchange
The AppExchange market enables rapid, affordable access to pre-built apps. Here you’ll find 4,000+ apps to meet your Salesforce requirements. From hooking up LinkedIn, Zoom, DocuSign, Stripe and more, this marketplace is ideal for extending features with minimal budget. Use the advanced filters to find apps such as the following:
- Sales: LinkedIn, Zoom, Adobe, Conga, RingCentral, Asana, etc.
- Marketing: Query Studio, Mailchimp, Jotform, Volunteers, Events, Marketo, etc.
- IT: Adoption Dashboard, Declarative Lookup, User Access, Data Fetcher, Streaming Monitor, Check, etc.
- Customer service: DocuSign, Genesys, Amazon Connect, Salesforce Agent, Box, Dialpad, etc.
- Finance: Stripe, TaskRay, QuickBooks, MissionControl, nCino, True Time Tracker, etc.
- Analytics: Dashboard Pal, Time Warp, Smart Lists, Rollup Helper, DuplicateCheck, etc.
- Productivity: Agile Accelerator, Service Agent Script, Gong.io, Timeline, S-Docs, etc.
- Commerce: AWS Partner CRM Connector, PayPal, Sync Made Easy, SurveyVista, Zenkraft, JustOn, etc.
- Collaboration: Generative Canvas, Images, CalendarAnything, Webex, Flowdometer, DropBox, etc.
- ERP: Recruiting App, Accounting, Org Chart, Appinium, Inspire Planner, GoMeddo, etc.
Lightning Platform
The Lightning platform is a unique low-code tool to boost your CRM. It consists of a library of configurable components that you can drag and drop into place. In essence, it lets you custom-build your own apps in Salesforce to meet your specific workflows and needs. It also supports integrations with your external data and stakeholders, as well as provides prebuilt themes.
A variety of tools are available within Lightning:
- App Builder: Build your own apps using pre-built components.
- Process Builder/Lightning Flow: Set up efficient workflows with point-and-click abilities.
- Lightning Object Creator: Transform spreadsheets (such as Excel and Google Sheets) into apps.
Salesforce AI: Einstein AI
Einstein powers Salesforce’s AI features, enabling AI-assisted experiences and efficiencies. Einstein is incorporated into every business area in Salesforce, so you can boost automation, personalization and data-driven decision-making.
Einstein AI grants your team intelligent, low-code controls for improving your customer and employee tooling. Additionally, you can power CRM AI data to discover new insights and opportunities. Key features of Salesforce AI are related to:
- Content generation (emails, summaries, product descriptions, recommended insights)
- Personalized customer experiences
- Agent productivity
- Real-time predictions
- Customer journeys
- Knowledge bases
- Automated processes
- Einstein Copilot
- Einstein 1 Studio
- Copilot Builder
- Prompt Builder
- Model Builder
- Einstein Trust Layer
- Dynamic Grounding
- Sensitive Data Masking
Why choose Salesforce and how to get started?
There’s not just one reason why Salesforce is the #1 customer relationship management platform in the world. This robust platform has numerous features and advantages that make it rise above the rest.
For example, Salesforce software can transform your business by building strong rapport with customers, new and old. Boost customer engagement, team productivity, operational efficiency and business growth – all from a single, unified platform. Here’s how.
1. Choose your partner wisely
To reap the benefits of Salesforce, it's essential to have a top Salesforce partner to co-pilot your solution. While Salesforce is intuitive and integrates some low-code features, leading Salesforce specialists will more effectively tailor your solution.
2. Dream big, but start small
Getting started with the Salesforce platform can seem overwhelming at first. Define your priorities as a business so you can start small with your most urgent requirements and scale up your full solution in stages.
3. Don’t settle for out-of-the-box
One of Salesforce’s greatest strengths is the myriad of built-in features that save time and resources. Yet, don’t settle for something premade when your needs are more complex. Having a Salesforce specialist on board will enable you to customize on your own terms.
CTA: Rev up your Salesforce solution with our experts today. We’ll walk you through the advantages of Salesforce and how our teams customize it to fulfill your KPIs.
Jumpstart Salesforce success with Nearsure
Whether you’re pursuing leads, providing customer support, building personalized campaigns or all of the above, Salesforce is a one-stop shop for business success.
Our top services
To ensure effective integration, customization and support, lean on a seasoned certified Salesforce partner like us. We’ll work closely with your teams to identify opportunities to boost efficiency, build top experiences and raise your ROI. Our end-to-end services include:
- Salesforce consulting
- Salesforce CRM implementation services
- Salesforce integration services
- Salesforce analytics
- Salesforce low-code solutions
- Salesforce AI solutions
- Salesforce training & mentorship
- Salesforce support services
- Salesforce managed services
- Salesforce staffing agency
Our key values
We have a decade of experience in driving Salesforce success for global brands. Everything we do is focused on creating new value for you and all our Salesforce customers. To achieve smart solutions that make an impact, we leverage our business values:
- Decade-wise Salesforce expertise. Our Salesforce experts are well-versed in the platform’s finer points and can help pinpoint the right Salesforce strategy.
- Resource-effective agile method. Our teams integrate agile best practices to guarantee efficient and high-quality work that aligns with your business goals.
- Business-first mindset. Technical excellence is just one of our specialties. We’re also proud of our business aplomb, which informs our technical decision-making and boosts key Salesforce outcomes.
- Shared time zones. Our Salesforce specialists are located in Latin America, enabling top workday overlap for seamless real-time collaboration.
- Open door communication. Transparency is a key part of our company identity. Our Salesforce teams are strong communicators who value honest conversations. Our top English and cultural proximity also supports frictionless ongoing communication.
- Excellence via Studios. At Nearsure, we elevate our technical skills through a Studio model. In specialized working groups, our professionals come together to exchange knowledge, leverage best practices and ultimately enhance your Salesforce results.
- Future-forward partnership. We’re keen to build strong lasting relationships that evolve with your needs. Our mission is to create future-proof products that drive value for you today and tomorrow.
Get on a call with our Salesforce consultants today.
FAQs
What are Salesforce Clouds?
Salesforce offers a variety of products that meet today’s most urgent business challenges. Called “Clouds,” these specialized sets of services are tailored to business areas such as Sales, Service, Marketing, Commerce, Experience, Analytics and more.
Each Cloud has features designed to make life easier for your teams, as well as boost customer outcomes. For example, the Sales Cloud has functions that streamline efforts to capture leads, enhance services, land more deals and more.
How does Salesforce protect security?
As a cloud-based platform, Salesforce uses best-in-class security protocols. It has a top cybersecurity landscape and follows advanced regulatory standards for data privacy and compliance. Some key features include data encryption, airtight user access controls, firewalls, data backups and more.
Is Salesforce an AI platform?
Salesforce is an all-in-one CRM platform that includes AI-led features. Its built-in Einstein AI platform supports automation, personalization and data-first functions. Through Einstein AI, Salesforce is more powerful than ever, enabling new efficiencies and experiences that define business excellence.