10 Reasons to Adopt Salesforce.com for Customer Relationship Management

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Salesforce.com is a Software as a Service CRM leader packed with an array of features and functions designed for sales, marketing, and service and support automation. It offers on demand software as a service platform that gives significant advantages over on-premise technology in terms of cost and functionality. There are several cloud-based CRM applications that provide several customization options, however its tools may be daunting to some users and can seem overly flexible and complex in these areas. Salesforce.com offers a robust technology platform that is based on an on-demand and shared, multi-tenant architecture. The CRM software sets new standards for functionality and support that is comparable to best companies in the industry. Salesforce.com could be recommended for company that needs to efficiently manage contacts and track sales, run targeted marketing campaigns, and manage customer support.

1. Brand Image

Salesforce.com is backed by its widely recognized brand name. Salesforce.com is market share leader for hosted CRM software products. It is a 800 pound giant of the SaaS CRM industry. It is one of the most highly rated CRM applications in the market that depends on the edition purchased. They can offer the best value for the money.

2. Easy Installation

Salesforce.com is easy to install. It takes less time to install and the wizards makes the setup a snap. Salesnet uses 128-bit SSL security and three-tiered authentication that requires users to enter their company name, user name, and a password every time they transfer data between the web-based and off-line version.

3. Customization

The customization feature in Salesforce.com depends on the edition you are using. Customization is manageable for a typical user. The online tutorials offered on Salesforce.com that can offer database customization. Changes can be implemented with little effort.

For instance, you can modify the navigation tabs near the top of the web page (Campaigns, Leads, Accounts, etc). It’s easy to add tabs for sections of Salesforce.com that are not noted. There are overwhelming Customization options with much flexibility and the tools are daunting for some users.

4. Online facilities

Being an online CRM Salesforce.com can access the system from remote location. It is a rear advantage for CRM tool that allows productivity gains. Salesforce.com offers wireless editions for both browser-based and e-mail based devices. It allows users to enter the real time queries and request accurate data while roaming. For instance, you can see all the deals closing this month which is greater than $1 million. Further, you can install a small client on the device to store queries for use in future.

Salesforce offers a powerful new S3 edition that gives IT departments a client-server application platform called sforce. It integrates Salesforce with back-office applications. S3 also has a shared document library, an Outlook edition, rich-media HTML e-mail templates and tools for managing multiple sales teams, workflow, and business processes. In addition, S3 also provides options for opportunity alerts when deal closes or certain business conditions are fulfilled.

Additionally, Salesforce.com offers added advantage to access and update Salesforce.com data from a variety of handheld devices that includes BlackBerry, iPhone, or Windows Mobile products.

5. Third party solutions

Salesforce.com CRM adds two additional services - AppExchange and Force.com. AppExchange is growing third party software directory. AppExchange offers third party SaaS solutions to compliment salesforce.com CRM. Force.com is a Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) using which users can create custom applications that can be implemented into the Salesforce.com workflow to enhance productivity.

6. Pricing

Salesforce.com SaaS solution offers numerous advantages with reasonable price per month. It has no commitment for high-dollar software. With each session you will have SSL encryption and full mobility. Salesforce.com could have several editions for buyers that can have the right choice to fit the business, based on the needs. The Contact Manager Edition allows the users to store contacts, manage customers, tasks and meetings as well as run activity reports. The price can go up to $250/user/month for the Unlimited Edition.

7. Benefits to small business

In the SMBs already using Salesforce.com CRM system the service is a natural way to manage the leads and customers. It allows cost savings in time and training, enabling sharing of knowledge in multiple locations with most relevant information constantly available on the top. Since it is a cloud computing service, it doesn’t require an IT department, additional hardware or software maintenance.

8. Customer Service

Service Cloud comes with online solution for customers that allows companies to automate their customer service functions from traditional contact center channels such as phone calls, e-mails, and chat. Moreover, the service enables communication through new channels such as website portals, communities and social networks (Facebook and Twitter).  The users can now gathers crowd-sourced knowledge from experts on their website or even in social communities like Facebook.

9. User-friendly Interface

Salesforce.com involves web-based and off-line interfaces, which are similar except for the home screens. You might be able to customize a graphical dashboard displaying sales charts as your Web-based home screen. The graphs offer a nice display.

10. Innovation

Salesforce.com keeps on improving on its flagship on-demand CRM solution, especially with value-added solutions such as Apex (development platform), ContentExchange (content management) and Successforce (user community). Salesforce.com has a unique IdeaExchange community, this is where customers can ask their questions, experts answer, the community votes, and the best knowledge is ranked the highest. Users can extend a knowledge base, which can be made available via Google or any search engine.