Salesforce CRM: Software as a Service (SaaS)

Posted on by Mihir Dixit

About Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud based Software as Service (SaaS) provider which mainly provides Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services. Salesforce is mainly used by businesses to enhance their prospects, customer service and better connection with present and future customers and stakeholders.

Salesforce was founded by Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Dave Moellenhoff and Frank Dominguez in 1999. Salesforce headquarters is located in San Francisco, USA. According to salesforce.com, Salesforce employees around 78,000 employees all around the world.

Salesforce CRM is used extensively by many large companies. Notable clients include Amazon, Spotify, American Express and many more. Customer service being one of the most key aspect of any company makes Salesforce CRM a very much needed software to assist the growth of a company.

Terminologies

As we are going to learn more about salesforce CRM and the way it works, it is important to understand terminologies like Software as a Service (SaaS) and Customer Relationship Management(CRM).

Software as a Service (SaaS):

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud based service wherein applications are remotely delivered using internet. A Software as a Service(SaaS) manages application storage, security, access control, backups and performance. An end user is not required to install or maintain, install or upgrade any part of the infrastructure which is handled by the provider. SaaS provider helps an organization to achieve rapid deployment, scalability, efficiency, bug fixes and many more. Salesforce, Slack, Github, Google Workspace are some of the most well known SaaS providers.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM):

Customer Relationship Management is a technology used by businesses and organization to manage customer and maintain customer relations. CRM technology is used mainly in customer relations aspects like marketing, sales, handling customer query and subsequent support to solve their problems. CRM allows the organizations to manage customer and prospective relationships efficiently as CRM technologies allows you to store, track, manage data in one central location in the CRM software. SAP, Salesforce , Zoho are some of the most popular CRM technologies.

CRM Architecture

Services offered by Salesforce CRM

As mentioned previously, Salesforce offers multiple services for customer relationship Management(CRM). Here are the services offered by Salesforce for Customer Relationship Management(CRM).

Sales Cloud

Sales cloud is a cloud based application by Salesforce which helps the salespersons of organizations to sell faster by centralizing customer information, customer leads and customer interaction. Sales cloud automates most of the administrative tasks performed by salesperson of the organization which helps them efficiently focus on interacting with customers and closing the deals on time. Sales Cloud dashboard provides insightful real time picture of the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, leads and making further decisions to provide better services to current customers as well as prospective customers. Companies like Walmart, Lenovo, Redhat are some of the notable companies which use salesforce sales cloud service.

Sales Cloud

Service Cloud

Service Cloud helps organizations to automate processes, streamline workflows and best possible expertise for customer service agents in their jobs. The Service cloud offers features such as email to case, skill based routing, macros and milestone tracking which provides possible insights for the company about the customer feedback about the services offered by the companies. Service cloud also offers embedded Service for In-App Mobile & Web, which let you embed customer support directly into the organization’s mobile app. This helps the customers to directly with customer service agents to solve their queries. Citigroup, live nation entertainment are some of the notable companies using service cloud.

Marketing Cloud

Marketing cloud provides a platform for delivering relevant information across channels and devices. Marketing cloud helps in delivering right messages at right time during all the course of customer relationship. Marketing Cloud includes best solutions for advertising, customer management, content creation and data analysis. It unites customer data with customer behaviors in real time to create a more interactive service for the customer. Every interaction drives personalized, 1-to-1 communications which can be very helpful for customers. Sony, GE, HauteLook, and News Corp Australia are notable brands using Marketing Cloud.

Commerce Cloud

Commerce Cloud​ is a Business to Customers (B2C) and Business to business (B2B) commerce solution by salesforce. Commerce Cloud is a multi-tenant, cloud-based commerce platform that empowers brands to create intelligent, unified buying experiences across all channels — mobile, social, web, and store. Commerce Cloud helps brands launch sooner, grow faster, and reach more customers. The commerce cloud is infused with artificial intelligence which makes it advance solution in context of Customer Relationship Management. Commerce cloud offers B2B and B2C services with respect to need of the organization. Costco, FedEx, Louis Vuitton are some of the notable users of Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

Tableau: Data analytics Cloud

Tableau is a visual analytics platform which is now part of salesforce cloud experience is transforming the way individuals and organizations use data to solve problems. Tableau empowers people around the world to make the most of their data. Tableau approach in regards to analytics helps organization increase productivity, time efficiency and finding new opportunities in regards to businesses. Nike, Coca-Cola, The New York Times are some of the notable companies using Tableau SaaS based CRM.

Slack

Slack is a messaging program, which is now a part of Salesforce cloud services. Slack includes interactive spaces called channels. With all the people, messages and files related to a topic in one place, you can move a whole lot faster. Slack connects you with the people and tools you work with every day so you can easily collaborate with your team.  The Salesforce and Slack integration allows users to communicate in real time between Slack and Salesforce Chatter which helps in increasing team co ordination, improving productivity and streamlining across platforms. Airbnb, Pinterest, Instacart, Shopify are companies which use slack.

Pricing

Salesforce provides different pricing for different products as mentioned above. Here are links of pricing for different salesforce services.

Pros and Cons of Salesforce

Pros:

  • Loyalty Management
  • Customer-organization Engagement
  • Intelligent interaction
  • Better Customization Abilities
  • Detailed Analytics

Cons:

  • The pricing can be enormous for a small business with financial constraints.
  • Configuration can be cumbersome.
  • Vulnerable to cyber threats.
  • Cluttered interface may lead to user dissatisfaction

Potential competitors of Salesforce CRM

Here is list of the potential competitors of Salesforce CRM :

Conclusion

To summarize the blog, I can say that Salesforce provides excellent services as SaaS provider for Customer Relationship (CRM). Every service mentioned has its own different unique ability which shows how vastly salesforce is involved in CRM.

For any organization, customer relationship is the most important part of the organization which requires best possible attention and best possible resources at the forefront. During the course of this blog and subsequent research salesforce stood as a best solution for SaaS CRM services.