Salesforce.com

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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).

It is an essential tool for medium to enterprise businesses, but it has to be designed well from the beginning. Implemented properly, the executive team, operations, sales leadership, inside sales, direct sales, marketing, and more will benefit.

Vorteile

HIGHLY customizable. All data fields can be pulled into reporting/dashboards. To implement properly, you have to reverse-engineer what metrics are important to your business. Once you have a comprehensive understanding of the reporting that you want to see then you can build fields, pick-lists, radio buttons, etc so you capture all relevant data. The beauty is that you are not at all limited to the out-of-the-box configuration (which is good, but generic). In the past I have built in lead sources and ROI, appointment setting quality grading, commission reporting, stack ranking, and many other highly customized reports. Start with the end in mind and then find a good implementation partner who can execute on your plan.

Nachteile

Cost and support at the lower levels. Unless you have (pay for) their premium support, their customer service is not quick to act.

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.

Vorteile

I have been using, recommending and adopting salesforce.com for my sales teams for ten years in several different digital technology, media and advertising organizations. I can say unequivocally that the CRM software has evolved from being a supplement and "nice to have" to a must buy and necessary and vital tool for doing business. The key to any business solutions and software product is getting the team to adopt and use it. Training and practice is essential. Its like your golf game, the more you practice the better your score or working out, no pain, no gain.

I like the social media and conversational abilities you can have with sales team; the app is excellent for quick reviews and checking on status of pending, pitches and prospects; the flexibility and customization options based o salesperson, account, deal size, industry vertical. In one organization we adopted it for internal sales data use and tracking and also incorporated product data about our partners, customers, audience metrics and analytics and distribution platform.

Nachteile

Depending on the level of subscription, will also vary with the amount of personalized training you receive. I would also say there needs to be more attention and customization devoted to industry verticals that contain many nuances regarding customer segments and rev streams. This includes the advertising and digital sales industries where there are multiple customer touchpoints and rev streams including agencies, direct to client, programmatic, 3rd party vendors, ad tech partners etc. I also think saleforce.com needs to develop more compatible software and training that integrates salesforce,com into other software linked to finance, accounting etc.

Empfehlung für andere Nutzer

I would recommend that you try several types of CRM software that fit with your company's culture, size, client base and industry. Get involvement from your team - account managers, account execs, sales managers, VP Sales, marketing support- who will all have varying opinions on needs and functionalities to improve business flow, communications, customer x and employee x.

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.

Vorteile

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.

Nachteile

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.