Last year Salesforce announced it was ranked the #1 CRM provider by International Data Corporation (IDC) in its latest Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker, for the eighth consecutive year. The study shows that Salesforce is the market share leader in IDC’s segments for sales applications, customer service applications, marketing applications, model-driven application platforms, and enterprise community applications. In a Salesforce Relationship Survey conducted 2014 -2016, among 10,500+ customers, they found that companies who invest in the Salesforce platform can see, (on average) success metrics such as 38% faster decision-making, a 25% increase in revenue, and a 35% jump in customer satisfaction. It’s no wonder why companies are looking to partner with Salesforce to drive their digital transformation, and company growth, and connect with customers in innovative new ways. We’ve all heard amazing data points about the efficiency achieved, but what is it about Salesforce that really makes it the #1 CRM? Let’s take a closer look.
- Growth Capacity
- Focused on Customer Success
- Extensibility
- Visibility
- Efficiency
Growth Capacity
“Salesforce allows companies to ideate, design, build. test and deploy much faster than any other platform due to the declarative capabilities of the system and the robust framework.” Cole Conroy, CEO of Roycon.
There’s an increasing demand for the need for simplified scalability. You may or may not have heard this quote before, “the pace of change is faster than ever before and will only continue to accelerate.” I am unsure who initially said this quote, but I continuously hear it in the ecosystem, because it’s so important and relative when it comes to your tech stack. Even when we think about our customers, they expect projects to be completed even faster and more efficiently than ever before. Organizations need to stay ahead, with highly flexible work solutions, that can grow and adapt to their business changes, right now, and in the future. The Salesforce platform offers this type of flexibility and growth capacity. The Lightning platforms framework consists of HTML-based components that are easily extensible and customizable to help businesses create customized experiences which allow businesses to be able to pivot as their goals, strategies, and approaches to business change.
A Focus on Customer Success
Salesforce has an entire ecosystem surrounding its customers that’s purely dedicated to customer success. And, It’s not just customer success managers at Salesforce, but an entire ecosystem of program architects, partners, independent vendors, individual Salesforce evangelists, mentors, and just people in the community who are eager to help one another succeed on the platform. It’s an ecosystem where the users are believers in the platform’s ability to transform the way people work. Additionally, Salesforce has a free learning platform called, Trailhead. It breaks down any barriers to learning by offering a completely free and accessible pathway into the Salesforce ecosystem. Last year, there were over 3 million users on the platform who are growing their careers in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Extensibility
The Salesforce platform has the ability to connect to everything a company needs to achieve a 360-degree view of the customer. Salesforce has its own portfolio of products that connects your marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT teams with a single view of your customer data. That’s pretty powerful, but what makes this even more powerful is the platform’s ability to connect and integrate data from other platforms, quickly, and easily. This is pretty critical when it comes to solving business challenges. The number of helpful Salesforce apps on the SalesforceApp Exchange makes it easy for customers to quickly add a solution to overcome a new business challenge. Salesforce’s AppExchange has you ready to head into the new future with a new suite of solutions that meet the needs of your next steps. The Apps are easy to install, you can see our quick tutorial here on how to install Apps on the Salesforce AppExchange. Most B2B companies leverage the AppExchange to automate tasks, consolidate information, and more closely integrate systems with Salesforce. Some of these apps can allow your business to integrate into other systems fast, saving you time and effort in getting disparate platforms to talk to one another.
Improved Customer Visibility
Salesforce built its entire solution with the customer in mind in order to provide its clients with the ability to provide the best customer service. Users on the platform need to be able to quickly access accounts, contracts, tasks, events, and any information that’s relevant to their customers, quickly. The Salesforce platform provides a convenient way to do that. And with the 360-degree view and the extensibility of the platform, the platform can become a single source of truth. So not only is the data easily accessible, but the data is reliable.
With the ability to connect your entire business on one platform, Salesforce is able to give you a 360-degree view of your organization. Companies can see and maintain complete visibility from lead to cash, and gain valuable insights such as lead sources, individual rep performance, quotes, orders, and revenue, throughout the entire customer lifecycle. With the use of products such as Marketing Cloud or Pardot companies can gain visibility into the most successful marketing channels, and pivot their marketing initiatives to focus on what is performing the best. Ultimately, the platform provides you with the holistic data to make data-driven decisions.
Efficiency – Improving Business Performance
“The adoption of Salesforce has been shown to increase sales productivity by as much as 34%.” – Salesforce.com
I think we all know there’s a significant amount of efficiency and increased productivity gained by using the Salesforce platform. Through the use of automation, minimalizing time-consuming tasks, more collaboration, and better processes, Salesforce can be an efficient system that gives your organization what it needs to run better and deliver more value to your customers. Overall, it’s a huge increase in productivity and business efficiency.
So how does the platform help your business? With the following:
- With extensibility, it’s the most comprehensive solution.
- Unparalleled data security.
- The platform is a completely customizable solution.
- The Salesforce AppExhcnage provides Apps, to help solve business challenges.
- By creating innovative business solutions.
Those are 5 reasons why we feel Salesforce is the #1 CRM. If you’re exploring Salesforce, or you’re just looking to enhance your existing solution, feel free to reach out to us.
Jennifer Contino
Director of Marketing
Jen, our director of marketing comes to us with over a decade of marketing experience and nearly a decade within the Salesforce ecosystem. She’s known for her work with Pardot, creativity within the digital marketing space, and passion for marketing and the power of Pardot and Salesforce together.
About Roycon
We’re an Austin-based Salesforce Consulting Partner, with a passion and belief that the Salesforce platform’s capabilities can help businesses run more efficiently and effectively. Whether you are just getting started with Salesforce or looking to realize its full potential, Roycon specializes in Salesforce Implementations, Salesforce Ongoing Support, and Salesforce Integrations, and Development. We’re the certified partner to guide the way to increase Salesforce Adoption, make strategic decisions, and build your Salesforce Roadmap for success.