In recent years, the IT industry has seen a shift from servers to the cloud, making cloud adoption an inevitable choice for businesses. Among various cloud platforms, Salesforce boasts the No.1 market share in sales and customer service cloud applications worldwide.
In this article, we aim to explain what Salesforce is and what it can do, especially for beginners who may have heard the term but still feel unsure about it.
1. What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a service provided by Salesforce.com and is categorized as a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) application that collects and analyzes customer information to provide optimal approaches.
In the CRM industry, other popular platforms include Knowledge Suite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Oracle CRM on Demand, Kintone, and Zoho CRM. The greatest strength of Salesforce lies in its customizability. Although Salesforce already comes with a wide range of built-in features, it can be extended by integrating with external systems or applications.
Moreover, simple modifications such as changing screen layouts or database fields can be done with mouse-based operations—no coding required.
2. What Can You Do with Salesforce?
Salesforce services are structured to support different business functions:
Sales support: Salesforce enables customer management, marketing automation, quotation process automation, and customer data analysis, helping to increase customer acquisition and sales.
Customer support: Inquiries can be managed on a single screen, improving customer satisfaction.
Commerce applications: Salesforce also provides platforms like B2B Commerce, making procurement operations for businesses more efficient and easier to manage.
User custom apps: With little to no coding, companies can implement internal systems using apps provided by Salesforce. You can build and integrate internal data or create custom objects.
Third-party apps: These are apps developed by Salesforce partner companies to extend Salesforce’s functionality. They are available through the AppExchange marketplace, enhancing usability and convenience for users.
3. Benefits of Salesforce
So what are the benefits of using Salesforce?
- Improved customer management efficiency: Many companies still manage data with shared Excel sheets. However, Excel can be time-consuming when analyzing sales or reporting. With Salesforce, revenue tracking and forecasting for the next fiscal year become much easier. It also allows tracking of customer visits to prevent lost sales opportunities.
- Cost reduction: With a monthly subscription model based on license purchases, there’s no need to invest in hardware or software.
- Access from anywhere: As a cloud-based service, Salesforce allows updates to customer information and case management from anywhere with an internet connection.
- High customizability: Users can freely change fields and layouts from the admin screen. For instance, it’s possible to set different process flows for specific customers.
4. Conclusion
Salesforce is a sales support system that small and medium-sized businesses can quickly adopt. Since it allows you to start small, the risk is low, and employees who are used to traditional methods can easily transition without much resistance.
At BAP Solution Japan, we offer Salesforce implementation, custom development, and operational support. Please feel free to contact us for consultation or inquiries.
