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A brief history of Salesforce

Salesforce was founded in 1999 in the USA to address customer dissatisfaction with Siebel, the most widely used Recruitment CRM software at the turn of the century. At that time, installing a management software was not an easy task.

Marc Benioff, Parker Harris, Frank Dominguez and Dave Moellenhoff created a new CRM model and developed Cloud Computing and SaaS technologies. Initially, they were ridiculed by big companies like Adobe and Microsoft because they were betting on a simple, user-friendly, product running through the internet on a marketing campaign, which affirms the end of an era when programs needed to be installed on systems. It was a simpler way for organizations to adapt to new technology trends, with Marc Benioff traveling the globe to advise company leaders. In its first year, Salesforce had 1,500 customers and more than 30,000 subscribers, quickly becoming a multinational company.

Over the years the company has diversified its products, including solutions for websites and applications creation, internal communication, marketing and project management, with vast customizable options for attending to the clients’ needs. Its growth has led other companies to integrate their own business applications and components within Salesforce.

Its annual revenue grew exponentially from US$ 53 million in 2006 to US$ 5 billion in 2015. In January 2018, Salesforce has more than 150,000 customers in its catalog with companies such as L’Oréal, Coca-Cola, Ford, Vodafone, Nikon and Petrobras. That number rose up to US$ 10.48 billion, increasing 25% in comparison to the previous fiscal year.

Despite its growth, Salesforce still faces strong competition from the giants Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle.

Main Features

-> Workflow: Salesforce allows you to automate project management with a variety of possible actions, such as field updates, email submissions, tasks, and records creation, along with creating publications on Chatter, Salesforce’s social network.

-> Chatter: the free corporate social media for Salesforce users. There, it is possible to form groups, share documents and integrate platforms with other social media. Chatter is also accessible via mobile, it allows the team to share ideas and opinions, fostering collaboration. You can, for example, receive updates on the progress of any document — pdf, .ppt or .doc — and track the life cycle of a customer request or a sale.

-> Access: you can access Salesforce on any device, including smartphones. It has an app for iPhone, which provides access to contacts, leads, and tasks.

-> Contacts Management: You can have a complete view of your customers, with information such as activity history, important contacts, and internal discussions related to each account. You can engage in customer targeting, and with a Salesforce Professional license, you can have private accounts and contacts.

-> Leads Management: Salesforce enables leads to be tracked from the first contacts to the closure of deals. It is also possible to integrate them with SEO strategies and Google Adwords campaigns to analyze where the most qualified leads come from.

-> Marketing: in the platform, one can manage all email marketing campaigns and know the results of each one. With Pardot Marketing Automation the sales and marketing teams can work together on leads qualification.

-> Social media: Social Media Marketing enables users to analyze, publish and engage with the target audience.

-> Sales: Tracking the sales pipeline becomes simpler with Salesforce. In addition, you can analyze and understand the interaction of potential customers and connect them to the sales team quickly through personalized marketing campaigns.

-> Customer Service: Reaching customers is simpler with the customer support integration using apps or websites.

-> Reports: You can get custom reports from the simplest to the most complex. Salesforce provides a wealth of information and options in the analytics panel.

-> Validation Rules: To make sure that report generation will not contain incorrect data, you can determine whether the data entered on the platform is valid or not. An example is when a new opportunity arises and its specific origin requires validation. It is then possible to create a determinant to be fulfilled. Therefore, the alert will only be triggered when the opportunity has its origin pre-established.

-> Security: Salesforce’s security model covers features such as profiles, roles, seting permissions, sharing settings and more. All these security possibilities that Salesforce offers is of great value for data maintenance, especially in the wake of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

“The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.” Albert Einstein

On the premise of its birth, when Salesforce was launched to simplify the CRM use, the company wants to democratize Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). To accomplish that, it invested on a cloud-based A.I. platform, the Salesforce Einstein.

Developed in partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the A.I. is simplified to be used in everyday business. For those who have been Salesforce users before Salesforce Einstein, the Artificial Intelligence functionalities became available after one of its updates. For example, if a user had used the software for sales automation, A.I. features related to sales became available after the upgrade.

In short, Artificial Intelligence has been added to existing products and developers now have access to features that allow them to build their own applications using A.I. technology.

Pros and cons

Pros

• Salesforce’s user interface brings a vast possibility of customization without the need for coding knowledge

• The news feed and social media function work well with Facebook, which allows browsing with a familiar structure. Status updates, posts, and uploading files directly to the dashboard and sharing of links are also features of the platform;

• The ability to use the app via smartphones is very convenient, enabling mobility for professionals;

• Excellent tracker of opportunities and contacts, allowing the integration between sales and marketing teams.

Cons

•  Salesforce customization can be a part of both Pros and Cons. The administrator needs attention when setting up required fields, access and reports, otherwise, the user experience can become quite unpleasant;

• Price may be high for smaller companies. The most popular version — Enterprise — costs US$150 per month. Cheaper CRM solutions, such as Microsoft’s, gain an advantage due to the price tag;

•  Its reports are not friendly to less experienced professionals compared to competing softwares. Even reports with the most basic information may appear daunting;

•  Technical support is one of Salesforce’s biggest weaknesses, according to its users. Reports are frequent about the difficulty in establishing contact in the case of doubts and problems. Salesforce’s technical support team is not trained adequately which causes several problems to remain unresolved.