Salesforce Pros and Cons: Does the Best in the Field Mean the Best for Your Business?
Everybody in sales knows Salesforce. In 2019, it was named the world’s #1 CRM for the sixth consecutive time. But is the best CRM a necessary investment for your business?
Salesforce is the Coca-Cola of the customer success industry. Everybody engaged in this field knows the platform, and its popularity is not overhyped. This year, it was named the world’s #1 CRM for the sixth consecutive time, as well as became one of the top vendors in the market along with Oracle, Adobe, and SAP:
Started from a small apartment in 1999, Salesforce pioneered the idea of a cloud-based CRM software in spite of people’s overall distrust of any third party holding their data. In the course of the following 20 years, Salesforce has marked multiple milestones:
- Helping 150,000+ companies run their business more effectively in the field of sales, marketing, ecommerce, customer service, and more.
- Launching its own Dreamforce conference, which is a major San Francisco event today.
- Developing a number of accompanying products, like its own marketplace AppExchange or Chatter, a private social network.
- Making a number of key acquisitions, like email service provider ExactTarget, app building platform Heroku, and integration vendor MuleSoft.
- Reaching a $1 billion revenue mark that became $10 billion by 2018.
- Launching its own Trailhead training academy.
- Enjoying the recognition among the fastest growing Top 10 enterprise software companies.
This kind of achievement woos lots of customers, but Salesforce’s laurels still can’t make it a perfect solution for any business out there. Our review of the platform’s major pros and cons will help you decide if it fits your business, and if yes—whether you need the help of Salesforce consultants to get the most out of it or you can do well enough with your in-house forces.
Functionality
Though Salesforce is widely known for its sales application, the vendor has extended its reach well beyond this area. Today, Salesforce is a set of products called Clouds:
As your business grows, you may feel the need to automate workflows in particular business areas. Here’s where Salesforce comes in handy as it’s possible to purchase a Salesforce product license to cover a specific business need.
Yes, if you have a few needs, it means buying a few licenses. There are almost no cost-efficient stacks where you can buy a few products at a discount. There’s only one bundle combining Sales and Service Clouds, and a special edition for small businesses.
When you use a few Clouds in Salesforce, data can be shared across all of them. It creates a fruitful environment for cross-team collaboration, which is a prerequisite for providing successful omnichannel customer experience. What’s more, Salesforce has a private social network called Chatter where employees can connect with each other to share knowledge, insights, and ideas.
Salesforce has one more killer feature: its products are powered by AI technologies. For example, in the Sales Cloud, you can enable AI to automate data entries and run predictive analysis.
Keep in mind, however, that while you will have access to all the out-of-the-box features in your purchased plan, it will have its own limitations. These typically pertain to the number of validation rules, emails, file shares, and reports allowed, which can negatively affect your business workflows. It’s possible to upgrade some features, but it comes at an additional fee. For this reason, it’s better to project your business scalability in advance to understand whether your strategy matches the possibilities Salesforce can provide you with.
Pros:
- Versatile products for process automation in different business areas
- Data sharing opportunities for managing omnichannel customer experiences
- A private social network for employees
- AI technologies for automation and next-best-move predictions
Cons:
- Certain functional limitations in each edition
Configuration and Customization
Salesforce is an open ecosystem specifically designed to be configured and customized. When default features are not enough, the Lightning Platform gives you an opportunity to develop apps and digitize your business processes. What’s more, Salesforce’s artificial intelligence tool called Einstein is built into the Lightning Platform so that users can create AI-powered apps without heavy coding.
There are a number of drag-and-drop and coding options for configuration and further customization, such as custom fields, email templates, tailored dashboards, or automated workflows for specific tasks.
Although users with minimal technical experience can manage the platform with no hassle, in many cases this level of skills isn’t sufficient. If you want your Salesforce platform to work as if it was developed in-house, most probably you will have to hire a Salesforce admin and a team of certified developers. What’s more, the limit upgrades and additional plugins required for customization will come at a price.
Once you start an optimization spree, make sure you have a platform personalization plan since the absence of a well-thought-out scope of needed features may lead to over-optimization. Why is it undesirable? First, you will have a pile of redundant features. Second, the more features your system has, the more challenges your employees will experience while trying to get the most out of it. As a result, you will face a rather steep learning curve and a low adoption level.
Pros:
- A variety of options for customization and configuration
- Minimum technical skills required for basic personalization
- Accessible development of AI-powered apps
Cons:
- Sophisticated customization requires an admin and a developer team
- The risk of over-customization entails a lower adoption level
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Training
Salesforce doesn’t hide the fact that you’ll need some training to get the most out of the platform. For this reason, they launched an educational gamified platform with plenty of training resources to learn at a user’s pace:
There are also various learning resources, from tools and guides to webinars, video tutorials, and blogs for each major role: Salesforce admins, developers, partners, and students.
In spite of the fact that Salesforce learning resources are designed to cut on training costs, in reality, staff from different departments may feel rather overwhelmed and incompetent to use the platform to drive any results. Consequently, it’s often necessary to introduce an adoption plan with a training curriculum for every level and track the progress continuously.
Pros:
- An educational gamified platform with options to learn online, in class, via workshops and community
- Self-learning resources
Cons:
- A steep learning curve
- The need for ongoing training
Updates and Innovation
Salesforce is constantly working at enhancing its products and is proud to have technologically-advanced releases three times a year for all users. As the system is updated automatically, the plan for an annual release cycle is available beforehand for everyone to prepare. What’s more, there are pre-release updates usually used for extensive testing and bug reporting.
The main challenge of such a state of things is that once new updates are rolled out, they cannot be rolled back. As a result, there can be forced changes to the Salesforce UI or functionality. In the case of the UI, the change in the layout of some components may lead to users’ confusion. When it comes to the functionality, it may compromise your customized workflows and even require additional training to assist the staff in learning how new or modified features work.
Pros:
- Ongoing innovations and enhancements
- Regular updates
- The possibility of pre-release testing
Cons:
- Forced releases can bring disruptive changes to the UI and custom features
- Additional user training required to come to terms with changes
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