Salesforce was started as Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM company. Salesforce now provides different software solutions and a platform for users and various kinds of developers to develop and distribute customer-specific software. Salesforce.com is based on multi-tenant architecture. This means that multiple customers share common technology and all the variants run on the latest release. You don’t have to worry about the application or infrastructure upgrades being automated.
There have been huge changes in cloud computing from the past few years. Salesforce, which comes under cloud computing, had a massive impact on the present technological world.
In this blog, we’re going to cover all the topics of “Salesforce”.
Here’s the thing.
Before going to the actual topic of “Salesforce” let’s know some basic definitions of Cloud computing and CRM.
Cloud Computing:
Cloud computing is a remote server in managing, storing, and processing the data instead of personal/server computers.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM):
CRM is a kind of software which is used to store customer information like name, age, phone number, and address. It keeps on track of the activities such as the number of incoming and outgoing calls, number of websites, and so on.
Now, we will move into knowing “Salesforce.”
A SaaS (Software as a Service) CRM is used to manage customer relationships, in building your applications, and integrate the systems. The Salesforce tool helps to create custom solutions as per the requirements of the business. In recent times, Salesforce has expanded from Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to products’ multitude.
Benefits of Salesforce:
Here are some of the advantages of Salesforce:
- The data of Salesforce is stored in the cloud to use it from anywhere all over the world.
- It is referred to as the complete feature-rich solution for service, sales, marketing, community management, and partner management.
- Salesforce increases customer retention, loyalty, and satisfaction.
- It can easily integrate with third-party applications.
- Accelerates sales productivity.
- Increases your company’s growth.
- Salesforce fulfills the needs of small, medium, and large organizations.
- Based on the market response, Salesforce optimizes business campaigns continuously.
- It works on the pay-as-you-go model.
Salesforce Architecture:
Salesforce architecture can be divided into five components:
- Scalable Metadata Platform
- Trusted multi-tenant Cloud
- APIs
- Enterprise Ecosystem
- CRM and Related Functionality
- Scalable Metadata Platform
- Trusted multi-tenant Cloud
- APIs
- Enterprise Ecosystem
- CRM and Related Functionality
Scalable Metadata Platform: It is used for the customizations and allows you to increase concurrent user instances.
Trusted multi-tenant Cloud: In this, there are multiple instances of operating more applications separately in a shared environment.
APIs: Salesforce provides Application Program Interface (API) in developing mobile applications.
Enterprise Ecosystem: Salesforce has a vast ecosystem when compared to other partners.
CRM and Related functionality: Salesforce includes all the CRM’s features for creating the applications.
Features of Salesforce:
Salesforce CRM doesn’t need any technical knowledge to set up for the management. It is designed for marketing, service, and sales. Salesforce is featured with the elements that are required to run the business with embedded intelligence on an automation platform. Let’s look at the features of Salesforce:
- Contact Management
- Opportunity Management
- Quote Management
- Quote to Cash
- Salesforce for small business
- Lead Management
Contact Management: Salesforce assures hassle-free management to critical information of the customers. Also, it gives the picture of the engage-enhancement strategies of the customers in service deeper understanding. The cloud-based management can easily collaborate in sharing the insight documents to the workplace. Besides, the deals movement accesses all the data.
Opportunity Management: It offers an opportunity to view the customer’s timeline activity. Also, it depicts many stages of the particular deal in deciding the next move. The ready-made templates in the opportunity management ensure hassle-free emailing to the customers.
Quote Management: Salesforce simplifies the business process and sales with productivity tracking and forecasting. With CRM applications, the products’ management becomes very easy. You can track the established quantity of products as well as the revenue schedule. The quote management is used to build the quoting of the client’s data.
Quote to Cash: Salesforce can automate three essential elements: price, configuration, and quote in simplifying the quote management. The sales representatives select the right quotes with the latest discounts. Using Salesforce CRM, the user can submit his proposal very fast. It also makes the cash collecting and invoice sending process easy.
Salesforce for small business: Salesforce offers a guide to growing the startups and small businesses. The application has also provided best-in-class services to customers. With the help of a regular customer view, the trailhead catches the data from the channels, emails, and calendars. There’s an assistant set up to answer the queries very quickly. Salesforce gives in-depth details of the product, including Customer Relationship Management.
Lead Management: The Salesforce lead management gives access to update the contacts with industry best practices. It can also use the path to understanding the documents. The CRM application informs the lead’s source and boosts the revenue-generating mechanism.
Salesforce Use Case:
Many companies use Salesforce in improving productivity and solving problems. Let’s look at how the HCL company utilizes Salesforce in solving business challenges.
- Suppose HCL is facing a problem in business requirements, that’s why the company integrated a new salesforce application called .NET SFA.
- HCL is also looking to overcome the data inconsistency and redundancy problems of the multiple applications.
HCL has chosen to implement SFA to meet the requirements in governance, security, and integration of third-party applications. There are different modules to solve the challenges, as shown below.
Account Management Module: HCL uses this module to implement custom solutions for real-time business logic and manage the batch updates.
Lead Management Module: This module is used for lead capturing from the external sources to prevent duplication.
Contact Management Module: After the account conversation, the contact management module is used to manage the data flow.
Integration with other applications: Salesforce CRM integrates with other apps like BI, ODS, SAP, and other third-party exchange applications.
Opportunity Management Module: The module is used to add the products in enabling manual product pricing on discount.
Data types in Salesforce:
There are five different types of data in Salesforce:
- String
- ID
- Double
- Boolean
- Varies by type
Let’s look at how these data types work:
| Data Type | Functionality |
|---|---|
| String | E-mail, text area, auto number, text area, rich text area, long text area, and URL. |
| ID | Master–detail, Look up relational relationship. |
| Double | Number, formula, roll-up summary, currency, and percent. |
| Boolean | Checkbox |
| Varies by type | Formula field |
Different field types:
| Field Type | Description |
|---|---|
| AnyType | It’s a polymorphic data type which runs a picklist, string, currency, boolean, reference, ID, int, DateTime, email data, percent or double the data depending on the field. |
| ID | Master–detail, Look up relational relationship. |
| Combobox | It includes enumerated values to specify a particular value in the list. |
| Address | It contains the address of the field |
| Calculated | It is defined by a formula |
| Email address | |
| Currency | Currency values |
| ID | A primary key field for an object |
| Data Category Group Reference | It refers to data category group |
| EncryptedString | Combination of numbers, letters, symbols stored in the encrypted form |
| Location | Contains longitude and latitude values for geolocation fields |
| Junction Id List | It Manipulates the string array in a single API call. |
| Multipicklist | It includes a set of enumerated values |
| Master Record | It saves the record ID |
| Phone | Values can include alphabetic characters |
| Percent | Percentage values |
| Reference | Analogous to a foreign key field in SQL |
| Picklist | It includes a set of enumerated values |
| URL | Displays the client applications as hyperlinks |
| Textarea | It displayed as a multi-line text field |
Salesforce Components:
- All TAB menu: It can be found in salesforce.com along with the “More TAB menu.”
- User menu: We can use this component to change the “profile settings.”
- Application menu: Among the applications, it allows shuffling.
- Sidebar menu: It has different sections like monitor, build, logs, jobs, etc.
- Search Menu: It helps to search for anything in Salesforce.
Conclusion:
The above article gives you the details about Salesforce right from the basics such as Salesforce architecture, features, benefits, components, use case, data types, and field types. I hope this article helps to acquire some in Salesforce CRM. Still, you have any queries, feel free to comment in the below section. Happy Learning!