Salesforce started in the market as a CRM platform on the Cloud, and ever since its launch. It has been a massive success in the market. Salesforce metadata entered the arena and completely revolutionized the face of CRM software for industries across the world. For those of you who do not know what a CRM is, it means “customer relationship management,” It is one of the best ways for a business to maintain and retain relationships with its customers.
The business can effectively use the CRM platform to target contacts, leads, and opportunities. You can also use the CRM for tracking your business deals. It is highly efficient for product planning and helps you with manufacturing and shipping too. These are the primary benefits of CRM application, and till Salesforce arrived, it was very challenging for businesses to maintain successful CRM applications in the market.
Why does Salesforce score over the traditional CRM?
Now, you might be wondering as to why Salesforce is popular today and how it is different from the conventional CRMs. For many business owners, Salesforce is just another name offering the same CRM platform, like the rest in the market. However, this is not true. They are big differences, and the following are the key reasons why Salesforce scores over the traditional CRM in many ways:
1. Lower costs – In the past, traditional CRM was very expensive. It is practically financially impossible for small business units to have an extensive CRM of their own as it had to be hosted on the company’s own server that again meant high costs. Moreover, the company had to invest in a good infrastructure and developer team to look after the CRM and develop the CRM application, which again is cumbersome and costly for most businesses to do. On the other hand, Salesforce is more convenient as it is hosted on the Cloud, meaning lower costs. Salesforce hosted its CRM on its own Salesforce Cloud space, and so it did not need to spend on special infrastructure or a developer team to manage the software.
2. Shorter time to set up – The traditional CRM took a longer time to set up. In fact, for some businesses, it could take months or even years to be effectively set up and functional. Salesforce CRM does not have this issue. It can be set up in just a few weeks or even days, giving you the scope to focus on the other core business needs.
3. Ease of use – The traditional CRM was very complex and had a difficult interface for most employees of a company to use. There was a huge difference between the specifications of the product desired and the actual product delivered by developers to the company leading to difficulty in use. However, Salesforce has its own developer team that constantly works with the platform. This means the team here takes feedback from their customers and improve the CRM regularly. The levels of customer satisfaction with Salesforce are high, which is the key reason it scored over the traditional CRM to a great extent. It also has the benefits of better change management with its dedicated SF DevOps team that automates:
- New releases through repeated and integrated deployments
- Tracking changes in the production org.
- Testing of units and
- Backup
Therefore, in short, Salesforce has the key motto to embrace better robust DevOps practices for a unique experience for its customers.
Striving for effective communication and collaboration
The DevOps process under Salesforce changes how the developer teams in the company work by bringing in a positive cultural shift. This process breaks the silos down in both the software development and the operations team, business stakeholders, and end-users of the Salesforce platform. Thanks to these robust processes and practices, businesses can deliver their applications faster to get a strategic edge.
Faster Loops For Feedback
The DevOps processes take their inspiration from the agile best practices of incorporation. This feedback loop is continuous and concentrates on enhancing the app’s operational stability and quality based on customer feedback. This assists the development team to boost the feedback loop for the software app for delivery and further enhancement.
The deployment pipeline becomes automated
The Salesforce deployments are automated. This boosts the promotion of the metadata codes and the changes to the configuration easily. They can be applied to multiple environments under Salesforce with just a few clicks. These solutions automate the deployment to enhance the stability and the quality of the application.
Frequent release
The DevOps development team at Salesforce permits the development teams to issue a restricted set of enhancements and features to the customer frequently. This is vital for the collection of end-user feedback and implementing it for improving the app. The management tools used for the release of these features and enhancements are comprehensive. They offer tech support to organizations for enhancing the frequency of release.
The success of the deployment of DevOps under Salesforce depends on shifting important parts of the application development towards the start. This process is called “Shift Left” This implies the Salesforce development team tests the application at the beginning of the cycle over the end after its completion. This robust practice helps to reduce the time between two releases as it is targeted towards the prevention of issues over the detection of problems. For instance, Amazon hugely relied on testing their software apps and roll back to bring in quality and stability to the end-user.
Organizations can opt for maturity assessments, tech support, coaching, and training if they are interested in using DevOps under Salesforce. Here, they need to consult experts on the subject to get customized solutions as per the needs and goals of their businesses. Therefore, for those who think that Salesforce is just a CRM on the Cloud, they are wrong. It goes beyond that, and modern businesses must embrace it for better ROI and credibility in the market.