Businesses around the globe are using technologies such as AI/ML, IoT, and cloud-based customer relationship management(CRM) software to streamline their operations and make their companies more efficient.
Given the cut-throat nature of the market, businesses can’t afford to fall behind. Even a minute oversight can cost them, valuable customers. And so, businesses must employ every tool they can to hold onto their customers while acquiring new ones regularly.
In order to become more efficient, businesses must evaluate their internal operations first. In the wake of the Covid pandemic, many businesses were hit by the grim reality that their internal workflows were less than adequate to adapt to the changing market.
And businesses that did have internal systems in place found them disconnected and thus performed poorly in an unprecedented situation.
Now more than ever, businesses must strive to work like well-oiled machines. They need to create an ecosystem of various mission-critical software tools that share data.
And perhaps nothing is more suited for this job than Salesforce.
What is Salesforce?
Founded in 1999, Salesforce is an American cloud-based software company that provides a wide range of CRM software tools.
The primary goal of Salesforce is to fine-tune and automate a business’s internal processes and bring them all together in a well-knit environment in which data flows between various solutions seamlessly and is accessible from anywhere in the world.
For instance, businesses can bring all of their sales and marketing data under one roof with Sales Cloud. Since all the data is in protected cloud space, it is accessible to everybody with the right access, anywhere and anytime.
It is in stark contrast to data being stored on an on-premise server, forcing people to be connected to the company network or be on the premises to get access.
Marketing Cloud is another Salesforce service that makes the job of social media marketers a lot easier.
Marketing Cloud connects businesses to some of the world’s biggest social media platforms and lets them mine critical data such as engagement, likes, etc. This data can then be fed to the CRM software, where it can be used to target potential customers better.
From marketing to customer relationships, Salesforce offers a robust collection of cloud-based services that are easy to learn and provide great value to the customers.
These solutions allow businesses to build better relationships with their existing customers, reach out to potential ones, and maintain proper communication between stakeholders.
According to stats, Salesforce occupies almost 20% of the global CRM market. Furthermore, Salesforce claims that the companies that use their services see a 27% increase in sales revenue and a 34% increase in customer satisfaction.
Salesforce Service Integration
One of the biggest misconceptions about Salesforce is that it is a single CRM software solution. But in reality, it is a collection of many individual CRM-centric software tools that can be added to a business’s internal systems.
Companies don’t purchase the entire suite, but instead, they have the power of picking the right Salesforce tools for their business needs.
The liberty to pick the tools they want makes Salesforce the perfect CRM services provider for companies looking for scalable solutions.
But Salesforce goes beyond just CRM services. It also provides a host of solutions for enterprise resource planning(ERP). An ERP tool allows companies to make sure that they utilize their workforce optimally. When integrated with Salesforce, ERP can provide surprising benefits.
It can help companies locate inefficiency and then take measures to remove it, making sure that every employee is doing their best work.
Other areas that can benefit from Salesforce integration are human resource management, customer service, lead management, etc.
Top Benefits of Salesforce for Businesses
Now that we know what Salesforce is and how Salesforce integration works let’s learn why companies are drawn towards it.
Enhanced Productivity
Data is the king in the business world. And managing it is one of the most challenging tasks. As technology and the internet grow, people create more and more data.
This creates a big copy-and-paste problem for marketing and lead generation people. The endless and brain-numbing cycle of data entry leads to a lot of inefficiencies since valuable human resources are being used to do such tedious manual labor.
Furthermore, due to the human element, data entries are prone to mistakes, which can have devastating repercussions on a department.
The solution, however, is simple. We can take humans out of the data entry process and integrate a Salesforce service into our system.
It will allow businesses to get their employees to do something far more useful and creative and achieve data accuracy as well.
Better Communication
Enterprises often struggle with inter-department communications. This can be a big problem for departments as closely related as marketing, sales, and lead generation.
Contracts can fall through cracks, quotes can get lost, or miscommunication can cost the company a crucial lead. The solution to this problem is ensuring that all the stakeholders are on the same page and that the information is traveling between departments smoothly and is easily available.
Salesforce’s Chatter is a collaboration and social platform like Facebook but for enterprises.
It runs on a company’s internal network, and when integrated with the system, it allows people to share files, communicate efficiently, track tasks, get clarification and approvals quicker, etc.
Chatter truly makes internal communication and collaboration easier for companies and integrating it will help companies get more efficient.
Better Data Accessibility
There are many reasons why on-premise data storage servers are a bad idea for companies looking for better accessibility and scalability.
First, on-premise servers are expensive to buy and even more expensive to maintain. Secondly, businesses can’t scale up and down according to their changing needs. Furthermore, data is not available to people easily.
But with Salesforce integration, all the data can be put in a secure cloud space. From there, various applications, tools, and people can easily access it from anywhere in the world.
In the internet age, especially with the rise of hybrid working, more and more people are working remotely. So data accessibility is a pressing issue for many companies that they need to fix quickly.
And Salesforce integration can allow their scattered workforce to access the most recent data and work accordingly.
Improved Reporting
With better data management comes improved reporting. Sales and marketing people can use the data to create more detailed reports and dashboards.
Suppose we stack data from Marketing Cloud integration on top of normal data collection. In that case, social media trends and insights can also be used to create sales reports, marketing plans, and define business goals.
End-to-End Automation
Data entry is not the only manual task that marketing and salespeople have to do. Once stored, data needs to move through various applications and analytics systems to be of some use, and that used to be a chore many people had to do.
But thanks to Salesforce integration services, business workflows can be automated, thus eliminating the need for human intervention. But the word automation triggers the sense of complexity and intense coding in the minds of a lot of people.
But Salesforce offers codeless automation, which means it’s easier and less time-consuming to establish.
Better Customer Experience
At the heart of every business is the customer. We live in an age where customers have many choices. They also have certain expectations from the companies/brands they shop with.
All of this needs to be taken into consideration while creating marketing plans. Using data from sources like Marketing Cloud, companies can figure out how to market to certain demographics, which products are doing well with them, etc.
Furthermore, companies can now offer a better customer experience as well. Salesforce integration allows companies to not only focus on customer acquisition but also on customer retention.
From sending them birthday wishes to notifying them when a new product or a service similar to the one they purchased or showed interest in is now in stock, all of it can be done with proper Salesforce service integration.
Codeless Customization
Salesforce emphasizes heavily on customization. It is the lynchpin holding the entire ecosystem together. The first layer of customization is the type of cloud or modules as they are referred to, according to business requirements.
Salesforce has various modules: Sales, marketing, service, commerce, etc. Once companies have subscribed to a cloud, the Salesforce cloud UI is customized according to their selection.
They can then further customize the UI like adding tabs or apps, creating profiles, creating workflows, etc., according to their business needs. And the best part is, all of it is completely codeless.
However, if they want deeper customization, such as UI customization or adding new features, they will require coding skills.
Conclusion
In order to keep up with the changing market and stay ahead of the competition, businesses need to harness the power of Salesforce and perfect their internal operations.
Careful Salesforce service integration with their systems can help them streamline their workflows and make them more efficient.
With the right Salesforce service integration partner like Matellio, businesses can add highly customizable CRM services and become more productive.
Martello has years of experience as a Salesforce consultant and service integration partner. We evaluate your business needs and suggest the right Salesforce services for your systems based on our findings.
As a software development company, we have more than the required skills to customize your Salesforce applications according to your business needs and logic. If you want to know more about our Salesforce integration services, click here.
