A customer relationship management solution (CRM) allows companies to track each stage of a customer cycle, including pre-sale marketing efforts, sales stages, customer service and customer nurturing programs. Modern CRM systems allow users to access their data anytime and anywhere. A number of those cloud-based, subscription applications are available in the market-place, so the choices can be daunting. Here are a few reasons why Salesforce is right for you.
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a cloud based customer relationship management (CRM) tool designed to streamline pre- and post-sales and support efforts through tracking, analyzing and sharing information throughout your organization. Since launching in 1999, Salesforce has grown into a CRM powerhouse – constantly adding new and exciting features to help improve the user experience. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, said, “As a company, you need to get to the future first, ahead of your customers, and be ready to greet them when they arrive.” Salesforce practices this mantra and it shows in their product, always staying one step ahead of the curve.
As a Salesforce customer, Revolution Group uses Salesforce for every department – Marketing, Finance, Sales, Customer Service, Project Tracking, etc – taking full advantage of the variety of features.
Here are a few of our favorite features broken down by department:
- Marketing (Pre-Sale/Lead Nurturing): We love the “dashboard” that comes standard in a Salesforce campaign and displays bounce rates, open rates, click rates and unsubscribe rates for the latest email blast. The charts provide a snapshot view of how the campaign performed and allow us to tweak our messaging and approach as we go.
- Sales (Pre-Sale/Opportunities): Salesforce seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Outlook, bridging the gap between emails we are sending and receiving in Outlook while keeping detailed activities on the Salesforce record. This integration between Microsoft Outlook and Salesforce helps our team increase productivity by cutting out unnecessary steps of manually adding the same information to multiple locations.
- Support (Post-Sale): Our Customer Service team is able to provide top-of-the-line support to our customers with the Salesforce Service Cloud. The Service Cloud is an easy-to-use console built into the Salesforce platform that allows you to keep pushing the envelope and deliver next-level service.
Why Salesforce is Right for You vs. the Competition
When our Salesforce Consultants are speaking with clients, we get asked a lot of questions about the differences between Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. Here are some statistics comparing those two solutions further proving why Salesforce is right for you.
G2 Crowd
In study by G2 Crowd, a leading business software review platform, Salesforce ranks the highest with a G2 Score of 87. The G2 Score is determined by the CRMs customer satisfaction rating and market presence based on their 80,000 user reviews. Microsoft Dynamics, a top Salesforce competitor, was given a score of 68.
Based on a top score of 10, G2 Crowd compares the two software platforms with the following criteria – Usability, Setup, Maintenance, Support, East of Business, and Product Direction. Salesforce has 1,091 customer ratings and reviews and Microsoft Dynamics has 121 ratings and reviews on G2 Crowd. Here are how the two ranked based on those areas and as a result of those reviews.
| Microsoft Dynamics | Salesforce | |
| Usability | 6.9 | 8.2 |
| Setup | 6.2 | 7.7 |
| Maintenance | 7.3 | 8.0 |
| Support | 6.7 | 7.8 |
| Ease of Business | 7.1 | 8.1 |
| Product Direction | 6.1 | 8.4 |
Capterra
A report from Capterra, a company dedicated to matching businesses with the right software solutions, ranks the 20 most popular CRM software systems. The rankings are based on the number of customers, number of users, Facebook likes, LinkedIn followers, and Twitter followers as of November 2015.
According to this study, Salesforce is considered the most popular CRM system with 150,000 customers, 7.2 million users, 516,872 Facebook likes, 527,463 LinkedIn followers, and 271,703 Twitter followers. Microsoft Dynamics ranked #5 on the list of most popular CRM systems with 40,000 customers, 4.25 million users, 51,205 Facebook likes, 51,278 LinkedIn followers, and 49,961 Twitter followers.
When selecting the right CRM system for your company, weighing the pros and cons of each system’s features can help make your decision easier. If you would like more information about customizing Salesforce features and functions to fit your business needs, call our certified Salesforce Consultants at 614-212-1111 or fill out the form below. They are experts in migration, implementation and customizing Salesforce to fit your business needs.
For more information about why Salesforce is right for you, read our blog, “6 Signs You Should Invest in Salesforce.”
