Salesforce

"Salesforce CRM Review - Daily user"

Comments: My overall experience using Salesforce has been good. I've used the application for 19 months and I'd say it took at least 3 months to get familiar with the tool. I work for an organisation of +180k and the tool is used widely across the business, which is a testament to its reliability and scalability. For smaller organisations, there is likely to be less complexity involved, as there will be less integration required with other applications - which Salesforce does incredibly well. To summarise, I'd say to prospective adopters of Salesforce, expect to invest some time in training new users of the tool but its remarkable functionality and capabilities far outweigh this ramp-up period.

Pros: -Highly customisable with deep and wide integration with my organisations SaaS or natively developed applications.
-Allows you to produce very detailed reports to track my own activity and history. Which can also be used by management to track team progress and activity.
-A customisable dashboard that allows frequently uses tabs to be populated to a "bookmarks bar" which allows for faster navigation.
-Great search feature that allows for search across the entire CRM database.

Cons: -Due to its high functionality and range of options it can be overbearing to use at times.
-Requires internet connection which means there is occasional latency and is not accessible at all times.
-Visually, it's not the most appealing tool that I've ever used.
-Steep learning curve for those that have not used it before, but then that goes for most CRM tools.

"Jeremy's Review"

Comments: Good. I like using it and it is easy to keep track of all of my contacts and the conversations/information I have on them.

Pros: It is very easy to navigate through and simplifies the process. Most who use excel or something else find themselves losing contact with many contacts. This makes that easier to track.

Cons: I cannot make my home screen the way I want. It is set up how my company (Colliers) wants it set up - not the way I would like it to be set up.

"Salesforce: Helps Improve Internal Communications/External Customer X"

Pros: I have been using, recommending and adopting salesforce.com for my sales teams for ten years in several different digital technology, media and advertising organizations. I can say unequivocally that the CRM software has evolved from being a supplement and "nice to have" to a must buy and necessary and vital tool for doing business. The key to any business solutions and software product is getting the team to adopt and use it. Training and practice is essential. Its like your golf game, the more you practice the better your score or working out, no pain, no gain. I like the social media and conversational abilities you can have with sales team; the app is excellent for quick reviews and checking on status of pending, pitches and prospects; the flexibility and customization options based o salesperson, account, deal size, industry vertical. In one organization we adopted it for internal sales data use and tracking and also incorporated product data about our partners, customers, audience metrics and analytics and distribution platform.

Cons: Depending on the level of subscription, will also vary with the amount of personalized training you receive. I would also say there needs to be more attention and customization devoted to industry verticals that contain many nuances regarding customer segments and rev streams. This includes the advertising and digital sales industries where there are multiple customer touchpoints and rev streams including agencies, direct to client, programmatic, 3rd party vendors, ad tech partners etc. I also think saleforce.com needs to develop more compatible software and training that integrates salesforce,com into other software linked to finance, accounting etc.

"Easy to Use"

Comments: We can track all of our leads and opportunities from how they are coming from all the way to the final disposition of the leads and everything in between. We are very happy with Salesforce and can't imagine ever using another CRM.

Pros: This product was very easy to install and includes a cloud version. For most small, medium and some larger size businesses, this software will meet all of your Sales and Marketing needs. This software is a great overall value for the price point. Customer service is great!

Cons: There is a slight learning curve as this software has so must functionality and is very robust. Other than that the possibilities for your sales team with this software are limitless.

"Is the price and learning curve something you can afford?"

Comments: We are using salesforce as our CRM. It is the only one that actually works with our other systems. We really like having one environment to operate in as opposed to several systems.

Pros: The marketing automation is hands down the best in the market. The ability to nurture prospects through the sales cycle is amazing. Lead generation tools are top-notch, sales tools, and the sales system is set up for growth, and customer retention is a breeze as well.

Cons: It is expensive to implement. We needed a consultant to help us with setup, which was not cheap. Also the learning curve for over 200 employees took time.