What is our primary use case?
I am using Salesforce as a user at NICE, which is the company that uses Salesforce CRM. I am part of thousands of NICE employees who use Salesforce CRM, and it offers many more features than just a CRM system.
I am not certain which products are particularly licensed, but I can tell that we use Salesforce for holding customer data. We also use Salesforce to store a lot of implementation information. We use Salesforce to integrate with pricing tools, and in Salesforce you have customer records for each customer and opportunities. You also have projects that have been delivered, and there are many tracking confirmations for those projects. It is not fully a tool to automate project management, but it contains many elements related to project management, stages, and statuses.
One of the key use cases is collecting all pipeline data, all leads, and all opportunities to build and monitor pipelines, stages, and related information. Since I have been working with Salesforce for at least five years, this was one of the primary use cases.
What is most valuable?
I am aware that NICE is working with technologies because our contact center cloud solution is based significantly on AWS. We also use Azure, though I am not certain about Cisco. The company is working with both AWS and Azure, but I am only aware of starting details. AWS is an industry standard, and Azure is a significant competitor to that. Some customers want their solutions running on AWS, while others ask for solutions on Azure or part of the solution on Azure. These are the two cornerstones of cloud infrastructure today.
NICE works in the customer experience domain, which is a very wide marketing term. NICE delivers cloud contact center solutions and all related applications to the cloud. NICE has a full cloud portfolio for contact center customers and NICE has an almost full portfolio for enterprise solutions which are on-premise as well. Historically, NICE came from on-premise, but now NICE supports full cloud. I have multiple years of experience in the development of contact center solutions and have worked for many years on different applications inside the suite we offer to the market.
What needs improvement?
Sometimes I would prefer Salesforce to run a little bit more quickly. My tasks are relatively easy, and I am not the person responsible for the company. There are some gaps that people responsible should address with ideas on how to improve. My role is not a leading point; I am a very basic user of Salesforce. My tasks are not complex, and I do not have a big problem with that.
Salesforce could improve its speed. I would prefer not to analyze it in detail because it generally works well. I cannot say that I spend a lot of time waiting for a response from Salesforce, which would not be suitable for work. For me, this mostly works. There may be more experienced users with wider tasks who experience more problems.
I am not in the details of how this works. We have a separate service department responsible for business automation, and those people know the details of how to estimate complexity, comfort level, and expense. I am just aware that Salesforce is running some integrations for us. All integrations are very important, but I am not in the details of this. If there are limitations, problems, or requirements with regard to integrations, I am not aware of them.
With regard to setup, I feel informed because I am not setting this up. What can I complain about? It is pain-free. If you want, you can mention that sometimes my business would be great if Salesforce runs a little bit quicker in a soft manner. I do not have a strong component with regard to speed. Cloud-based software runs on different resources. The GUI might sometimes be a little bit slow.
Salesforce is good for me. I am clicking on a link and catching it. There is nothing to install, and it is running. I think Salesforce is perfectly scalable because it runs very big datasets for many years and serves thousands of customers. I think it is perfectly scalable from my point of view as a customer.
I think approximately 1,000 to 3,000 users are working with Salesforce in my company at the moment.
Salesforce is a huge universe, and I cannot tell what should be improved because it has so many capabilities. Probably I am not aware of the majority of those capabilities. This is rather static for big systems, as customers are not aware of the majority of such big system features. I cannot say that I experience some lack of specific functionality. Usually, everything is in place, but I need to have the right permissions. So I cannot answer the question, as I am fine currently.
Sometimes I feel the reporting could be more sophisticated and even AI-enabled. For today, the reporting is a good one but a classical one, and I need to build a report. I need to mention the data I want to run on, the filters to apply, and the commands to choose. Sometimes I have much more complex tasks. Generally speaking, I collect the data and know that the data is in the system. If one day they introduce an elaborated AI capability for me to tell Salesforce that I need to get this kind of data and then perform this kind of comparisons and checks to get this kind of result in that form, my ability would be very good.
For how long have I used the solution?
I did not have a chance to evaluate any other CRM solutions in my company. I am trying to recall my experience. I think my ability of time in my work when I dealt with CRMs, I interfaced with some tailor-made solutions or mostly I dealt with Salesforce.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Salesforce is stable for me.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I think Salesforce is perfectly scalable because it runs very big datasets for many years and serves thousands of customers. I think it is perfectly scalable.
How are customer service and support?
It is not my business to approach technical support because if I have a problem, I approach the internal help desk. They work to help me, and I do not even know if they fix something by themselves or if they need to open separate cases.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I did not have a chance to evaluate any other CRM solutions in my company. I am trying to recall my experience. I think my ability of time in my work when I dealt with CRMs, I interfaced with some tailor-made solutions or mostly I dealt with Salesforce.
How was the initial setup?
I am not in the details of how this works. We have a separate service department responsible for business automation, and those people know the details of how to estimate complexity, comfort level, and expense. I am just aware that Salesforce is running some integrations for us. All integrations are very important, but I am not in the details of this. If there are limitations, problems, or requirements with regard to integrations, I am not aware of them.
With regard to setup, I feel informed because I am not setting this up. What can I complain about? It is pain-free. If you want, you can mention that sometimes my business would be great if Salesforce runs a little bit quicker in a soft manner. I do not have a strong component with regard to speed. Cloud-based software runs on different resources. The GUI might sometimes be a little bit slow.
What other advice do I have?
For those who might want to use Salesforce in the future, I do not know what to say. What I can tell is that I never passed any training here for Salesforce, so it could be almost plug and play. It is a good one, and I see that those who choose Salesforce as a platform for their CRM or business process estimations would be making a good investment because it is an industry standard. What is important is that several people move between companies, and it is frequently beneficial that they do not start teaching themselves the CRM because if Salesforce is easy to start, and with high probability, you will have a person who is already familiar with it. In this case, it is an advantage. Finally, I think those who will be using Salesforce will probably enjoy it. I would rate this product 9 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)