Salesforce Sales Cloud Reviews

Salesforce Sales Cloud serves as our primary tool for our sales team and reviews team to document and keep all our information in one place as a source of truth. We use it to manage our business processes and the effectiveness of how our team works, going through specific things such as the sales process or any business process that we need to monitor and make sure that the process is working and that we're following the right motions in order to work effectively and intelligently and making sure that we're getting to what we need to do in a timely fashion and manner.

A quick specific example of how my team uses Salesforce Sales Cloud in our daily workflow is that today we're managing reviews. When new users are created or when we're uploading specific people who we need to solicit reviews from, we put it into Salesforce. It's either an automatic or manual process at the moment. Then we have a team that actually solicits and calls them for reviews.

Our main use case for Salesforce Sales Cloud is that our team uses it as a tool to guide their workflow and ensure that they're doing what they need to do on a day-to-day basis. It's unique because as a manager, I am able to see what's done and what's not done. We're able to take a business process and break it down into bite-sized pieces and then manage that process through Salesforce Sales Cloud to ensure that we're constantly optimizing it and making sure that the business gets what it needs and that we're fulfilling our KPIs and that nothing falls through the cracks.

Salesforce Sales Cloud offers excellent features, particularly the ability to make changes on the fly as an admin. Being a platform allows us to make changes easily, enabling us to be nimble, which is a great win. The depth of the reporting that we can access helps us see where we are in any of our processes at any given time.

The flexibility and reporting features have helped my team significantly, as I am working at a company that's very data-driven, and I happen to be a data-driven individual as well. I do not like to make decisions on a whim or just from intuition. Being able to pull reports in Salesforce Sales Cloud based on any of the fields that we have there and then building logic on those fields saves me time and also gives me visibility into what's going on with my teams across multiple departments, which is very helpful for us.

I appreciate that Salesforce Sales Cloud is constantly evolving and adding new features, allowing us to turn features on and off. This is very beneficial.

Salesforce Sales Cloud has positively impacted my organization as the old excuse where a lot of people used to prefer working in Excel has been eliminated. Nowadays, we have a system that's built around our business needs, which helps us optimize processes, make processes much shorter, and give us insights into sales cycles and how to improve them. We keep our discussions and our calls in Salesforce Sales Cloud. It also helps us manage certain departments, making sure that our time to delivery is effective, that we're not lagging behind, and that all customers' needs are taken care of.

We have definitely seen reduced time to delivery and increased sales as we've experienced improved efficiency and cost savings. Cost savings go into the tens of thousands of dollars.

In terms of positive impact, I have noticed that it gives all different departments visibility into our processes and where we are within specific projects and how we're doing with sales. Anyone at any given time, especially the executive teams, can monitor how many sales we've done, how many programs are running, what the status of each program is, whether we're above or ahead of the curve or behind the curve, and then we're able to spend time and fix these things.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is beneficial for the business because it manages business processes and saves a lot of time and effort. Each employee having to manage multiple Excel spreadsheets or using Google Sheets could be a catastrophe. Salesforce Sales Cloud basically streamlines that process, so there are probably hundreds of hours saved. It also allows us to manage things and automate things. I don't say we need to get rid of employees, but when you're going into such a project, you can already assume that you won't be needing so many employees to throw more employees at a problem. It's extremely important to plan before you implement such a tool.

Salesforce Sales Cloud can be improved in several areas. First, the UI is an area for enhancement. Even though they've launched Lightning, it's clunky at times with page load speeds. It also needs to be made extremely more user-friendly. For new people using Salesforce Sales Cloud, there is a steep learning curve. Additionally, giving non-admins the ability to make changes on the fly is something that I feel is necessary. Currently with Salesforce Sales Cloud, you need to have a consultant. It's hard to build the flows or workflows. Making it easier for that end-user who's not so technically minded to help themselves is essential.

I choose seven out of ten because I think you need a consultant or a consulting company to help you build it out. Certain changes should be made much easier and more user-friendly where an admin can do it. The automation processes need to be much simpler. If you're looking at other tools out there, for example SalesLoft or HubSpot, it's much easier to build those workflows and do automation.

I have been using Salesforce Sales Cloud since 2007.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is very stable.

Salesforce Sales Cloud's scalability is impressive as it grows easily with my organization's needs. Scalability is possible when you have ruthless planning. You need to have the end goal in sight before you adopt such a platform, as with any CRM. If you don't have the end in mind or a goal with proper milestones and project management, it will be a disaster. The key is planning.

The customer support for Salesforce Sales Cloud has improved over time. When you're talking about mega enterprise platforms, in the beginning, it's really terrible. But I think as the years move on, they've gotten a lot better. However, we have an in-house admin and an offshore team that manages our instance. Having this in-house team is very nimble and much easier. I wouldn't say you go to Salesforce Sales Cloud for their customer support unless you purchase one of their premier plans, which is additional money. I feel sometimes they nickel and dime instead of providing a full package. We bought the platform, we bought into the platform, and we find workarounds in order to get what we need.

Neutral

At my current organization, we've always had Salesforce Sales Cloud, so I don't know what they had before I joined. In previous companies, we used home-baked systems. And then it was always that question: do you build or buy? We ended up buying because when you're buying a product or solution, there's a team that's thinking day and night about that solution and how to make it better. That allows a company where you're at to focus on their core competencies, which is their product. We switched from a home-built system into Salesforce Sales Cloud, which was difficult in the beginning, and it's hard to change habits, but eventually, after some time with rigorous planning, we managed to release a good, stable Salesforce Sales Cloud version for the company to use.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been that it takes a lot of negotiation. Salesforce Sales Cloud is extremely expensive. They have their year-over-year increase of, if it's 3% or 8%, they keep on increasing prices every year. It's completely licensed, so you have to really know which licenses or the amount of licenses you want to purchase before you go into negotiation with them. They're generally reluctant to lower licenses and lower cost. It's an effect where they want to start using strategy with different levers, signing multi-year contracts, and so on. I think it's important to get the best deal when you start because then pricing, besides their yearly increase which you can negotiate with, will not go up. Getting very firm with the costs is vital.

My advice for others looking into using Salesforce Sales Cloud is to look at the size of the company, how many people are going to be using it, whether or not you have somebody that can build it out, and have somebody with experience in CRM systems to map out what you're looking for. Have a look at Salesforce Sales Cloud, have a look at HubSpot, have a look at any other tools out there that provide you with a sales platform. It's then about the users; make sure that your users feel comfortable using the tool because it doesn't matter what tool you bring into your organization, the users have to feel comfortable using it. It has to be frictionless and easy to adopt. If you don't have those things in mind, your project most likely will fail. I rate this solution a seven out of ten.

For every cloud of Salesforce Sales Cloud, we work with them because we are partners for the last 15 years.

The feedback about Salesforce Sales Cloud is related to our recent delivery of a large project in the solar industry, where we have utilized Agentforce, the AI. The implementation timing was almost one year. In this project, we have not only automated the whole AI journey but also achieved huge success with the three minutes quote process. If you land on their website, you enter your information, and your quote is ready, absolutely perfectly fine with the correct data and service provider. You can get your quote done within three minutes. The moment you hit claim now or save for later, the AI starts working, which includes auto follow-up via email, SMS, and even voice agent calls to help sellers sell faster.

The company name is The Very Good Solar Company. They are based out of Utah in the US, and the CTO is our very old client. This is the fourth project we have done with this client, where we have implemented Salesforce Sales Cloud, which is the unlimited edition of the highest edition of Salesforce Sales Cloud. We have fetched the whole data for every state because in every different state, there are different products permitted by the US government. We have integrated a couple of applications that tell you your monthly bill for the whole year and also check the rooftop, as the Google Solar API has been integrated, giving accurate information about roof size, how many maximum panels can fit, shadow analysis, and financial analysis from the Solar API. Based on that, it tells you that the 100% offset can be achieved with eight, 12, or 16 panels, increasing by four panels each time. That is the configuration we have done, and that's all we have for now.

Salesforce Sales Cloud itself is a wonderful solution, and there are two different versions: Lightning and classic. The Lightning version is a new generation version compatible with any mobile device, whether it's a phone, iPad, or any size of screen. The reporting and analytics functionalities, especially with the Einstein feature, are wonderful because it allows for analysis of data regarding your opportunity pipeline, giving insight into how long it will take to close deals. This gives a great understanding of running different levels of campaigns and defining smart workflows, where if one task is done, the other task can automatically get created and assigned to different team members. This flexibility is a key benefit of Salesforce Sales Cloud.

Lead management is a great feature in Salesforce Sales Cloud because if you go for enterprise and above licenses, you can define different record types. For example, if one company is into two different businesses such as real estate and car reselling, both being opposite, this can be defined in Salesforce Sales Cloud, allowing for different workflows, fields, and mechanisms that do not affect each other's operations.

The predictive insight feature known as forecasting is a very old feature of Salesforce Sales Cloud, giving predictions based on your pipeline and previous opportunity closings. The new Einstein analytics feature is more advanced and is enabled with AI, providing better forecasting based on your current pipeline. Salesforce Sales Cloud is working smartly with AI to help close more deals based on opportunity stages, trends, and industries, advising on the steps to take next.

Lead generation is the most important thing because every sale starts from the lead. At the lead level, different stages and resources can be defined. You can capture leads from various resources, with Salesforce Sales Cloud offering a web-to-lead feature and integrations with LinkedIn to fetch data. Once a lead is qualified and converted into opportunities, there are stages with percentages, and workflows can help in easily closing deals.

Improvement is always necessary. The Lightning version and classic version have some differences needing improvement. For example, in classic, you can create different folders, but in Lightning, the document feature is not available; only files are accessible. This missing document feature in Lightning is something that Salesforce Sales Cloud should address.

15 years

We don't host or deploy Salesforce Sales Cloud as it operates on Salesforce's cloud system. All we do is access it and implement solutions according to the requirements and workflows clients seek. We customize it as needed and integrate third-party applications if necessary. No Salesforce Sales Cloud product requires hosting; it's all managed on the Sales Cloud.

With 15 years of experience, we've found solutions for various problems, and while critical situations can arise, we are confident in our ability to resolve them. There aren't really obstacles in Salesforce Sales Cloud.

There are two types of support: free and paid. Paid support provides quick assistance within 24 hours and can include technical help through screen sharing on platforms such as Google Meet or Zoom. For free support, my experience in India suggests that the support team requires more training as some are still not fully ready or aware of all Salesforce Sales Cloud features. They need better training, but generally, the support is good and responsive.

Positive

Lead generation is crucial as every sale starts from the lead. At the lead level, different stages and resources can be defined. You can capture leads from various resources, with Salesforce Sales Cloud offering a web-to-lead feature and integrations with LinkedIn to fetch data. Once a lead is qualified and converted into opportunities, there are stages with percentages, and workflows can help in easily closing deals.

I always address requirements gathering with new clients, considering their vision for the future as it's crucial. We are not just implementing Salesforce Sales Cloud; we need to understand what the customer wants to achieve in 5 to 10 years. Implementation should align with their requirements and vision, so we prepare a scope of work document and suggest improvements. Many first-time CRM users are unaware of all features and best practices, so we guide them with use cases, sample work, or sometimes create a POC to show them how their system will look and the expected outcomes, ensuring the ROI is beneficial for them.

Pricing in India has evolved as a reseller; the market has gone above a billion dollars for Salesforce Sales Cloud. This happened for the first time because of the new CEO, Arundhati, who revolutionized pricing strategies, allowing discounts of 60-70% for Salesforce Sales Cloud in India. Salesforce Sales Cloud also supports implementation, helping with the right consulting partners, and conducts surveys after project delivery to ensure the implementation partner was helpful and that the solution met the client's needs.

As a Salesforce Sales Cloud partner, we take care of Salesforce Sales Cloud projects. Both Agentforce and Salesforce Sales Cloud are available. We operate as a reseller and implementation partner. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Salesforce Sales Cloud an 8.5.

For managing two different things, I'm managing some sales pipeline, the pipeline of sales of some products, and also doing marketing automation for after-sales.

The functions of the Salesforce Sales Cloud that I have found most valuable are mostly because it's a CRM system; it's a central location where you gather all of your customer information, and based on that complete view, you can act. But that's not specific to Salesforce Sales Cloud; it's to any CRM system.

We've got a highly customized solution from Salesforce Sales Cloud, so we do use automations in some areas. Not specifically for sales, but we do automatic quoting, for instance; that's an automation.

The biggest benefit of the Salesforce Sales Cloud is a centralized point, a centralized source of truth for customer-related information; you centralize all the information in a single database, and that's the biggest benefit. The second benefit is that you can analyze or standardize processes in different areas; for sales, for service, for marketing, there are many ways in which Salesforce Sales Cloud can be used to improve a company's processes.

From a customer perspective, it's a very stable system, and people are used to its functionalities, good and bad. Improvement, in my opinion, would be to include AI functionality in a simpler way; right now, it's not easy; it's cumbersome and requires some back and forth with different functionalities in the system, and it's a very complex integration. It would be my recommendation to make the integration simpler.

I am still working with the Salesforce Sales Cloud and still using Salesforce products.

I would rate the stability of Salesforce Sales Cloud as a nine.

I would put scalability, or the ability to scale and expand, as a seven.

The initial setup process for the Salesforce Sales Cloud very much depends on how customized you want to have your solution, so there is no easy answer for that one; it depends on the customer and the level of customization that you want. If you want to use the system out of the box, you can do that, but probably it won't fit your business process. If you want it to fit your business process, you've got to do configuration or possibly even custom development. Overall, I think, as a system, it's one of the best systems to configure and customize, but there's a learning curve like most systems, and it depends mostly on the process. On a scale of one to ten, being ten the easiest to customize, I would classify it as a seven.

I would rate the price for Salesforce Sales Cloud as a three, where one is a high price.

I would compare Salesforce Sales Cloud to Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which is the second player in the market; from my perspective, Salesforce Sales Cloud is the biggest player.

Dynamics CRM is the closest one, but Salesforce Sales Cloud is much bigger still.

The integration capabilities of the Salesforce Sales Cloud, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the hardest, I would rate around five.

From my perspective, the main issues or main complexities with integration include large-scale data integration; when you have to do large volumes of data synchronization with external systems, Salesforce Sales Cloud can become an issue because of something called governor limits, which are rules that force you to divide the data into small chunks and small transactions.

It's a very flexible solution; I can advise it for any company size. I don't have a preference; different companies will use it differently. The big companies will probably customize it more, but smaller companies will use more features because they are more flexible. It's mostly a question of negotiation of the license and selecting the right type of license for your company.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is leading in the market, holding 25% market share, while the second player has 8%, which is Microsoft, the last time I looked at it.

I rate Salesforce Sales Cloud eight out of ten.

Neutral

My primary use case for Salesforce is to streamline sales strategies, define key sales parameters, and manage focus areas effectively. I leverage Salesforce to record, track, and optimize our sales processes and business development deals, ensuring seamless pipeline management and data-driven decision-making.

Additionally, I utilize Salesforce’s reporting capabilities to generate insights for new business management, enabling proactive engagement and strategic growth planning. In previous projects, particularly in the automobile industry, I used Salesforce to manage global car orders through a customer portal, enhancing operational efficiency and customer experience.

Overall, Salesforce Sales Cloud has been instrumental in driving growth, optimizing workflows, and ensuring a more structured and efficient sales approach within our organization.

Salesforce’s user-friendly interface makes it effortless to track business reports, manage tasks, and access key sales data efficiently. The ability to segregate tasks by focus areas provides quick visibility into new business management and reporting, ensuring streamlined operations.

Additionally, its clear visibility and intuitive navigation enhance data management and cross-departmental collaboration, making it a valuable tool for tracking progress, optimizing workflows, and driving business growth.

Improving system performance and processing speed would enhance productivity and allow for even smoother workflows according to my view.

Additionally, introducing faster data retrieval and real-time updates in the next release would further strengthen Salesforce’s ability to support high-volume transactions and dynamic sales environments.

I have been utilizing Salesforce on this project for approximately two years, gaining extensive hands-on experience in its capabilities and functionalities. While I have also worked with Salesforce on previous projects, my involvement was not as in-depth. However, each experience has contributed to my growing proficiency in leveraging Salesforce for streamlining sales processes, enhancing customer relationships, and driving operational efficiency

AWS has proven to be a highly stable and reliable cloud platform, ensuring consistent performance and uptime. Throughout my experience, I have not encountered any major degradation in service availability. Any challenges faced were primarily related to configuration, deployment, or coding aspects, rather than inherent platform issues.

AWS’s resilient infrastructure, global scalability, and robust failover mechanisms make it a dependable solution for mission-critical workloads, high-availability applications, and large-scale business operations.

However, Salesforce has demonstrated exceptional stability, with no significant performance degradation during my experience with the platform. Any challenges encountered were primarily related to custom development and configuration, rather than inherent issues with Salesforce itself.

Its robust infrastructure ensures consistent uptime, reliable performance, and seamless user experience, making it a dependable solution for managing complex business processes at scale.

Salesforce is highly scalable, offering seamless adaptability to evolving business needs. It efficiently supports growing workloads, increasing data volumes, and expanding user bases without compromising performance.

During development, the client-provided platform demonstrated excellent scalability and user-friendliness, ensuring a smooth experience while accommodating business growth and process optimization. Its flexible architecture makes it a reliable solution for both small teams and large enterprises.

Yes, I have previously worked with AWS, particularly on a project focused on automation in the education industry, where it was primarily used for data management and training booking systems. AWS provided a scalable and flexible cloud infrastructure, enabling efficient handling of large datasets and automated workflows.

However, on other hand Salesforce started to use for its CRM capabilities, advanced sales tracking, and seamless business development tools. Salesforce offers better customer relationship management, pipeline visibility, and integrated analytics, making it a more comprehensive solution for sales-driven operations and strategic decision-making.

The initial setup of Salesforce was a structured process that required custom configurations and integrations to align with project requirements. During my involvement in an automobile industry project, we implemented multi-language support within Salesforce to accommodate users across different regions.

This setup involved custom coding, localization configurations, and integration of language packs to ensure seamless user experience and accessibility. By leveraging Salesforce’s customization capabilities, we successfully enhanced global usability, allowing regional teams to operate efficiently in their preferred languages while maintaining a unified sales management system.

The Return on Investment (ROI) with Salesforce has been significant, particularly in streamlining sales operations, improving data visibility, and enhancing collaboration across teams. we have effectively addressed this by providing structured guidance and step-by-step instructions through  documentation and internal training sessions.

By ensuring proper onboarding and support, we have enhanced user adoption, efficiency, and overall productivity, maximizing the value derived from Salesforce within our organization.

When considering AWS setup costs, pricing, and licensing, it’s important to evaluate your business needs, workload requirements, and cost optimization strategies.

Same for other Clouds as well..

the platform offers robust functionalities and a comprehensive feature set that effectively supports business operations. I have developed strong expertise in navigating its capabilities, optimizing workflows, and leveraging its tools to drive efficiency.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten for its versatility, user-friendly interface, and ability to streamline processes, making it a valuable asset for business success.

Salesforce offers a comprehensive suite of CRM functionalities to support various aspects of sales and customer relationship management. I am currently focused on managing APAC roadmaps and strategies, and this product has been implemented for Australia and New Zealand this year. While I oversee the broader approach, one of my managers handles the detailed aspects of the implementation. It provides extensive CRM capabilities, including but not limited to case management. It can also integrate with other ERP systems, allowing for a more holistic view of sales and operations.

At our pharmaceutical company, we previously struggled with properly logging customer cases. Now, we can track cases effectively and manage responses more efficiently. We can also attach relevant documents directly to each case, which is a significant improvement over our previous system, in which everything was handled via email. This change enhances our ability to monitor cases and track their progress over time. Additionally, we have access to reporting features, including KPIs and dashboards, which allow managers and team leaders to review case-related data and performance metrics.

We do have a backlog, and we're currently working on addressing it. However, we're trying to overcome some limitations with the standard Salesforce features. We're exploring options to find a technical resource who can assist us with this backlog. 

Certain fields are not editable using standard Salesforce features, and I'm not fully aware of the specifics regarding this. Additionally, we're experiencing issues with copying and pasting data, which is impacting the efficiency of our customer service. These are the main challenges we're currently facing.

I have been using Salesforce Sales Cloud since April.

12-15 users are using this solution. 

It is scalable, but scaling it to meet the diverse needs of the APAC market can be challenging. Each market has unique requirements; for example, Australia and New Zealand might need to view only seven fields or features, while China might require twelve. The current setup displays all 40 fields, which makes it difficult to tailor the system to specific market needs. Improving flexibility to customize and control what each market sees would address these challenges and better support the varying requirements across regions.

Understandably, transitioning from a basic system to a feature-rich technology can be overwhelming. While I haven't been directly involved in the execution, it seems clear that comprehensive training could address many of these issues. The shift to using a technology with numerous features can be challenging, especially when users face more information than they need. For instance, displaying too many options when only a few are necessary can create confusion. This feedback highlights the need for improved training and possibly some adjustments to the user interface to streamline the experience and focus on what's essential.

It is expensive.

We're using SAP Commerce.

Previously, tracking cases effectively was a challenge, but with the recent improvements, we now have a better mechanism for monitoring cases received from customers. To enhance its functionality further, it would be beneficial to integrate this with an ERP or SAP system in the future. For instance, linking cases to trigger returns or other processes isn't set up yet.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Any organization with leads and a positive pipeline that spans different geographies can benefit from using Salesforce Cloud to manage its entire sales cycle effectively.

Salesforce includes various objects that help manage records of all incoming leads. These leads may come from different sources, such as workshops or other channels. Once the leads are collected, organizations use various methods to engage with them, including email marketing or direct calls. Each organization has its process for analyzing leads. 

For example, if a lead responds to an email, it may be considered a valuable lead. The sales or business development team will then reach out to understand their needs. The qualified leads eventually enter the opportunity pipeline. Salesforce provides a platform to manage and process these leads, from initial collection to closing opportunities, streamlining the entire process.

One of Salesforce's key features is its comprehensive management of the opportunity pipeline. You can document all relevant details during client discussions and use Chatter for team communication. Roles and permissions allow team members to see the status of opportunities and plan their actions accordingly. Salesforce offers extensive customization options, allowing you to tailor the opportunity pipeline to meet specific customer needs.

Additionally, Salesforce supports integration with various tools. You can connect it with marketing solutions, whether Salesforce's own or third-party platforms. Telecalling and quotation generation can be managed directly within Salesforce, eliminating the need for separate tools. The platform also facilitates asset assignment during contract phases. 

One concern with Salesforce's CPQ solution is that the integration and user interface are not as seamless as possible. Although CPQ was successfully integrated into Salesforce following its acquisition, there are still noticeable gaps in the UI and the features. These issues reflect the challenges of merging acquired solutions with the existing Salesforce platform, which, despite successful integration, still shows areas for improvement.

I have been using Salesforce Sales Cloud for over five years.

Occasionally, certain features may not work due to ongoing maintenance or background updates. If you encounter an issue and raise a ticket, Salesforce responds quickly. Their support team provides direct assistance for major issues.

It can be scaled both horizontally and vertically.

It offers excellent technical support with multiple service levels. For prime customers, on-call support is available. There are three levels of support: at the basic level, you raise a ticket and receive a response based on the ticket's severity within 24 hours, with most issues resolved in a few days. Prime customers benefit from direct, on-call support, ensuring a high level of service.

Positive

The initial setup depends on the organization's requirements. It is relatively straightforward for a small organization with only fifty licenses. However, for a larger organization that needs 500 licenses and has extensive requirements, the process becomes more complex due to the significant customization needed. Thus, the setup complexity is directly tied to the client's specific needs.

I rate the initial setup a six or seven out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

It streamlines the entire sales process, allowing top executives, such as the CEO, to easily access sales performance data without connecting with numerous individuals. They can review pipeline statuses and overall performance directly from their laptop. This efficiency significantly benefits CXO-level executives by providing a clear and comprehensive view of sales operations.

Pricing for Salesforce can be high compared to some other products. For example, Zoho often has lower prices.

Forecasting in Salesforce involves analyzing conversion rates and probabilities set by the customer for each deal. For instance, if a positive pipeline is forecasted for six months to a year, you can predict the potential revenue for the upcoming quarter based on these probabilities. Additionally, historical data from previous years can help refine these forecasts. Immediate predictions rely on the current pipeline, while long-term forecasts use historical data to project revenue over the next few years.

Salesforce requires minimal maintenance because it handles infrastructure management itself. The primary maintenance tasks involve managing customizations, adding new users, and addressing evolving requirements, particularly in larger organizations. Other than these updates, Salesforce operates with little need for additional maintenance.

Salesforce can be costly, but it is highly recommendable if it aligns with your organization's needs.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I'm in an architect role. Primarily, it's for CRM. Service Cloud is used as our call center using the CRM.

Essentially, it's the CRM solution for managing customers and leads.

The features that had the most significant impact on our sales efficiency include flexibility, regular updates, and very good end-to-end sales and customer management processes.

AI and machine learning are on the agenda for next year. Initially, it will be very silo-based, but eventually, we'll be integrating MIBI data into our solution.

Sales Cloud's reporting and analytics capabilities influenced our sales strategy quite a lot. We can build every report as a dashboard, and there are various sorts of things. We are using Tableau as our MIBI analytic solution, which is also owned by Salesforce these days.

Sales Cloud is invaluable because it's a cloud solution that's well-used, provides businesses with essential sales tools, and is infinitely customizable.

FlowBuilder and DBSync are critical. DBSync is a tool that manages our databases.

Lucidchart is valuable for creating diagrams.

There is room for improvement in Documentation and third-party documentation. 

CI/CD is the biggest room for improvement. Deployment between environments and configuration. They've come up with their own CI/CD solution recently, but it still feels a bit like it's held together with string and paper.

I have been using it for two years. We use the latest version. It was deployed in Spring 2024. 

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. It's pretty good. Sales Cloud has defined upgrade paths—three upgrades a year. Things very rarely break. They fix bugs and update code that we're currently using. The APIs they use to support multiple versions. The stability of the platform is very good.

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. The biggest impediment there is storage costs. It's very expensive.

At the moment, we've not gone live. So, it will be around 250 end users. 

The customer service and support are excellent. I'm overall satisfied with it. It could be improved, but everything could be improved.

Positive

We used a different solution. We decided to move mainly because the old solution was long in the tooth, no longer supported, and would have needed substantial updates. It wasn't really a solution that could be used for a membership management system.

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a six out of ten, with one being difficult and ten being easy to set up.

The reason for that is it's ultimately customizable. It's out of the box—it doesn't really give you anything. You need to customize it. 

Sales Cloud could deliver a whole package of design patterns or out-of-the-box solutions that work better for different industries.

The deployment took quite a while, maybe a year, mainly because of customization issues.

It's fully CI/CD delivered. It's not very manual at all. We want to move to an automated process where you make changes, test them, deploy them, and they're automatically tested, which is a bit awkward but it's getting there.

Around 20 people, doing various jobs were included in the deployment process. 

More than 20 because we got a third party to help us develop it. We outsourced a lot of the development to a system integrator.

We expect to see a ROI. 

I would rate the pricing as seven out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. 

It's expensive, storage being the most costly aspect. We got a good deal, but it's quite a lot.

We evaluated other options. We looked at upgrading our legacy system and the latest version, which didn't work well with our membership organization—it works best for customers. 

We also tried Microsoft Dynamics, which didn't fit our business needs, and SAP, which was a bit clunky and not customizable enough.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.

It's very flexible, and customization varies greatly. The key is to accurately collect your requirements and manage the delivery of your requirements. Otherwise, you'll encounter problems, and that's the same with every solution.

I have expertise in Salesforce Sales Cloud, Revenue Cloud, and a little experience in Experience Cloud as well. I have been using Salesforce Sales Cloud for around three years. The Sales Cloud is generally used for lead management, where we can grab leads, convert them, and track opportunities and accounts. It helps manage our entire business process and track revenue by setting up quotes, orders, and invoices.

Salesforce has helped by providing a comprehensive system to capture opportunities and leads, maintaining everything in one place, and tracking customer data. Additionally, the automation features enhance business operations and revenue growth.

Salesforce provides a lot of tools out of the box like opportunity tracking, automation, and linking between account, contact, and posting. The lead conversion process, approval processes, and automation are particularly valuable.

The developer console might be enhanced. Sometimes, there can be a lot of open files, and improving the learning process of data processing would be beneficial.

I have been using this solution for around three years.

There are no stability issues found yet.

The solution is scalable.

Most of the time, customer service resolves the issues effectively. Sometimes they provide guidance on whether the issue is on their side or ours and suggest solutions.

Positive

As a Salesforce developer for three to four years, I consider it the best CRM to use. It is the first CRM I have worked on.

The initial setup doesn't take much time, it depends on the deployment tool used. For Capado, the setup might take one day or half a week. For others, it may be as quick as one hour.

Generally, we use tools and follow a structured process to deploy. Specific tools might be required as per customer requests.

I am not exactly sure about the numbers, but the licensing for different purposes can be checked online. The cost might vary if you need licenses for specific functionalities like CPQ.

I would recommend Salesforce for an enhanced revenue system, whole automation process, and CRM to lead management.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

The main use case of the solution is to create tasks and flows. The sales team uses Salesforce Sales Cloud to do the tasks and assign them to campaigns and managers.

The main benefit of the product is that it provides a 360-degree view of the customers. We can integrate all the data, get the visions, and establish analysis. The solution is easy to use. The product helps get metrics from the sales team, contact the customers, and see whether the features in the products are doing well.

If a customer is not in the report, we cannot see these aspects and place some tasks on the sales team. Tracking the campaigns, the return of the contacts, and how a contact becomes a sale is the main benefit. The strategy is based on market analysis.

The cost of building integrations is the main challenge we face. We hired a Salesforce integrations partner so that we do not overload our team. It's very costly and takes a lot of time to do. Salesforce must build some connectors and features to make integrations easier.

I have been using the solution for two years.

We have 100 users, including sales team members and managers. We are thinking of expanding. We might evaluate Salesforce along with other data visualization tools like Tableau.

The technical support is good, but the team must improve the time it takes to respond. The escalations must be quicker.

Positive

The main challenge in the deployment is understanding the workflows. The technical setup is not difficult and long. Understanding and building the workflows is the main challenge. It is not a big problem, though. The product is SaaS-based. It's not a costly deployment. We can get new features and integrations quickly. Salesforce does the maintenance of the solution.

The return on investment is based on the tracking of the tasks. We can build campaigns. It makes the investment work. The main benefit is how the product integrates with the campaign tool and provides features to track the campaigns.

The price is fair. The tool is not that expensive, considering what it offers. It is worth the money.

I will recommend the product to others. It is worth the money. It provides a good price, service, and quality. It's a leader in their market. The product is worth it if we have the budget to use the mobile version, web version, and business intelligence features. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.