Data Cloud provides businesses with a comprehensive platform for managing and analyzing vast data sets, empowering users to drive data-driven decisions effectively.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Data Cloud | 0.4% |
| Microsoft Dynamics CRM | 2.7% |
| Salesforce Sales Cloud | 2.3% |
| Other | 94.6% |
| Title | Rating | Mindshare | Recommending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LeadSquared | 4.0 | 0.8% | 94% | 9 interviewsAdd to research |
| Nimble CRM | 4.3 | 0.8% | 100% | 3 interviewsAdd to research |
This platform offers robust capabilities enabling users to harness data for strategic insights. Key use cases include data warehousing, real-time analytics, and machine learning model deployment. Data Cloud stands out for its scalability, ease of integration with existing systems, and advanced security features. Users point out room for improvement regarding cost management and interface flexibility, which could enhance experience and efficiency.
What are the key features of Data Cloud?Data Cloud is implemented in industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail to streamline data management and analytics. Financial institutions utilize it for risk assessment and fraud detection, whereas healthcare providers deploy it for patient data analysis. Retailers leverage its capabilities for inventory management and customer behavior insights, demonstrating versatility across sectors.
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Salesforce Data Cloud Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees | 4.5 | I've used Data Cloud with Marketing Cloud for two years, finding it easy to set up, stable, and effective for data unification and campaign targeting, though SQL limitations in Calculated Insights need improvement for better debugging. |
| Senior Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees | 3.0 | I've found Data Cloud useful for unifying customer data across Salesforce products, though it's somewhat average, costly, and has poor documentation; integration is easy, but stability, support, and scalability costs can be concerns. |
| Account Executive - Cloud & AI at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees | 4.0 | I've used Salesforce Data Cloud for forecasting and opportunity management, valuing its real-time analytics and integrations, though report creation and UI speed need improvement; I’d rate it 8 overall and find support generally satisfactory. |
| Director at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees | 4.0 | I used Data Cloud CRM for a decade; while it offered strong analytics, scalability, and support, it was difficult to customize, costly, and complex to deploy, which led us to seek a more suitable and affordable alternative. |
| Head of International Sales at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees | 4.0 | I manage the sales area, collaborating with contact centers using Session Border Controller. While it's a powerful tool, implementation and changes in Data Cloud are time-consuming. Despite complexities, post-go-live offers better business visibility and quicker decisions. |
| Regional Business Director at a tech services company with 51-200 employees | 4.5 | Data Cloud effectively unifies data across various product lines, enhancing synergy and providing insightful management data. However, its extensive customizability, while advantageous, also introduces challenging complexity akin to solving a massive puzzle. |
I combine Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud for my work.
For one of my clients, which is a social media company, I migrated their social media campaigns and marketing campaigns from Marketo to SFMC. For that migration, I used Data Cloud to create a targeted audience. I completed the audience using creator segments, activations, calculated insights, data transforms, and everything involved in the process.
Every function in Data Cloud has its unique purpose, but Calculated Insight is one of the strongest functions that I believe is very useful. I can accomplish everything, including customization, using Calculated Insight.
If a client uses Data Cloud, they can save time and most importantly, they can save budget because I generate the target audience for marketing campaigns using unification. Redundant email or communication never happens due to the unified profiles, which helps businesses save their marketing budget and indirectly increase revenue. That is one of the most important benefits. Technically, there are many benefits, but in terms of business revenue, that is the most crucial part.
I have not used the real-time analytic function in Data Cloud yet, so I cannot provide feedback on real-time data analytics.
Most of the time, I believe that not all SQL functions are working in Calculated Insights or in Query Builder. That should be improved because when I debug anything, Cloud developers face many issues. In my experience, that is the major area for improvement.
I have been working with Data Cloud for two years. I am currently working with Salesforce products, specifically on Data Cloud along with Marketing Cloud, and I have not moved to another vendor.
I would rate the stability of Data Cloud a perfect 10 out of 10.
Scalability is also fine. Data Cloud has huge potential, but every developer or business needs to understand their capability. Based on that, they can expand or scale up to meet business requirements. In my opinion, scalability is good, and I would rate it around 8, 9, or even 10.
My clients are very satisfied with the functionality, and it is brilliant.
Negative
The initial setup is very simple and takes just a few minutes, not an hour or longer. It is very easy.
Data Cloud is easy to integrate. I can integrate most legacy or external systems to get the data into Data Cloud. However, for sending data from Data Cloud to downstream systems, I have very few options available so far, including Salesforce CRM, Marketing Cloud, and some cloud systems like Azure and AWS. I only have out-of-the-box connectors available for these in Data Cloud.
Integration is definitely very easy. I have already integrated systems including Marketing Cloud, CRM, AWS, then SF via MuleSoft, Oracle via MuleSoft, and Azure with Data Cloud to get the data from their end.
I can recommend this product because it is a very useful tool in terms of unification. Data Cloud is the product I can use for data unification, and while many ETL tools exist, none achieve the same level of unification as Data Cloud.
To be honest, I do not have any idea about Data Cloud pricing because I have never purchased it, nor am I a primary decision maker on that.
I do not have much idea about the CDP business, but I have heard that Treasure CDP is one of the CDP platforms available in the market, and it is also good. I have used it to create a segment, and I can use all the SQL functions without any restrictions or changes required in the syntax or keywords.
The initial setup is very simple and takes just a few minutes, not an hour or longer. It is very easy. I would rate this product 9 out of 10 overall.
We are mainly using Data Cloud to harmonize our Marketing Cloud personalization data and the customer data from our database.
Whatever data is coming from Marketing Cloud personalization is streaming data, and that lands in Data Cloud. Then we push the customer data from our database to Data Cloud. We do the mapping and harmonize the data into one particular schema. Then, the identity resolution logic runs. Once the data is unified, we create the segments out of it. That data is also being pushed to an external database for further analysis.
Currently, we are in the pilot phase with Data Cloud. We will probably be fully productionalizing it by the middle of this year.
The major use case for Data Cloud was because we needed to bring in the Marketing Cloud personalization data, and Marketing Cloud personalization does not expose the data easily. We need Data Cloud to connect with Marketing Cloud personalization and stream that data into Data Cloud, store it in the form of objects. As we are also bringing in Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, we need this for connecting back to the CRM.
Data Cloud is an average tool, and it does not offer much extra. One thing is that I can directly connect with a Salesforce environment. That is one good feature. I can easily interact with other Salesforce tools, and I can pull the data and push the data easily. The zero-copy data feature is also good. However, it has limitations, such as being able to connect it with only two platforms for the zero-copy data activity.
Usability with Data Cloud is good. It is usable as I need to continuously pull the data from Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Then, I can get the streaming data from Marketing Cloud personalization, and I can push the data to Sales Cloud, I can push the data to Service Cloud, and also back to Salesforce Marketing Cloud. I can directly integrate it into the journey. Also, I can push the data to external databases like SQL Server or AWS. Data Cloud is pretty useful, and it is also good at consolidating data from multiple sources. It can give me a unified customer profile view.
The Salesforce team can make Data Cloud more user-friendly and a bit more open. The documentation should be improved. That is the first thing. They have very poor documentation on Data Cloud. For most Salesforce products, the documentation can be improved.
I have been using Data Cloud for the last two years.
Data Cloud is about eighty percent stable. However, there are still issues with this product that need to be improved.
Data Cloud is scalable, but at the same time, with scalability, my cost can go up, and real-time workloads can also be expensive.
Customer support for Data Cloud is a bit inconsistent. Salesforce support is sometimes not sure how to approach a problem, what the exact problem is, or how to solve it.
We already had Salesforce Marketing Cloud and were planning to go for Sales Cloud, so Data Cloud came as part of the bundle. There was no other exploration.
With Data Cloud, I will definitely need a smaller number of employees because it is already a developed, proven tool. If I were creating my own customer data platform, I would need five to six people to continuously work on that product. But with Data Cloud, I will definitely need a smaller number of people to work on it. Creating a custom solution might take six to eight months. With Data Cloud, I can set it up, and in six to seven months, I can actually productionalize it.
Data Cloud is on the cloud, but it is being managed by Salesforce. Salesforce products are mostly managed by Salesforce itself. So it is managed hosting, which is managed by Salesforce itself.
Data Cloud can be used when I need a single, real-time customer profile and have the budget and governance to support it. It is a costly solution.
Data Cloud is an overall average product. Mostly, if an organization does not have any customer 360 solution where it can easily get a unified profile of the customer, then Data Cloud should be considered. Apart from that, Salesforce does not easily provide the data or allow export of the data out of the Salesforce environment. That is why Data Cloud will mostly be needed to transfer the data from one Salesforce environment to another. The major use will be there.
Overall, Data Cloud is a powerful product for unifying real-time customer data and enabling personalized activation. But at the same time, it can be a bit costly and complex to implement. It also raises integration challenges sometimes. Data Cloud should be selected wisely.
The only good thing about Data Cloud is that it is easily integratable with different Salesforce systems or products. My overall rating for Data Cloud is six out of ten.
Data Cloud's real-time analytics feature helps us improve quick decision-making regarding customer sales cycles, what they are suited to buy, and when we should propose products to them. The second benefit is understanding how much trouble they have had in the past, and there is good integration there.
The benefit of eliminating data silos with Data Cloud is substantial. I expect more and more integration is coming, including with Gong, our internal ordering system, and I think there is LinkedIn integration to it. Those are the top three that I use.
Positive
Mostly, I am a user, and when I have trouble, I go to my internal IT staff to help troubleshoot, or I go to the Salesforce side of things. If I am reaching out directly to Salesforce, it is a bad thing. I gave this review an overall rating of 8.
We had Sales with Sales Cloud with a bunch of add-ons, and the things we wanted to do and the price was becoming untenable. So, we had to have an exit strategy.
The main use cases were the same exact ones.
It had such a heavy data backbone that it really would connect all of the information quite easily, and to get some generic information out of it was very easy. The basics were not difficult for our people.
We used the intuitive user interface for data analytics purposes. That was fine and good in helping non-technical users.
It helped us maintain control over data quality and access since we have a lot of defense work, making data integrity and compliance issues very important. Having the built-in guardrails was helpful.
We used the machine learning tools available for predictive analytics. We looked at being able to forecast anticipated needs from existing customers, which was helpful. Based on market conditions, we gauged what expectations we would have in each sector, so the machine learning was helpful in that. Because in many cases, we knew what was going to happen before it happened or before the opportunities arose, it allowed us to get a jump on sales and then a jump on delivery, so it allowed us to scale.
There was excessive difficulty to customize for our business processes, so you either change to how they have it set up or you spend money getting someone to fix it. It would work, but it was time-consuming and another ongoing expense.
It was not helpful for streamlining our organization's decision-making processes because you had to modify it to accept your data the way you do it, not versus the way they had it set up.
The initial setup was onerous. We thought we would deploy it in 30 days, and it took approximately four months.
We had multiple vendors to help us with Data Cloud deployment.
The scalability was excellent, while the flexibility was moderate for our dynamic needs. That was due to how difficult it was to get into our process.
Service was very good. Their technical support was highly responsive within an hour of any of our users' needs, which made their service better.
Positive
The initial setup was onerous. We thought we would deploy it in 30 days, and it took approximately four months.
We had multiple vendors to help us with Data Cloud deployment. We had admin, sales, and post-sales support roles that were required to deploy this CRM.
There was efficiency and some opportunity, but sometimes it was difficult to keep that in an even state regarding ROI, as far as more efficiency saving and overall time saving.
With the package we had, each seat was costing approximately $1,500 a month.
We were evaluating other options at that time, but I would be challenged to remember what they were.
It is considered the Data Cloud CRM now.
We deployed it to approximately nine or ten people.
On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution a 7.
I am in charge of a sales area here. We integrate with some contact centers as a service tools, but we provide solutions for contact centers. We cannot contact centers as a service more than call classification and SBCT tools. The most familiar product that we use solves customer issues: Session Border Controller. I worked in a software provider for CCaaS, a French company that uses Salesforce worldwide, and I was in charge of the sales area. I had to control all the sales representatives using Salesforce around the world.
The most familiar product that we use solves customer issues: Session Border Controller. SBC stands for Session Border Controller. The cross information that I can use via getting some insights from the ramp up the business, and the type and area of all the business that are being generated by our sales representatives provides a better strategy for the future. From my experience as a VP of sales, I was not involved directly with development and configuration, but every time I need some change in our strategy and data, it takes a lot of time from our development team or technical team to implement this change, so it is not easy to add columns or information in the reports or in the information that I gathered from Data Cloud.
From my experience as a VP of sales, I was not involved directly with development and configuration, but every time I need some change in our strategy and data, it takes a lot of time from our development team or technical team to implement this change. It is not easy to add columns or information in the reports or in the information that I gathered from Data Cloud. It takes a lot of time, and it was not exactly what I was expecting. I had a project that required changing the views that I need from my team, and it took two to three months to make the change. It was just a simple click of a button and adding some information, so what I was expecting to take one or two weeks took three months.
It was very complicated to implement in the beginning, and it took a lot of time. It is a very good product, but it is very complex to implement, change, develop, and integrate.
The deployment took almost seven or eight months.
We never had a problem with stability.
It is very scalable. We made a first implementation for a small environment, and it is very easy to grow and work. It is a very scalable solution.
I have two scenarios. One is the partner that implemented, and we had some support from this team that was really good. We used it with BlueVant as a service provider, and we had some contacts directly with Salesforce for main support. It is not easy and not quick to have some answers directly from Salesforce.
Positive
We used CRM, and I worked previously with Salesforce, and we are trying to implement Salesforce here.
We had the sales operation team and some IT professionals to integrate with the ERP. I estimate that at least 10 to 20 people were involved in this project.
The plan took a lot of time to implement, and after the go-live, we can see better visibility of the business. The decisions are faster with a CRM, so I would say that in one year, we have the ROI as decision.
It is a bit high, but as the features are really good, rich features that gave us different functionalities, I understand that it is a high-end solution with high cost but with many features that justify the price.
For this new implementation that we are looking for right now, we are looking for Salesforce.
We are competing with AudioCodes. We are a software provider. We are evaluating the new CRM for our company right now. We use a local provider for CRM, and we are looking for another solution right now. We use Power BI; we prefer to use Power BI. We use Salesforce Professional, and the cloud both, the Salesforce for sales, that is the cloud solution, and the service for the support ticket. I have never used the Marketing Cloud. I have used Data Cloud. It is not a simple solution, but it is a powerful solution. Based on my experience, I would rate this solution an 8 out of 10.
Neutral
