Salesforce Platform Reviews

There are many use cases as we have done more than 300 projects globally. One of the projects was where we implemented a customer care solution for dealers, sub-dealers, contractors, et cetera. We have worked in aviation, where we designed solutions there as well. One client was a manufacturer of parts for the aircraft. The quality check of each product, each spray part, what they were manufacturing, was pretty hard. It's supposed to go through ten different testing checkpoints. We designed a solution for them on Salesforce, to follow the protocol and the process.

Apart from that, I've worked on many real estate projects where a company used it for managing properties, including rental properties and construction. We have worked with integrating Salesforce with a government website where they used to update the new buyers of the property across Philadelphia. We pushed data from that government website into a client's Salesforce. That way, they were always aware of sold properties, when, and by whom. They used the information to make a pitch for renovation assistance services. 

The solution has grown its services over time. Now, for example, it includes a Sales cloud, Marketing cloud, Service cloud, et cetera.

I liked the classic version of Salesforce. There are a lot of really great basic features.

It's very flexible and offers tremendous features for customers.

The solution is stable. 

The product works well at an enterprise level.

Pricing is the biggest factor. The cost right now is too high and I've had a lot of clients leave. 

Sometimes customers can get annoyed as there are just too many features to understand and work with. They should consider reducing their offering, or work to streamline it so that it is not so overwhelming. There are now many great competitors that offer more streamlined, easy-to-understand services. 

Customers need accounting, and, right now, they need to go elsewhere, to something like Xero, for example, or QuickBooks. It would be nice to have some kind of accounting available right in Salesforce. 

The stability could be better. 

We don't get any leads from Salesforce here in India. It would be helpful if we could use the product to get us leads. 

We've been on the Salesforce platform for about 11 years at this point. It's been over a decade and we've used it for quite a while. 

In Salesforce, I haven't seen many issues. However, in some cases, we have clients that for some reason don't see specific add-on features and we bring in Salesforce to understand why certain things do not appear. 

However, for the most part, the stability is good and doesn't cause any issues. 

We have not set a benchmark in terms of the size of companies we work with. We don't work with thousands of users. We are helping single users from companies and we have worked with 4,000 plus users at an enterprise level.

That said, this solution works well for enterprise-level organizations. 

A customer who is coming to Salesforce for the first time, and doesn't understand CRMS, may need to take time to understand business practices. However, if a person is in IT or software, they usually get it a bit faster. They can handle the complexity.

During implementation, it's best to take baby steps before getting into complex cases. There's a learning curve, however, the level of the learning curve varies from customer to customer. 

The amount of time deployment takes depends on the kind of project.

The pricing is pretty expensive. 

We're using the enterprise version of the solution. 

I've done only four or five projects since I started my own shop back in 2010. Most of the projects which we have done are all for overseas companies. 80% are from the US and 20% are from the rest of the globe, including Australia, Canada, Europe, and the UK.

I'd rate the solution at an eight out of ten.

It is our customer base, and we use it for just about everything.

I am using the unlimited latest version. It is on the Salesforce cloud.

We use the whole gamut of it. We use it for customer information. We also use it for prospecting. It has information about our delivery team such as who has got a particular account. It also has any type of service information that is needed, such as billing address, demographics, system information, account teams, and account planning. If we want to delve into a customer, we can account plan and find out what they've got and what their networking environment looks like, and this information is held in our records. If something happens to me, and somebody called about that particular record, they can find this information and pick from where I left off.

It is easy to close pending deals. When a customer signs the paperwork, it has got the e-sign incorporated in it. So, when a customer says, "Yeah, let's move forward with that.", we send an amendment or a contract to the customer via e-sign. They sign it, and it comes right back to us. After that, the person who does the sign off on contracts signs it, and when they're finished with it, it comes right back to me stating that it has been signed and countersigned, and now I can go ahead and process that order and get to the customer a copy of the record so that they have a copy in their records. It is overall an easy place to keep things organized.

It is a good solution. It has a learning curve, but once you learn it, it is a very good piece of software to have to keep up with everything, such as cancellations, new accounts, new contacts, and new opportunities. We also sell co-location, so it gives us a lot of data center information, such as what rack this customer is in and how much power they've got on that particular rack. It gives a lot of information. You just need to know where to find it. Once you learn it, it is just easy to navigate. 

I can go anywhere with it because it is web-based. All I need to do is get to it, and I can get to my customer. It is pretty straightforward. It's like any piece of software nowadays. It has an application that can be taken with you anywhere. It is on my phone, and it is also on my iPad, desktop, and laptop, so I can take it with me anywhere. It is very easy to use and easy to access.

I like it because of the fact that it lets me know what I'm working on and what I've recently worked on. It also helps me and allows me to do tracking. If I want to go out and find out how many times I've touched customers, I can find that information out. It tracks such information, and we use it. If we send any type of promotions out, it tracks who gets those promotions and how they've responded to those promotions. It is just a well-organized space that kind of has everything that you need to take care of your customer.

There is always room for improvement. It can be hard to learn, but when you have somebody who is experienced in this, it is like anything else. It is like Excel, you'll never know everything about Excel, but there's somebody who would possibly know. I'm sure I don't know all of the ins and outs of Salesforce.

In terms of additional features, it has got pretty much everything in there. It has a lot of information, and it is perfect for me. I'm an old-school guy, so I think it's perfect, but I'm sure there's going to be some room for improvement somewhere along the line.

I have been using this solution for the last five years, but my company has probably been using it for quite some time.

The only glitches that you'll have will be the operator, but once you know the navigation of it all, you won't have a problem with it. It's like anything else you learn.

It is easy to scale. I use the unlimited version, so I've not been stumped on anything here. In terms of usage, all the personnel in our company use it.

I've signed up for difficult classes, and they've been Johnny-on-the-spot to help out and to see if there's anything else that they can do. Their customer service is top-notch.

It is pretty straightforward. It is pretty easy to set up accounts.

I don't know anything about its cost, but I'm sure it has got a nice little price tag that goes along with it. 

I would recommend this solution to others if they can afford it. It doesn't mean it is expensive. I don't know what it costs, but if you can afford it, it is a good way to get in. 

It is a good product, and it has served us well. It keeps us organized, and it keeps us with our customer numbers. It has a learning curve, but you got to start somewhere. Like anything, you have to learn it. If you've got a good attitude and an open mind, you can learn anything.

I would rate Salesforce Platform a 10 out of 10.

We primarily use the solution for the CRM, the customer relationship management, but now we are expanding its usage to allow our customers use access an online customer portal based on salesforce community and using B2B commerce  

It was a great add-on to our digital landscape. It is an easy-to-use, easy to customize platform.

Salesforce is not a product, it is a platform, there is a huge difference between the two use cases. 

The platform allows us to receive and collect information easily.

There's a great ecosystem within Salesforce:

1) A huge network of implementation-certified  partners  who have great knowledge about the platform

2) A Market place where you  can download 3rd party apps on the platform

3) There is very good online documentation available and Salesforce offers good communication with its clients. It's very user-friendly and has a system that is easy to learn.

We've found the stability to be quite good.

The initial setup is easy.

The product can scale well.

The solution doesn't really have any weak areas. Overall, it's a very good product, but technical support could be a bit faster. For the standard support, their SLA is about 48 hours which is not that fast if you have a serious issue 

Based on the platform capabilities. I see that the Platform is very, very capable of handling a full ERP, and not only a CRM.

Maybe in the near future, SF will launch their own ERP system.

We've been using this solution for ten years at this point. It's been a decade. It's been a long time.

The stability of the product has been good overall. We don't experience any downtime. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. You do need access to a good internet connection, however. Without a strong internet connection, you may experience some problems. However, that's not the fault of the Salesforce backend in any way. 

The scalability is very good. If you need to expand it, you can do so relatively easily.

Technical support is okay. It's average. Their response times could be faster in terms of getting assistance to us. I'd rate it overall at a four out of five. Mostly we are happy with the level of support.

We did previously use another solution before Salesforce.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

The time it takes to deploy depends on what your plans are for the solution. Without any specific customizations, it's a very quick process. Once you log on, you have access.

The solution is relatively expensive. It also comes with extra costs. For example, extra technical support is a bit more. It can add up.

We did evaluate a few other options before ultimately choosing Salesforce. Among these was Microsoft.

We're just Salesforce customers. We don't have a business relationship with them.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We're mostly quite satisfied with the product and its capabilities.

I'd recommend the solution to other users and companies. However, you need a strong team to manage it. You need to have suitable admins on hand to properly implement the rules. 

I sell competitive solutions, and I am an end-user of the Salesforce Platform, which is our CRM. We use this solution to keep track of customers, prospects, and associated contacts.

The reporting capabilities are pretty user-friendly.

They should provide access to data quality tips and tricks to make it better.

I've been at my current job for five years, and I've been using it for that time. I have also used salesforce at other companies as well.

We are using the latest version, it's called Lightening.

It's a stable solution. We have not had any issues with the stability of the Salesforce Platform.

It is easy to scale. It is, of course, the original software as a service.

We have 300 users in our organization who are using this solution, who are mainly Sales and Sales Management.

I haven't used technical support. We have our own first-line support for our company. I've never had to actually reach out to Salesforce themselves.

Previously, I hadn't used any other solution. I have used Salesforce at this job and at my previous two jobs.

I was not a part of the initial setup, it was already in place and done for me.

The solution is good.

It's only as good as the company that you are working for, who sets it up, and that monitors it and dates it. This is one of the biggest challenges with customer relationships.

Management Software such as the Salesforce Platform ensures data quality.

The tool can be great, but if you don't enter enough accurate data and keep it up to date then the CRM tool functionality cannot be leveraged.

I would advise having a data quality manager for this solution. If you're going to be using it to manage sales over time and for marketing efforts, if you don't have up-to-date complete information in there, then you don't get the value out of the solution.

I would rate Salesforce Platform a seven out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for Account Management and Lead Management.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the unit coordination between sales and marketing when it comes to lead management.. We needed one CRM where we can have all the relevant lead lists, customize lead information fields over there, upload important information, update information and pass the information from sales to amrketing and vice versa and ensure a seamless coordination - that was the best part of it because it improved the productivity and no longer we rely on email threads or manual excel sheets -we had a robust mechanism.

Another interesting feature is integration with other marketing automation platforms like ZoomInfo, Outreach etc. This significantly reduces our workload or maintaining or integration of data across tools and seamlessly helps us execute our activities. 

The initial setup was straightforward.. It didnot take any time to learn and set it up. 

The product has proven to be stable. We have not faced any productivity or workability issues. 

The pricing is good.

We've found the technical support to be very helpful and responsive. 

Basically, Salesforce has two different views. One is the plastic view and one is the lightening view. If I log in the view is not returned for me specifically. For example, if I'm working with view number one, and I toggle to view number two and then log out when I log out, I come back and I'm still back in view number one. I'd like to stay in whichever view I need.

Sometimes what will happen is we work on it and then we move to a different tab and work on something else. After five minutes, when we come back, it automatically signs out. The thing is, every time we need to re-login. I would like to propose a session extension pop-up. This means that there will be some kind of reminder that your session is going to expire in the next two minutes and to please sign in if you want to continue. 

We haven't been using the solution for a short amount of time. We've used it for about two to four months.

The solution is quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. We haven't found that it crashes or freeze. Its performance is reliable.

We have yet to attempt to scale the solution generally. 

We did not add any users, however, we have added more and more workflows. We've been able to customize to our needs. In that sense, it can scale.

We have five users on the solution currently.

I'm not sure if we have plans to expand the product at this time.

I've been in touch with technical support and would give them a rating of nine out of ten. They are quite responsive. We've been very satisfied with their level of assistance.

The initial setup is not complex or overly difficult. It's very straightforward, very easy. A company shouldn't have any issues with the process.

I cannot recall the exact amount of time that the deployment took.

I don't have too much insight on the licensing, however, the pricing is quite reasonable. It's not overly expensive. 

We did evaluate one solution, however, Salesforce is the best when it comes to marketing.

We are just a customer and an end-user.

It is my understanding that we are using the latest version of the solution at this time. 

Salesforce is great. Without any doubt, I would say one should definitely go for Salesforce. It does a lot of sales and marketing in the CRM that would help you if you work on productivity. If someone wants to have a single place where they need to be productive and that will deliver to the sales and marketing list, then yes Salesforce is the place.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been very happy with its capabilities overall. 

We use it to manage the customer base, sales funnel, and sales team. We also intend to use it for CRM.

It is very modular in approach. It is very light, and it can be used on various devices. It could be used on an Android phone or a laptop, which makes it good for the sales team on the road.

It could have a lot more customization options in terms of fonts and reports. 

There should be an even lighter version with just two or three fields. It could be a bit more light if the field guys want to use it on a mobile phone on the road. 

For deploying it for CRM, maybe we can have our customer database, project funnels, and projects to help us in managing our supply chain business.

I have been using this solution for almost ten or eleven years. In my current organization, we have been using it for the last two years. I have also used it in my previous company.

It has been quite stable. We didn't have any challenges.

In terms of scalability, it has been good so far. I have seen it working fine for a team of 10 people as well as for a team of 1,000 people. There are probably more than 1,000 users in our organization globally.

In this organization, it is primarily for managing the sales team and sales funnel, but we also intend to use it for CRM around three years down the line.

I am a sales guy, and from my point of view, I never had any problem.

It is straightforward.

I have heard that it is fairly priced. It offers ROI.

It is a good platform. To deploy it in your organization, users should identify their problems and needs. They should align it with their needs in terms of customization. 

I would rate Salesforce Platform an eight out of ten.

We used it for sales and mobile access. We had to create mobile access for sales agents. We also used it for customer service and for onboarding in the treasury space with the nCino product. 

It has definitely improved the way our organization functions.

We used it for providing a 360 view of the customers from within Salesforce. So, a lot of data got presented there, for which we used Einstein Analytics. The Einstein Analytics dashboards were really great.

It is quite expensive. It has gotten to that point where it is a lot more pricey. It has kind of got its own proprietary language for development. It is probably never going to change, but if it had a more market language for development, it would be easier to find developers. They come at a premium cost, so it is expensive.

I have been using this solution for more than four years.

Overall, it is stable. We generally tend to wait until somebody else has upgraded.

It is highly scalable. In my previous organization, we probably had 2,000 or 3,000 users.

They have a model where there are a lot of user groups before you get into really calling them. We go through the sales channel and get assistance through that. We didn't really use the tech support itself that much. We kind of leveraged sales engineers to help us with things that we had questions about.

Based on my knowledge, we were not using any other solution. I have used it here for four years, but they have had it for eight years.

It really depends on what you're doing.

It is quite expensive. Its developers come at a premium cost, which makes it expensive.

I would advise others to go with the base functionality first and then develop specific use cases for your expansion and customization. Try to leverage, as much as possible, the core capabilities without customization. Rely on configuration because customization is really expensive. The developers are expensive.

I would rate Salesforce Platform an eight out of ten.

We originally started using Salesforce Platform for our sales guys who go into the market every day. They wanted a common platform that is scalable and easy to work with, especially for the clients. We took to Salesforce because it filled this need, and because it came with multiple apps from different vendors and partners that could be integrated with it.

The sales team do route planning, meeting planning, and then they take a particular vehicle to particular retailers. Then they talk to them and find out their reason for taking or not taking a particular order, so that my marketing team and other teams can take action.

In 2015, we decided we should be on cloud. That is, we should not build our own infrastructure, hardware, network, database, etc., because then you cannot focus on the business outcomes; you're focusing more on the infrastructure. With Salesforce Platform, we are able to focus on business outcomes and we need not worry about infrastructure at all.

We found that the dashboard creation is very simple, so we got all our data in one place and we told users: now it's your job to create whatever analytics you want on the backend. So instead of generically recreating and redefining everything, what we did is we allowed our users access to all the fields that let them select and define their own graphs and analytics and so on. When used like this, it is very simple for users and doesn't require any technical IT skills from their point of view.

We like that the technology is very agile and flexible in the sense that there's a large partner ecosystem within Salesforce Platform. This enables us to choose from many different partners with different advantages, and all of it can be done in a plug-and-play kind of way.

One other aspect that is very important to us is that Salesforce Platform is a global platform and widely available across all of India.

Although the platform is already set up for you, there's a lot of customization that needs to be done, especially for any new component we start using. For whatever solution we wanted, we had to think for ourselves and design it all on our own. And, unfortunately, there were some components that were not really mature in the beginning, like Tableau for example. I would like to see Salesforce better, or more quickly, integrate the applications that they acquire, like Tableau and Slack.

Technologies are changing rapidly nowadays, and customers are requesting all sorts of new integrations. For example, some are asking for WhatsApp integrations, AI and ML integrations, etc. When you're using a single platform such as Salesforce or SAP, your data quality is the one thing that is taken care of, and we would like to continue managing our data across many different integration channels.

We've been using Salesforce Platform for almost four years. 

It's a very stable solution. We haven't had many issues with stability. 

With our environment of around 1500 users, there have hardly been any performance or scalability issues.

I don't think I have ever called technical support for an explanation or anything. At least not for the solution that we use for our sales staff who visit the markets. 

The setup was really straightforward. The one hitch was that when first setting up our customers, to capture their details and enter them into the system, we found that not all of them had reliable internet access. However, I understand that this is not a product challenge, but rather a practical or technical challenge.

The licensing is per user per month, which we took out a contract on a long time back. It's really an okay price for what solutions are available and for how many features and what kind of functionality you get.

The only thing is that, regarding the pricing contract, if you agree on 2000 users, you have to pay for 2000, even if you only have 1500. An agreement for 2000 users was in our contract, so we had to pay a little bit extra because we only have about 1500 users currently.

I can recommend Salesforce Platform to others with no hesitation. For a PaaS, all the infrastructure was in place. But when you begin with a new platform, you have to start from scratch at level zero and then keep on maturing. Thus, my advice to my team and everyone else is: don't complicate from day one. You start, make it simple, keep on using it, make sure it's working correctly and so on, and from there on out things are very easy for users.

I would rate Salesforce Platform a seven out of ten.