Introduction to Salesforce
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM platform. It is a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform offering customer relationship management services on the cloud. Being on cloud, Salesforce application can be accessed from anywhere at any time. This is the biggest benefit of the SaaS platform, as one can use the application suite even without installing it on their device. With the help of the Salesforce application, businesses can connect to their customers, partners, and suppliers over the cloud.
Salesforce as a CRM platform provides 6 specific modules to manage customers effectively, and automate the business processes associated with customer management. This includes recording every detail of their customers, their contact details, accounting information, and even preferable mode of communication.
What is SaaS?
Salesforce offers is a solution as Software as a Service (SaaS) on the cloud platform. Salesforce is a completely cloud-based solution, which means the Salesforce application can be accessed from anywhere at any time, without even installing the application files. Salesforce can be accessed directly from a web browser or even from its mobile app, that is the flexibility a cloud-based platform has over the traditional platform. Software as a service delivers applications over the internet as a service, as a cloud-based solution. This gives the user complete freedom from installation and maintenance of the software. This simply means no executable files, no update patches, no repair.
Conventional software needs an executable file for applications, updates, and security patches to keep the application update, and repair files in case the application needs to be repaired. Moreover, the application performance is limited and dependent on the device hardware and software configurations. This is not the case with the SaaS, as it is completely independent of the device on which it is accessed. That is the beauty of modern-day cloud computing. SaaS applications are also referred to as:
- Web-Based Applications
- On-Demand Applications
- Hosted Software
The applications are hosted on the SaaS provider’s server. In this case, salesforce is the SaaS provider hosting the SaaS applications. Being the SaaS provider, Salesforce is completely responsible for maintaining access to the Salesforce application suite, providing security, ensuring high availability, and optimizing performance. SaaS is a cloud platform, completely abstracts the hardware and software platform from the users.
SaaS platform has the key characteristics that make it one of the preferred platforms for the Salesforce application. These key characteristics are:
- Multitenant: All the users share a single infrastructure, rather than separate infrastructure for each of the users. In the shared model, the code base is run and maintained centrally. With a single update on the platform, all the vendors and clients can get the updated version delivered to their device. As this is a shared model, the subscription costs for Salesforce is quite low and reasonable. One can subscribe to Salesforce with subscription cost starting as low as $25 US dollars.
- Customization: SaaS allows for easy and hassle-free customization. The Salesforce environment can be customized with custom development and custom coding. Right from altering the page layout with CSS, to integrating third-party tools and platforms, creating apex triggers, multiple types of customizations are allowed in Salesforce as per the business needs.
- Accessibility: Accessibility is one of the bluepoints of Salesforce. Being a SaaS platform, provides seamless access to the application, along with the application data and user data. No need to store the data on the local devices, or servers within the intranet. Salesforce enables data accessibility on the go.
History of Salesforce
Salesforce was founded in 1999 by three ex-employees of Oracle. However, it was only in 2004 when Salesforce listed itself in NSE and classified itself as a CRM company. In 2014, Salesforce merged all its modules under a single platform, that was named as a customer success platform. All the key modules, such as sales, analytics, service, and marketing were merged into a single platform. In 2014. In 2017, Salesforce developed and launched the Facebook Analytics tool, which is still one of the best tools in the market for measuring social performance. In 2018, Salesforce solution apps for Apple, bringing significant improvement in the business processes of Apple. With over 80,000 customers and over 2,00,000 subscribers, Salesforce is one of the largest CRM service providers overcloud.
Key benefits of Salesforce
Salesforce offers multiple benefits as a CRM platform based on the cloud. Some of the key benefits are listed below:
- It is a solution made up of extensive features for different modules such as customer management, marketing management, leads, and opportunity management, service management, contract lifecycle management partner management, and many more.
- Anytime availability of the data and platform, as the application is offered as SaaS and PaaS.
- Any type of organization can use Salesforce apps, right from small to SMEs to large enterprises.
- It allows us to customize the applications as per the business needs and requirements.
- Less overhead costs, as Salesforce provides the option of pay as you go model.
- Increased level of customer satisfaction, with an increased level of customer retention and customer loyalty.
- Easy integration with third-party apps.