Is Salesforce the right fit for you? Consider the Pros and Cons before making a decision

Salesforce, one of the top CRM platforms, is certainly familiar to anyone who works with customer contact, customer experiences, or digital marketing. 

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and Salesforce can assist you and your company in developing and sustaining great customer relationships.

Are you thinking about implementing Salesforce? You're not alone; it's one of the most widely used CRM systems for a reason. To help you figure it out, our Salesforce implementation experts present a complete assessment of the platform's benefits and drawbacks, so you can get the most out of Salesforce implementation services if you choose this platform as your CRM platform.

1. Customization

Advantages:

Salesforce is built to be highly configurable while still providing a large number of functions out of the box. Salesforce can be swiftly adapted and installed to match a variety of use cases, improve business processes, and help organizations become more efficient using point-and-click tools, built-in UI/UX capabilities, and automation. However, the platform also enables complicated programming, system integrations, and much more.

Disadvantages:

You can easily over-customize your Salesforce solution with so many customization features. The more complicated features and custom fields your solution has, the more difficult it will be for your employees to fully utilize them. Excessive customization could result in low CRM adoption and employee productivity.

2. Cloud-Based Functionality

Advantages:

It's all the trend these days to use cloud-based solutions, and for good reason. CRMs that run on physical servers on-site can limit connectivity and make it difficult for employees to securely access company data off-site.

Salesforce is cloud-based, which means it is based on data centers that are accessible to users via the internet. Users have more freedom and accessibility with cloud-native software, and it's easier to scale to serve a growing staff. As a result, businesses may utilize on-demand computing capabilities and optimize their operations without having to worry about provisioning and maintaining physical infrastructure.

Disadvantages:

One of the most obvious disadvantages of Salesforce (and any other cloud CRM) is that it is completely dependent on internet access. To ensure the consistency of business activities and transactions enabled by CRM, the connection must be steady. In addition, a company's lack of control over system updates and planned downtimes might be a serious concern if it wants to handle such issues on its own.

3. Products for various business needs

Advantages:

Salesforce is more than just a sales CRM; it also contains critical products and applications that assist customer service and marketing activities. Furthermore, you can use the Lightning Platform to develop your own app or portal for customer and partner communication, or you can use the Salesforce Site.com solution to create a website.

Disadvantages:

Adding more things to your solution means more money out of your pocket. If you plan to meet all of your sales, customer support, and marketing objectives with Salesforce products, the message is clear: be prepared to pay.

4. Extensive out-of-the-box functionality

Advantages:

If you consider the sales process as a whole, Salesforce Sales Cloud includes capabilities to help you at every stage, from prospecting to closing and following up on sales deals. The same can be said for Service Cloud's multichannel customer service and Marketing Cloud's ability to create highly tailored customer journeys across all communication channels.

Disadvantages:

Every Salesforce edition (Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, and even Unlimited) includes system limits, such as a limit on the amount of validation rules, custom fields created per object, and file sharing, which might stymie some business operations.

Data storage restrictions are perhaps one of Salesforce's most significant challenges.

There used to be 1GB of data and file storage per org, which was insufficient for allocating all of the customer data.

And, while the 1GB limit for Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited editions has been expanded tenfold since the spring release of 2019, 10 GB per org may be insufficient for a global organization with thousands of clients.

5. Salesforce Technical and Training Support

Advantages:

Salesforce offers a variety of ways for individuals and businesses to seek support, improve their skills, and learn from one another.

The Trailblazer Community allows you to ask questions about anything from how to utilize a certain feature to how to create new fields, construct formulas, and automate your workflow.

Salesforce customers, consultants, and others can network at community events.

Trailhead offers self-guided learning options for everyone from complete novices to seasoned Salesforce professionals, as well as industry-recognized certificates.

Disadvantages:

Problems can develop with any technology deployment, as they do with any other. Despite the fact that Salesforce has a dedicated support team, automated technical services sometimes fail to fix difficulties fast, and reaching a person who can provide the answers you need can take time. This delayed assistance may have an influence on the organization's efficiency.

6. Integration capabilities

Advantages:

Salesforce can be integrated with a variety of external systems, including DMS, ITSM, ERP, accounting systems, ecommerce platforms, and social media, to deliver smooth and synchronized business processes for many departments.

Standard APIs and default integration tools enable mutual data sharing and synchronized workflows between linked systems.

Disadvantages:

When it comes to particular integration demands, default tools aren't always enough. Consider Salesforce Connect, which is frequently used to connect Salesforce to ERP or DMS systems (like SharePoint). There are certain technical restrictions to the tool, such as the fact that it only supports SharePoint document libraries (all other library kinds and lists are not supported), and there is no way to create SharePoint files within Salesforce. In such circumstances, custom work is required to ensure that the integration problems are fully addressed.

Is Salesforce a good fit for you?

Consider all of the Salesforce advantages and disadvantages when making your CRM decision. As a result, Salesforce can assist you in supporting complicated business processes and increasing sales, customer service, and marketing team productivity. From a functional standpoint, this feature-rich and adaptable CRM is a fantastic pick.

If you have a tight budget and aren't willing to invest much in customization, integration, and continuous maintenance, Salesforce isn't the ideal solution for you; there are more advanced and cost-effective CRMs available, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 or SugarCRM.

Do you need a Salesforce solution to help you manage your sales, service, and marketing processes? We're here to assist you.

Working with a Salesforce Implementation partner like Cynoteck can help your company prioritize requirements and get the most out of your Salesforce org at the most efficient pace and level of customisation.