Salesforce Platform Reviews

We primarily use Salesforce to manage pipeline opportunities. We are customers of Salesforce and I'm a senior enterprise multicloud strategist.

Salesforce enables us to track the percentage of opportunities that progress, the percentage that don't, and the reasons why.

This solution gives us a great platform to import and save customer data from various sources, and then manage them using outreach and various plugins to keep activity up. The dashboards are great, I can see lost or suspended accounts, year to day, total opportunities either as owner or team member, team pipelines, etc. It's very modular, so I don't have to continue to run reports and then track them myself. They have third-party plugins which are basically the same as features that enable you to get whatever functionality you need. It's fast and it works well, it's easy to aggregate information from multiple sources and all in all, I feel like it makes us a lot more productive as opposed to having to go to multiple websites. Here you can pull up an account, see all the tabs for that account without the need to have seven different tabs open on your browser.

The reporting functionality is very granular and you can do a lot with it, but unfortunately, it's not very intuitive. It's hard to get the report to show exactly what you want. It works if you turn it into a tile in the dashboard but working through it and creating the report is a little cumbersome, it's terrible. It's not super user-friendly, it takes time and some fiddling around. Simplified reporting would be great, but perhaps I don't have enough experience. I could spend some time figuring it out but for now, I create a report that I never have to create again. It's in a dashboard, so I don't get the opportunity to create much. With some training, I'd likely be better at creating reports. 

I've been using this solution for six months. 

The solution is stable. 

I've been able to scale very easily. We've doubled the size of our team in the last year and it's really easy to add new users and with a couple of minutes of training they've pretty much got it down. For that kind of internal growth and for everyone to be using it relatively well in such a short period of time, is great.

We have an internal technical resource that's able to assist on the Salesforce side. One of the things we've added recently is a button where you can essentially open a ticket for questions related to the use of Salesforce. In the past, I would reach out to our internal support team to help me build a report. Now, we simply have a request button that gets us to Salesforce.com support. I open the ticket and get a very quick response which is really great. 

From my perspective, they need to incorporate plugins. Salesforce is a great platform. It's like being able to use the apps on an iPhone. It looks good, you can make calls and it's easy to use but it's the ability to add apps which makes it great. In Salesforce terms, the value lies in the modular solutions through the plugins.

In terms of rating, the solution loses points because of the non-intuitive reporting. On the other hand, it provides many benefits. I would therefore rate the solution eight out of 10. 

My primary use case for Salesforce is managing and analyzing data related to sales opportunities and leads. It includes extracting data to analyze service performance. 

The product's most valuable features are a user-friendly interface and comprehensive CRM capabilities. These features help manage sales data and extract meaningful insights from opportunities and leads.

The product's pricing model could be improved, as some features are only available in paid modules, which can be costly. 

I have been using Salesforce Platform primarily as an end user for several years.

The platform is stable.

The platform is scalable, as it effectively supports the commercial team in our medium-sized organization.

The technical support services are good. 

The product generally requires specialized knowledge for configuration.

The product's additional features can be expensive. 

I 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.

There are various modules available, and not all of them are fully utilized or engaged extensively. Some modules serve internal purposes, such as tracking employee efforts and utilization. This relates to our customer support services. When you input something, you need to adhere to your specified timelines.

I find the user interface to be excellently crafted. It's user-friendly, and intuitive, with a minimalistic design, making it straightforward to navigate. The presentation is clear and easy to comprehend. Overall, it's quite satisfactory.    

Companies prioritize quality execution and user convenience over pricing concerns. Their primary focus is on the platform's effectiveness and the positive impact it can make, as well as the time-saving benefits it offers. It's essentially a blend of both factors, striking a balance between quality and cost.

This platform is indeed on the expensive side. One notable aspect is that it offers a comprehensive range of fields and even allows for customization, enabling users to tailor it to their specific tasks and requirements. This flexibility extends to creating customized labels and columns in the backend, making it a highly adaptable and tailored tool. Overall, I haven't encountered any significant challenges.

Pricing could potentially be a deciding factor, but I believe it's unlikely to be a major concern for the company behind this widely used CRM platform. Despite the higher pricing, it remains the most popular CRM tool globally due to its extensive features and capabilities.

I have been using Salesforce Platform for the past year.

It is a stable solution. 

It offers high scalability and is easier to scale and navigate.

I am not a part of the internal team. They are mainly responsible for the deployment.

From a pricing perspective, I believe it's safe to say that this platform ranks as the top choice globally. It offers an incredibly user-friendly experience and provides efficient storage solutions, albeit at a relatively higher cost. Nevertheless, it's also the most widely adopted platform worldwide, owing to its comprehensive set of features and capabilities that cater to organizations of all sizes, particularly larger IT firms. Whether it's big IT companies or any other industry, this platform stands out as a CRM tool for internal purposes, mainly due to its cost-effectiveness.

We use it as a CRM for our client management. We use it as a rostering and scheduling tool for our main business, which is supporting people with disabilities. We also use it for our payroll system.

We have increased the visibility of our information and reporting with the tool. Also, I think we now have a more streamlined end-to-end process.

I like that everything is on a fairly easy platform, and you can learn the system by yourself. Also, it's very fairly flexible. It's a system that you can use anywhere. So, you can use a mobile phone. You can use it anywhere. So it doesn't tie you to the office.

There are a few functions that I would like to see improved. The solution's rostering and scheduling, and payroll functionality need to improve.

We're working with all our vendors on issues that need to be updated and addressed to meet the changing business needs.

I have been using Salesforce Platform for about two years.

The solution's stability is fine. There are no issues with Salesforce's stability.

The scalability of the solution has been fine. We have a year of data in the tool, and there are no differences in performance from when we started using it. Around 550 users in m company use the solution.

Our third parties handle the technical support, and each one is different. Overall, they're all fairly good at what they do.

We used a number of different solutions before going with Salesforce. We didn't switch because they weren't fit for purpose, and we wanted to get all our critical business systems onto one platform.

The initial setup process was a complex thing to do because four different organizations were working together. We get enhancements and improvements every quarter from our vendors. Also, we enhance the product ourselves. I am responsible for the maintenance of Salesforce platform.

Third parties were involved in the implementation process. We had our in-house project team, but we also worked with a main external provider who organized the other third-party providers since four different organizations were working with us to do the deployment.

Price-wise, the solution is reasonable for what we're getting.

I would tell those planning to use the solution to take more than eight months to implement and ensure they have work in their internal business cases before implementing. I rate the overall product a nine out of ten.

We were trying to use Salesforce for an ecosystem to create a loan origination system. So, we are developing a product on the Salesforce platform.

Salesforce's out-of-the-box features are sufficient for most businesses. For instance, if I consider Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, they encompass almost every feature that businesses need for their sales and service processes. If customization is required, Salesforce offers good options, such as using their process automation tool called "Flow" or taking the programming route with Apex programming. They provide a wide range of capabilities under what they call "No code," "Low code," and "Pro code" options. Businesses can use these to tailor their processes on the Salesforce platform.

Salesforce introduces a lot of products and sometimes rebrands them, causing confusion. They acquire products like W and retain their names, creating confusion in the market. This confusion isn't related to the product's functionality but rather its positioning and rebranding. For instance, what was once known as Community Cloud is now referred to as Experience Cloud. This can be confusing for business leaders. Regarding the product's functionality, I find it quite competent. 

We did encounter some issues with Einstein, specifically Einstein Discovery, which is Salesforce's tool for building machine learning models. While it offers out-of-the-box features, we faced occasional problems with it not running properly and had to seek support from Salesforce. There were also some bugs affecting the results. The features didn't always seem stable. The support we received was often delayed, which was frustrating. So, in terms of Einstein Discovery, there were some issues with stability. Our support issues were primarily related to Einstein Discovery. We were getting really late support.

So, there is room for improvement in Einstein Discovery. 

We have been working with this platform for close to two years.

The solution is highly stable. They are among the best in this regard. They prioritize transparency and trust, promptly reporting any outages. Therefore, the solution consistently maintains its uptime without issues.

Our customers are in the enterprise category. They have a considerable number of licenses, more than 10,000.

Salesforce is indeed scalable. The key is to strictly follow to their design guidelines and recommendations when it comes to data storage. Since it's a cloud-based platform, they suggest using external objects for smaller data. By following their recommendations, there are no inherent limitations in scalability. They also offer options for data archival. However, the challenge arises when organizations deviate from these recommendations, which can lead to performance and scalability issues.

The current recommendations are quite satisfactory. Considering it's a cloud platform, the capabilities are impressive. The only challenge is that as the platform grows, it becomes more complex. There's now a greater degree of customization and additional features, which can be overwhelming for smaller clients who may not need all of them.

With Salesforce introducing numerous features annually, the product has become larger and more intricate. Before implementing these features, they undergo extensive due diligence. However, as the product has grown, it now contains a lot of features. Some of these features may not be relevant to a particular client. For instance, a smaller client that has purchased Salesforce might find these features overwhelming rather than beneficial. It would be helpful if they could also offer lightweight applications that cater to specific sets of features rather than providing everything to every client. However, this might not be feasible due to its cloud-based nature. Nevertheless, there are many features that do not add value to the client. To put it quantifiably, if an organization or client uses only 10% of 100 features, it implies that 90 features are superfluous. So, it has indeed become feature-rich. But how do we determine which features are actually being used? Is there uncertainty around that? The usage of features can be somewhat doubtful.

Einstein Discovery support was somewhat delayed. The response time could be faster. 

Salesforce is cloud-based, so there's no installation involved. You simply log in using the provided organization login. There's no need for installation.

There are two approaches, managed and unmanaged packages. For maintenance, a team is required because new features need to be developed regularly. Everything is managed within Salesforce itself, including DevOps. The team is needed not just for maintenance but also for feature enhancements.

The people required for the deployment process vary depending on the specific module or feature. For example, in a larger implementation like insurance, you might require a big implementation team of 15 to 1,000 people. However, even for a smaller 15-member team, ongoing maintenance and support by at least 10% of the team is necessary.

However, it's not fair to base this solely on team size. Suppose we're talking about a significant feature; we've delivered the entire thing in two to three months, but we still need at least two to 10% of the team to maintain it.

The licensing is on the expensive side, but most clients engage in negotiations to reach a more favorable agreement. For stand-alone or medium-sized clients, it can be relatively costly.

Currently, it operates mainly on a monthly basis, with options for yearly subscriptions. In practice, clients often opt for the annual subscription, which results in monthly billing.

Pricing is somewhat intricate in that regard. Salesforce offers various types of licenses, including unlimited, enterprise, and CFO licenses, along with different Sandboxes and channel support options. The licensing structure is not very straightforward. It's very cumbersome.

So customers have options within the license only where customers can get an option of different Sandboxes and channel supports.

When planning a Salesforce implementation, or any similar platform for that matter, it's essential to have a crystal-clear understanding of your needs. This advice extends beyond Salesforce to other platforms as well. 

Salesforce often provides recommendations on how objects and custom objects should be created. My suggestion would always be to aim for a solution that leans towards standardization. Avoid adding unnecessary complexity through extensive programming or excessive custom object creation.

I recommend leveraging no-code or low-code solutions rather than diving into pro-code development. Pro-code can introduce complexity, especially when dealing with new releases. With no-code and low-code approaches, you can ensure that your solutions remain robust and don't break with each update.

Therefore, it's advisable to rely on standard objects and processes as much as possible. If customization is required, prefer configuration or flow options. Only in the most complex scenarios should you consider pro-code, such as Apex programming. This approach ensures stability. Additionally, during the design phase, create plenty of instances to facilitate the entire process.

This advice is applicable across the board, but it's particularly crucial for Salesforce implementations. Properly planning data design and reference architecture before implementation is key. These principles can significantly impact the success of any implementation.

Overall, I would rate it as an eight out of ten. It's a very good solution, but it does come with complexity.

The Salesforce Platform is a massive-sized solution. It's a vast digital platform that you can place all your business processes on and you can make the best use of your data and your customer data all in one place. The large data that you can take out of it to base your decisions on, to know your customers better, to be more efficient, and grab all opportunities that are in place and have clear visibility. 

The Salesforce Platform can help aid you in making the right decisions at the right time. It's easy to use because everything is in one place. It saves the time of the people working, using it in different processes.

The Salesforce Platform's most valuable features are everything in one place, perfect reporting, highly customizable, and easy to receive information you need.

Salesforce is very fast in acquiring new companies that are good in certain business processes or modules which they update their solutions.

The general reports could be made easier in the Salesforce Platform. Generating needs extensive training to know the exact structure of the design. Whenever you search for something you need to know what are the exact fields that you need to view. It's not an easy process to learn.

We're in the implementation phase with the Salesforce Platform. We've launched one of the modules and we're working on the second one we will be working on the sales module later this year.

The stability of the Salesforce Platform it's very good for what we have used it for. However, I didn't use it extensively yet. I need more time to use it or to see how people are using it to be able to judge and say more details.

Salesforce Platform is scalable.

We have approximately 100 users using this solution and we have plans to increase usage.

I have a vendor on board, and whatever issues we might have they are my reference if I need something. I have not contacted Salesforce directly. 

I'm pushing people in my team to get certified to be administrators. They go on the Salesforce training on their website and they are doing their own training online. This is the only direct contact between my team and Salesforce directly.

Salesforce Platform has been easy to set up.

We are having a vendor do the implementation of the Salesforce Platform. It is not taking too much time as other CRMs do. 

If you have the people with the implementation knowledge they can do it internally, but I don't think this is the right approach. It's very costly to find somebody who's capable and I don't think you would need them as a full-time employee. Once you have your processes set up and ready, you might need only one administrator, you don't need developers or architects. You need only an administrator to sustain and maintain what is already there.

I would recommend Salesforce Platform to others.

I rate Salesforce Platform an eight out of ten.

I am an end-user, I was never a power user or an architect, and I never developed any reports.

I use Salesforce for logging meetings, sales information, and metrics. I also use it for updating opportunities and looking at my own sales performance reports.

The company's sales team was at least 5,000 people.

I was hoping that with the integration of Tableau that they would have better end-user analytics to play around with. Coming from a MicroStrategy background, I was kind of disappointed. 

MicroStrategy is actually easier to use than Tableau. It was a function of the license that I was given.

Salesforce is incredibly slow. It was difficult to run live sales calls and leverage Salesforce at the same time. You can't ask a customer to hold for 45 seconds while you are looking for information about the account.

Salesforce also did not integrate well with some of the other systems that we had.

More end-user functionality would be useful. They should have some pre-canned reports that other analysts or salespeople would find valuable. 

I tried Salesforce Einstein, but that never really worked for me. The PowerSeller tool was just as helpful.

We would gather news reports about specific customers and identify if there were any buzzwords attached to it. I was able to create customized daily intelligence reports that would go out directly to my customers. TechnoMile integrated these reports directly into Salesforce allowing every salesperson that had the Archintel module to subscribe to specific reports giving them a compelling reason to reach out to the customer. Salesforce has a news feed function, but it is pretty ugly and very clunky to use. If they leveraged some sort of tool like this one, it would be amazing.

I use Salesforce every day.

I personally did not use the tech support at Salesforce. We had our own IT team.

The slowness of Salesforce could have been due to the fact that it is on the cloud. I had used Salesforce at other companies and it was not as slow.

Salesforce is the best one out there. I know that SugarCRM claims to be better but I haven't had a chance to use it to compare.

I would rate Salesforce a 6 out of 10. It wasn't great and wasn't terrible.