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reviewer1753767 - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing Director at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jan 16, 2022
Reliable, has good automation features for reporting and offers knowledgable technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The dashboards and dashboard customization are great."
  • "The reporting formats could be better."

What is our primary use case?

We use the solution for opportunity identification, pipeline management, and forecasting. Those are primarily the areas.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution has provided our company with a common platform, a common process, and has created a common skill set, and institutional awareness of major transactions. It's provided easier audit for opportunities, deal reviews, and automation features for reporting. 

What is most valuable?

The dashboards and dashboard customization are great.

The solution is stable and reliable.

You can scale the solution easily.

The setup is pretty fast.

Technical support is helpful and knowledgeable. 

What needs improvement?

The reporting formats could be better. We'd like to be able to graphically, optically, change what the selections are that we can choose to put a report or format in, just in how they appear, the aesthetics. There could be more presentation formats that are incorporated that would make them easier to transfer over to a PowerPoint or something. We should be able to export documentation capabilities that are more presentation-friendly outside of the system.

II want to be specific about what it looks like, what the actual report actually looks like. For example, the optics of the report, the colors that are used, the format that it's in. That's the main comment. The data is fine. It's how the report actually looks that's an issue.

Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Sales Cloud
February 2026
Learn what your peers think about Salesforce Sales Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2026.
883,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for more than 12 months at this point.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. It's reliable. It's a good solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales well. A lot of people need to own that the solution will only work as well as its design, and how people apply it. The more information that can be given upfront about what the outcome requirements are, the better.

That's a conditional situation. It really depends on how engaged the client is in providing their requirements and then giving that stuff over so that it can be executed. It's a pretty well-thought-out solution that performs and scales well.

We have more than 5,000 users at this point. That's across departments in the services division. The solution is extensively used. 

How are customer service and support?

I've dealt with technical support. They were good. They were on the better side. Nobody's perfect, however, they were pretty knowledgeable.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I've used multiple CRMs and NetSuite by Oracle in the past. In this organization, we had a homegrown solution that would not have been commercially marketed.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex, however, it was well planned. There was a good approach. It was very formulaic. It allowed for customer feedback to help customize the solution. I thought it was a very interactive process.

The configuration part was relatively quick. It was the planning that took longer as it required a lot of internal reviews to discern what was important information and what wasn't. It's hard. I would say that the process was six months, however, the actual flipping the switch wasn't that long - maybe a couple of weeks.

That's why it's hard for me to discern where the breakpoint is. It was a lot of reviews, communication, et cetera. However, the enabling of the technology did not take very long. It was more or less deciding on how to enable the technology that took long.

There is a team that handles maintenance for the product. I don't deal with that directly.

What about the implementation team?

I've done it probably two ways. One was an internal engagement. The other one was external. I know that Accenture was involved in that. I myself actually had to go to Chicago to train at one of the Accenture facilities to be a champion for their transition.

What other advice do I have?

I'm an end-user. I'm using the most recent version of the solution.

I'd advise potential new users to make sure you're good by researching what's best for your organization and make sure that once you choose to go down that path, that you've put the right steps in for adoption. This or any other CRM will fail if the organization doesn't agree on the value or use of the tool.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. It is highly available, handles the majority of our business needs, and the consistency of its function is pretty strong. The capacity of capability is good.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1753716 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Logistics at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jan 16, 2022
Lightweight with respect to resource usage, and relatively easy to use
Pros and Cons
  • "This product is lightweight."
  • "The user interface could be more intuitive. I had some challenges with how to convert from a lead to an opportunity."

What is our primary use case?

I am a salesman with a systems integrator we use Salesforce Sales Cloud as our CRM solution.

What is most valuable?

As a CRM, it's relatively easy to use.

This product is lightweight.

What needs improvement?

The user interface could be more intuitive. I had some challenges with how to convert from a lead to an opportunity. It may have been due to our configuration, rather than the software, but I did not find it was intuitive.

Assigning team members to a deal is something that I found challenging.

It offers some level of integration with LinkedIn, although closer integration with LinkedIn would be good. On top of that, having tighter integration with other tools, like Franklin Covey or Miller Heiman would be good.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with Salesforce Sales Cloud for approximately five years, on and off.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This solution is super stable.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I've used a couple of other CRM solutions.

At a recent company, I used Siebel for a couple of years and it was very clunky. Anytime I wanted to use it, it would consume a lot of resources on my computer and it took a long time to load up. I haven't experienced that at all with Salesforce Sales Cloud.

What other advice do I have?

Any of the limitations that I've felt when using this product could be due to our configuration, and not necessarily due to the software itself.

This is a product that I would recommend. The only thing that I would suggest is that if somebody is going to implement it, then what they need to do is collect more feedback and more input from different levels of sales leaders beforehand.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Sales Cloud
February 2026
Learn what your peers think about Salesforce Sales Cloud. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: February 2026.
883,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1372812 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage Sales Excutive at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Jan 13, 2022
Helpful for forecasting and having information at your fingertips, but the process for getting information accurately into the system could be improved
Pros and Cons
  • "It is nice to have the install base information at your fingertips when you look up a company."
  • "We have a very broad set of products at our company. The process to get that information accurately into the Sales Cloud system could use improvement. It shouldn't take weeks of time. The process of identifying products that are being sold for forecasting purposes and sales tracking purposes is too hard."

What is our primary use case?

We are primarily using it for tracking sales opportunities. Our company has done some things where we've plugged in some resources that it taps into, such as some databases of install base and LinkedIn information about different influential executives that we might reach out to. Those are probably the three primary things that I use.

I assume I am using the latest version.

How has it helped my organization?

It helps the company, or at least executives, with forecasting.

What is most valuable?

It is nice to have the install base information at your fingertips when you look up a company.

What needs improvement?

We have a very broad set of products at our company. The process to get that information accurately into the Sales Cloud system could use improvement. It shouldn't take weeks of time. The process of identifying products that are being sold for forecasting purposes and sales tracking purposes is too hard.

We're starting to prepackage new product builds that address replacing the install base. If we can get that to be really smooth, it would be great. If a storage array is going to end of service/life, I am looking at something that not only tells me that but also says, "You should replace it with this, and here's the build for it." This way, you don't have to go through the process of throwing up what the new array would look like to get it over to the customer.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I don't really have problems with it. It seems to work when I access it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I don't perceive any problem from where I sit. 

We probably have 5,000 people who are using this solution. They range from salespeople to management. It is being used extensively. I don't know what the corporate plans are to expand its usage.

How are customer service and support?

I did not contact their support.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it a five out of 10. The reason is that I'm not using it for myself. I'm using it for other people to get information because I have to do it for my job. It helps me with that, but it is not particularly useful for me in my sales tracking.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees
Real User
Jan 11, 2022
Robust and customizable with many useful features
Pros and Cons
  • "There are many extremely useful features."
  • "There are also certain restrictions on the reports in terms of the number of records. Ideally, that should be removed."

What is our primary use case?

I am fundamentally a consultant to businesses exploring CRM solutions. My first choice, subject to the customer's budget, is Salesforce. At my office, we have been using Salesforce primarily for lead management, sales cycle management, renewal management, and sales performance management. We have also integrated it with our help desk and our HRMS. 

We use the Salesforce Platform edition with 300 objects which gives us a phenomenal ability to develop specific functionalities that we need for our unique requirements.

How has it helped my organization?

An integrated approach to CRM always helps in streamlining activities across all the departments. We have been able to better our response times, reduce our sales cycles, and have increased overall sales revenue. Similar results have been observed for all our customers who have implemented and adopted SalesCloud in the right manner. 

We have developed a module for integrating our digital marketing tool with Salesforce. The campaign ROI monitoring ability has helped us to increase our marketing effectiveness to a great extent.

What is most valuable?

There are many extremely useful features. Lead scoring is useful for automatically signaling the importance and urgency of acting on any particular lead. Website integrations are useful for getting in the lead data into Salesforce along with auto-tagging of the customer's point of interest. The automation rules that have been set up across all modules deliver tremendous value by speeding up things, ensuring process compliance, and increasing productivity. 

The customized and role-based dashboards help our team to make the right decisions.  

What needs improvement?

Featurewise, the product almost has all CRM features that one can think of. Beyond CRM, if the integration with MS Office can be made tighter and smoother, that could be great value for customers. Especially integrating MS Word and MS Excel would be really useful. 

If a lighter version of CPQ is made available, it would help many midsize customers. As of now, Salesforce is the most expensive CRMs out there - making it a bit more affordable will help them in a big way. 

There are also certain restrictions on the reports in terms of the number of records. Ideally, that should be removed.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for more than seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is extremely stable. We haven't seen any nasty surprises. trust.salesforce.com is a great place to check the stability and dependability of Salesforce.  

Irrespective of the number of concurrent users, the automation rules, reporting requirements, workflows etc, the system performance remains the same. There is no performance degradation by additional of number of users or increase in data or increase in automations or functionalities whatsoever. 

trust.salesforce.com gives a real-time view of all salesforce datacentres and the various clouds in terms of their health, availability, uptimes, maintenance status, security and compliances. There is a lot more indepth information if one really wants to dig deeper. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is highly and seamlessly scalable. it is very robust at any scale.

How are customer service and support?

This is not applicable to us. However, the back-to-back support from Salesforce has been pretty good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We have used a homegrown application earlier. Switching to Salesforce was due to the capabilities provided by the Salesforce platform. It practically molds itself as per an organization's working style. 

How was the initial setup?

It wasn't complex for us as we are ourselves are implementation partners. For customers, it can turn out to be pretty overwhelming. 

There are so many features and so many possibilities, it is very easy for anyone to keep asking for more. That is often the biggest pitfall. A step-by-step phased approach is usually more successful.

What about the implementation team?

We have a highly skilled implementation team.

What was our ROI?

We've seen an ROI of at least 20%.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Salesforce surely is one of the most expensive CRMs out there. However, if implemented in the right manner and adopted extensively, it does deliver a great value to the organization. 

While deploying Salesforce, I would generally suggest engaging a consultant for optimizing the license costs. Salesforce sales team may try to oversell. A 3rd party consultant like us can help you with an unbiased opinion. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate others while choosing for ourselves. However, as a consultant, we frequently need to show customers comparisons with Navision, SAP, and Oracle.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Apart from being users of salesforce, we are also an implementation partner to Salesforce.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1752747 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analyst at a tech services company
Real User
Jan 10, 2022
Allows our team to track important information such as the conversion of leads and opportunities
Pros and Cons
  • "Different leads and fields can be utilized inside of Salesforce, using the Sales Path to follow those specific leads, and what leads convert over into opportunities. The leveraging of fields help to track progress on the user interface."
  • "Applications that can help with migrating data over from the sandbox to production would make it easier because sometimes change sets can be bulky and they're not always as effective. This can be frustrating when you make a lot of changes and try to put those changes into production."

What is our primary use case?

I use Sales Cloud quite often through an apprenticeship I am doing at a non-profit organization. I do utilize Sales Cloud often, and practice using Trailhead. I also use Sales Cloud with the Nonprofit Success Pack, or anything pertaining to that. We also make use of the Education Data Architecture. I have used Sales Cloud in the past as an administrator.

How has it helped my organization?

Sales Cloud really helps to point out different numbers for our company in terms of what converts or what doesn't. Different leads and fields can be utilized inside of Salesforce, using Sales Path to follow those specific leads, and it demonstrates what leads convert over into opportunities. The leveraging of fields help to track progress on the user interface. I think that's fundamental, especially for users or individuals that don't know how to use Salesforce. It's easier to track. The page layouts are pretty good for users as well, to track those numbers.

What is most valuable?

I would say Sales Path is something that I do like to use to track leads and opportunities. It's a pretty cool feature to use inside of Sales Cloud. Different fields inside of Sales Cloud have pretty cool features in Salesforce too.

What needs improvement?

There are different applications that can definitely help leverage Salesforce when it comes to data management. Importing and exporting different applications can be used to help that process. 

In addition, applications that can help with migrating data over from the sandbox to production would make it easier because sometimes changesets can be bulky and they're not always as effective. This can be frustrating when you make a lot of changes and try to put those changes into production.

Sometimes uploading and making changes to processes can be a little slow.

The implementation of automated processes could be a little bit better understood.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used a Microsoft platform. 

How was the initial setup?

It wasn't easy. The difficulty was in tracking the changes that were made inside of the Sandbox, and then trying to put all the changes into a changeset into production. There were certain fields that you needed to have inside the changeset that wasn't there, so it made it a hassle to deploy.

It took a couple of days to deploy. 

What about the implementation team?

It was implemented in-house. There were about three people that were involved with deployment.

What was our ROI?

We track changes inside of the platform and they are major programs that help the non-profit to run and complete their mission and vision. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Salesforce Sales Cloud is reasonably priced. 

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend getting assistance from people that know what they're doing in Salesforce. They should get a good idea of what the client wants and take it from there. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. The implementation of automated processes could be a little bit and better understood.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
Salesforce Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Dec 15, 2021
Good for all sizes of customers; offers declarative development
Pros and Cons
  • "You can adapt Salesforce for all customer needs."
  • "The solution can be difficult to understand for customers of Salesforce."

What is our primary use case?

My current use for the solution is in implementing it for a company that sells services. The aim is to use the Sales Cloud to track all the existing accounts of my customer.

How has it helped my organization?

I'm a consultant, so I don't implement Salesforce for myself, but for my customers. I need Salesforce to be valuable for my customers. Because if not, the project will not be a success. In every project, it's very important to define the KPIs. But if you define well the KPIs with your customers, Sales Cloud will improve the organization. 

For one customer, Sales Cloud helped him to save two FTE. I don't know the English word for that, but it's like two times of 2% a year. So you save two-incomes per year using Salesforce because your employees are going faster.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Salesforce is that it's a system where you can use declarative development. Just using point and click, you can configure it in very nice ways. For small customers, you can use it for 80% of their business. Then we will have to use the custom development using a code, JavaScript, HTML only for really complex business processes of your customer. It's a nice feature because developers and development are expensive, and long to payment. So it's good that you can do a lot with point and click.

What needs improvement?

One area that needs improvement is that it can be difficult to understand for customers of Salesforce. If you are subscribing to Sales Cloud, we will have an out-of-the-box solution that is good and easy to use. But if you are not keen on system language and things that, you will need a consultant. You will need me to implement it to answer your needs. Because it can be difficult to understand, customers have to pay for the system, and then they have to pay a consultant to implement it. So that is expensive. But in the end, you will win money if the project is well defined, and the design has been done in a good way. Then the system is designed for the customer.

An advantage of Salesforce is that they upgrade their system every time they have a new release. We have a community where we can ask for additional features, and then Salesforce implements the new features in the new release.

For how long have I used the solution?

I'm currently working on a Sales Cloud project. I'm working on a CPQ project, but while you work with CPQ, you have to work with Sales Cloud at the same time because both products are linked.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is reliable. Salesforce use is like renting an office in a building. You share the water and things with all the users of the building. So you have to be aware that you can use too much, or you can use the water of your neighbors. It's the same way for Salesforce. So as long as you spend time to find the solution the best way, the only concern you will have is the data you're using and the storage of files. But you can have best practices for your people in the company, and buy extra data from Salesforce if you are using too much. So it can be a concern, but you will always have a solution.

The solution can require some maintenance as there can be bugs, and the customer doesn't always understand why. Sometimes, the customer is allocating one of their employees to be the admin of the solution, so they do not require a consultant.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is really easy to scale. One of my projects was to deploy Salesforce for a multinational company, we started with one country, and then deploy it to all the countries of the company. 

The risk there is about the right & access and to cover all countries requirements.
But Salesforce gives a lot of tools to answer to customer needs.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service for the solution is good. You can log cases, but the one thing you have with Salesforce, you will not have the same maintenance quality. If you pay a lot, you will have the best support. If you pay less, your support will be maybe not that efficient as another customer. But overall, it's nice.

Salesforce will give you an answer. The time for the answer will depend on how much you paid to Salesforce.

How was the initial setup?

To build and deploy the initial setup takes about one month for big needs, half a month for medium needs. 

First is the design parts where you have all your customer needs, we build it in what we call a sandbox. In this sandbox, you have all the custom fields and the custom features that you build for your customer. You deploy this in a user acceptance testing environment. Then your customer, the company, will subscribe to Salesforce, will test those features. Once it is tested you will have to deploy it to the production environment, where the customer has all his data. It takes some time, and you have to wipe down everything you've built, to not miss anything. Because if you do, the deployment can be long and difficult. But there are tools that can help you to easily deploy the Sales Cloud solution.

It's very rare that your customer is only subscribing to Sales Cloud. Sometimes he has Sales Cloud and Service Cloud and things like that. And all your clouds are linked. But it's easy. You don't have to independently deploy the Service Cloud and the Sales Cloud. You can deploy it together.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation team depends if you have declarative development or custom development using Apex and things like that. As Salesforce is using the cloud, you are using shared resource. Salesforce asks you to test your development, to not use too much data. If you have custom development, you will need to test it, and you will need a developer to deploy this. If it is only custom fields and declarative, depending on the size of the project, you only need one person. But then you need someone to follow the test, that the customer tested the solution, is it accepted by the customer. That is the longest part.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is expensive, but you don't have to install it. You can access it from any computer, and it's the only solution on the market allowing that many features. So it's expensive, but you know why that is. It's not surprising.

What other advice do I have?

Salesforce is good for all sizes of customers because you can adapt Salesforce for all customer needs. My suggestion to anyone considering Salesforce would be to spend a lot of time in the designing phase. For me, that's the most important.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Team Lead at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Dec 12, 2021
Has good flexibility but is slow to handle feature requests
Pros and Cons
  • "On the high level, it's all about managing the clients, managing the opportunities around those clients, managing the tasks, calls, activities, all those things."
  • "One area where the solution could improve is with handling feature requests."

What is our primary use case?

Our main use cases for the solution are B2B directions, some presale activities, and some of our service manager activities, which are mainly requests for supplies, certain products.

We do re-house implementation, sales calls for our B2B segment, so it's business to business. We are actually covering all of our sales interactions with our clients within Sales Cloud, just trying to keep the information in one place and all of the activities, according to the sales cycle, within the Sales Cloud, within the certain records inside Salesforce.

How has it helped my organization?

The main way the solution has improved the organization is by giving a good understanding of how the salespeople should be tracked, how to restructure their work. Normally salespeople can be disorganized, so we have people who do something which is very difficult to track. However, some people won't do anything until the deadline is tomorrow. So all of the directions, all of the processes should be tracked and sales will give you the understanding. If a salesperson is working to discover a relationship with a client and is trying to sell something, it can be very easy, very intuitive, with very few fields. 

Then you can see if something is moving on or still at the same place for months or even years. You can easily identify it by creating the opportunity and seeing whether you made progress or not. As long as you understand how it should be tracked, the only thing is left to go to sales and say that you expect anything you do to be reflecting this in a certain record, and either I see the progress there, or I can see there's no progress at all. You can say that you're doing something, but if I do not see it within the system, it does not exist.

What is most valuable?

One of the most valuable features is with management within Salesforce. This is one of the important parts of the process we have right now in place. 

First of all, the point of view that Salesforce gives you on certain object models normally satisfies the biggest parts of the business. In a lot of business scenarios, because the sales process is more or less at a high level the same, in different areas, it's been changing. On the high level, it's all about managing the clients, managing the opportunities around those clients, managing the tasks, calls, activities, all those things are already pretty fine on Salesforce. 

Flexibility is the second point I would like to mention. The flexibility is pretty high and we can set up different scenarios. We can use different pools, both with developer experience and with development experience, making things automated within Salesforce. So it gives you an opportunity for not just a flexible set up, the processes you would like to set, but also to automate the things and make the automation for different scenarios, like providing emails, assigning leads, assigning the right clients to the right people. And also automate that during the sales cycle, if we're talking about providing the resources and providing the information resources.

And I would say the interface isn't perfect, but it's much better than the other CRM systems can provide. So it's not 100% modern if they're talking about making it 21, but compared with the competitors, you can see that Salesforce is way better in terms of user experience. Working the system, it's much more intuitive, it's more user-oriented, user friendly than the other systems I had in my previous experience.

What needs improvement?

One area where the solution could improve is with handling feature requests. Salesforce has its own community all over the world and people submit ideas saying, okay, that's what's needed. The number of requests is pretty high, and all of these requests are stored for years, but people need these. These features that I requested really sound obvious, but they're still for five, four, six years remaining just the same. When you search for a feature and find that someone created a request years ago, and 6,000 or more are saying, "yes, of course, we need this," it's an obvious feature. It's not that difficult to implement but the waiting line can be up to 10 years long.

One of the features I'd like to see in a future release is a way to see the updates of all the records that I follow. Not an email notification, but a single page to see the information for all the records I'm following. There is a solution that can partially satisfy this need in Salesforce Classic, but it's also classic and old-fashioned, and we would not like to promote the initial sales software within our firm. We are trying to keep Salesforce Lightning as the main tool. Rather than asking the commercial director to switch to Salesforce Classic, just to see a part of the information, but if you need both, we'll be able to give it.

The other area that is definitely a waking point for me is the integration with Slack. Slack is pretty popular and we're trying to launch it as well. The basic integration that is out-of-the-box is pretty small. Having both of these products in the product portfolio in the same company, we actually really expect to have it highly integrated for different scenarios, like task assignments, following notification, so even the same balance can be done within Slack and assigned to a certain account record in Salesforce. There is a huge field for improvement; right now these two products are pretty separated, despite the service.

And the third thing I would say is a Salesforce strategy. A lot of countries, all over the world are trying to protect personal data. And the limitations are increasing here and in new territories, like China, Russia, India, Arabic countries, GDPR regulation, European Union, all of these things that you require the new response from the platforms that are actually dealing with this personal data, personal information. Salesforce itself, its data is a GDPR compliance system, out of the box. The only funny thing is it's two digital compliance until you start entering the personal data there. As long as you are entering personal data there, so they can do some GDPR compliance, in terms of Russian regulation, Chinese regulation, Arabic countries' regulation. It's definitely something that we expect to be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been working with Salesforce Sales Cloud for three and a half years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability and performance of Sales Cloud itself, which is provided by Salesforce, is pretty good. We are pretty satisfied with it. We didn't have any huge lags in months with Salesforce downtime; some certain tools that we actually implemented ourselves, were not the level of reliability of Salesforce, though. But that was something we implemented in our own home. The problem was not with Salesforce, but really the tools, the way we actually implemented it.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Ease of scalability depends on where we actually are scaling, and if we had a certain predicted behavior, such as we have a new region to sell, we have a new person in the new region or have a new account, etc. It definitely requires not just some maintenance, but some developments as well. 

We have approximately 100 users in our company. We're using the solution more and more often. Initially, it was a certain form where sales just gave everyone the opportunity. Then we came to the decision, we want this as a system to direct those people on a regular basis. Now we have a regular meeting and the information from Salesforce is checked by the commercial director. We're trying to introduce the solution to see the broader picture, the full pipeline for targeting the client, and finishing the client when you've closed the case.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support has been pretty helpful, in those rare cases I actually use it. During my previous experience, which was also connected with Salesforce, we had some strange cases escalated to Salesforce, and the answer was, okay, we will fix this in one of our upcoming releases. But that was a matter of half a year, and we had a business stopping issue. But after a certain escalation, we actually managed to do this fix earlier. However, we expected it to be faster.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously, I've worked with this SAP, and I was working with a custom regionally developed CRM system based on the Microsoft platform. Salesforce has better flexibility and orientation to the user. SAP has perfect functionality and it's really powerful. However, I wasn't fulfilled with the SAP for five years before I actually left SAP. It was like people who developed it just forgot about the end-users. So the interface, how the end-users actually interacted with the system, was horrible. Salesforce is way better. However, SAP also had the best effort in giving data during the later five years.

How was the initial setup?

The initial deployment can take time. We started the project in February, and the deployment was in June, end of June. Five months, and we are not talking about the prerequisites, because we gathered the business scenarios we need to finish the analysis. So if you're talking about the analysis and prerequisites as well, so it will three months more.

Update deployment prevents a lot of issues, as it gives you the opportunity to change the things that can be badly influencing the production system. So you invest some time to get a deployment done. It still takes hours to deploy and there is a certain benefit behind this. The more time spent on deploying, the fewer issues on production. However, there is certainly fuel for improvement there.

What about the implementation team?

The initial deployment was a group of about 20, involving people from different parts, both development, quality assurance people, admins, business analysts, business representatives, salespeople, pre-sales people department. So this group was much broader than future deployments.

There is only one person who actually doing update deployment for us. However, the more we grow, the more people will be involved in the deployment. And we work with the vendor because certain parts of our implementation require the help of Salesforce authorized companies which help us to do this. And there were more people than one to do the deployment because different groups of people were involved in the development. To merge the codes of different groups of development, we required the efforts of recruiting people. Either two or three people were involved in the deployment; they were not only our internal team working with the development.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Right now I'm operating on the Russian market, and in terms of investment value and return of the investment, Salesforce right now is pretty good in the Western markets where the price of the employees is pretty high.

Here in Russia, the country has a cheaper workforce, so the investment into Salesforce Solution is questionable, in terms of the return on the investment. The price model, is oriented on the best markets and there is a certain sense of investment in Salesforce there; but here in Russia, prices for the workforce can do the same thing easily. It's the 21st century, probably manual work should be reduced each day. We think if we look at this problem in terms of the investment, it will be a big question if it's worth the money, as Salesforce is pretty expensive.

What other advice do I have?

The biggest advice that I can give to anyone considering Sales Cloud is to develop a good pre-analysis before the implementation and don't overload the stages of the opportunity. Think what the main purpose of these stages is. The best way to make it work for salespeople and for the commercial department is to structure it that way, that it will now reflect the stages of the penetration to the client. Pursue methodology, when we have targets, interact, propose, close. It's not just throwing the opportunity between the different departments, but it's complete and clear and simple, which is very important. You don't have 20 stages, but you have five certain career stages, which actually reflect the steps when you're closer and closer to the deal. Not in terms of working with the documents, but in terms of structuring the sales process in terms of the penetration to the clients.

Also, very close to the implementation, the final day of the goal, dedicate as much time as possible to the data migration. Dedicate as much time as you have, consider doing data migration; it will be difficult. We will have a lot of migrant issues rolling the data from the previous system to the new one. So two or three weeks is the shortest period that should be dedicated to that purpose.

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1737423 - PeerSpot reviewer
Salesforce Administrator at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Dec 11, 2021
Customizable, highly scalable, and responsive support
Pros and Cons
  • "Salesforce is such a widespread software in terms of what it can do and its scope. Theoretically, you can run a whole company off of it. There are many valuable features, such as reporting and analytics. You can customize almost the whole environment is what appeals to so many companies the most."
  • "I would love Salesforce to keep on committing and building out what they call flows. It's their point-and-click version of coding. You don't have to be a coder to create essentially what a developer would have to normally, which is a great feature, but it could still be improved upon."

What is our primary use case?

We use Salesforce Sales Cloud for keeping track of both clients and employees on different levels, whether they're client-facing or they're more behind the scenes, such as myself.

How has it helped my organization?

Salesforce Sales Cloud has helped our organization by giving it the flexibility to customize our products to fit tiers of products. There are many timing and automation features that have given us control over some of the very unique business processes.

What is most valuable?

Salesforce is such a widespread software in terms of what it can do and its scope. Theoretically, you can run a whole company off of it. There are many valuable features, such as reporting and analytics. You can customize almost the whole environment is what appeals to so many companies the most.

What needs improvement?

I would love Salesforce to keep on committing and building out what they call flows. It's their point-and-click version of coding. You don't have to be a coder to create essentially what a developer would have to normally, which is a great feature, but it could still be improved upon.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Salesforce Sales Cloud within the past 12 months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Salesforce Sales Cloud is reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Salesforce Sales Cloud is one of their biggest advantages.

We have a little over 150 employees using it Salesforce Sales Cloud. There are probably 10 of us that use the backend. We have five of us that are dedicated Salesforce developers and administrators and an additional five that you would call super users, who have a lot of permissions because they were very close with us, and we trust them. The rest of the workforce is more client-facing in different parts of the organization. We are the development team, they are part of who we support.

The leadership team is very dedicated to increasing the use of Salesforce, whether it's adding another cloud or adding more people to my team. Recently we added approximately 30 brand new users. this can happen again at any time.

How are customer service and support?

Salesforce is such a large company, they have three feature releases a year. They're constantly addressing issues. However, their responsiveness could be better at times. I do not have many complaints and they have very good customer service when we developers need it.

Overall the support is very good. The responsiveness can vary, but nothing that has displeased me and they will always see the job through. They're very dedicated to filling those types of quotas. They can be very responsive when a case has been open for a while.

The delays we faced are more of a corporate issue, but if you contact them individually, you receive much better service.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have always used Salesforce, I am a Salesforce specialist. However, the company I work for might have used something else previously but I am not sure about that.

How was the initial setup?

The implementation of Salesforce Sales Cloud is straightforward because it does not matter who you trained with to receive your Salesforce certifications and work in the industry, you know the deployment process. Everyone tends to know that it can be clunky, it can be frustrating, but at the same time, it's not exactly a broken system by any means.

The time it takes for the deployment depends on the size. We work in sprint cycles, we do it every two to three weeks. It depends on the size of that particular sprint. When it comes to deploying and then testing to make sure it's already it will never be more than an hour and a half.

The deployment tool could use a lot of work. However, when compared to everything else they're doing, it feels it's more left on the side, they prioritize the newer features.

What about the implementation team?

My whole team and I, do deployments together or at least after we finish our assignments. There are about five of us at the moment. We have both developers and administrators, who all come together, and we complete whatever needs to be deployed all at the same time.

We always need someone dedicated to regular maintenance. I would imagine it's no different than any kind of another software environment of the size of Salesforce. You always want to have someone dedicated purely to making sure everything is working all right.

What was our ROI?

When it comes to dollars and cents, I couldn't tell you what that return on investment is. What I can say is that as we've grown out and increased automation, and over the past six months we have seen a very noticeable improvement.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I've seen the prices for Salesforce Sales Cloud, but I haven't been the one to handle the money. As someone who's only visually looked at the price, I would imagine it's on the pricier side, but they do have a ton of leverage, and seeing that everyone I've worked for has always been dedicated to continuing Salesforce. I've never worked for anyone who has threatened to leave. Everyone has accepted the pricing for what they offer.

There are additional feature costs but licenses are definitely the most expensive, but once you add or talk to your account representative about more individual features. We're talking about Salescloud, and if we wanted to add Servicecloud, that would be much more reasonably priced than us asking for 50 new licenses. Licensing is where they make most of their money.

What other advice do I have?

The three companies I've worked for who have all used Salesforce, they've never by any means brought up the idea of moving to a competitor. Everyone's been happy on a macro scale of what the product has brought to their firms.

I rate Salesforce Sales Cloud an eight out of ten.

They can always improve and, if 10 other people in my position were asked about features they could improve they would bring up different answers. They do release a lot of features three times a year, every year. They're listening to customers, but sometimes you have to be more persistent than you'd hoped for them to listen.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer. Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Salesforce Sales Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: February 2026
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Salesforce Sales Cloud Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.