Introduction to Salesforce for Beginners

What is Salesforce?

In the previous section of this Salesforce tutorial, you got an Introduction to Salesforce. So, What is Salesforce? This section will explain the actual Salesforce meaning in detail. Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that provides its customers with a platform to develop their own applications without following the tough steps that they used to follow in the legacy system. The software or application once created can be uploaded onto the cloud allowing the end-users to view them.

Watch this video on ‘Salesforce Tutorial for Beginners’:

Salesforce is currently providing various software solutions and platforms for developers to create and distribute custom software/applications. Tech giants like Google, Twitter, Amazon, and Facebook are using Salesforce either in the form of SaaS or PaaS.

Salesforce developers can make an application on the cloud and share it with multiple companies across multiple domains by using Salesforce.

Talking about HR systems, every company across the globe has an HR team. Each HR team would require an HR application to store employee records. Almost all specifications for such an application would be common for all companies. So, as a developer, it would be very easy to create a Salesforce application for such specifications, post it onto the cloud, and provide it as a service to multiple clients at the same time. Maintenance of the same can be done altogether too. So basically, the problem of scalability gets eliminated.

This is the same with the financial systems since most of the finance companies or banks need to keep track of different transactions, who is making them, how much amount is transacted, and at what time the transaction is done. A single application can be created to meet all the required specifications and, by just posting this application on the cloud, multiple clients can be served.

In the below image, you can see the soaring numbers of customers, applications, and installations of Salesforce. This is why Salesforce is number one in CRM and in sales.

It is the oldest and most flexible CRM to date. Hopefully, now you have understood Salesforce’s meaning in a better way.

Salesforce Sales Cloud is the most popular and the most trusted cloud service offered by Salesforce. It is very useful for companies that require a lot of follow-ups with respect to leads and customers. Sales Cloud makes the work of a sales representative very easy as it gives him/her a very consolidated view of all customers. All data can be stored in a single window with all the required details.

With just a single click, the details of a customer can be viewed, edited, or deleted. The entire customer information and interactions happen in one place and that is how Salesforce Sales Cloud helps companies. It enables better use of sales data by sales personnel. Deals are processed faster as best practices are incorporated, along with in-line intelligence. Decisions can be made quickly based on the latest information as all the data is located in one place. This information is so compatible that it can be viewed from a phone, laptop, etc. Leads can be provided to the right representative at the right time, thus improving productivity.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Marketing Cloud is used by almost all companies for marketing purposes. In this Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can send customized mass mailers to thousands of potential customers at just a single click. You can also target some content on social media using advertisements. This can be used to boost your sales numbers.

There are many ways how an optimal marketing strategy should be. But from those companies that failed badly in marketing, one thing is clear. Deluging mistargeted ads to customers is clearly not the way to go. If you’re an avid online user, you might definitely have encountered such ads in your mailbox.

If you are into marketing, with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, you can make your marketing team smarter and be more predictive about each customer. You’ll get an intelligent platform integrating marketing, sales, service, and commerce that will make for a collaborative CRM, equipped with tools and data to make recommendations based on past purchases.

This is also helpful in solving issues your customers might have with certain products. You can increase engagement through custom communities (as specified in the subsequent section below) and connect to your customers through any device on any channel from social media. Gathering key insights into strengthening your relationship with each customer at every stage will be made easy with Salesforce Marketing Cloud. Easily adjustable campaigns to help drive leads in the pipeline while you get a complete view of the customer data to optimize your marketing strategy, all is possible with Salesforce’s marketing facility.

Salesforce Service Cloud

Using Salesforce, support agents can address customer problems with the right tools. Building self-service communities give your customers the ability to solve their issues on their own terms.

As a service owner, customer opinions ought to be your top concern. Every share, like, heart, or recommendation makes a big difference, and if they’re happy you’re happy too. As a service business owner, you should know all the issues of your customers and the customer history and then should provide one-on-one service, accordingly.

This makes you smarter and better able to discuss the details of each sale and case history. You should also be able to put forward marketing messages that tweak the interest of your customers. When you are better able to connect to the technicians on the field, it becomes easier for you to make them more productive. All this is possible with Salesforce Service Cloud.

Salesforce Analytics Cloud

Analytics Cloud can be integrated with many other clouds. In this Salesforce Cloud, you can get data from all clouds and give an analysis of the problems that arise time-to-time.

Salesforce Community Cloud

Users may wonder what Salesforce can do in the community cloud. It has good applications in marketing, sales, and service, but what could it have in the community?

Salesforce Community Cloud lets you directly connect with customers, increase partner success, and drive employee productivity like there’s no tomorrow.

Multiple communities can easily be created and accessed for specific needs and customized to represent any brand. You can personalize each customer’s experience with his/her specific interests so that customers can search for communities to find the information they need or get answers to their questions while service representatives spend time tackling the toughest cases.

Channel partners can close deals faster by easily accessing experts and managing leads right within the specified community. Marketing teams can collaborate with agencies to streamline their campaign creation and gather feedback from potential customers.

Salesforce Commerce Cloud

The next Salesforce cloud is Salesforce Commerce Cloud. It is a cloud-based e-commerce platform that can manage products while providing a wide range of facilities. It delivers a comprehensive digital experience to its customers. It enhances customers’ shopping experience. It connects them with the right product at the right time. It is used for connecting merchandisers too with the right information they need in order to make the right business decisions, with the help of Artificial Intelligence.

Salesforce App Cloud

Let’s talk about the next Salesforce cloud, i.e., Salesforce App Cloud. Imagine, how it would be if you have the power to create apps! Salesforce App Cloud is a new kind of PaaS that helps you do the same. In simple terms, it can be said as Salesforce for dummies. Just imagine this to be in line with the Play Store of Google but for CRM purposes.

It is a kind of ecosystem for building, discovering, and running all your apps. Developers using various frameworks in modern languages and Business Admins using drag-and-drop lightning tools, such as App Builder and Process Builder, can all leverage App Cloud. With the help of this platform, legacy data can be modernized and made available through mobile apps to all your stakeholders if you host an organization. You can design these apps to listen to event data from mobile devices, sensors, websites, etc., and then make prudent actions based on this. Thus, it truly gives out several Salesforce features for the development of apps.

Salesforce Collaboration Cloud or Quip

This Salesforce cloud, basically, changes the way a team works together, from combining data, documents, spreadsheets, etc. to anything! It is used to connect to the content and communicate with the team.

In this section on Salesforce meaning, you learned ‘What is Salesforce?’ in a more in-depth way. Here, you also got an idea about various Salesforce clouds. By now, I hope, you understood the meaning and use of Salesforce. In the following section of this Salesforce tutorial, you’ll be learning more about Salesforce Marketing Cloud.