Salesforce Sales Cloud Reviews

The core features as well as the ability to extend them using ‘click-vs-code’ configurations to drive workflow activities.

We have been able to automate a large portion of the manual processes for our sales activities.

We know that User Interface improvements are coming, as well as improvements to reporting and dashboards.

I have been using Salesforce for four years.

It is possible to use or configure the system in a way that can ‘slow it down’, but deployment, stability and scalability are some of the best features of Salesforce.

The technical support is the one area that Salesforce needs the most improvement. They are slow to respond, and in many cases you don’t get the help you need. There are different levels of support based on the license agreement, so make sure you know what you are getting, but don’t expect fast results except for the most basic questions.

A different solution was used several years ago and was called Goldmine.

The initial setup is very straightforward, and consists of many of the same considerations for any move to a CRM solution. However, the ability to configure Salesforce Sales Cloud is much faster.

We did use a partner for the implementation, but have not used them since. I would highly recommend that you have someone on the team who is close to a salesforce solution/technical architect. They don’t need to be certified, but they should have a track record for successful project management and understand the salesforce technology stack.

Negotiate during the end of the Salesforce year. You will get the best pricing. Review the licensing options to align it to your needs. And ask for help from people you know who are like your company and using Salesforce.

We did evaluate other CRM solutions as well such as Microsoft CRM.

Follow good practices for comparing it, don’t over customize the standard functionality, make sure you understand how you would use it based on your sales processes and which ones you should/could change.

All the features of this product are valuable to me.

It helps our sales organization manage their workload, manage their sales pipeline, and our execs can track performance and perform all relevant sales functions.

I cannot think of anything right now.

I've used it for four to five years.

As it is a cloud computing managed technology, all these headaches are taken care of by Salesforce itself.

As it is a cloud computing managed technology, all these headaches are taken care of by Salesforce itself.

As it is a cloud computing managed technology, all these headaches are taken care of by Salesforce itself.

5/10.

5/10.

No previous solution was used.

It was straightforward.

We did it in-house, but I would suggest enterprise companies to use a vendor team, as there are a lot of minute details with Salesforce. Experienced vendors will help you harness the real power of Salesforce using industry practices and previous experience.

I am a technical person and do not look at those details.

Cloud computing is the future. Many companies are jumping on the Salesforce bandwagon as it integrates and works well seamlessly with other cutting edge technologies.

• Open API
• Big ecosystem of applications, knowledge, and training
• Flexibility

I’ve worked with about 30 nonprofit organizations implementing Salesforce. I’ve seen it answer questions that are key to an organization’s strategy, e.g. Does our program work? Which people does it work best for? Where is the revenue coming from? How many people are we serving today/this week/this month/this year?

In addition, it saves hours a day for staff members who track donations, volunteers, etc.

Reporting is still not as strong as it should be.

I've used the Enterprise Edition for three years/

Salesforce is complicated, and there are plenty of things that can go wrong. With small to medium non-profits, the biggest issue is typically that staff don’t have time to spend using the new system, or that leaders aren’t asking questions of the system. When the system doesn’t get used, it definitely doesn’t work.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

It really depends. The free customer service isn’t so useful, but that is mitigated by the huge number of consultants, YouTube videos, and KB articles. These resources are just a different level of magnitude than for any other similar product. If you pay for tech support and additional customer service, I believe that the experience is better, but I don’t have direct experience with that.

The free tech support is really only useful for pretty basic stuff. They get the job done, but it isn’t any fun. It would be nice if they would consent to fix things via email instead of phone calls.

I’ve switched organizations from various home-grown solutions, eTapestry, Donor Perfect, Gift Works, and piles of spreadsheets. All those options have their advantages, but none are as flexible as Salesforce.

I did set it up for an organization where I worked, and it was complex but now I’m very comfortable doing it, however, your average non profit staffer is not.

I've been the vendor, except when I set it up for the organization where I worked.

The price point for non profits is very low, as the first 10 users are free and subsequent users are about $30 per user per month. There’s also the investment either in significant staff training or in a consultant, but for something as simple as a donor database, you’re probably looking at a one time cost of about $3000-$5000. Ongoing costs depend on the time and tech skills you have on staff. Organizations with one person who is interested and able to spend some time on it can need as little as 10 hours from a consultant per year, but those who need more assistance might need more like 48+ hours per year. Prices for consultants vary widely, as does quality. In terms of the return on that investment, a non profit that uses the system well should be able to raise more money with the data and time savings provided. Some organizations do this by better identifying and following up with donors, and some are able to demonstrate their effectiveness and better compete for grants.

It depends entirely on how complex the use of the system is. A system that does day-to-day program management, volunteer management, donor management, and outcomes tracking can cost upwards of $40K. A basic donor database can be as little as $3000-$5000.

For different organizations, I’ve evaluated Sugar CRM, eTapestry, Gift Works, Donor Perfect, Wild Apricot and Neon. These products all have their advantages, but only Sugar CRM has the open API and flexibility of Salesforce. Unfortunately, Sugar’s ecosystem is tiny compared to Salesforce’s. It is much harder to find qualified consultant, online resources are paltry in comparison, and I’ve been told by web developers that Sugar is horrible to interface with.

Hire someone to help, even if you just hire them to spend a few hours pointing you in the right direction. Make sure you’re ready to use the product, Salesforce provides pretty good resources for evaluating this. However, the big thing you need are leaders who are asking the important questions and who will give staff time to devote to setting up and using the product. Without those two things, it doesn't matter who you hire or how much money you spend, you won’t be successful.

The ability to customize many things, from the UI to the business logic, and the fact that the solution uses a cloud platform were valuable features for our organization.

It has sped up development and delivery within the organization.

The areas for improvement are adding more options to customize the UI, and the business logic.

I have been using the solution for 3 years.

No issues with deployment.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

The customer service was good.

The technical support was good.

Initial setup was straightforward. It is just a matter of receiving the initial user credentials, change its password and create the other users after logging in. This is the initial setup prior to developing any customizations.

We implemented through an in-house team.

Setup cost: $280 per month per user, $600 per month per developer + 20% of the total yearly cost (users x individual cost) per sandbox - pre-paid annually.

Before choosing we looked at Microsoft Dynamics.

If seeking help, make sure that the people who will work on your project are certified (don't merely ask if they are certified, ask for a list of their certification numbers prior to agreeing with their statement of work). There are companies that assign junior people to your projects and bill them as senior consultants.
Expect to pay $200+/hour for HIGH quality consultants - if less than that, you may not getting high quality and may end up paying more in the end for the rework or the costs associated with a inadequate implementation.
Start with smaller, short term projects and add functionality and users gradually.
If you're in a large company (has divisions/regions), before attempting companywide adoption, choose a smaller group of users and make sure they are so pleased that they become champions of the product.

Ability to add custom objects (tables) into the database means Salesforce can be tailored to any business. The workflow capability makes it possible to automate labour intensive tasks such as sending standard emails at pre-defined points within business processes.

Automation of routine emails, centralisation of data, standardisation of company processes, on demand access to reports and dashboards, 360 degree view of customer records and history.

Some areas of functionality from early versions of Salesforce getting a little dated and in need of overhaul. Examples include activity management.

4 years

Installing Salesforce for Outlook needs careful preparation and confirmation of users' version of Windows and Outlook.

Salesforce is very stable. I have not experienced any major outages since using the system.

No

Salesforce customer service is efficient.

Salesforce technical support is efficient.

As a Salesforce implementation consultant, I have seen Salesforce setup in many organisations. Whilst it is easy to configure Salesforce, it is not always done in the most appropriate way. For example, creating custom fields when it would be better to create a custom object related to a master object, A specific example would adding fields to an Account to record customer satisfaction on a monthly basis. Better to create a custom object rather than adding a new set of fields each month.

Think about the Reports you want to run before you begin configuring Salesforce. Otherwise you may find you configure the system in a way that is incompatible with the Reports and Dashboards you need

I really like the Sales and Marketing related tabs as there is Leads, Accounts, Opportunities, Reports and the very practical and self-explaining use of Salesforce. The Software offers a nice overview and doesn't let you forget about any planned or scheduled tasks with reminder functions as well.

Salesforce helps me very well organizing my daily tasks and shows me an overview what I have reached every day or offers me reports which can be easily created and saved for my personal way of working.

They should think about introducing some sort of fire system (colours: green - yellow - red) to set alarms of overdue tasks.

Since May 2013, every day

None

One day in the morning it broke, but the support team quickly helped me get back to speed with it.

None

I'd give it an A - perfectly satisfied

I'd give it an A

Oracle Siebel, Update seven and others - all of them not very practical, no real overview or easy way of handling. It took much longer to become acquainted with these systems.

Absolutely straightforward - no difficulties there as far as I learned from our IT team

I was lucky not to need to evaluate other solutions, as my company chose this product.