Associate Vice President at a consumer goods company with 201-500 employees
Real User
Empowers our sales team with a common platform, but lacks a few niche integrations
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Platform
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about Salesforce Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Salesforce Platform for almost four years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's a very stable solution. We haven't had many issues with stability. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

With our environment of around 1500 users, there have hardly been any performance or scalability issues.

How are customer service and support?

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. 

How was the initial setup?

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.

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

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.

What other advice do I have?

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.

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: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Account Executive at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Real User
Enables us to log meetings, sales information and metrics but more end-user functionality would be useful
Pros and Cons
  • "Salesforce is the best one out there."
  • "Salesforce is incredibly slow. It was difficult to run live sales calls and leveraging Salesforce at the same time."
  • "Salesforce also did not integrate well with some of the other systems that we had."

What is our primary use case?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I use Salesforce every day.

How are customer service and support?

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

What other advice do I have?

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.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Salesforce Platform
May 2024
Learn what your peers think about Salesforce Platform. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2024.
787,061 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Cybersecurity Technical Leader AWS - Google at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Stable with an easy initial setup and excellent scalability
Pros and Cons
  • "The stability has been great."
  • "There's a learning curve. It was a bit hard to understand the logical way of working with it, just at the beginning."

What is most valuable?

The initial setup is straightforward. 

The solution scales extremely well.

The stability has been great.

What needs improvement?

There's a learning curve. It was a bit hard to understand the logical way of working with it, just at the beginning.

In Salesforce, you cannot adjust the level of information to what you want to exploit or to use yourself and not share. In a big environment, it's hard to hide information you need, so you have to get local writing for avoiding sharing information you don't want to share with other sales guys or management. It's useful for your business, for your objective, however, it's not useful if you share it on too large a scale, as name dropping is something our consultants and our other sales guys try to avoid in order to be discreet.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for one year at this point. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability has been great. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or free. We find it to be completely reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability has been excellent. We haven't had any issues and don't see any limitations at all. if a company needs to expand, it's not a problem to do so. 

How are customer service and technical support?

I've never had to contact technical support. Therefore, I can't speak to how helpful or responsive they are. We have our own internal team that we would turn to if we ran into any problems. 

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

I've used Microsoft Dynamics. I come from Microsoft Dynamics and it was more integrated with our email solution. It was for the agenda, the calendar, and all the tools you use to just work on a daily basis.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is really easy.  It's not overly complex or difficult. However, that said, figuring out how to us is a bit difficult to start with.

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

We have a pretty limitless license. However, I don't know the exact costs involved. I'm just a user and do not handle any of the payments or contracts between Salesforce and our company.

We are a partner from Salesforce. There is a special agreement with them. 

What other advice do I have?

We are Salesforce partners. 

I'm in sales. I'm working on Salesforce. My consultants work with different tools, and they are certified on it. 98% of our consultants are certified on solutions.

Overall, it's been a good solution and we've been happy with it. 

For those considering using the solution, I would advise that the company or team follow the different enrollment videos to be ready to jump into the Salesforce mechanisms.

I'd recommend using the solution. 

I'd rate the product at a nine out of ten. However, I find Microsoft Dynamics better. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Vice President - Customer Success at a tech consulting company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
User friendly, intuitive, with high scalability, and reliable
Pros and Cons
  • "It is very user-friendly, and intuitive, it will lead you and take you to the next steps."
  • "I would like to see the organizational details improved to make it less difficult to bring new clients on board."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is as an end user.

What is most valuable?

It is very user-friendly, and intuitive, it will lead you and take you to the next steps.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see the organizational details improved to make it less difficult to bring new clients on board.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Salesforce Platform for the past few years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good and I would rank it an eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is excellent with more than fifty thousand users.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support team is called internal.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Salesforce Platform an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Vishal Karanjkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Head - IOT NW Products & Solutions at Itron, Inc.
Real User
Top 5
Reliable and high availability
Pros and Cons
  • "The scalability of the Salesforce Platform is good."
  • "Salesforce Platform could improve by having better integration with Microsoft Azure. For development, we use Microsoft Azure and there was proper integration between the two solutions. We had issues with the customer and they were logged into the Salesforce Platform. We did not have any good way of integrating those issues into the R&D. The R&D mainly uses Microsoft Azure."

What is our primary use case?

We use the Salesforce Platform for all the CRM activities in the organization.

What needs improvement?

Salesforce Platform could improve by having better integration with Microsoft Azure. For development, we use Microsoft Azure and there was proper integration between the two solutions. We had issues with the customer and they were logged into the Salesforce Platform. We did not have any good way of integrating those issues into the R&D. The R&D mainly uses Microsoft Azure.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the Salesforce Platform for approximately four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Salesforce Platform is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of the Salesforce Platform is good.

We have 2,000 to 5,000 users using this solution. The product management uses it extensively.

How are customer service and support?

We have used the support and I have not heard anyone complaining about the level of support.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Salesforce Platform a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Customer Service Representative at GLOBAL SERVICES
Real User
A great platform but crashes and loses notes occasionally
Pros and Cons
  • "It is a great platform. It's definitely an improvement from the GCP application that we were using previously."
  • "When we're documenting information such as notes, and so forth, if we were to go back to the same case all notes go missing."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for the CRM.

What is most valuable?

It is a great platform. It's definitely an improvement from the GCP application that we were using previously.

What needs improvement?

The issue that my company has is, say, for instance, a user is dealing with more than one member in the system and they're looking up over five members. Once they hit the fifth member, it goes down. It crashes. This only happens when one of our customer service agents pulls up multiple members at once.

When we're documenting information such as notes, and so forth, if we were to go back to the same case all notes go missing. It's not great for documentation purposes as the CRM is losing our notes. This can be a big issue for the company especially if the provider has called and said they want to check on a specific case where the notes were lost. I need to review what's sent over. We've had customer service go back to a case number to seek those notes out, however, the CRM really should be able to just keep them in their system properly.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using the solution since 2018. It's been a few years at this point.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability isn't the best, especially if you are looking at multiple member profiles at the same time. If you open more than five, it crashes the system.

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

We used to use a GCP application and we switched to this product in 2018. We find it to be a much better CRM overall.

What other advice do I have?

I'd rate the solution at a five out of ten. If it didn't crash or lose notes, I would rate it higher. However, it is a pretty good CRM.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Head Of IT and Corporate Processes at a pharma/biotech company with 51-200 employees
Real User
Fully integrated, providing a seamless experience and increased efficiency in our company
Pros and Cons
  • "A fully integrated solution that provides a seamless experience."
  • "An expensive solution requiring a lot of configuration."

What is our primary use case?

We use the product for management processes such as grading sales orders, including all the KPI for the sales team to close negotiations. I'm head of IT and corporate process and we are customers of Salesforce.

How has it helped my organization?

Now that mail and other communications have been automated by Salesforce, we have seen a 60% increase in efficiency levels. In addition, we improved 30% of the analysis of the KPIs in the sales team.

What is most valuable?

The value of this product to us is the seamless experience and having a fully integrated solution with all the market solutions. Salesforce also have a lot of partners with product teams for major project support. There are continuous improvements to the platform. Each day we find new functionalities or reports and it's very good for the team.

What needs improvement?

The solution is very expensive compared to CRM solutions. It requires a lot of configuration that could make it difficult for some people. We are lucky to have a partner helping us. In addition, the license together with the cost of implementation, makes it very expensive. In some cases it's good to be modular, but in this case each time you want to integrate something, there's an additional cost. If you want to integrate with Office 365 you have to pay; if you want a seamless process with the marketing team or the accounting team, you have to pay. Right now our process is good and we can do anything we need but we may need something more in the future. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for six months. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We haven't had any issues with stability. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is great, we can do anything we want. Again, you have to pay for it but scalability is good. If you want to add processes, functions, area, additional information, it's very good.
For now, we have the sales manager and the principal sales team using the solution. Marketing and other users don't have access yet. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer service responds very quickly, within a few minutes. They will respond with a solution within about three hours. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was okay because we paid for the configuration using an external partner and we didn't have the internal resources for that. We defined the process and all the designs with the partner in the first week. It then took another month to define the environments and some functionalities. The process took a total of five weeks. We currently have one IT leader who spends about 20% of their time on it and then an admin who spends about 10% of the day making changes and administering. We are going to increase usage in the coming year in the sales team and maybe increase some functionality.

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

My advice is to consider in detail what you are acquiring because you might not get everything you need in the initial quote provided by Salesforce. It's tricky and the price will be high. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We don't plan to replace Salesforce but we're looking at other ERP solutions to integrate with Salesforce. 

What other advice do I have?

It's important to understand what you need for the short, middle and long term. Salesforce is a huge platform and might provide a level of functionality that you don't need. I would highly recommend implementation with a partner. It simplifies the process and if a company doesn't have the resources or people to administer the platform, it can effect the outcome. It's good to have a Salesforce administrator to assist when you need help. 

I rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Associate at Workvisory Services LLP
Real User
Top 20
Lightweight, easy to use, and flexible as it's on the cloud
Pros and Cons
  • "I found the ease of use most valuable in the Salesforce Platform. I also found the platform pretty light."
  • "I want more analytics in the platform and the addition of AI-based models, for example, predictive feedback. The Salesforce Platform needs to be more intelligent and intuitive to make it a great solution."

What is our primary use case?

I use the Salesforce Platform for customer relationship management. I use the solution for tracking and managing the customer lifecycle and the sales cycle.

What is most valuable?

I found the ease of use most valuable in the Salesforce Platform. I also found the platform pretty light.

What needs improvement?

The Salesforce team is building some intelligence into the Salesforce Platform, but it needs more automation. In particular, I want more analytics in the platform and the addition of AI-based models, for example, predictive feedback. The Salesforce Platform needs to be more intelligent and intuitive to make it a great solution.

What I want to add to the Salesforce Platform is the ability to organize and present information on the dashboards more intelligently, as that would be of great help.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the Salesforce Platform for about one year now.

How are customer service and support?

I've never contacted the Salesforce Platform technical support team because my company has a separate operations team in charge of getting support.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup for the Salesforce Platform was easy, so it's a nine out of ten in this area.

I have no idea how long the deployment took because I wasn't involved in the platform's deployment.

What other advice do I have?

I'm part of a product company in the synthetic data space rather than traditional TDM solutions. I head the global analysis team in my company.

For CRM, my company uses the Salesforce Platform. It also uses Amazon Web Services. I'm also a user of the Salesforce Platform.

The Salesforce Platform is on the cloud, so I always use the latest version.

At least thirty-five people use the Salesforce Platform in my company.

The Salesforce Platform is a solution I would recommend to others.

My rating for the platform is nine out of ten based on its usability. The most important driving factor to me is its ease of use. The Salesforce Platform also has excellent features and functionalities. It's also important to me that the Salesforce Platform is a lightweight solution and very flexible to use on the cloud.

My company is a Salesforce customer.

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?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Salesforce Platform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: May 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Salesforce Platform Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.