SalesForce

In today’s era of cutthroat competition, conducting your business in a way that yields the desired outcome isn’t easy. This is primarily because customers have become more informed and expect personalized and timely interaction with your brand. Consequently, marketers should also be ready for change.  According to an IDC study commissioned by Salesforce, about 65% of B2B buyers engage with vendors only after they have made a purchase decision and 83% of them are willing to hear only from those that are relevant and contextual.  While marketers and sales reps make every effort to turn prospects into sales opportunities, yet they do not want to appear as spammers who would spend an entire day cold calling. Rather their goal is to build a strong relationship with them, which would help them to close sales deals quickly. However, personalizing every interaction across a long sales cycle can be daunting and thus requires having in place a well-thought-out lead nurturing strategy.  Given the fact that the average buyer’s journey is complex, and the content (problem awareness, solution consideration, and decision regarding solution purchase) that helps them to move down the sales funnel should be perfectly timed and polished, it’s practically impossible to cut it using random emails. Automating lead nurturing allows for the methodical tracing of lead engagements with appropriate content and accurate pinpointing of that lead’s stage in the sales cycle.  So, if your business is struggling to nurture leads consistently then Salesforce offers the perfect solution to manage your leads and support your sales team in multiple ways. It makes sense to get in touch with a reliable Salesforce partner if you wish to seek assistance for the automation of your lead nurturing process.  Organize Lead Information: Information gets scattered and leads might not be handled properly without a robust system in place. By installing a cloud-based CRM like Salesforce, managing lead information becomes easy. You can enter the contact details of your leads, keep a track of their calls, and emails while schedule follow-ups to fulfill business needs. You can also modify several data entry features to meet your business needs.  Access: Even if your lead information is well organized, it won’t be of much use if your team can’t access it. Since, Salesforce is a cloud-based platform, it helps your team to share, view, and update information at any point in time.  Track: While it is important to access and organize lead information, it isn’t of any use if you aren’t able to track your leads. In fact, it is crucial to have details regarding leads that are qualified and where they are positioned in the lead nurturing process for driving sales and upholding best practices. Salesforce with its features allows you to categorize lead status and convert qualified leads to contacts.  Quick Wrap-up: It’s important to include lead nurturing within your sales and marketing strategy. However, it’s important to utilize automation resources for nurturing your leads especially if you are scaling up your business to ensure you’re connecting with your audience at every step of the buying process. To know more about the benefits of using Salesforce for nurturing your leads, it’s prudent to partner with an experienced Salesforce consultant.

The success of a business is directly proportional to the extent their customers are satisfied. With a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system like Salesforce in place, organizations will not just be able to improve their customer relationship but will also be able to increase their sales and revenue. As a leader in the CRM space, Salesforce has displayed promising statistics, which includes an annual growth of 29% in the financial year 2020. Apart from this, its customer base, which currently stands at 150000 is also increasing year on year. To, implement Salesforce, organizations should seek Salesforce Support from a reliable service provider. Here are some of the latest trends that will rein the Salesforce CRM space in the year 2021 and beyond: Customer 360: Uncertain situations like the recent Covid-19 pandemic have forced businesses to change the way they function. While customers have become digital-first, organizations too are moving towards digitalization to retain their customers. However, to sustain the market competition, organizations should equally focus on creating innovative solutions rather than just digitalization. Statistics reveal that around 69% of customers look for digital ways to get their products and services while 54 percent of them are seeking other ways to connect with a company. For the year 2021, Salesforce is coming up with a customer 360 tool that will enable companies to get a complete view of their customers.  Data Analysis:  Organizations these days are looking to analyze the data of their customers from multiple sources such as social media profiles, phone support, newsletter, etc. However, a report shared by Salesforce reveals that only 50 percent of companies can access all the data. This happens because most of the data is dispersed, which makes it difficult for organizations to analyze and visualize it. Consequently, organizations are adopting Salesforce as it helps them to gather data in a single place so that the sales, service, and marketing teams can work together without any doubt. Salesforce empowers organizations to create a data-driven approach by bringing together sales, service, and marketing cloud to arrange for data using customer 360 solutions.  Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: The AI-powered platform by Salesforce i.e. Salesforce Einstein provides actionable insights and suggestions that help organizations to make informed decisions. The platform has built-in deep learning models that predict by reading CRM data. Few other features that show how Salesforce is utilizing AI and ML to develop intelligent platforms for an organization include the following: Tableau:Tableau is a business intelligence and analytics software that helps in creating a dashboard within a few clicks.  AppExchange:It is a marketplace for third-party apps. Salesforce is working to upgrade it by offering apps that are more installable to increase sales and client interactions of the businesses. Analytics that is Voice Enabled:Salesforce launched Einstein’s voice, which uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) for processing the user request. Users can update records using their voice. Einstein voice bots empower users to create their voice assistants for custom apps.  Salesforce Ecosystem: As one of the most popular and widely adopted CRM software, numerous applications can be integrated within the platform, which in turn helps in extending its capabilities and functionalities.  Lightning Web Components: These are HTML elements that empower users to create lightweight UI designs.  Mobile Applications: Salesforce is striving to get the entire CRM into a mobile app for which it has laid a solid foundation to achieve the goals. Some of the upgrades aimed at by Salesforce include the following: Salesforce has re-developed the native Salesforce app by partnering with Apple to make the most of Siri and other Apple features. It has developed low-code mobile builders that allow users to convert spreadsheets to apps without the need for any formal training. Industry-specific Platforms: Though Salesforce is more efficient in Sales, marketing, retail, and finance, it has now started developing solutions for other industries given the growing demand.   Final Words: Being one of the most popular and widely adopted CRM, Salesforce keeps on innovating to provide users with a more efficient and robust platform. By implementing the aforementioned trends, Salesforce is striving to transform the CRM industry. To stay ahead of the race, organizations will look for business-specific solutions, which Salesforce is striving to fulfill. It’s prudent to partner with a certified and experienced Salesforce Consultant to know more about Salesforce and its latest offerings.

To keep their sales pipeline fresh and full of prospects, organizations indulge in lead generation. However, knowledge of lead management can be the difference between losing them and turning them into paying customers. Proper lead management will help in lead scoring leads, guiding them through the sales funnel, and ultimately converting them into paying customers. It is therefore important to ensure the effectiveness of your lead management process as an improvement in lead management efforts can empower sales teams to frequently convert prospects while enhancing customer satisfaction.    According to statistics shared by Sales Lead Management Association, organizations fail to follow up on the majority (80%) of leads generated.  Though lead management is typically considered to be the purview of a sales team, marketing, and customer service teams too play a significant role in the proper management of leads. By creating processes that are integrated across units, training employees on best practices for lead management, and leveraging robust lead management software, organizations can ensure that their best leads remain in their pipeline. This will bound to have a positive impact on their bottom line. A powerful lead management system does away with weak leads and nurtures those that are most likely to convert. Such a system will help organizations streamline their customer experience and make their sales and marketing teams more efficient and productive. Why Should Organizations Use CRM for Managing their Leads? Today, most organizations are looking forward to leveraging the benefits of lead management CRM software such as sales pipeline visibility, real-time analytics, contact management, and so on. Listed below are some instances when leveraging CRM software can be highly beneficial: Managing Leads that can’t be Handled Manually: Managing leads without a CRM becomes more difficult as lead volume grows. With a robust CRM by their side, the entire lead management process can be automated. Apart from this, sales and lead activity can be monitored via a single centralized dashboard. When Using Different Tools: If an organization is using disparate tools and applications to manage their lead management, they might not get a consolidated view of the process, are keeping duplicate data or wasting time shifting between the tools. Since, CRM systems have integration capabilities; organizations can manage their data from a single place. Couldn’t Understand the Reason behind Losing Leads: To provide their prospects with appropriate content during the lead nurturing stage, it’s important to understand their buying behavior, their preferences, and where they are in their buying journey. In other words, organizations have to track how leads behave on their website, the number of times prospects have visited their site, what type of content they take in, and much more. By leveraging robust CRM software like Salesforce, organizations can get access to every single detail, which means they can take all the necessary steps to move their leads from one stage to the other in the Sales pipeline. To understand how Salesforce CRM can help organizations manage their leads, it’s important to get in touch with a reliable Salesforce partner. Quick Wrap-up: Despite having sufficient lead in their sales pipeline, often businesses fail to generate the desired revenue. This calls for the need of evaluation for your lead management strategy, which also includes the implementation of robust lead management software. Implementing powerful lead management software like Salesforce can be leveraged to not just increase the number of leads but also manage them effectively. Such a system provides an efficient process for accessing and organizing contact details including information required for qualifying prospects and closing sales. Apart from this, the system also helps in managing the flow of information to make sure that none of the leads fall through the crack. Some advanced tools can gather all data in a single place and provide meaningful insights for a superior relationship with your prospects. So, if you too are looking to implement robust lead management software like Salesforce then it makes sense to get in touch with one of the best Salesforce implementation partners.      

In today’s era of the cut-throat business landscape, success-oriented organizations are looking to incorporate multiple channels into their sales and distribution processes to stay competitive while creating integrated and intelligent buying experiences for their customers by using robust e-commerce solutions. Such a solution will not just impact their operations, agility, and scalability but will also transform their customer experience.   Salesforce e-Commerce cloud is one of the leading solutions that is endowed with a wide array of features and applications that have significantly benefitted the commercial sector. As one of the leading B2B and B2C solutions, the Salesforce commerce cloud with its multi-tenant architecture empowers organizations to create a unified and intelligent buying experience across different channels.  Why Salesforce e-Commerce cloud is a preferred choice? The software as a service (SAAS) platform provides a set of powerful tools that allow organizations to connect with their prospective customers or buyers at every stage of the sales process while providing them with outstanding support across different channels. Given the evolving customer behavior with each passing day, organizations require omnichannel insights to analyze users’ behavior and engagement across various channels. What sets apart the robust platform from other e-commerce platforms is its integral predictive intelligence i.e. Salesforce’s Einstein AI. This in-built advanced predictive intelligence system aids in providing a matchless shopping experience by delivering smart insights regarding customers’ behavior, their purchasing patterns while identifying options to sell across different untapped channels. To know more about this platform, organizations can seek Salesforce support from a reliable service provider. Benefits of Leveraging Salesforce e-Commerce Cloud Predictive Intelligence: The disadvantage to working with third-party integrations is that the system used to run a business becomes disengaged and can bring a business to a standstill. The Salesforce e-Commerce cloud is bundled with predictive intelligence that does away with the need for manual data analysis. The AI (artificial intelligence) powered technology i.e. Salesforce Einstein is integrated into the Commerce cloud and allows organizations to deliver enjoyable and personalized shopping experiences on different channels. Enhanced Marketing Tools: The commerce cloud offers a wide array of tools that empowers retailers to manage product details, images, and content cross catalogs, categories, and sites. All these things can be unified across various sites, currencies, and languages. This enables marketers to connect customers with the right products, price, offer and content at the right time to maximize the rates of conversions while increase average order value. Eventually, brand marketers are empowered to launch campaigns, drive business growth, optimize conversions, etc. without any technical support. Cost-efficiency: Businesses leveraging this software can enjoy cost-efficiency as they need to pay for what they need. In case their requirement changes, they can seek assistance from their SaaS provider to scale up their system.          Flexibility: One of the significant aspects of this platform is its flexible nature. This allows businesses to scale up their resources w.r.t to a huge or unexpected spike of traffic that too without any user intervention.  Security: The commerce cloud is a highly secure platform that allows businesses to move their operations to the cloud. As compared to the local hosts, the security of cloud data is much better.  Unified Experience: One of the most convincing benefits of Commerce Cloud is the way it brings together all the channels to generate a unified customer experience. So, instead of considering their brick-and-mortar outlet, online store, social selling, etc. as separate entities, organizations can bring all of these together for the benefit of customers.  Mobile Focussed: Having a mobile-optimized store is essential for creating a gratifying and frictionless customer experience. Salesforce commerce cloud takes a mobile-first approach while managing everything from point of sale in brick-and-mortar outlets to operations in online stores. This provides a great shopping experience to mobile users. Final Words:  In a nutshell, Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a robust and scalable eCommerce platform that is endowed with a wide array of features for store management, merchandising, customer segmentation, and more. So, if you are looking for a powerful e-Commerce platform for managing your infrastructure then Salesforce e-Commerce cloud can be the right solution for you. So, if you have made up your mind to migrate your business to Salesforce e-Commerce cloud then, you must consider partnering with a certified Salesforce consultant. 

To sustain in today’s digital era, organizations need to indulge in the development of robust and indigenous applications that can help them in making their business super productive while serving their customers in the best possible way. However, redressing business-critical issues expeditiously using normal CRM applications isn’t possible and thus requires the development of cloud-based CRM applications. Since, software development isn’t a simple task; it becomes all the more challenging to develop, test and deploy a cloud-based system such as Salesforce on a cloud environment. To understand a typical Salesforce development lifecycle, it’s important to seek Salesforce support and know about the various actors involved in the process. Some of the most common ones include the following:   Product Manager: One who is responsible for coordinating and finalizing the business requirements.  Release Manager: One who coordinates the release schedule with the client and the development team. Developer:One who does the main coding, and produces deliverables. Quality Analyst: One who tests and confirms various features. Trainer:One who provides training. Listed below are steps that are involved in the Salesforce Development Lifecycle:  Discovery Phase: It is the first and fundamental phase that contributes to the successful execution of Salesforce implementation. During this phase, the groundwork for the Salesforce Implementation is done and all the crucial information required for the implementation is gathered, reviewed, and deliberated. During the discovery phase the following factors are examined: The goal and objectives of the business and the project at hand is analyzed Gaps, risks, and critical requirements are identified. Analysing the existing systems that require CRM integration Get a detailed overview of the scope of the deployment Understand the reporting requirements etc. Source Control Set-up: In this step, the release manager sets up the source control repository. It’s always beneficial to have a separate Git repository for each project while the default branch can act as the master branch where production metadata can be stored. Post this; different branches are created for different features by the release manager, which will be used by different developers. The release manager also creates the package.xml manifest and uses the same to populate the master branch with metadata and uses Force.com for data migration. Development Phase: Developers create their sandboxes that usually have a copy of the main production app and all the related Salesforce configuration information. The developers start developing within their sandboxes and use Force.com to connect with their sandboxes and recover metadata from the sandbox to the IDE. After doing necessary coding and initial unit testing, developers obligate the code to the Git repository.  For the next steps of development, the freshly committed code can be migrated to the Sandboxes while they carry on with further development. The latest development should be committed to the repository. However, if more people are working on the same code then they should check for conflicts before committing the code to the repository.  Testing:  Once the development is completed, it is followed by testing. Just like the developers, QA’s or testers migrate the code from the repository to their sandbox environment for testing. Testers use partial copy sandboxes when they are assigned the task of testing a specific feature. QA’s require sharing their sandbox environment if they are required to do more thorough testing of crucial features, which largely depends on the workflow pattern of the organization. However, changes recommended at this stage will take it back to the initial development phase.   Acceptance Testing: After the aforementioned level of testing is accomplished, another level of testing i.e. user acceptance testing is conducted wherein apart from testers and QA’s product managers, developers, and other users perform the final testing. Partial sandboxes are being created by the release managers for testing, which are then used by the product managers for carrying out ad-hoc testing followed by preparing a final presentation for the clients or the end-users. However, any changes suggested during this stage can take the entire process to the initial development phase to integrate the changes.  Product Release: The app that has undergone all the testing processes is tested for performance in an intermediate sandbox environment, which has all the data and configurations of the production environment. Since, this sandbox isn’t partial; it has all the features of the app. After the final performance and regression testing is performed by the QA team, the app has to pass all service level agreements. Post this; the app is ready to be deployed in the production environment. Patch Releases: Even after the deployment of the app, some of the other requirements for bug fixes, tweaking of a feature, or a minute change may pop up and are taken care of during the patch releases. The patch release cycle has a cycle of its own but has faster processes as compared to the app development lifecycle.  Quick Wrap-up: So, if you are looking for robust apps that can help you streamline your business processes and increase business productivity then it’s important for you to partner with a certified Salesforce partner for Salesforce app development.  

In today’s competitive business era, data is the pivot on which the business world balances. With the human race generating humongous data of around 2.5 exabytes every day, forward-looking businesses are investing in processing, cleaning, and analyzing these vast stores of data to draw meaningful insights, which they can leverage to make informed decisions and better understand their customers. In fact, companies that adopt data-driven strategies enjoy higher productivity and profits than their counterparts. According to a report shared by IDC, revenue generated from big data and business analytics is expected to increase from $130.1 billion in 2016 to $203 billion through 2020. Since, sales continue to be one of the most important functions of any business entity, sales reps should be empowered to connect with their customers in a better way. Salesforce Einstein Analytics – an AI-powered tool can be leveraged by organizations to automate their time-consuming admin activities to make time for other important activities. With AI-informed insights and automation, the Sales team can streamline every aspect of their sales cycle. Here’s how Salesforce Einstein can be leveraged by organizations to improve sales performance: Prioritize Leads: By introducing AI-powered Einstein analytics to your sales team, organizations can empower their sales team to sort and prioritize incoming leads. The AI-powered sales tool helps in analyzing historical data to disclose the best kind of leads for their business, which further helps sales reps to focus on leads that are most likely to convert. The patterns identified by this sophisticated tool are more focused than the traditional criteria that are based on intuition. Consequently, sales productivity increases as more leads are converted in less time. Recognize Opportunity Health: Sales reps are bogged down with the pressure to handle multiple opportunities concurrently. With a robust AI-powered tool i.e Salesforce Einstein in place, sales reps can distinguish between opportunities that require attention and those that are doing well and moving towards a successful conclusion. This leads to high sales productivity within a short time frame. Search for Strategic Contacts: Sales reps understand the significance of a sincere and heartfelt introduction to key contacts and its significance in building a rewarding and long-term relationship. The robust Einstein tool can help find contacts that have a prior relationship with key contacts and provides sales reps the benefit of knowing the contact before the formal introduction is made.   Accurate Forecasting: The forecasting ability of this AI-powered data analysis tool help decodes the trends existing in the sales cycle right down to every sales rep. The predictive capabilities of the tool help organizations to plan accordingly for the approaching sales quarter and prioritize sales deals to maximize winning chances.  In a Nutshell: These are some of the many ways how Salesforce Einstein analytics can help organizations build a high-performing sales team and empowering sales reps to excel at their work. Adopting Salesforce Einstein analytics can help organizations to boost customer loyalty while building a long-term relationship with them. Organizations should consider partnering with one of the most reputed Salesforce consultants to avail outstanding consultation and implementation services.   

The global insurance sector is undergoing a dynamic change due to digital transformation. This digital disruption has forced insurance providers to either make significant changes to their business models or face the risk of being ruined. However, insurers, especially traditional insurers may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage owing to their age-old business models, as well as hefty investments made in infrastructure. In fact any change to their business model might be extremely difficult for some insurers as it may cannibalize their existing business. To create efficiencies leading to higher profitability or a competitive position, insurers are leveraging innovative technology solutions that too without making significant changes to their business models. Insurance regulators are indeed viewing technology as an enabling solution that can help them better realize their mission of warranting a competitive and sustainable insurance market. Today, insurance providers are doing away with traditional customer servicing methods and are opting for robust insurance CRM software that has helped them manage everything from a single place. Let’s take a quick look as to how a robust CRM like Salesforce drives positive growth for businesses that are a part of the insurance sector: Personalized Services: CRM software provides users a great way of increasing the understanding of existing and potential customers. This enables them to provide personalized services according to the unique requirement of every client. Financial service cloud by Salesforce paves way for marketing automation, which enables brokers to nurture leads and then turning them into customers while connecting with customers at the right time, and with the right product advice. Salesforce CRM software for insurance also helps in delivering personalized services to the policyholders. To implement Salesforce insurance CRM software within their business ecosystem, insurance organizations should consider partnering with an experienced Salesforce Implementation Partner. Improve Customer Loyalty: Offering superior customer service is a key way of improving customer loyalty. Insurance companies that have implemented robust cloud-based CRM get access to meaningful insights that are required for providing personalized sales, claims, and service-related interactions for a huge client base. Moreover, a cloud-powered solution can be integrated with different departments such as sales, marketing, etc., which allows staff and clients to connect irrespective of their location thereby paving way for a more integrated environment. Secure Repeat Business: A robust CRM can be leveraged to utilize multiple aspects of a business. This presents a cost-effective way of bringing people together, breaking data silos, providing a single view of customers. This allows insurance teams or brokers to sell (up-sell and cross-sell) more while making repeat sales to existing customers by keeping the need of each customer at the center of communication regarding sales, marketing, and support. Wrap Up: Salesforce CRM software for insurance provides insurance companies an opportunity to support their customers in a way that extends their journey with the organization rather than providing momentary service and support. With competition within the industry becoming fiercer, Salesforce CRM for the insurance sector can make organizations stand out of the crowd. Organizations looking forward to enhancing business efficiency and ROI by implementing Salesforce insurance CRM should should seek assistance from a reliable and certified Salesforce consultant.