Top Reasons to Choose Salesforce CRM
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Salesforce AppExchange
Salesforce AppExchange
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management program, which is used to engage and build relationships with customers and consumers. It is not just for a big corporation or a large-scale business. A CRM system does not only handle customer interactions, it actually provides a variety of other functionalities that can maintain or enhance customer relationships. CRM systems track and monitor sales, manage customer data, convert data into information, predict sales, manage contacts, record activities, send emails (manual as well as auto), make calls, and dozens of other quality functionalities. No matter what your business needs are, these functionalities, which are becoming intelligent day by day will be able to fulfill.Salesforce CRM Overview
Salesforce is an all-in-one, cloud-based solution that offers everything a company of any scale needs and desires in CRM software. Salesforce’s software is basically associated with larger enterprises and businesses, Salesforce has a business edition to offer that lets you take advantage of the product’s robust resources and a set of quality CRM tools and at a small business-friendly price. Its key features include (and is not limited to) lead generation, sales forecasting, account and contact management, opportunity management, and workflow automation. The solution also includes an advanced artificial intelligence system – Einstein. This AI program allows Salesforce to develop predictive features that make the program easier and more comfortable to operate resulting in more business for the subscribing companies.
Basic license: $25 per user per month
What is AppExchange?
It is one of the major causes that Salesforce has been chosen as the world leader in CRM for consecutive years is because of the wide range of business processes that can be empowered on its platform using the out-of-the-box functionalities. However, there are various scenarios in every company and every business demands different business processes, usually, some customization is needed in the Salesforce platform or it needs to be integrated with custom solutions and 3rd party apps to include these business-specific demands which are not already taken care of by the system or its features. To fulfill these needs, Salesforce AppExchange was introduced.
Salesforce AppExchange is a go-to place when it comes to your desire to have your business use extended Salesforce enabled services provided by 3rd parties. You can discover very useful apps, packages, and extensions to address your business-centric needs. You will find apps that are built outside the Salesforce platform as well as some built using the platform itself. From an individual developer to software product companies, anyone can list their built apps to the AppExchange. Some of them are free and some of them are paid apps. This way you can find a ready to use the app for your use case without customizing it yourself or investing in developers to do that for you. Salesforce AppExchange was launched in 2006, and now it is the world’s number 1 enterprise marketplace. There are thousands of apps listed, with millions of customer installs and thousands of reviews given in this marketplace.
It is very easy and safe to use these products from the AppExchange as Salesforce’s security team reviews each one of them before making it available in the portal for public usage. Before actually purchasing the paid apps, there are options to try them which makes it even easier for you to decide what you want.
How to use Salesforce AppExchange?
Now you are aware of the Salesforce AppExchange offerings and their usage. Let’s see how to make it work for your company. Below are the basic steps needed to be performed to have it installed and enabled in your Salesforce Org.
Step 1
Visit Salesforce AppExchange . If you log in to it using your credentials, you will see a personalized view as per your needs.
Step 2
You will find different sections such as Top Categories, Sponsored Solutions, Customers Using AppExchange products, Trending Now, etc on the page. The top categories include different categories such as – Finance, Human Resources, Enterprise Resource Planning, Sales, Customer Service, IT & Admin, Marketing, Integration, Salesforce Labs, Analytics, etc. Each category will have multiple related apps to choose from. There are options to filter the apps based on price, editions, ratings, features, languages, etc.
You may hover your mouse on the app icons and a pop-up with details will appear with relevant brief information about that app. You may also use the search tile to look for a specific app. You can click on any one of them and see the details, along with pictures and demo videos. After going through the details, you can choose a suitable app for your business scenario.
Steps to get apps from AppExchange
A. Click on ‘Get it now’ – Next pop-up window appears to select where you want to install it.
B. In the next window click either ‘Install in Production’ or ‘Install in Sandbox’ as per your need.
C. In the next window review the details, read terms and conditions and confirm installation by clicking on ‘Confirm and Install’.
D. In the next step, you will need to log into your org by providing your credentials.
E. Then it asks you to choose for which profile you want the app to be installed, choose the profile as per the business scenario needs.
F. Click on ‘Install’.
G. Installation Complete message will appear, click on Done.
Your installation will finish, and you will be ready to utilize the apps services in your org.
01.
Usability:
Salesforce is rated as one of the easiest CRMs to use. With visualization of customer’s information in a 360° view, all in one place, sales teams can make informed decisions and close deals much faster than ever before. Its competitors fail to showcase customer information in such an organized manner as Salesforce does.
02.
Functionality:
Salesforce provides the widest ranges of outs of the box functionalities among different CRMs. At the time of the first setup, companies can choose the features they want to utilize in their business processes. There are multiple options and features that can be utilized. Additionally, configuring Salesforce is a point and click task which makes it even easier to implement. You will be glad to know that you do not need expert developers to set up your basic business environment in Salesforce, rather a few Administrators might be sufficient.
03.
Cloud Technology:
Salesforce was the very first company to offer a cloud-based CRM system that can also be used as a Platform as a Service (also called PaaS). That means all your infrastructure is on the cloud, and you do not need to take care of the setup or maintenance by yourself. The technology can help complex business systems with no additional capital required for setup. Salesforce has four different versions of its service which are licensed according to the number of users billed. You always have the flexibility to switch from one edition to another when needed.
04.
Informative Reporting Tools:
Sales teams can utilize the reporting feature to create reports of the accounts they are taking care of. In Salesforce, all the transactions and activities related to an account like products sold, hot deals and prospects, completed tasks, and so on can be viewed using the reporting tools. Sales reps and managers may also use a graphical representation to check their progress and performance.
05.
AppExchange:
As already discussed, AppExchange is an efficient business app marketplace launched by Salesforce. Salesforce's users have access to thousands of apps that they can use to enhance Salesforce’s out-of-the-box features. These are both paid and free. Some of these apps include MailChimp, AdobeSign, Conga, and more. Lightning App Builder allows developers to create or customize apps themselves.
06.
Customizability:
Highly customization in Salesforce gives it an extra edge over other CRMs. You can take the help of Salesforce Implementation Partners to add an extension to the CRM so that the business can easily utilize offers and functions that are required by any company. With the help of integration to business apps, you can choose from pre-existing functionalities, and add extensions. The customizability of Salesforce is second to none.
07.
Scalability:
Salesforce is highly scalable, and it is another benefit that companies can benefit from. As your business grows, you will need to handle more customer information and other data. Salesforce is scalable and is dynamic in providing additional infrastructural needs that your business needs at any point in time. Just with a few modifications or switching of editions, you can achieve additional infrastructure on the go and as and when required.
08.
Consolidated view:
The view of progress is one key feature every business wants. The view of the Opportunities tab function gives the sales team a unified look at the current relationship with the customer. The data is shown in a very clear and easily understandable manner which helps teams to better plan their customer interactions for the most impactful results.
09.
Tracking of the customer lifecycle:
It is very important and valuable for a salesperson to be able to keep track of a customer lifecycle. With Salesforce every transaction can be captured and visualized later to help in improving the customer experience. There are several features like Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, and more help to better serve your customer’s needs, track the customer journey and provide better service to drive sales. Custom features for customer service can help differentiate your company from others and help with customer loyalty and retention.
10.
New updates:
Salesforce keeps on always innovating and reinventing itself. With a long and well-planned journey, the CRM has developed into a strong force for customer retention and sales. The company continues to make efforts towards making improvements in their products so that businesses can have a CRM tool that efficiently and effectively stores customer data and shows it in a way that gives it meaning. Having Salesforce always keeps on innovating so that it remains up to date in changing times is a long-term benefit that it offers its users.
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Categories of Salesforce CRM AppExchange Solutions
There are many solutions available on AppExchange. These can be categorized based on how they can be managed and how they are built. All apps fall under the below categories:
Native Apps:
Salesforce provides its platform to developers to build their solutions and host them as well. That the apps that are built and hosted inside Salesforce using the Lightning Platform are called the native apps. A native app is built and hosted within Salesforce and doesn’t need a separate integration with Salesforce. With native apps, it is assumed that all of your app data is also securely stored inside Salesforce and is not exposed to any other party.
Non-native Apps:
An app can be built on other platforms and can be hosted somewhere else in some other infrastructure. A Non-native App is one that is built outside of Salesforce and has been in integration with Salesforce using the Salesforce API. The app will be hosted outside the Salesforce platform and data might also be stored outside the Salesforce infrastructure.
Managed Packages:
Managed packages need no modification and are hosted and taken care of by the app providers themselves. These are full-scale solutions that can be installed and only the provider is responsible for customizing and upgrading the apps for optimizations. Majorly the app data and configurations are hidden and stored outside Salesforce servers. Users have to just install the package in their org to utilize the features to fulfill the desired business outcome without the need to edit it.
Unmanaged Packages:
Some packages are there which offers developers to customize them further taking the package as the base. Open-source solutions are available as Unmanaged packages that can be used by developers as a baseline while developing functionalities that support the business needs. The providers are not responsible for customizing or upgrading such packages. It is the role of the developers or admins to use these packages, build/modify them, and also maintain to accomplish project goals. The open-source solutions may or may not provide upgrades on a timely basis.
Free Salesforce AppExchange Applications
Customer Service Salesforce AppExchange Apps
- Round Robin Record Assignment: There are situations where the team members or managers are out of the office for their personal engagements or maybe they are not working in some specific hours. In this case, you will not want their work to remain pending for them to return. These works can be delegated to one or more people to be completed in time. This tool assigns records to one or more users or groups.
- Survicate Surveys for Salesforce: This tool lets you send interactive surveys to your customers. This way you will be able to engage your customers for their valuable feedback which can help the company to provide better service and have a better relationship with them. Net Promoter Score surveys are included.
- Take Ownership for Cases: Taking ownership of a case is hectic if you have to do it repeatedly in your daily work. This tool reduces the number of clicks needed for the case ownership from 5 to 1.
Sales Apps on Salesforce AppExchange
- Ebsta for Gmail: You can see and modify Salesforce very easily from within Gmail. You can sync calendars, add emails, track email opens, and more. Note: It is free for the first 3 users.
- Ebsta for LinkedIn: This app enables Salesforce inside LinkedIn to help your sales teams sell more. You can see Salesforce records alongside LinkedIn profiles and open records in Salesforce with one click. Note: It is free for the first 3 users.
- S-docs – Free Document Generator: This enables you to automate the document generation process using a platform solution. It also supports batch transactions and full workflow automation. This provides solutions to create quotes, proposals, statements, invoices, account reports or summaries, and contracts.
Finance AppExchange Apps
Avankia – DBSync QuickBooks Integration for Salesforce: This free app synchronizes Salesforce accounts, contacts, products, and opportunities to QuickBooks desktop customers, jobs, products and invoices, estimates, or sales orders. It also has an automatic online update, so you never have to manually upgrade your application.
Timesheets.com: This is a simple timesheet tool and does the job efficiently. The timesheets in this tool can be used for hourly payroll, time-off, project analysis, billing, and accruals. It also has features to track Employee expenses and HR reports. Individual accounts are free.
IT and Administration Apps
Dataloader.io: This is a simple-to-use tool that is must be needed for IT Teams, which requires no download, provided by Salesforce, and is a 100% cloud solution. This allows you to efficiently import, export, and delete data in Salesforce.com. You can also have these imports and exports tasks to be automated on a daily, hourly, weekly, or monthly basis. You can even import or export data from multiple file sources like DropBox, Box, FTP, and sFTP.
DupeCatcher: This has been observed in many org that companies are concerned about repetitive data which are redundant and duplicate. DupeCatcher allows users to detect, stop and deduplicate accounts, contacts, person accounts, and leads in real-time at the time of creation. You will always have control of the detection and merge process, and need not worry about the fear of loss while cleaning data.
Mass Update and Mass Edit from List View: Mass update and mass edit are the features that become very important for many companies if they need to perform data modification on a large scale. This tool takes selected records from any filtered view or related list. You may use any of the two easy tools designed for both standard users and admins. This app supports the following object types out of the box: Account, Contact, Opportunity, Campaign, Lead, Contract, Product, Case, Solution, and Asset. It takes 15 mins of configuration, and you can enable it for any custom object in your organization.
Mass Update, Mass Edit, Mass Delete: If you need to mass delete, update or edit your records in the org, this is the tool to go for. It can take filtered data from a view or a related list.
Jitterbit Cloud Data Loader: This is a fast and easy integration for any Salesforce Admin that requires no coding, this free data migration app allows Salesforce users to automate the import and export of data among files, databases, and Salesforce. It can help with creating, inserting, upsetting, deleting, hard deleting, querying, and bulk loading.
Mass Update Tasks, Activities Tab, Create Multiple Tasks: This app helps you multitask efficiently. This allows you to create multiple tasks for multiple Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, and Cases. Additionally, you can mass update any standard or custom field as well as customize mass create and update task pages.
Zapier: Automate repetitive and tedious tasks, this tool can connect Salesforce to all the web apps you use. It automates your entire workflow by copying and moving data for you. Integrations are available for many known and popular apps.
AddressTools Free: With an auto-complete pick-list, you will be ensuring your users enter consistent country and state names with supported additional validation features. This requires no data cleanup before implementation. You can also standardize, validate, and correct all address fields on a pay per lookup basis with street-level validation (20 free lookups are provided).
Field Trip: You wish you could run reports on your Salesforce fields. The tool does the job! This utility lets you analyze any object field be it standard or custom, including what percentage of the records (or a subset of your records) have that field populated.
Marketing AppExchange Applications
Campaign Monitor: Combine the strength of the data and Campaign Monitor in Salesforce for smooth and hyper targeted email marketing to your contacts. Seamlessly build elegant, branded email marketing campaigns with a drag and drop tool. The utility comes with professionally designed, mobile-ready email templates.
AdvocateHub: Mobilize your advocates with AdvocateHub. It is a powerful marketing software for advocates that helps B2B companies capture customer enthusiasm to turbocharge Sales and Marketing teams. You need to create an advocate community and invite partners, customers, and employees into the app to complete a wide variety of challenges such as referrals, reference calls or product reviews.
Collaboration Salesforce AppExchange Applications
Box: Enables you to seamlessly access, share, and manage files within Salesforce.
Agile Accelerator: This agile development utility is built by Salesforce itself which helps you manage sprints and workflows. This is very useful for any scrum team.
Drag, Drop, and Unload: This is a free document management tool. It lets you drag & drop multiple files for instant uploading into Salesforce and you can do it even from Google Drive. Quickly add contracts, case logs, legal docs, marketing collateral, and more against any standard or custom object.
DevOps tools on Salesforce AppExchange
DevOps is a set of processes and practices which combines IT Operations and Software Development in one. Its goal is to minimize the development life cycle and provide continuous integration and continuous delivery. It also makes sure the quality is always high through the deliveries. DevOps and Agile methodology goes hand in hand and DevOps works better with Agile methodology.
Copado
Copado is listed as the number 1 DevOps tool for Salesforce. It is built using the Salesforce platform and is a 100% native Salesforce solution. It helps the IT operations and developers to release the development faster with assured quality, by shortening the software development lifecycle.
Copado provides continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) and can be fully integrated with Salesforce DX. It can be used by a variety of IT professionals for different roles in the software development lifecycle.
– Architects and Developers:
Developers and architects can plan to deploy quicker with fewer issues and no more repetitive manual tasks, making the process smarter.
– Consultancies and ISV:
More projects can be managed in parallel with ease. It helps in meeting deadlines and decreasing problem resolution time.
– Administrators:
Admins can monitor the org’s health in real-time. They have visibility across all changes made to all Salesforce environments be it dev, QA, UAT, or prod.
Highlights
- It is built on the Salesforce platform and is an end to end native DevOps solution. It unites Developers, Admins, and Architects to be on the same page every time. It is a team sport, and uniting all three roles enables you to focus on what you need to be focusing on that is delivering innovation to the customer.
- The collaboration can be moved beyond just the Developers, Architects, and Admins. You can also collaborate with your business planning units, different IT departments, and your customers to achieve the ultimate release process perfection.
- Copado offers the utilities and processes which can unite all these departments together, working in sync to enable a streamlined and higher, more efficient quality release process, which results in smarter teams with high levels of innovation.
- Starting at $250 USD per user per month
Top features:
- Continuous Integration (without Jenkins)
- Deployment of metadata using OAuth
- Change Management
- Version Control & Branch Management
- Compare & Deploy Org Metadata Differences
- Automated Metadata backup
- Automated Apex testing of all your Salesforce org
- Webhook API & CLI
- Compliance Hub
- Static Code Analysis
- Test Center
- Selenium Testing
AutoRABIT
AUtoRABIT is an automated release management system and it is among the fastest DevOps platforms in Salesforce AppExchange. This Automated Release Management (ARM) DevOps platform is built for Salesforce for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery which offers speed and accuracy. It includes integration with Salesforce DX as well as top ALM, code analysis, version control, and test automation tools.
Highlights
- More Productive Developers: AutoRABIT CI and CD platform is purpose built for Salesforce. Since it is non-native which is unique among other DevOps offerings, it supports the top best in class tools for Version Control, ALM, and Test Automations.
- Faster Deployment: AutoRABIT CI Server platform is Metadata aware which can deliver Salesforce deployments 5x Faster. Moreover, its multi-threaded workflow offers parallel builds for faster release cycles.
- Scales With Teams: It is quite flexible and as your teams grow, AutoRABIT scales to handle complexity and collaboration. AutoRABIT with cascading automation in release workflows, delivers true CI/CD and more powerful automation.
- Starting at $149 USD per user per month
Key Features:
Deployment Automation
• Defined release process for Salesforce
• Deployment from your Salesforce Org as well as from Version Control System
Data Loader Pro
• Eligible to migrate millions of records for Salesforce and eliminate complexity
• Ensures data integrity between source & destination environments
Test Automation
• Test Automation Framework designed for Salesforce which reduces effort and cost
• Smooth integration with most existing test tools like Provar, ACCELQ, etc.
Version Control – Intelligent Code Management
• Manage & merge branches of code from multiple developers – supports major Version, Control tools
• Utilises metadata to automatically identify, merge, & commit code across Orgs
• Pre-defined auto-commit rules
Sandbox Management
• Easily synchronize releases across geographically disparate sandboxes
• Schedule sandbox backup & manage data to remove redundancies
Autorabit For Salesforce DX – Create Powerful Contextual Scratch Orgs
• Enhance the Salesforce DX experience
• Easy graphical interface as an alternative to the command-line interface
Salesforce Document Management Applications on AppExchange
DocuSign eSignature for Salesforce: The trusted eSignature solution
DocuSign is an electronic signatures solution, which helps you close deals faster with eSignature on the go. You can sign, send, save and track your company agreements on Salesforce. This has been the most downloaded eSign solution in the AppExchange.
Highlights
● It basically helps you generate and send agreements for signature. Additionally, it can trigger actions, automatically store agreements, and track their status to the original record. This is a Lightning Ready integration that works in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and Salesforce CPQ.
● Your customers now have the ease of signing anywhere, anytime, from practically any device. You get to close deals faster. And your sales reps get to spend less time manually moving agreements and more time selling.
● DocuSign is the market leader in electronic signatures, with over hundreds of millions of signers and over 500 thousands customers. Salesforce is also among one of the customers of DocuSign, using this technology across Sales, HR, Purchasing/Procurement, and other departments.
● Starting at $30 USD per user per month
● Requirements – Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Force.com, Developer, Performance Salesforce Editions
Conga Composer | Document Generation & Reporting for Salesforce Made Easy
Businesses have the need to generate multiple forms and documents on the go. Conga composer is a very convenient solution that helps you create and auto-generate quotes, proposals, doc gen, account plans, contracts, invoices, QBRs & more. Conga eases the tedious tasks of document generation which helps you and your customers to focus on other important priorities. You can also create, track and manage on-brand documents automatically.
Highlights
● Accelerate Your Business – Reduce the document delivery time. Get up and running quickly with Composer to gain more insights with document history and notifications that increase visibility, increasing team speed, processes, and business cycles.
● Automate For Consistency – Eliminate manual tasks and automate document creation using workflows that initialize and complete customer engagements based on the applied logic. Make standard documents that you send to ensure you land on-brand, every time.
● Flexible To Fit Any Solution – Pull data from across Salesforce org, objects, and external systems – like ERP, Marketing, and HR. This makes personalized, customized, and on the go reports and documents with ease of delivery for every business scenario.
● Starting at $20 USD per user per month
● Requirements: Salesforce Edition Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Force.com, Developer, Performance
Key Features
Generate any document:
➔ Quotes
➔ Proposals
➔ Account plans
➔ Invoices/receipts
➔ Contracts
➔ Work orders
➔ Reports & charts
➔ Shipping documents
➔ And more!
Into the following formats:
➔ Word
➔ Excel
➔ PowerPoint
➔ PDF
➔ HTML email
Tips To Find The Right App From Appexchange
01.
Check if it is free/paid
02.
Read AppExchange listing reviews. The customer reviews are the best way to gather unbiased feedback from other clients about the application.
03.
Try it before you buy it. Regardless of the ratings, feedback, and demos, you will require to decide if the product is a right fit for your business usage and worth the price. While you might be able to narrow down the contenders with ratings, feedback and demos, you really need to try it to be sure. Install in a sandbox and play around.
04.
Watch for the latest releases. Keep an eye on the 'latest release' date -- knowing that an app is being improved regularly is helpful.
05.
Search smart. Type the first search keyword in the search bar but do not hit enter yet. Read all of the queries searched to be directed on the different types of apps. Once you click through to a listing, look at the customization guides to get a better idea of the support quality and the configuration capabilities.
06.
Google the app and see what comes up.
07.
Contact the vendor’s support team to see their response. Also try to negotiate the price (if possible).
Need Help to Publish Your Idea on Salesforce AppExchange?