By | Kelly Wilson
Salesforce is now the No.1 platform in CRM, which is used by organizations of all sizes. With SF DevOps, no development operations are also made easier on this platform. However, many small business owners are still doubtful about the adoption of Salesforce as their enterprise platform as their requirements and minimal and budget consciousness is more. But as the company grows and the customer-base increase, they have no other go than adopting it and building from scratch.
Here, in this article, we will discuss some crucial things small businesses should now about Salesforce as to how it can support your business and how Salesforce features can support small businesses.
Salesforce was also started small
About two decades ago, Salesforce was also started small in an apartment. The journey of Salesforce started in the same way as to which many of the startup and small business owners can easily relate with. In the year 1999, Marc Benioff and his three co-founders in San Franciscostarted Salesforce. Benioff, to start Salesforce, had given up his successful career and struggled to find investors.
As we can see now, Salesforce is a technology giant, for which the revenue crosses $2.56 billion in the last quarter. There is a steady 26% increase in revenue over the last couple of years. Now, Salesforce is recognized as the top-grossing CRM brand in this competitive industry.
Including many small businesses, there are more than 150000 customers now for Salesforce
Being a small business by itself, Salesforce had taken off the ground by initially serving small businesses’ needs. So, they know the challenges well and solutions for the same. Many big companies in various industries rely on Salesforce solutions, but still, a large chunk of its customers are small businesses and startups. The company had never taken their eye off the category of customers who had brought them up to what they are now.
We can consider DUFL as a classic example of small business which had taken tremendous advantage of Salesforce. Their service was of offering a personal valet for the business traveler to clean and store the garments which their customers need to arrange for trips and then shipping it off to their destination. DUFL started using the Salesforce suite to keep and their complete recordsof every customer based on their unique needs to deliver a personalized experience. With the support of Salesforce in customer service and sales, DUFL’s team of hardly 50 employees had witnessed a 10% monthly growth and an impressive customer retention rate of 99%.
Salesforce is a lot more than just a CRM
Salesforce, of course, stays synonymous with customer support for small businesses. But now the provider also gets the reputation of offering the full set of services small to large enterprises need. Say, for example, we can see Salesforce acquisition of Demandware a few years ago, which now acts as the Commerce Cloud of Salesforce. It allows the small business administrators to create a customized shopping experience for their customers by including great ways to engage them on their mobile devices at any given time. The latest SF DevOps also puts forth a total cultural change in the enterprise development approach by collaborating on the development and operations effectively.
Dreamforce will never let you walk alone
With Dreamforce, small businesses will never walk alone. Dreamforce is the annual user conference by Salesforce, which is now the largest of its kind software conferencesin the world. Dreamforce also offers the participants a grand opportunity to learn things first-hand from Salesforce and its unique offerings, including those which aimed to help small businesses. You have the chance to meet and interact with about 175,000 attendees at the Dreamforce conference. Many of these Dreamforce aim at small business users. In the last year, about 300 sessions of the same were focused on small businesses.
Salesforce is investing big on AI
Salesforce is now keen on integrating AI (artificial intelligence) on to its CRM platform. The company has named its AI as ‘Einstein,’ which promises to support everyone involved in the small business to function smarter. In a press release to the Small Business Trends, Salesforce also stressed its impact and role in small business AI.
The spokesperson of Salesforce stressed that with Einstein, no small business needs to have an AI or data sciences division. Salesforce is trying to put the functionality into a product that helps users see smart trends and get recommendations on the most desired action to take further steps. Very soon, the SMB customers of Salesforce will know how these AI products are going to darn. This may come up with help for small businesses to find capital, seek investors, and get help on their growth on the Salesforce platform. Salesforce also has its investment and venture capital division, which is the Salesforce Ventures.
Salesforce also created an AI Innovation Fund, which is investing about $50 million in the startups, which are working on AI solutions to integrate their products with the Salesforce suite.
For the startups, Salesforce provides access to their technology, expertise, and resources to thrive in the companies with customer and community-focus. Salesforce also helps startups build, grow, and give back through their Salesforce Ventures and AppExchange Partner Programs.
The 1-1-1 philanthropy program
Making a better impact on the business community outside of itself is a successful technology company, Salesforce adds value to other small businesses. Salesforce.org is based on the 1-1-1 model of the company belonging to social philanthropy. This 1-1-1 model is deemed to be the best for small businesses to donate from the very beginning without compromising their growth. The ones in 1-1-1 represent1% of the time, products, and resources, which goes into a common good of the community around each business with a pledge for social contribution.
We have just reviewed a few of the Salesforce initiatives, making it an ideal solution for small businesses. Along with these, you can find endless possibilities for a small business to take advantage of adopting Salesforce, which will be the foundation of your future growth in various aspects.
