System Overview

Primary purpose of Salesforce:

Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com) is the provider of the enterprise software applications to manage customer relationship management (CRM) and applications over the internet. CRM allows businesses to manage data, information and also to manage business relationships. CRM is a major component of the salesforce platform and is delivered primarily through Sales Cloud and Service Cloud.

Salesforce is delivered via software-as-a-service (SaaS) or cloud computing model and has a lot of unique features. Customers need not buy, install, update or maintain separate hardware or software for it. They would only need an internet connection and a web browser. As mentioned in the Information Week (2015, June 23), Salesforce Vs. The Competition: A CRM Primer “Salesforce.com is the leader in providing cloud-based enterprise software applications and platform services and in terms of market share, Salesforce.com is the leader with 18.4% market share, followed by SAP (12.1%), Oracle (9.1%), Microsoft (6.2%) and IBM (3.8%)”.

Salesforce is a centralized way to keep track of people, companies, opportunities, and it connects all the information by using one simple website. It helps to effectively organize all the information such as accounts, contacts, opportunities, forecasts, reports and dashboards. Salesforce.com also offers customizable reports and dashboards give customers instant access to real-time views of data and analysis. It is a social and collaborative way of interacting within the company.

Main Features:

It is a single platform with the following main features included:
a. Sales Cloud manages functions such as lead, account, contact, opportunity and partner relationship management. It integrates social media and real-time customer collaboration through Chatter.
b. Service Cloud includes call center-like case management with chat, automated routing, chatter, self service customer portals, social network integration and mobile CRM. As mentioned in the Information Week (2015, June 23), Salesforce Service for Apps Gives CRM a Mobile Edge “The Intelligent routing engine automatically routes the cases to agents who have prior experience with the case or customer in order to solve most cases during the first interaction”.
c. Marketing Cloud offers Radian 6, a social media monitoring and marketing application
which enable better productivity and insights across social channels.
d. Chatter Collaboration Cloud is the social capability of Salesforce. It is like an internal or external communication tool which allows us to follow people, groups and individual CRM records.
e. Data Cloud is helpful to know and connect with customers easily, as it provides easy access to decision makers. Having better customer data gives us insight that helps us to go beyond the sales data.
f. Force.com is the company’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) product that allows software
developers to create Salesforce.com add-on applications.

Source: What all products does Salesforce.com offer? (2012, June 22). Retrieved September 19, 2015. http://www.asagarwal.com/612/what-all-products-does-salesforce-com-offer

Main functionalities of Salesforce:

a. Opportunity tracking: This feature allows us to keep track of important milestones and communications with customers. This information can be analyzed graphically whenever required. Salesforce can also send automatic email reminders to keep employees informed whenever new information is available.
b. Marketing campaigns: Salesforce CRM can help to create Google AdWords, email marketing, managing the campaign across multiple channels and also set up route leads.
c. File collaboration: Allows for quick and secure sharing of files with employees. It also facilitates organizing content into specific groups by setting up libraries in the sales cloud.
d. Analytics and forecasting: Analytics gives us an overall idea of the business in a moment’s notice. It has dashboards that shows the company’s key performances. Business planning and sales forecast are also much easier through this system.
e. Email and calendar integration: Emails and Calendar can be completely integrated with Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. It also allows personalization of email templates when dealing with potential customers.

Use of salesforce to IVK:

Salesforce can be very useful for IVK corporation as it provides visibility between departments, streamlines business processes and eases collaboration. The Service Cloud is an excellent opportunity for IVK corporation as most of IT department’s success is associated with service. It is also easy to use and having dashboards, can help analyze the company’s performance, which in turn can decrease the operational costs and increase sales revenue. Salesforce.com can be customized for the needs of the company which is an important tool, as a company grows.

References:

1. Cloud apps and platform - Salesforce Europe. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
2. Salesforce Vs. The Competition: A CRM Primer. (2015, June 23). Information Week; http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/software-as-a-service/salesforce-vs-the-competition-a-crm-primer/d/d-id/1320966?image_number=9
3. Salesforce Service For Apps Gives CRM A Mobile Edge. (2015, June 23). Information Week; http://www.informationweek.com/cloud/salesforce-service-for-apps-gives-crm-a-mobile-edge/d/d-id/1321045
4. Weinberger, M. (2014, December 11). Salesforce Introduces Custom AppExchange Storefronts. CIO.