Terrific account management, order processing, sales management, reporting and then some platform!

In general, it is an amazing tool that helps productivity and sales management performance, I highly recommend it!

Pros

Ease of use Complete tool used by the entire team; sales, account management, finance, operations, product delivery Customization Workflow processes for account management and project management Integration with marketing platforms such as Watson/IBM Silverpop for email marketing Add-on modules such as Wave, a truly amazing reporting module Ability to create custom proposals, contracts, work orders in one click Integration with Outlook

Cons

Some data entry can be mundane Some of the set-up is quirky but that could also be at our request from initial set up years ago

SalesForce for the small user

We were attempting to organize our internal processes in Salesforce, granted our process were not well developed, our hope was we could fine tune processes and implement them in Salesforce. We share the blame for the difficulty because we really needed better developed processes, but we were pretty early in the development of our business. Probably should have waited a couple years before turning to SalesForce.

Pros

Great functionality, decent customer support and training were available to us. We found when we ran into issues, we had difficulty getting someone to help us

Cons

Too cumbersome for a small organization. We were always working on the implementation versus running the daily business.

style over substance

it may have improved since I used it

Pros

it has a good graphic user interface (GUI) very windowsesuqe and therefore quite usable. It is a nice clear visual.

Cons

not very easy to navigate, things were not where i expected to find them, and needed several clicks to get to what you wanted

SF has a lot of features but isn't intuitive at all to use; you have to learn a difficult language to use it.

We recently purchased Fonteva to record our registrations for a national conference. It was a nightmare, and wouldn't do even the most basic functions without adding on expensive services. We had to sort our reports by hand to get even the simplest name badge information: first, last, state, organization. It was very disappointing that it couldn't communicate better with SF as it had been sold to us.

Pros

Has many features and options that can do many things to track donors, sales, record contacts, follow up and make notes on activity history. It keeps record of event specifics by campaign and allows us to communicate with our trained volunteers across the nation, making it an effective tool for inspiring and encouraging them.

Cons

When trying to track specific information, and create a viable report, you have to know it's language and fill in every field perfectly, or you'll never get what you want. I always have to ask for our certified tech for help, and she often has to ask for help from SF, which costs us money. It's not easy to use at all.

My Experience In SalesForce.

Aside from the glitches (which to be honest, any platform is going to have at least some), I generally enjoy the software. It does not have great aesthetic appeal, but it does the job we need it to, and that's what matters.

Pros

Powerful software to keep a massive company working together. I work for a Billion dollar company, so it's a tough job to keep it's staff in rhythm. SF enables us to keep that up as much as possible. We can communicate in a variety of ways, and it integrates pretty seamlessly with our company email provider.

Cons

Can be hard to find clients' files - there are glitches that mean searching multiple ways to track these files down. It's frustrating, because we do NOT want to miss anything or create a duplicate client file. For example, if I am looking for a specific company in Louisiana, typing the company name is rarely sufficient. I will likely need to look by 1) phone number, 2) address, 3) variations on address (e.g. the street number and name of town), 4) zip code only, 5) partial company name, 6) company entity, 7) members and/or officers of that company. Sometimes we will quite literally do each of those steps, and we STILL cannot find that file in SF, even though it is most definitely there and one of us created it. This is an issue I run into multiple times a day, and one I've adjusted to, but I know our entire team would be greatful if the seach function of Salesforce was a bit more robust/comprehensive.