“Salesforce is the best, I am going forward with them!”, - many managers think, and they are basically right. Salesforce as a customer relationship management platform has been holding top positions practically since the beginning of its history, and over the latest years they have been simply number one. Users praise it for many features for successful CRM teamwork, including analytics and customization.
However, this system has several limitations that you don’t necessarily think of at the beginning. We’ve prepared a list of concerning Salesforce features and what to do about them – whether you are only planning to implement Salesforce, or your organization is an active user. Read on!
Salesforce implementation: what to pay attention to
Salesforce can be very expensive, with implicit costs. An important and potentially the most high-budget part is data storage.
A standard storage limit which is included in the subscription is 1GB for data and 10GB for file storage per organization only if you don’t have advanced subscriptions.
Large organizations reach this limit within 1.5 – 2 years of active work, and then extra storage comes with additional costs. The price is $125/month for 500MB of additional data storage, and $5/month for 1GB of file storage.
As this is not a one-time payment, data storage may cost more than your annual license.
Only in the cloud option. It is true that the software world is moving towards the cloud deployment. However, many companies still need to have their CRM on-prem.
All primary Salesforce competitors, such as Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP CRM and others, offer multiple deployment options to their customers. For example, Dynamics 365 users have a number of choices when it comes to hosting their new solution. Initially intended to be cloud-only, Microsoft backtracked when they realized that demand for a locally hosted software was still high, and the suite is now offered via multiple means of deployment.
Why is on-prem CRM still needed? Firstly, due to regional data regulations, storing critical business and customer data in the cloud may not be viable to some companies.
Secondly, with data stored on-site, businesses have full control over the information and can quickly reach for it if the need arises. For example, during financial or legal audits, when you want to have important documents at hand.
A limited number of international data centers. If you use Salesforce outside the US, you may experience slower system performance. The system speed depends on your distance from the Salesforce data center. As of July 2019, Salesforce runs its services from 9 locations:
- Chicago, Illinois, United States (USA)
- Dallas, Texas, United States (USA)
- Frankfurt, Germany (GER)
- Kobe, Japan (JPN)
- London, United Kingdom (UK): London, UK (North) & London, UK (West)
- Paris, France (FRA)
- Phoenix, Arizona, United States (USA)
- Tokyo, Japan (JPN)
- Washington, DC, United States (USA)
And on top of that, Canada and Australia are served 2 instances from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Obviously, these data centers are not enough as users continue complaining about the speed. And the crippled performance may undermine product satisfaction and user adoption which ultimately affects customer relations.
Salesforce was not created for storing files. Basically, none of the CRM systems was, but employees continue abusing this option, attaching documents and notes to cases, tracking attachments in emails, etc.
Although Salesforce indeed has the option of attaching files, it doesn’t mean it is good for the system’s health. In fact, it hinders the performance a lot.
And when 80% of the storage space occupied, you don’t have many more options other than buying extra storage space.
The thing is, statistically, attachments occupy more than 2/3 of the storage space, and you can’t get rid of them merely by deleting outdated records like cases or opportunities.
System updates can affect customized solutions. Salesforce creates a lot of updates which is great. But if your developers have designed a custom plug-in, you need to babysit it for all system changes making sure they don’t conflict with the new plug-in.
You also need to document the process intensively and invest in continuous maintenance.
Or, alternatively, you may engage ready-to-use products that have maintenance included in the service.
What can organizations do for better Salesforce use?
One out-of-the-box product takes care of the Salesforce limitations. Document Extractor developed by Connecting Software and available on the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace. Let’s what exactly Document Extractor can do regarding the abovementioned concerns.
Expensive storage space: The solution automatically transfers all attachments and files from Salesforce to SharePoint and creates a link to the files in Salesforce instead. You still retrieve the files where you placed them but physically, they are not there and don’t occupy precious space. This process is called stubbing, and it frees the resources of your CRM for more important tasks.
Data protection in the cloud: You can configure Document Extractor to transfer files to SharePoint on-premises and solve the data ownership concerns.
Whenever the audit comes to check documents, you have them in one place in your local folders – not depending on the Cloud service or Internet connection.
Salesforce slow load: Once you don’t have physical documents in your CRM, it will not spend resources on storing, checking, attaching and loading them – a major part of the bandwidth will be free for real CRM work – developing business and providing great customer service.
CRM as the wrong software to store files: self-explanatory.
We transfer your documents to one of the most advanced document and team collaboration platforms, SharePoint.
Firstly, it has all the functionality for storing documents at much lower costs. Secondly, the functionality for team collaboration on documents, a possibility to share files with non-CRM users, for example, contract drafts with potential customers; document history tracking, check-in/checkout tracking etc. At Connecting Software, we use it a lot.
Regular system updates: Document Extractor has been developed on our advanced integration platform Connect Bridge, and we provide service to both devotedly.
Our support team follows all system updates and makes sure that the solution runs in accordance with the changes providing automatic stubbing and ensuring security.
Whenever system updates come, you don’t need to worry about them as the product integration will be updated for you by our experts.
Document Extractor is now available where Salesforce people look for best system solutions – Salesforce AppExchange marketplace. You can get the software from the marketplace or our website as SaaS or a self-hosted version and try it for free.
Or find more information about the product in our blog.
Takeaway
Salesforce is an advanced CRM platform, but even market leaders give space for improvements. Document Extractor helps to overcome important issues, ensuring the system’s excellent performance, together with decreasing costs and helping to be in compliance with data protection regulations. Visit the product page or ask us about the product – our experts are here to help!
Is there more information online?
Check other articles on our blog about the Document Extractor: