Salesforce’s Industry-Specific CRM: A Game-Changer for Businesses in the Digital Age

“How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether you win or lose.” – Bill Gates

Managing and leveraging information the right way is an essential element when it comes to achieving business success. And it goes without saying how complex it is to improve cross-team collaboration, manage information, and sync data.

Over the years, CRM has proven to be a key element to achieving success for every business. And the reason for the success of CRM is because organizations want access to customer data in real-time from a single source of truth, improve business processes, manage customer interactions swiftly, in order to provide personalized experiences.

In fact, according to research, the CRM market is expected to reach over $80 billion in revenue by 2025^[i].

And with this popularity, there’s no shortage of CRM solutions in the market, both off-the-shelf and custom-made, according to your unique industry or business.

According to research, the custom-made and off-the-shelf CRM software market is expected to reach $35 billion by 2023^[ii]. Yet, only 47% of companies^[iii] have a CRM adoption rate of 90%, while most of those who choose a custom CRM solution remain fully satisfied.

So, which one of the two CRMs is best for you? The answer may be a little more complicated than 1, 2, 3 as there is no “best CRM” per se. Let’s figure out this business enigma.

What is an Industry-Specific CRM?

An industry-specific CRM is a platform that is built from scratch and caters to your specific business/industry needs, and it does so in a way that is intuitive and effective. You get to add features that you require to simplify complex processes, the number of APIs you want to integrate, the number of users to support, and the capabilities you need to run your daily operations with ease. The system adapts to your business, and not the other way around.

The Pros and Cons of Industry-Specific CRMs

When investing in a tailored CRM, it is a long-term investment and the decision impacts the entire organization. The impact is not just in terms of cost but functionality and adaptability as well. At its core, the purpose of a CRM is to support your overall business strategy and streamline your customer management processes.

That’s why you must carefully weigh all the pros and cons to ensure that your investment should be a perfect match for your business.

To assess if your industry-specific CRM development is worth it, check whether it’s providing all of the benefits that you should be deriving from your platform:

• Robust reporting of customer data
• Simplified and effective visualization of this data
• Automated communication/messaging services for clients
• Automated efficiency that reduces lead time
• Simplified team-collaboration

Salesforce’s Venture into Customized CRM Solutions

Every organization has different needs and processes. That’s why the technology they opt for should be customizable to fit their needs.

Salesforce, from its inception, has provided top-notch CRM options to businesses from basic to customized. Salesforce specifically designed its platform for configuration and customization thus, saving time and eliminating costly software conversion problems.

Apart from being able to customize Salesforce to meet individual needs, you can also develop and optimize your own apps to perform an unlimited variety of tasks, for a completely customizable CRM solution.

With Salesforce App Cloud, you can quickly create custom CRM apps. You wouldn’t even require any coding knowledge and with its drag-and-drop elements, you can quickly create custom CRM apps.

And that’s not the end of it, if total app and/or platform customization doesn’t fit with your organization’s goals, Salesforce offers basic configuration options for easier platform adoption for CRM beginners. These configurations can be implemented simply from the administration panel.

There are numerous other Salesforce CRM customization options that can amplify the powers of your Salesforce CRM, such as:

• Custom portal
• Customized dashboards
• Customized views

Salesforce: Solidifying The Move Towards Industry-Specific Solutions

Salesforce empowers your teams with powerful platforms to boost collaboration and makes it easy to deliver great customer experiences.

Organizations in every industry need to keep up with the changing trends. This is because of the need to transform the business processes with speed and flexibility. And Salesforce is always a step ahead when it comes to meeting the unique customers’ demands that change with their buying behaviors and market trends.

Recently, Salesforce expanded its cloud expertise and explored new industries by curating industry-specific custom solutions.

Salesforce has 12 industry-specific clouds in the market so as to enable organizations to get a smart technology that caters to their unique needs, assists them to go digital faster, and, ultimately, blaze ahead in their industry.

The Future of Salesforce’s Industry-Specific CRM Solutions

The future of customer relationship management in your organization is dependent on the technology that you choose to implement. It also depends on how the technology is enabling your teams to work in synergy and deliver stellar customer experiences.

Every organization that wishes to get ahead in the marathon of customer and employee efficiency must invest in a CRM technology that is tailored to meet their unique needs. An ideal platform is the one that can grow with you, today and in the future.

Salesforce reigns supreme in the CRM space and the platform has continued to expand, innovate, and integrate a host of functionalities and tools. With continuous innovation in the cloud space, Salesforce is blazing ahead to redefine ‘intelligent solutions’ that transform business processes irrespective of their industry type. It is empowering organizations to identify and capture the most relevant information.

Upcoming Custom Industry-Specific CRMs From Salesforce

Salesforce is consistently working towards expanding its CRM solutions that are especially catered to meet the needs of specific industries. As a testament to this, Salesforce has already introduced 12 industry-specific clouds. They understand the importance of people-centric functions like service, marketing, contact management, or communications to incorporate task-oriented functions, and that’s why they’ll bring more verticalization and enhancements in their industry-specific CRM cloud solutions.

The one cloud that we feel will see major improvements and truly revolutionize the way manufacturers’ operations run is the Manufacturing Cloud. Manufacturing Cloud will be a trump card for companies to drive collaboration, eliminate inefficiencies, and stay ahead of the curve in the manufacturing industry.

With the new Winter ‘22 release, Salesforce has made its CRM cloud solutions for different business verticals like Consumer Goods Cloud, Financial Services Cloud, Health Cloud, and Public Sector Cloud smarter and easier to use.

Another key factor to watch out for in the future is Salesforce’s expansion in the financial sector. We believe more banks will begin to use their innovative solutions and capabilities. With Financial Service Cloud for Retail Banking, Salesforce’s plans include efficient customer base management by gaining a 360-degree view of the customer and minimizing internal silos.

Also, Salesforce is set to make waves in 2022 by improving its two powerful CRM solutions – Sustainability and Healthcare Clouds.

Sustainability Cloud 2.0 – The Sustainability Cloud 2.0 will enable you to analyze carbon emissions accumulated via carbon emissions. With a directional flow of data to one platform, you can quantify carbon footprints. As a result, a robust climate action plan can be created.

Healthcare Cloud 2.0 – Healthcare Cloud 2.0 enables you to bring individuals together and deliver healthcare services from anywhere in the world. It empowers organizations and governments to support the health and safety of communities, employees, and customers.

This move is a testament to how Salesforce is not just transforming businesses with tailor-made solutions to grow better revenue but making a positive impact towards building a sustainable future.

Statistics References

^[i] Grandview Research

^[ii] Market Research Future

^[iii] MarTech Zone