Salesforce has become synonymous with CRM, and it is one of the first names to come to mind when organizations are looking for a solution in this space. Salesforce has rightly gained this reputation due to the features and support that it has been providing to all its users. It is also very responsive to user and community feedback, and this input drives a lot of their changes in new versions.
A new version of Salesforce is due in Summer ’15, and just as with every new release, users are eagerly waiting to hear more about its features. A small snippet has emerged regarding the cessation of support for the IE7 and 8 browsers. This is due to various reasons, including lack of HTML5 support in these browsers, security issues and a majority of the customer base moving to newer browsers.
The most recent release of Salesforce was the Spring ’15 version, and it proposes to help customers build meaningful connections throughout their organization. Here are some of the biggest areas impacted by the features of this release:
- Analytics:
Wave is the new Analytics Cloud of Salesforce that is available with this release, and it promises to change the way you think about data. Organizations can now access all their data from across systems and use it to arrive at valuable insights. Such a powerful analytics tool also means that you can draw action-plans and drive them through various teams in your company. This could also give rise to analytic apps that can easily be deployed using the cloud.
- Sales:
Sales Path is an exciting new addition in this version, which can help sales reps along every step of the sales process. The way duplicate records are managed has been improved, and this would lead to a more concise database that can be used for lead conversion and other sales related activities. Collaborative Forecasts would offer the sales reps and managers more power to adjust their data. Enterprise Territory Management and Email Connect are other features that would prove useful for the sales workflow.
- Service:
Case Feed offers support personnel a focused way to create, manage and view cases. The Salesforce CTI Toolkit that enables creation of adapters and Open CTI that can be used for CTI integration without adapters are both a part of this release. Customers may choose the one they need depending on their installation. Users in time-dependent environments may use the Salesforce Console for Service app. Social media has grown in status where customer service is concerned, and the Social Customer Service feature is a way to integrate it with the support system. Service Communities and Business Continuity are other features in this area.
- Mobile:
Sales reps are sure to find a big difference with this release, as they can quickly bring a lot of activities to completion with the Salesforce1 app. As a lot of decisions in sales have to be made on the move, these changes would have a positive impact on sales productivity. The mobile browser app may seem more feature rich compared to the Salesforce1 app, but these are sure to filter through soon in future updates.
- Community:
This release has a lot of Community relevant changes that would be reflected in Community Management, Community Builder and Community Templates. Community members would now be able to manage their own authentication settings while accessing external data sources. Question-to-Case would help in getting questions resolved more efficiently.
- Other Changes:
- The Lightning Process Builder and Apex Flex Queue are the major changes in the Force.com platform.
- Users can now choose to subscribe to reports that would notify them of relevant changes, which means that they can choose to be proactive rather than reactive to error situations.
- There have been changes to access policies and session security levels which could be used in specific workflows.
Customization would help adapt Salesforce to your specific needs, and changes in the Administration mechanism would help make this process smoother as well. - There are significant changes in Data.com and Work.com that have been touched upon in this post in the functions that they impact, such as Sales and Service.
If you are interested in more details of the Spring ’15 release, please refer to the Release Notes.