SAN FRANCISCO, March 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Salesforce
(NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, today announced Salesforce
Essentials—easy-to-use, intelligent apps for small business teams,
built on the world's #1 CRM platform. The first Essentials
apps—Sales Cloud Essentials and Service Cloud Essentials—are
available today, enabling every small business to grow and innovate
faster with the power of Salesforce.
"There are more than 125 million small businesses around the
world all working toward one common goal—growth," said Mike Rosenbaum, EVP, CRM Applications,
Salesforce. "With Essentials, we've taken the full power of
Salesforce and tailored it for the unique needs of small
businesses. Essentials is easy to set up and use—and it's
future-proof, so small businesses can add new capabilities quickly
and easily as they grow."
Small business teams spend 23 percent of their
workdays1 on average manually inputting
data—time that should be spent finding, winning and keeping more
customers. Essentials helps small businesses save time with sales
and service apps that are easy to set up, learn, use, maintain and
add new capabilities as their businesses grow.
Essentials takes advantage of all the Salesforce innovation that
is delivered in three major releases per year. It's the same
trusted CRM platform used by 83 percent of Fortune 500 companies,
now optimized for small businesses.
With Essentials, small businesses can:
- Get started fast and learn easily with Trailhead: 62
percent of small businesses2 say training
would help them improve their operations, but they're constrained
by costs and time. Trailhead, Salesforce's interactive, online
learning environment, is free and guides Essentials customers
through a fast, fun and easy setup. In addition, Trailhead gives
anyone, regardless of their education level or background, the
opportunity to develop skills that span Salesforce products, app
development and even business skills such as public speaking.
- Work smarter with Einstein artificial intelligence built
in: Essentials includes Einstein Activity Capture, which
automates manual data entry to make sales and service reps more
productive. When reps receive emails and calendar events, Einstein
automatically adds messages to the appropriate record in
Salesforce, freeing up the rep's time to focus on engaging with
customers. All of the captured messages provide a rich history of
engagement with each customer, giving all team members the context
they need to make the next customer interaction more personalized
and productive.
- Work faster with Lightning and the Salesforce Mobile
App: Built on the Salesforce Lightning framework, Essentials
has a consumer-like experience optimized for any device so
customers can work the way they want, increasing productivity.
Relevant information is surfaced in one unified console,
modernizing processes and making workflows more intuitive. In
addition, users can easily customize their consoles by simply
dragging and dropping components most relevant to them.
- Scale as they grow with a complete platform: Small
businesses often make technology buying decisions based on what
they need now rather than what they will need in the future,
costing them more time and money on upgrades and integrations in
the long run. Because Essentials is built on the world's #1 CRM
platform, small businesses don't have to worry about outgrowing
their CRM—they can add more advanced capabilities quickly and
easily. In addition, customers can use the Small Business Hub on
the AppExchange, the world's leading enterprise cloud marketplace
for business apps and solutions, to access apps that integrate with
Essentials, extending the power of the Salesforce Platform.
Sales Cloud Essentials
Sales Cloud Essentials enables
small sales teams to get up-and-running fast, work smarter and sell
more. With Lightning Sales Console, sales reps have a complete view
of their customers—including activity history, key contacts,
customer communications and internal account discussions—in one
place and accessible from any device using the Salesforce Mobile
App. In addition, reports and dashboards make it easy to keep track
of company performance. By increasing efficiencies in the sales
process, reps will have more time to spend building customer
relationships.
"Sales Cloud Essentials is a great place to start if you're new
to CRM," said Kenny Hodge, director
of business development at Handstand Innovations. "The setup
assistant was incredibly helpful, making the product feel
intuitive, easy to customize and powerful for sales right out of
the box. Now we can turn our data into action and easily add new
functionality as we grow."
Service Cloud Essentials
Service Cloud Essentials
makes it easy for small service teams to set up their helpdesks
instantly and provide customers with faster, more personalized
customer service. With the Lightning Service Console, service
agents have a 360-degree view of every customer interaction in one
unified desktop view, ensuring they're equipped with the context
needed to resolve issues faster, with greater accuracy and from a
single location—whether customers reach out via phone, email,
Twitter or Facebook. In addition, the Service Cloud Mobile app will
empower agents to provide personalized customer service from
anywhere.
"As a small business, our support team often needs to answer
sales-related questions in addition to typical customer support
questions," said Justin Mauldin,
customer support advocate at TrackVia, Inc. "I really like that
Salesforce Essentials provides a comprehensive view of customers,
with sales and service data in one place, so that support reps can
easily access the information they need to deliver fast and
personalized service."
Additional Comments on the News
"The adoption of new
technology can contribute to bottom line growth, but for smaller
companies, setting up a CRM can seem overwhelming," said
Rebecca Wettemann, VP Research,
Nucleus Research. "Salesforce Essentials will help small businesses
accelerate time to value with an out-of-the-box sales and service
CRM that makes it easy for them to get started fast and acquire,
manage and service more customers."
"Small businesses are the cornerstone of innovation and economic
growth," said Marie Rosecrans, SVP
of small business marketing at Salesforce. "That's why we're so
excited about Salesforce Essentials and the opportunity to help
every small businesses tackle the unique needs and challenges they
will face as they grow."
Pricing and Availability
- The Salesforce Essentials apps—Sales Cloud Essentials and
Service Cloud Essentials—are available today and priced at
$25 per user per month.
Additional Information
- Ready to get started with Salesforce Essentials?
-
- Check out the Salesforce Essentials demo video.
- Sign up for a free 30-day trial:
-
- Sales Cloud Essentials trial
- Service Cloud Essentials trial
- Learn more with Trailhead:
-
- Grow Your Small Business with Sales Cloud Essentials
- Discover Service for Small Business with Service Cloud
Essentials
- Follow us on Twitter @SalesforceSMB and join the conversation
with #SalesforceEssentials.
About Salesforce
Salesforce, the global CRM leader,
empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new
way. For more information about Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), visit:
http://www.salesforce.com.
1 Source: Salesforce Research, "2017 Small
and Medium Business Trends Report," October
2017
2 Ibid.
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SOURCE Salesforce