Does Salesforce make sense for small businesses & startups?

In principle, Salesforce addresses its cloud solutions to companies of all sizes. Regarding the size of the company, the question arises for whom the switch to Salesforce is really worthwhile. We would like to answer this question in the following: 

Especially in start-ups, the investment in a state-of-the-art CRM system is often considered superfluous. However, this basically depends on the business model and the number of customers. There are two scenarios in which Salesforce can also be of great added value in startups: 

1. Even with a small customer base and if the sales force consists of only one person, it pays to record every exchange for later. With the Sales Cloud CRM system, start-ups can use Salesforce for orderly data storage from 25 euros per user and month. Important here: Salesforce can be scaled up easily and grow flexibly with companies without incurring incremental hardware costs. 

2. Startups that serve many different customers with very different needs can also benefit from Salesforce, although the focus here is primarily on the diversity of the customers. If many customers are very similar, a cheaper CRM system is probably also worthwhile. 

However, startups are not advised to implement too many Salesforce features too quickly, as some of them cannot yet add value to small businesses. For example, Einstein AI needs to analyze huge amounts of data to make predictions and thus only unleashes its full power in larger companies. 

As the backbone of the German economy, SMEs must not miss out on important trends. But companies in the SME sector in particular face special challenges, making differentiation increasingly important: 

• Many competitors 

• The Internet offers transparency about products/services and prices 

• Prices are comparable and products are often interchangeable 

The opportunities of digital transformation for medium-sized businesses are beyond question. A CRM system enables the company:

• a targeted and precisely fitting approach to customers and interested parties via online marketing channels, 

• digital distribution platforms, 

• the optimization of production processes 

• to the data-driven creation of new digital products

Compared to large companies, SMEs have the advantage of shorter decision-making and therefore action paths and better financing options compared to start-ups. Salesforce offers the highest quality in the CRM area and enables companies to stand out from the competition through data analytics, mobile functions, AI and, above all, through continuously new features. 

Salesforce can finally unfold its full scope of functionalities in the context of large corporations. Having a 360-degree overview of its customers should describe one of the main goals of the organization for every company. However, the more customer contacts and data a company has, the more difficult this overview turns out to be. The CRM system Salesforce enables such an overview and many other functions that advance the company, optimize processes and automate them. 

For large companies with sophisticated infrastructures, the Salesforce implementation is usually a more extensive project. Requirements and complicated business processes have to be worked out and understood in detail before a custom-fit platform solution can be designed. However, with the right partner and the right team, the effort more than pays off. The wealth of data that accumulates in a large company offers enormous potential for synergies, forecasts and trends. Salesforce enables cross-departmental, cross-location, and even cross-country collaboration based on a single, collaborative data source. Moreover, the more data there is, the more input Salesforce's data-driven Einstein AI can process. As a result, the system's intelligence can make the most of it in large companies and provide employees with accurate forecasts and tips.