Salesforce Essentials is Here--Now Millions of Small Businesses Can Grow and Innovate Faster on the World's #1 CRM Platform
Salesforce Essentials is Here--Now Millions of Small Businesses Can Grow and Innovate Faster on the World's #1 CRM Platform
Essentials delivers new easy-to-use sales and service apps backed by the power of Salesforce Trailhead, Einstein AI, Lightning and AppExchange
Now small businesses can work smarter and faster than ever while future-proofing their business and putting customers at the center of everything they do
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 workdays((1)) 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
businesses((2)) 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.
CONTACT: Ian Twamley, itwamley@salesforce.com
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SOURCE Salesforce
