Salesforce and e-commerce: The often unknown and underestimated power-couple

"Salesforce is just a CRM... Right?" WRONG! It's much, much more than that!". By Steffi Kromer, Founder / MD at EMPAUA. Like many of you, I've always thought Salesforce is just a CRM, used by companies to manage their portfolio of prospects, their accounts, and their customers. A perception that, of course, is true, however, is much more than that. As I learned more about Salesforce, I realised that the familiar ready-to-use features (which are already fantastic tools for many business processes!) are just the beginning. I keep learning new things every day!As I plunged deeper into the abyss of Salesforce, sometimes as a business user, sometimes as an operations manager, I often encountered obstacles in the process. And I wanted to solve it all with Salesforce. Overall, I was rarely told that what I had requested or what I hoped to achieve through Salesforce was not possible.

How can we prove this?

A clear example of this is the management of incoming orders from a website. A requirement that every e-commerce business would have, and thanks to Salesforce and a connected interface system, it is possible to manage effectively. Using Salesforce, it is possible to see all the orders created instantly within the software, including the ability to report on them immediately, thus allowing the purchasing team to proactively plan with their stock of products and position them on the web. Salesforce services are able to further increase sales and provide the customer service team with up-to-the-minute data that allows them to answer all questions expertly.While working for the same company, the number of supplier invoices began to increase dramatically, because the company had greatly increased its offering. It soon became apparent that the company would have to hire someone to manage those invoices, or it could look for an alternative solution... like Salesforce. We decided on the latter option and created a process in Salesforce that would automatically manage the entire invoicing process with suppliers, saving the company the cost of hiring an additional full-time employee.Another excellent example of a "not ready to use and not considered as possible" feature was a solution we built for another customer, who also has an e-commerce business. As this business was very new, we were able to take all their requirements and create a complete solution in Salesforce from the beginning. As a result, we were able to create clean and efficient processes immediately, which eventually led us to create a warehouse management solution. Now, the company can develop and manage its inventory, picking and packaging, delivery notes, and even barcodes for shipping, all within Salesforce. All with minimal manual input, saving time right from the start. What's the best of it all? This solution was tailored to 100% of our customers' needs, and it only took us a few weeks to create it. Here it's important to highlight the infinite tools that Salesforce has for this purposes. In fact, Salesforce even has a dedicated cloud for it: Commerce Cloud.I've seen almost every process you can imagine in e-commerce created with Salesforce. Including purchasing, content production, product management, supply chain management, warehousing, customer service, or financial processes. Salesforce is a scalable and secure way to optimize your business from the start, especially for a company with a high motivation to grow. Do you need to know more about Salesforce Implementation?