Salesforce Cloud Services: A Deep Dive into Specifics

Being a mammoth in the world of customer relationship management, marketing automation, analytics, and data management, Salesforce offers a plethora of solutions for diverse business objectives.

How can your company manage its e-commerce activities or provide professional support? Is there a way to streamline marketing campaigns? These and other questions can be fully covered with Salesforce Cloud services.

Wrapping your head around their features might be a puzzler. In our blog article, we get you up to speed on the main clouds available in Salesforce and jump into their specific details and the benefits they will bring to your business.

What are Salesforce Cloud Services?

Salesforce Cloud services represent solutions for businesses that fulfill different requirements, such as:

• Enhancing customer experience through fully customizable websites and online portals;
• Managing processes in a sales team;
• Delivering lightning-fast customer service;
• Automating and gauging marketing efforts.

Why are these Salesforce products called “clouds”? It’s a snap: they are programmed to work via cloud computing – a way to access data and apps online, without server backup. This way, a business can connect with clients, partners, and employees with minimum effort.

6 Main Types of Salesforce Cloud Services

Now, it is time to discuss these 6 major clouds Salesforce provides, figure out the benefits, and reasons why your organization should implement them to increase efficiency:

1. Marketing Cloud

Thanks to the Marketing Cloud, you can keep close tabs on customer interactions, store valuable data and messages, coming to you from multiple channels (emails, online chat, or social media), and automate your marketing efforts.

One of its advantages is that you can build and manage email campaigns, check into customer engagement, and measure successful results (and understand where things went awry).

2. Experience Cloud

Experience Cloud helps companies create fully customizable websites and online portals for their customers, coworkers, and partners, called Experience Cloud Sites. They are connected to the CRM data in your Salesforce account. Acting as the perfect add-on to the other clouds on this list, Experience Cloud helps you:

• Develop a specialized platform to collaborate with your audience with the Customer 360 concept;
• Provide customers with impeccable customer support through knowledge bases, FAQs, Chatter Feed, etc.;
• Leverage Salesforce CMS (Content Management System) to create and assemble content in one hub;
• Build an on-brand portal with pre-built themes and Lightning components, setting up the color scheme, company logo, and styles.

What specifics do websites you build on Salesforce using Experience Cloud have? Miscellaneous! For instance, you can run a site for your nonprofit or membership organization, raise donations through it, and even gather ideas from your audience.

Salesforce Experience Cloud as a Tool for Digital Transformation

Experience Cloud is a Salesforce digital experiences platform empowered with technologies, products, and solutions that allows you to create personalized, fully-fledged sites and portals connected to your CRM data in Salesforce. Flexible, customizable, secure, and packed with excellent analytical and optimization tools, Experience Cloud is the best software for companies that are undergoing digital transformation.

Thanks to its flexibility, Experience Cloud allows the integration of numerous third-party components for even greater results. To get the most out of your digital experiences, you can adopt the special Salesforce add-ons we offer at Advanced Communities. Just check out the perks coming along:

• Modernize knowledge circulation within your company and deliver exceptional self-service to your customers or partners, ensuring greater productivity for your team.
• Harvest valuable ideas from customers, coworkers, or partners;
• Create, customize, and manage company-wide online or offline events;
• Establish an efficient member management in your nonprofit organization or association.

Thus, you can use native-to-Salesforce apps for sharing documentation with customers or partners clearly and more effectively while encouraging self-service and collaboration (AC Knowledge Management Enterprise), collecting new feedback and ideas to enhance your products/services (AC Ideas Ultimate), managing all kinds of events (AC Events Enterprise), and organizing member’s data in your association (AC MemberSmart).

To paint a brighter picture for you, this is what an Experience Cloud site may look like with the AC Events Enterprise add-on for event management:

3. Sales Cloud

Are you in pursuit of a solution that could beef up your sales team’s productivity? Salesforce Sales Cloud is the best bet. Its primary objectives involve helping businesses get their sales process on track, close deals faster, and rationalize their overall cycle.

The features included in the Sales Cloud help sales teams organize customer information and control sales processes. Look at the toolset:

• AI insights for more effective work;
• Pipeline management;
• Coaching tools for every sales rep to master their skills.

No doubt, this Salesforce cloud is everything sales teams have ever wished for.

4. Service Cloud

This cloud is one of the most frequently used ones from the whole package. It’s designed for businesses, wishing to jazz up their customer relationship management.

Thus, Service Cloud allows you to boost self-service, deliver personalized assistance via live chat, email, or phone, improve service reps’ productivity, and orchestrate customer information – all under the same roof.

Moreover, Service Cloud provides a feature-packed dashboard so that companies can capture and process customer data in real time, artificial intelligence to arm service reps with replies on the fly, and all-round reporting for the state of affairs.

5. Nonprofit Cloud

Nonprofit Cloud is specifically designed for nonprofits, charities, educational institutions, religious and cultural organizations to address the common challenges associated with all processes, such as fundraising, accounting, program management, grantmaking, etc.

Key features include:

• Fundraising – track Fundraising Portfolio, build reusable segments of donors, monitor their performance, and process special gifts for various commitments or designations;
• Program management – see every customer who has enrolled to your program and check their attendance;
• Outcome management – specify all the outcomes you’d like to receive in the end of your program, create special metrics and KPIs to measure success, and make sure the results are satisfactory.

Your Experience Cloud site can be a powerful addition to Nonprofit Cloud if there’s a need to run a digital platform for donor and fundraiser engagement. You can deepen its efficiency with AC Events Enterprise and AC MemberSmart add-ons. Thus, you get maximum functionalities for organizing your nonprofit business processes: build member directories, provide access to donations&payments, manage subscriptions and donor relations, organize fundraising events, and raise money for your cause.

Nonprofit Cloud VS NPSP: Exploring the Key Differences

We’re hearing a lot of buzz about transitioning to Nonprofit Cloud, especially from nonprofits who previously used Salesforce’s NPSP pack. In this blog, we are providing you with an understanding of Nonprofit Cloud and its features, and exploring key differences between the solutions.

6. Education Cloud

Education Cloud is designed with students and alumni in mind. It provides a suite of products specifically designed to meet the needs of educational institutions, including universities, colleges, and K-12 schools. The Education Cloud includes tools for student recruitment, admissions, advising, and alumni engagement, among other features tailored to the education sector. Thus, every customer who wants to become a scholar or already is one as well as businesses in the niche can experience these features:

• Applications available across the entire student journey, from recruitment to admissions and alumni;
• Robust platform to manage prospects, provide enrolment support, and monitor student records.

The abilities become more profound if you pair Education Cloud with an Experience Site. As Advanced Communities is a pro in this field, we deliver maximum value with our components. For instance, you can set up event management to run seminars/conferences, allow students to contribute their ideas, or develop an online portal for easy access to academic data.

Need a little nudge?

If you are new to Salesforce Cloud services or just need a professional touch, search for a solid ally. Speaking of, Advanced Communities is a Salesforce-certified community cloud consultant and an app provider that could be an asset and help you design your website using Experience Cloud from scratch, based on your requirements, and business objectives. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us – let’s shape your unique Salesforce journey together.

Q&A

1. How many Salesforce Cloud Services are there?

There are 6 main Salesforce Cloud Services: Experience Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, Nonprofit Cloud, Sales Cloud, and Education Cloud.

2. Is Salesforce a SaaS or PaaS?

Technically, Salesforce is both SaaS and PaaS. On the one hand, Salesforce is SaaS as its apps are hosted by third-party providers and you can access them with a stable Internet connection. On the other hand, it is a platform developers can use to create and deploy their apps.

3. What is Salesforce Core Cloud?

Salesforce Core Cloud refers to a set of solutions used to help companies skyrocket their customer support, boost marketing activities, and improve sales processes. Simply put, Marketing, Service, and Sales Cloud are involved in the Salesforce Core Cloud, usually bundled together.