An Enterprise Guide to Salesforce:
Capabilities, Integration & ROI
By 10Pearls editorial team
A global team of technologists, strategists, and creatives dedicated to delivering the forefront of innovation. Stay informed with our latest updates and trends in artificial intelligence, advanced technology, healthcare, fintech, and beyond. Discover insightful perspectives that shape the future of industries worldwide.
Enterprises often face challenges when modernizing operations for efficiency and growth. This can be attributed to fragmented business functions, cross-functional workflows, disparate data sources, or siloed teams. As businesses of all types and sizes increasingly prioritize customer-first strategies and digital transformation, it is essential to understand how Salesforce’s capabilities can help drive growth and business value.
Salesforce provides enterprises with a unified platform that connects sales, marketing, and service operations within a single ecosystem. Instead of relying on disconnected tools and teams, organizations gain a centralized and consolidated view of customer data, workflows, and performance. This integrated approach strengthens operational efficiency, supports large-scale growth, and enables consistent, high-quality business execution across the enterprise.
Salesforce has consistently been ranked as the number one CRM provider for over a decade, catering to 150,000 companies globally and transforming how they manage all the different aspects of customer relationships. In 2024, Salesforce came out on top amongst CRM vendors with a 20.7% share and the highest revenue, according to IDC.
Blog contents
What is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a CRM platform that has fundamentally transformed how businesses manage customer relationships, moving beyond traditional software and infrastructure limitations to deliver cloud-based solutions that can scale with organizational needs. Their platform ecosystem unifies sales, service, marketing, and analytics, providing businesses with a comprehensive overview of customer interactions.
What does Salesforce do?
Salesforce provides cloud-based software solutions that help businesses manage customer relationships, streamline operations, analyze data, and automate workflows. By connecting sales, service, marketing, commerce and IT teams on one platform, teams can collaborate seamlessly and deliver consistent customer experiences.
When it comes to what Salesforce is used for, businesses of all types and sizes are using Salesforce to manage their customer data, track leads and sales opportunities, automate marketing campaigns, provide customer support, analyze performance, and build custom applications. More than a dozen industries, ranging from healthcare and finance to retail and manufacturing, make use of Salesforce to digitize their operations, improve customer satisfaction scores, accelerate sales cycles, and make data-driven decisions.
What are the main functions of Salesforce?
Salesforce’s features and functions extend far beyond simply managing contacts and customer information. The platform has many sophisticated capabilities designed to address practically every aspect of customer engagement and business operations. Moreover, these functions are integrated to facilitate and create comprehensive solutions that adapt and evolve to meet specific business requirements while maintaining standardization and best practices.
How Salesforce helps business?
By streamlining and centralizing disparate data sources and workflows, Salesforce provides businesses with a platform that integrates and simplifies customer management, sales, service, marketing and analytics.
Customer Management
Salesforce centralizes all customer history, interactions, and preferences in a unified database accessible across departments and business units. This 360-degree view of customer data enables organizations to make data-driven decisions and deliver personalized engagement and proactive service.
Sales and Services
The platform streamlines lead management, opportunity tracking, and pipeline forecasting in addition to automating quote generation and order processing. Service teams benefit from case management, knowledge bases, and omnichannel support capabilities that reduce resolution times and improve customer satisfaction.
Marketing
Salesforce allows for smooth campaign management, lead nurturing and personalization at scale. Marketing teams can design customer journeys, trigger behavior-based automated responses, and measure campaign effectiveness with integrated analytics.
Analytics and AI
Einstein AI provides predictive insights, recommendations and automated decision-making across all platform functions. Advanced analytics tools enable real-time reporting, customizable dashboards, and deep-dive analysis that transforms raw data into strategic intelligence.
App development
The Lightning Platform allows businesses to build custom applications without the need for extensive coding. This extends Salesforce functionality to meet specific industry or organizational needs. Low-code/no-code tools democratize development, enabling business users to create solutions that integrate seamlessly with existing Salesforce data and processes.
How Salesforce works
Looking at Salesforce’s operational framework reveals why it has become the backbone of digital transformation initiatives across industries. Since it operates entirely in the cloud, it provides both flexibility and structure that enables businesses to adapt rapidly to changing customer needs and business requirements.
How does Salesforce CRM works?
Cloud Architecture
Salesforce operates on a multi-tenant cloud infrastructure where multiple organizations share computing resources while maintaining complete data isolation. This architecture enables automatic scaling, guaranteed uptime, and seamless updates without disrupting business operations.
Data model
The platform uses a relational database structure with standard and custom objects that represent business entities like accounts, contacts, and opportunities. Relationships between objects create sophisticated data models that mirror real-world business processes while maintaining referential integrity.
Configuration vs. customization
Salesforce emphasizes declarative configuration through visual tools over code-based customization. This approach accelerates deployment, reduces maintenance complexity, and ensures compatibility with platform updates while still allowing extensive customization when needed.
Workflows & automations
Process automation tools like Flow Builder and Process Builder enable complex business logic implementation without programming. These tools orchestrate multi-step processes, integrate with external systems, and ensure consistent execution of business rules across the organization.
How to use Salesforce
Users can access Salesforce through web browsers or mobile applications and navigate intuitive interfaces that are customized to their roles and responsibilities. The platform presents relevant information through dashboards, list views and record pages while automation handles routine tasks in the background. Administrators configure the system using point-and-click tools, and can define data models, workflows, and security settings without having to write code.
Salesforce core products and clouds
CRM and Sales Cloud
Salesforce’s success can be attributed to its revolutionary approach to customer relationship management, transforming how organizations track, nurture, and convert prospects into loyal customers.
What is Salesforce CRM?
Salesforce CRM is a cloud-based customer relationship management platform that centralizes all customer-related data, interactions, and processes in one accessible location. It provides comprehensive tools for managing contacts, accounts, opportunities, and customer service cases while enabling collaboration across teams and departments.
What is Sales Cloud in Salesforce?
Sales Cloud (or Agentforce Sales) is Salesforce’s flagship product specifically designed for sales teams, offering specialized features for lead management, opportunity tracking, quote generation and sales forecasting. It includes mobile capabilities, email integration, and AI-powered insights that help sales representatives prioritize tasks and activities, and close deals faster.
Service Cloud
Service Cloud (or Agentforce Service) transforms customer support operations by providing agents with comprehensive tools and information needed to resolve issues quickly while maintaining high satisfaction levels.
What is Service Cloud?
Service Cloud is Salesforce’s customer service and support platform that enables organizations to deliver connected, personalized service across every channel. It includes case management, knowledge base functionality, omnichannel routing, and field service capabilities that help service teams resolve customer issues efficiently while maintaining context across interactions.
Marketing Cloud
Marketing Cloud empowers marketers to create personalized customer journeys at scale, leveraging data and automation to deliver relevant messages across every channel and touchpoint.
What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?
Marketing Cloud (or Agentforce Marketing) is an integrated marketing automation platform that enables businesses to plan, personalize, and optimize customer journeys across email, mobile, social media, web, and advertising channels. It combines audience segmentation, content management, and campaign orchestration capabilities with data analytics to measure effectiveness.
Experience Cloud
Experience Cloud bridges the gap between internal operations and external stakeholders, creating connected and cohesive digital experiences that extend Salesforce capabilities beyond organizational boundaries.
What is Salesforce Experience Cloud?
Experience Cloud (formerly Community Cloud) enables organizations to build branded digital experiences including customer portals, partner communities, help centers and employee workspaces. It provides tools for creating responsive websites and applications that connect to Salesforce data while maintaining security and governance controls.
Commerce Cloud
Commerce Cloud delivers unified commerce experiences across all channels, enabling businesses to connect customer interactions from discovery through fulfillment.
What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?
Salesforce Commerce Cloud (or Agentforce Commerce) is an e-commerce platform that enables B2C and B2B companies to create unified, intelligent digital commerce experiences across web, mobile, social, and store channels. It combines commerce functionality with AI-powered personalization, order management, and integration with other Salesforce clouds for complete customer journey management.
CPQ
CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) streamlines complex selling processes by ensuring accurate pricing and configuration while accelerating quote generation and approval cycles.
What is Salesforce CPQ?
Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) automates the quoting process for sales teams dealing with complex product configurations, pricing rules, and approval of workflows. It ensures pricing accuracy, enforces business rules, generates professional quotes, and integrates with billing systems to streamline the entire quote-to-cash process.
Health Cloud
Health Cloud caters specifically to healthcare industry requirements, enabling providers and payers to deliver connected and personalized patient experiences.
What is Salesforce Health Cloud?
Health Cloud (or Agentforce Health) is an industry-specific CRM platform designed for healthcare organizations, and provides additional features for patient relationship management, care coordination tools and clinical data integration capabilities. It enables healthcare providers, payers, and pharmaceutical companies to build stronger patient relationships while maintaining regulatory compliance.
Data Cloud
Data Cloud (or Data 360) unifies disparate data sources to create comprehensive customer profiles that power personalization and insights across all Salesforce applications.
What is Salesforce Data Cloud?
Salesforce Data Cloud (formerly Customer Data Platform, now Data 360) ingests, harmonizes and activates customer data from multiple sources to create unified customer profiles. It enables real-time segmentation, identity resolution, and data activation across marketing, sales, service, and commerce touchpoints.
How does Salesforce Data Cloud work?
Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) works by connecting to various data sources through native connectors and APIs, ingesting structured and unstructured data in real-time or batch modes. It applies identity resolution algorithms to match and merge records, creates calculated insights and segments, and activates this enriched data across Salesforce clouds and external systems for personalized engagement.
Hyperforce
Hyperforce represents Salesforce’s next-generation infrastructure architecture, enabling global scale and local compliance requirements.
What is Salesforce Hyperforce?
Hyperforce is Salesforce’s public cloud infrastructure architecture that enables the platform to run on major public cloud providers like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. It provides enhanced scalability, improved performance, and local data residency options, enabling Salesforce to expand into new regions while maintaining security and compliance standards.
Shield
Shield provides advanced security, compliance, and governance tools for organizations with stringent regulatory requirements.
What is Salesforce Shield?
Salesforce Shield is a set of security tools that includes Platform Encryption for data at rest, Event Monitoring for user activity tracking and Field Audit Trail for maintaining data history. It helps organizations meet regulatory compliance requirements while maintaining platform performance and usability.
Essentials
Essentials makes Salesforce accessible to small businesses with streamlined functionality and simplified pricing.
What are Salesforce Essentials?
Salesforce Essentials is an out-of-the-box CRM solution designed specifically for small businesses with up to 10 users. It includes basic sales and service functionality, email integration, and mobile access at an affordable price point, providing small companies with enterprise-grade CRM capabilities without complexity.
Agentforce
Agentforce represents Salesforce’s latest innovation in autonomous AI agents that can handle complex business tasks independently.
How Salesforce Agentforce works?
Agentforce deploys AI agents that autonomously handle customer interactions, process requests, and handle complex workflows without human intervention. These agents leverage large language models, integrate with Salesforce data and processes, understand context and intent, and can escalate to human agents when necessary while continuously learning from interactions to improve performance.
Einstein
Einstein democratizes AI capabilities for businesses of all sizes by integrating artificial intelligence throughout the Salesforce platform.
What is Salesforce Einstein?
Salesforce Einstein is technically not a product, but rather the platform’s integrated AI technology, encompassing a suite of intelligent features that are embedded across all Salesforce products and clouds. It includes capabilities for predictions, natural language processing, intelligent insights and automaton that help users make smarter decisions and work more efficiently.
Vlocity
Vlocity provides specialized industry-specific solutions catering to over a dozen industries, enabling businesses to deploy industry-aligned and compliant CRM solutions faster.
What is Salesforce Vlocity?
Salesforce Vlocity (now Salesforce Industries) provides industry-specific cloud apps that are built on the Salesforce platform. With prebuilt data models and integrations for various sectors like healthcare, insurance and telecom, it reduces the need for customization efforts and allows businesses to deploy scalable solutions that are aligned with industry requirements.
What is Salesforce's biggest product?
Sales Cloud consistently ranks as Salesforce’s foundational and most widely adopted product and is probably the largest contributor to total platform revenue. This dominance reflects its maturity as the original Salesforce offering, broad applicability across industries, and critical role in revenue generation for businesses.
Sales Cloud’s extensive feature set, deep customization capabilities and strong ecosystem of complementary applications have solidified its position as the cornerstone of most Salesforce implementations, even as newer clouds gain traction in specialized use cases.
Salesforce Integrations
Salesforce’s integration capabilities are what make it the central hub of an organization’s technology ecosystem, enabling seamless data flow and process orchestration across disparate systems and functions.
How Salesforce and MuleSoft work together
MuleSoft‘s Anypoint Platfrom provides enterprise integration capabilities that connect Salesforce with any application, data source or device through APIs. This combination enables organizations to create application networks where Salesforce serves as the system of engagement while MuleSoft handles complex integration scenarios, legacy system connectivity, and API management.
Common integration patterns include syncing Salesforce with ERP systems for order management, connecting to data warehouses for analytics, and integrating with marketing tools for lead routing.
AppExchange
AppExchange extends integration possibilities through thousands of pre-built applications and connectors that can be installed directly into Salesforce. These solutions range from industry-specific applications to productivity tools and integration connectors, enabling organizations to extend Salesforce functionality without custom development.
The marketplace includes certified solutions that undergo security review, ensuring compatibility and reliability while accelerating deployment timelines.
Force.com
Force.com (now Salesforce Platform) is Salesforce’s original platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment.
Salesforce Platform is the foundation for all of Salesforce’s products and is the environment that customers can use to extend Salesforce. It provides the infrastructure (data models, APIs, automation engines, security and governance tools, etc) needed for developers and business users to build, run, integrate and automate custom enterprise applications on top of Salesforce.
Most common roles in Salesforce
The Salesforce ecosystem has created specialized roles that require unique skill combinations and offering rewarding career paths for professionals who have the platform expertise.
What does a Salesforce developer do?
A Salesforce developers specializes in building custom applications and features on top of the Salesforce platform. They design, code, and implement custom solutions that extend the platform’s capabilities beyond standard configuration options. They write Apex code for complex business logic, create Lightning Web Components for custom user interfaces, integrate Salesforce with external systems through APIs, and optimize platform performance through efficient code design. Developers also maintain existing customizations, troubleshoot issues, and ensure solutions align with platform best practices and governance limits.
What does a Salesforce consultant do?
Salesforce consultants bridge the gap between business requirements and technical solutions, analyzing organizational needs, designing solutions using platform capabilities, and guiding implementation strategies.
They conduct requirements of sessions, document business processes, configure Salesforce features, train end users, and provide ongoing optimization recommendations. Consultants often specialize in specific clouds or industries, bringing best practices and implementation expertise that accelerates deployment and adoption of success.
Salesforce pricing
Understanding Salesforce pricing requires considering multiple factors including user count, feature requirements, and cloud combinations, as costs can vary significantly based on organizational needs and negotiated agreements.
How much does Salesforce cost?
Salesforce’s pricing for Sales Cloud and Service Cloud typically ranges from $25 per user per month (Starter Suite) to $350 per user per month (Unlimited). The full tier structure includes Starter ($25), Professional ($100), Enterprise ($175), Unlimited ($350) and Agentforce 1 Sales ($550).
Marketing Cloud requires custom pricing based on contact volume and features, with implementation partners reporting entry-level costs typically starting at $1,250-$1,500 monthly.
Note that these prices are for annual billing; monthly billing will add some 20% to costs. Additional expenses include implementation services (often 1-3x annual license costs), training, integration tools and AppExchange applications.
Business value and use cases
Organizations across industries leverage Salesforce to transform operations, with measurable impacts on revenue growth, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction metrics.
How Salesforce helps business
Sales
Sales teams use Salesforce to accelerate deal velocity through automated lead scoring, opportunity management and AI-driven insights that help identify the most promising prospects.
Pipeline visibility enables accurate forecasting, while mobile capabilities ensure field sales representatives can easily access the data, they need to remain productive.
Companies using Salesforce report measurable increases in average sales productivity and deal closure rates with Sales Cloud. A wealth management firm was able to improve forecast accuracy and pipeline visibility by 50% with Salesforce’s Pro Suite capabilities.
Marketing
Marketers leverage Salesforce to create personalized customer journeys that adapt based on behavior and preferences, resulting in higher engagement and improved ROI.
Multi-channel campaign orchestration ensures consistent messaging while attribution modeling demonstrates marketing’s impact on revenue. Organizations typically see significant increases in email open rates and conversion rates with Marketing Cloud personalization.
Customer service
Service organizations are using Salesforce to reduce case resolution time with intelligent routing, knowledge management, and predictive recommendations. Omnichannel support ensures consistent experiences regardless of contact method, while self-service portals deflect routine inquiries. Companies report measurable reductions in handling time and increased customer satisfaction score with Service Cloud implementation. A European national airline saw a customer inquiry resolve rate of 80% as well as a 25% reduction in employee onboarding time using Service Cloud, Data 360 and Agentforce.
Healthcare
Healthcare providers utilize Health Cloud for patient engagement, care coordination, and population health management. The platform enables proactive outreach for preventive care, streamlines referral management, and improves care team collaboration. Healthcare organizations have reported improved patient satisfaction and reduced readmission rates. UChicago Medicine achieved a 60% campaign conversion after leveraging Data 360 and Agentforce to build new marketing segments.
Retail
Retailers deploy Commerce Cloud to create unified shopping experiences across digital and physical channels. Personalized product recommendations, intelligent search, and seamless checkout processes drive conversion rates while unified inventory management prevents stockouts. As a result, retailers typically see increased online conversion rates and average order values. A luxury watch and jewelry retailer reported 63% faster order closing through Commerce Cloud capabilities.
Strategic acquisitions and partnerships
Salesforce continues to accelerate its enterprise AI agenda with strategic acquisitions and partnerships geared towards delivering increased value for customers. In addition to expanding partnerships with Google and Anthropic, Salesforce recently acquired Informatica, Regrello, Convergence AI and Spindle AI, to name a few. These acquisitions not only strengthen Salesforce’s tech stack, but also amplify their ability to deliver scalable, trustworthy business outcomes with smarter data foundations, faster innovation, and competitive advantage and differentiation.
Conclusion
Salesforce continues to evolve, regularly introducing new features, enhanced AI capabilities and industry-specific solutions. Salesforce’s comprehensive platform approach allows organizations to adapt quickly to changing market demands while maintaining a high standard of operational efficiency. From basic CRM needs to enterprise-wide digital transformation, Salesforce provides a range of scalable solutions that are designed to grow with changing and evolving business requirements, making it an essential consideration for organizations serious about customer success and competitive differentiation.
10Pearls - your strategic implementation partner
By partnering with 10Pearls for AI-powered Salesforce development services, your organization can leverage scalable Salesforce architectures aligned with your business objectives, allowing you to unify and streamline workflows and accelerate decision-making.
Whether you are transitioning legacy data and systems to Salesforce or building from scratch, our team works with you to plan and customize implementations, with minimum disruption and maximum efficiency.
With 50+ certified Salesforce consultants and architects, our Salesforce software development services integrate AI-powered engineering with deep Salesforce expertise, as well as industry-specific knowledge, to leverage Salesforce products and clouds tailored to your organizational needs.
FAQs about Salesforce
What does Salesforce actually do?
Salesforce is a CRM platform and offers a range of products that enable businesses to completely transform how they operate. Acting like a digital nervous system of sorts for modern businesses, it facilitates a unified source of customer information and breaks down data silos. It automates repetitive tasks, provides AI-powered data-driven insights, and enables companies to scale their operations without needing to comparably expand resources.
What is Salesforce used for?
Businesses of all types and sizes are using Salesforce to manage their customer data, track leads and sales opportunities, automate marketing campaigns, provide customer support, analyze performance, and build custom applications. More than a dozen industries, ranging from healthcare and finance to retail and manufacturing, make use of Salesforce to digitize their operations, improve customer satisfaction scores, accelerate sales cycles, and make data-driven decisions.
What does the Salesforce company do?
Salesforce develops and delivers cloud computing solutions, focusing primarily on customer relationship management software and complementary enterprise applications for enterprises and SMBs. The company pioneered the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, eliminating the need for restrictive and expensive hardware and installations while providing constant innovation with regular platform updates. In addition to software development, Salesforce offers professional services and training programs and maintains a vast partner ecosystem that extends the platform’s capabilities.
Is Salesforce CRM the same as Sales Cloud?
While often used interchangeably, Salesforce CRM refers to the broader platform concept and capabilities, whereas Sales Cloud is a specific product offering within the Salesforce ecosystem focused on sales processes. Sales Cloud builds core CRM functionality with specialized features tailored for sales teams, but organizations typically need additional clouds for comprehensive customer relationship management.
What is the difference between Service Cloud and Health Cloud?
While Service Cloud provides general customer service capabilities applicable across industries and focused on case management, agent productivity and customer satisfaction. Health Cloud adds healthcare-specific functionality including patient profiles with clinical data integration, care plan management, household mapping for family health management and pre-built compliance frameworks for HIPAA and other healthcare regulations. Health Cloud essentially extends Service Cloud with specialized data models and workflows designed for healthcare use cases.
What does Salesforce Marketing Cloud do?
Marketing Cloud orchestrates multi-channel marketing campaigns, automates customer journey mapping, personalizes content based on behavior and preferences, and provides comprehensive analytics for campaign optimization. It manages email marketing, mobile messaging, social media engagement, and digital advertising while maintaining consistent messaging across all touchpoints.
What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud used for?
Organizations use Marketing Cloud for email marketing automation, customer journey orchestration, social media management, mobile messaging campaigns, advertising audience targeting, and marketing analytics. Common applications include lead nurturing programs, customer retention campaigns, personalized product recommendations, and coordinated multi-channel marketing initiatives.
What is the difference between Salesforce CRM and Marketing Cloud?
The key difference is in their focus. Salesforce CRM focuses on managing customer data, sales processes and service interactions within the organization, while Marketing Cloud specializes in external customer engagement via marketing campaigns and communications. CRM primarily serves sales and service teams with transactional data, whereas Marketing Cloud enables marketers to create and deliver personalized content at scale.
What is the difference between Salesforce and Marketing Cloud?
Salesforce refers to the entire platform ecosystem including all clouds and capabilities, while Marketing Cloud is a specific product within that ecosystem focused on marketing automation and campaign management. Salesforce provides the foundational platform and core CRM capabilities, while Marketing Cloud adds specialized marketing tools that integrate with but operate independently from other Salesforce products.
What is the difference between Salesforce Community Cloud and Marketing Cloud?
Community Cloud (now Experience Cloud) creates branded portals and communities for customers, partners and employees to collaborate and access information, while Marketing Cloud focuses on outbound marketing communications and campaign management. Experience Cloud facilitates two-way engagement and self-service, whereas Marketing Cloud primarily handles one-to-many marketing communications.
Is Salesforce Marketing Cloud a CRM?
Marketing Cloud is not CRM in the traditional sense; it is actually a marketing automation platform that complements CRM functionality. While it manages customer data for marketing purposes, its focus is more on campaign execution and customer engagement rather than the sales and service processes typically associated with CRM systems.
What is the difference between Einstein and Agentforce?
Einstein is Salesforce’s integrated AI tech. Einstein comprises a suite of intelligent capabilities and features that are embedded across all Salesforce apps, products and clouds that power automation, insights and recommendations. Agentforce (introduced later) builds upon the Einstein foundation to create autonomous AI agents that can perform various tasks, manage workflows and communicate across apps.
Which Salesforce product is the biggest?
Sales Cloud is Salesforce’s most widely used product, and is the foundation of Salesforce CRM. Sales Cloud helps businesses manage leads and prospects, track opportunities, automate sales workflows and forecast revenue.
What is a Salesforce developer?
A Salesforce developer is a technical professional specializing in building custom applications and functionality on the Salesforce platform using proprietary languages like Apex and Lightning Web Components. These professionals combine traditional software development skills with deep platform knowledge, understanding both technical capabilities and business processes to create solutions that leverage Salesforce’s native functionality while addressing unique organizational requirements.
