Prepare Yourself for Salesforce Interviews 1

The purpose of this extensive piece is to scrutinize the fundamentals of Salesforce and E-cloud infrastructure. It serves as a goldmine for Salesforce enthusiasts who are on the quest to increase their knowledge base or revisit the foundation of Salesforce.

Conceptualizing The Usage of Salesforce CRM in Organizations

Salesforce primarily functions as a CRM system with its primary purpose to document interactions with customers and their associated data. The Sales Cloud product from Salesforce enables organizations to register and track potential customers (Leads) while managing their journey through numerous sales cycle stages. This is essentially how Salesforce secures prospective business relationships.

Additionally, Salesforce's Service Cloud is built to streamline the customer service framework of an organization. It offers a robust system that manages customer inquiries and resolves issues effectively. Salesforce is not limited to these products alone; it extends its arms to support other internal teams within an organization such as Marketing, Analytics, Portals, Integration, and Collaboration (Slack).

Advantages That Cloud Solutions Like Salesforce Offer

Being a Cloud SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform, Salesforce bestows significant merits over traditional systems requiring extensive server power. This cloud-based service has adopted the trend of most applications we use today (Spotify, Gmail, Office365, Dropbox). Cloud computing benefits include:

• Cost-effectiveness: Conventional on-premise services require a massive initial investment in infrastructure. Cloud computing, inversely, allows the provider such as Salesforce to take up the maintenance of this infrastructure, thus reducing the financial burden on the end user.
• Upgrade efficiency: Unlike traditional software upgrading systems, Cloud-based providers manage software updates for you. Salesforce ensures that your solution stays on par with the latest updates on a tri-annual basis, thus continuously improving the system without any extra charges.
• Mobility: Cloud-based utilities are accessible from anywhere. With an internet connection and a device, you can access information stored in Salesforce, making it extremely handy for individuals who frequently travel for work or meetings.

Differentiating Sales Cloud and Service Cloud

Sales Cloud and Service Cloud are the central CRM platforms for Salesforce and are predominantly employed by the majority of organizations. Despite some shared features, they serve distinct functionalities:

• Sales Cloud: As the name suggests, it aids businesses throughout the sales cycle. It carries potential customers on a journey, starting from qualifying them via the Lead object and later converting them into an Opportunity during the main sales cycle. Furthermore, Sales Cloud incorporates other features to back this process, including quoting and forecasting.
• Service Cloud: Service Cloud is a go-to for organizations seeking to streamline their customer support processes. This product serves as a platform for customers to initiate support processes via email, calls, or online forms that later create a case in Salesforce. Then agents can use features like a knowledge base, milestones, and live chats to resolve customers' inquiries in real time.

Salesforce: Beyond CRM

Over the years, Salesforce has extended its array of products to cater to its customer's diverse needs. Among the unique selling points is the seamless integration within the wide-ranging Salesforce products, which provides a comprehensive 360-degree view of their users.

Some other notable Salesforce products include Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Experience Cloud, MuleSoft, and Slack. While each product serves a unique purpose, when used collectively, they provide a holistic solution.

The Salesforce Platform (Force.com) and its Benefits to Organizations

The Salesforce platform, formerly known as Force.com, is one of Salesforce's crown jewels. This platform allows for the unique customization of Salesforce products, which ensures they fit perfectly with any organization's peculiar needs.

Basic customizations can include the creation of custom fields and objects to store distinctive information relevant to an organization. Automation is one of the most popular types of customization available on this platform. It enables a wide array of functions, such as updating a field, creating a record, or sending an email. Such customizations end up saving users a significant amount of time.

Potential Salesforce Platform Custom Apps

Beyond simple customizations, Salesforce opens the door to creating custom apps on the platform. For instance, drawing from Trailhead, you can create:

• An HR application to assist internal teams in managing jobs and job applicants,
• A finance system to track invoices, or
• A goal-setting app to help managers set targets and goals for their team."

Differentiating between Declarative and Programmatic Customizations

In the realm of Salesforce customizations, two broad types exist—declarative and programmatic. Declarative customizations are essentially click-and-point. They allow non-developers to tailor powerful modifications like creating custom fields, automation, and tables of data, using a wizard.

Conversely, programmatic customizations mean customizations built with code. Coding languages like Apex for complex tasks or Lightning for custom UI design are the tools of choice in programmatic customizations.

Explaining Salesforce Releases

As a SaaS platform, Salesforce updates are automatically delivered to your systems. These major updates occur three times a year, with minor updates in between. Known as Spring, Summer, and Winter, these releases carry several feature updates across Salesforce's product portfolio.

While Salesforce's updates are efficient, it's essential to stay alert and conduct thorough checks to ensure that everything works as expected.

Role of Salesforce Lightning Experience

Released in 2015, Salesforce Lightning heralded a new User Interface (UI) era. Designed with a modular experience central to its build, Salesforce Lightning eases the layout control for Salesforce Admins.

The upgrade resulted in increased user productivity thanks to new features and an intuitive UI. Salesforce Lightning Experience allows full customization of almost all its pages. You can tailor the homepage and record layouts or even create dashboards to suit your specific needs.

Implementing a Sales Process in a Company

Sales Cloud, being the most popular product of Salesforce, is the backbone of most sales processes. A sales process refers to the journey a salesperson takes to sell a product or a service to a potential customer. This journey is translated into the "Lead Status" and "Opportunity Stage" fields of Salesforce.

The typical sales process may follow this linear progression: Qualify > Discover > Analysis > Proposal > Negotiation > Closed Won (or Lost). This simple sales process can be leveraged to streamline the sales procedure from the customer's entry point (Lead stage) to the final closing of the deal.