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Salesforce is one of those companies that I know does a bunch of stuff but I don't understand most of what it's for or how those niches combine into a gigantic

by Touche 6y ago

Salesforce is one of those companies that I know does a bunch of stuff but I don't understand most of what it's for or how those niches combine into a gigantic company. I get the sales lead tool, but everything else goes over my head. Don't understand how a sales lead tool became a "platform" either. Reminds me of SAP in this way.

sb8244 6y ago
Salesforce is not a sales lead tool, it's a way to codify your sales and marketing processes into a SaaS product. To me, it becomes obvious that it's a platform then, because users need integrations to properly codify their business processes. SFDC probably has more integrations than any other piece of technology that I can think of. When you codify your business processes, actual code is going to be needed as well. Enter Apex and heroku. Slack is a way for SFDC to codify another part of your business processes—communication. That said, SFDC does a lot of things that fairly give it a bad rap. Their developer experience is really bad, their apps are not that great, and lightning is still not adopted at many companies years after its release.
- echelon 6y ago
  > it's a way to codify your sales and marketing processes Are there no better ways to automate sales and marketing? Once you start using Salesforce, do all of your leads get stuck in the platform, or can you export them and do your own analytics queries? How deep is their lock-in? > Slack is a way for SFDC to codify another part of your business processes—communication. It feels too freeform to be automated. It's just chat with a so-so search interface.
  - sb8244 6y ago
    I don't equate codify and automate. That's sometimes a piece of it (automating state changes), but more specifically I'm thinking about all of the validations, human processes, etc that go into customer and sales management. I'd need to think about how slack can "codify communications", but I'm sure there's some people that already have answers for this. SFDC has one of the most robust APIs I've seen...you can export pretty much everything. I actually really enjoy working with the soql rest API, because it's simple, effective, and discoverable. The lock-in is instead in their integrations. It is almost guaranteed that there won't be another platform that has all of the integrations you need, so you stick with SFDC. You add more integrations over time and the lock-in deepens.
  - TuringNYC 6y ago
    >> Once you start using Salesforce, do all of your leads get stuck in the platform, or can you export them and do your own analytics queries? How deep is their lock-in? To some extent, as a business owner or CRO, you want the data to be stuck in Salesforce. The price of Salesforce is small compared to the cost of salespeople maintaining their own relationships directly with clients -- and then potentially walking away.
- couchand 6y ago
  Your points about codifying business process and integrations are spot-on. The developer experience is sadistic, but Lightning is the worst. It takes forever to load basic information because it all has to cycle through JS callbacks. Try opening a link (or a bunch!) in a background tab: it doesn't load anything until you're actually looking at the tab.
- Touche 6y ago
  > codify your sales and marketing processes into a SaaS product I don't understand what this means at all. Let's say I make pies. My sales process is I go to grocery stores and try to get them to carry my pies. My marketing is I buy commercial time on the local tv station. How do I codify this into a SaaS product?
  - kbos87 6y ago
    You have a sales team out talking to those grocery stores. You need to keep track of the relationships they have with those stores, the conversations they have, where those stores are along the journey to becoming customers. You want to understand how your marketing expenses influence that process. Further downstream, you’ll probably want to connect sales data to those stores over time to understand patterns and manage your operations. These are all pretty common use cases for something like Salesforce and there is a pretty widely accepted data model that most companies adopt to do these sorts of things which Salesforce out of the box is built around.
    - Touche 6y ago
      This is what I thought Salesforce was, and what I meant by a sales lead tool. I still don't get how this makes my pie making company a SaaS product though.
      - kbos87 6y ago
        I see what you mean. I understood the parent comment to mean that Salesforce can be used to basically build a bespoke saas app that you use at the heart of your operations, but I’d agree that doesn’t change the nature of your business as a commercial baker in this example.
      - lobotryas 6y ago
        Salesforce is a CRM. If you want to call that “sales lead tool” instead then go for it. Doesn’t change why people buy it. Salesforce is a SaaS because it’s in the cloud. The first company to take a big het on the Cloud, in fact. If you’re still confused, then spend an hour or so reading their marketing literature and kicking the tires in their free Developer Orgs. Simple as.
treis 6y ago
Sales app -> Customizable Sales Process -> Arbitrary Customizable Process -> Platform. Along they way they've bought a ton of companies that do various enterprisey things. Now they're a one stop shop to run everything a business might need.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  The original one stop shop at least since the early 1990s has been a cell phone.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
thrav 6y ago
This should help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20277115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20277115 (What’s Salesforce: by a HackerNews type)
- bonzini 6y ago
  So Salesforce is a huge Access database in SaaS sauce?
  - dzhiurgis 6y ago
    That applies to most SaaS if you think about it.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  Thanks I read all of it
PascLeRasc 6y ago
Whenever I read about what Salesforce and SAP are for it really triggers the "this is fake. you're just making up words" part of my brain. At this point I'd rather not know what they do.

by Touche 6y ago

sb8244 6y ago

Salesforce is not a sales lead tool, it's a way to codify your sales and marketing processes into a SaaS product. To me, it becomes obvious that it's a platform then, because users need integrations to properly codify their business processes. SFDC probably has more integrations than any other piece of technology that I can think of. When you codify your business processes, actual code is going to be needed as well. Enter Apex and heroku. Slack is a way for SFDC to codify another part of your business processes—communication. That said, SFDC does a lot of things that fairly give it a bad rap. Their developer experience is really bad, their apps are not that great, and lightning is still not adopted at many companies years after its release.

echelon 6y ago
> it's a way to codify your sales and marketing processes Are there no better ways to automate sales and marketing? Once you start using Salesforce, do all of your leads get stuck in the platform, or can you export them and do your own analytics queries? How deep is their lock-in? > Slack is a way for SFDC to codify another part of your business processes—communication. It feels too freeform to be automated. It's just chat with a so-so search interface.
- sb8244 6y ago
  I don't equate codify and automate. That's sometimes a piece of it (automating state changes), but more specifically I'm thinking about all of the validations, human processes, etc that go into customer and sales management. I'd need to think about how slack can "codify communications", but I'm sure there's some people that already have answers for this. SFDC has one of the most robust APIs I've seen...you can export pretty much everything. I actually really enjoy working with the soql rest API, because it's simple, effective, and discoverable. The lock-in is instead in their integrations. It is almost guaranteed that there won't be another platform that has all of the integrations you need, so you stick with SFDC. You add more integrations over time and the lock-in deepens.
- TuringNYC 6y ago
  >> Once you start using Salesforce, do all of your leads get stuck in the platform, or can you export them and do your own analytics queries? How deep is their lock-in? To some extent, as a business owner or CRO, you want the data to be stuck in Salesforce. The price of Salesforce is small compared to the cost of salespeople maintaining their own relationships directly with clients -- and then potentially walking away.
couchand 6y ago
Your points about codifying business process and integrations are spot-on. The developer experience is sadistic, but Lightning is the worst. It takes forever to load basic information because it all has to cycle through JS callbacks. Try opening a link (or a bunch!) in a background tab: it doesn't load anything until you're actually looking at the tab.
Touche 6y ago
> codify your sales and marketing processes into a SaaS product I don't understand what this means at all. Let's say I make pies. My sales process is I go to grocery stores and try to get them to carry my pies. My marketing is I buy commercial time on the local tv station. How do I codify this into a SaaS product?
- kbos87 6y ago
  You have a sales team out talking to those grocery stores. You need to keep track of the relationships they have with those stores, the conversations they have, where those stores are along the journey to becoming customers. You want to understand how your marketing expenses influence that process. Further downstream, you’ll probably want to connect sales data to those stores over time to understand patterns and manage your operations. These are all pretty common use cases for something like Salesforce and there is a pretty widely accepted data model that most companies adopt to do these sorts of things which Salesforce out of the box is built around.
  - Touche 6y ago
    This is what I thought Salesforce was, and what I meant by a sales lead tool. I still don't get how this makes my pie making company a SaaS product though.
    - kbos87 6y ago
      I see what you mean. I understood the parent comment to mean that Salesforce can be used to basically build a bespoke saas app that you use at the heart of your operations, but I’d agree that doesn’t change the nature of your business as a commercial baker in this example.
    - lobotryas 6y ago
      Salesforce is a CRM. If you want to call that “sales lead tool” instead then go for it. Doesn’t change why people buy it. Salesforce is a SaaS because it’s in the cloud. The first company to take a big het on the Cloud, in fact. If you’re still confused, then spend an hour or so reading their marketing literature and kicking the tires in their free Developer Orgs. Simple as.

treis 6y ago

Sales app -> Customizable Sales Process -> Arbitrary Customizable Process -> Platform. Along they way they've bought a ton of companies that do various enterprisey things. Now they're a one stop shop to run everything a business might need.

sushshshsh 6y ago
The original one stop shop at least since the early 1990s has been a cell phone.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

thrav 6y ago

This should help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20277115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20277115 (What’s Salesforce: by a HackerNews type)

bonzini 6y ago
So Salesforce is a huge Access database in SaaS sauce?
- dzhiurgis 6y ago
  That applies to most SaaS if you think about it.
cutemonster 6y ago
Thanks I read all of it

PascLeRasc 6y ago

Whenever I read about what Salesforce and SAP are for it really triggers the "this is fake. you're just making up words" part of my brain. At this point I'd rather not know what they do.