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I honestly still don't even understand what Salesforce is. I have never worked in eCommerce, yet still keep running into areas of the orgs I've worked for that

I honestly still don't even understand what Salesforce is. I have never worked in eCommerce, yet still keep running into areas of the orgs I've worked for that use it's plugin ecosystem to try and accomplish... things- things which usually have nothing to do with sales.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
Salesforce is the technical backing of the middle manager layer. The lemmings feed it data and neighboring software feeds it data so that middle managers can make fancy reports and presentations about how all the lines are going up that everyone forgets immediately as soon as they leave the room. I'm sure it has some actual legitimate functions too but they're so utterly lost in a deluge of MBA bullshit that I don't think it's remotely worth the price. We don't have one where I work. We run a pieces-parts setup of custom apps alongside ancient code in our website, and it definitely has issues and we are addressing, but the CEO has no desire to buy anything like Salesforce. He calls it "data noise:" it looks like data and it looks important but it doesn't mean shit.
- Eric_WVGG 2y ago
  Hm, I think it’s slightly more useful than that. Imagine a company that is driven by actual salespeople — like car dealerships, or any telemarketing or charity operation — where someone is making phone calls and trying to make sales. Salesforce is their CRM, a Customer Relation Manager. You can get a complete history of an individual and their buying history within your company. I worked for a travel-adjacent company a couple years ago, the entire thing was predicated on a half-dozen sales reps making handfuls of deals worth $50k+ each. Nothing like e-commerce. Salesforce was their Rolodex and their beating heart. That said, it isn't a good CRM. It's nineties tech that became very essential to very very big companies. Someone else here described it as akin to PhpMyAdmin and he absolutely nailed it. I think Salesforce is likely to be worth more someday for their Slack acquisition, not unlike how Meta is worth more for Instagram than Facebook.
  - beAbU 2y ago
    Salesforce is not sold as a CRM though, and that's the problem. They position themselves as the do-everything-you-can-dream-of engine for your business' IT transformation. It's like it's rule 34 of the business word: If you can think of it, Salesforce has a checkbox on a powerpoint somewhere about it. What this results in is that upper management sees all the features and capabilities in a flashy sales pitch, they close a deal with Salesforce (probably after some less-than-noble negotiation tactics deployed by SF salespeople), and then the mandate comes from the top: "We must implement Salesforce!" And all the tech people look awkwardly at each other not having the faintest fucking clue what that even means.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      And this is just my experience but like: every single product I have ever used, from anything, that claims to be the "do anything!" solution, always, always, always is shit. It seems to be a hard and fast rule of the universe that the more things your thing is designed to do, the worse it does all of those constituent things.
      - DowagerDave 2y ago
        maybe a counter-example? Zoho doesn't have one product that does everything but does seem to have A product for everything. None of them are fantastic, but many are decent or good enough, and they are cheap. I've been pleasantly surprised with the experience, as I thought it would be similar to the GoDaddy or AWS perpetual dark-pattern upsell.
DowagerDave 2y ago
I've worked in Ecommerce, but SF was not a concern, especially compared to how big a deal Shopify was for us. Now In EdTech we need to interface with SF for the bigger clients and it is a wild, painful ride. They have their own tooling/language/architecture for EVERYTHING. Oh, and good luck doing SF development locally. To (mis)quote Homer Simpson, there's the right way, the wrong way and the Salesforce way - which is the wrong way but way slower and more complex.
rawgabbit 2y ago
Where I work, Salesforce is the ERP and also powers a lot of our front end. Its core strength (if you don't fall for all their salesy mumbo jumbo magical mystery tour weasel words) is that "native applications" require zero integrations/configurations. They "just work". Salesforce is the CRM. It is the source of truth for our customers, orders, vendors. It is also the service (help desk agents use their VOIP to help customers and transcripts are automatically logged). It does the marketing. It also does our financials. It also integrates with our survey SaaS. It also powers a lot of front end because our front end stack sucks. We use SOSL to power our front end search. It also creates micro-sites that our front end points to. They also have an ecosystem of third-party apps that "just works". With all that said. It is very expensive. Mulesoft is horrible. I wish they tone-down the salesy bullshit; they don't need the Microsoft-Azure level of bullshit -- Salesforce actually works.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago

Salesforce is the technical backing of the middle manager layer. The lemmings feed it data and neighboring software feeds it data so that middle managers can make fancy reports and presentations about how all the lines are going up that everyone forgets immediately as soon as they leave the room. I'm sure it has some actual legitimate functions too but they're so utterly lost in a deluge of MBA bullshit that I don't think it's remotely worth the price. We don't have one where I work. We run a pieces-parts setup of custom apps alongside ancient code in our website, and it definitely has issues and we are addressing, but the CEO has no desire to buy anything like Salesforce. He calls it "data noise:" it looks like data and it looks important but it doesn't mean shit.

Eric_WVGG 2y ago
Hm, I think it’s slightly more useful than that. Imagine a company that is driven by actual salespeople — like car dealerships, or any telemarketing or charity operation — where someone is making phone calls and trying to make sales. Salesforce is their CRM, a Customer Relation Manager. You can get a complete history of an individual and their buying history within your company. I worked for a travel-adjacent company a couple years ago, the entire thing was predicated on a half-dozen sales reps making handfuls of deals worth $50k+ each. Nothing like e-commerce. Salesforce was their Rolodex and their beating heart. That said, it isn't a good CRM. It's nineties tech that became very essential to very very big companies. Someone else here described it as akin to PhpMyAdmin and he absolutely nailed it. I think Salesforce is likely to be worth more someday for their Slack acquisition, not unlike how Meta is worth more for Instagram than Facebook.
- beAbU 2y ago
  Salesforce is not sold as a CRM though, and that's the problem. They position themselves as the do-everything-you-can-dream-of engine for your business' IT transformation. It's like it's rule 34 of the business word: If you can think of it, Salesforce has a checkbox on a powerpoint somewhere about it. What this results in is that upper management sees all the features and capabilities in a flashy sales pitch, they close a deal with Salesforce (probably after some less-than-noble negotiation tactics deployed by SF salespeople), and then the mandate comes from the top: "We must implement Salesforce!" And all the tech people look awkwardly at each other not having the faintest fucking clue what that even means.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    And this is just my experience but like: every single product I have ever used, from anything, that claims to be the "do anything!" solution, always, always, always is shit. It seems to be a hard and fast rule of the universe that the more things your thing is designed to do, the worse it does all of those constituent things.
    - DowagerDave 2y ago
      maybe a counter-example? Zoho doesn't have one product that does everything but does seem to have A product for everything. None of them are fantastic, but many are decent or good enough, and they are cheap. I've been pleasantly surprised with the experience, as I thought it would be similar to the GoDaddy or AWS perpetual dark-pattern upsell.

DowagerDave 2y ago

I've worked in Ecommerce, but SF was not a concern, especially compared to how big a deal Shopify was for us. Now In EdTech we need to interface with SF for the bigger clients and it is a wild, painful ride. They have their own tooling/language/architecture for EVERYTHING. Oh, and good luck doing SF development locally. To (mis)quote Homer Simpson, there's the right way, the wrong way and the Salesforce way - which is the wrong way but way slower and more complex.

rawgabbit 2y ago

Where I work, Salesforce is the ERP and also powers a lot of our front end. Its core strength (if you don't fall for all their salesy mumbo jumbo magical mystery tour weasel words) is that "native applications" require zero integrations/configurations. They "just work". Salesforce is the CRM. It is the source of truth for our customers, orders, vendors. It is also the service (help desk agents use their VOIP to help customers and transcripts are automatically logged). It does the marketing. It also does our financials. It also integrates with our survey SaaS. It also powers a lot of front end because our front end stack sucks. We use SOSL to power our front end search. It also creates micro-sites that our front end points to. They also have an ecosystem of third-party apps that "just works". With all that said. It is very expensive. Mulesoft is horrible. I wish they tone-down the salesy bullshit; they don't need the Microsoft-Azure level of bullshit -- Salesforce actually works.