Salesforce is for more than just your sales team. Many companies using Salesforce are unaware that Salesforce is capable of empowering far more than just the sales and marketing teams in an organization. Sold products may be tracked as Assets. Contracts may be entered and managed. Cases will allow service teams to affiliate service calls to the specific product and the associated service contracts. Custom onboarding, delivery and installation processes will keep everyone informed as to the status of any post-sales processes.
After the sale, Salesforce enables service and delivery teams by managing sold products and licenses as assets. Assets allow specific information about the sold products such as serial numbers, license numbers, manufacturer, service providers, status and custom information specific to your company or products. Cases may be associated to Assets to track issues and service calls over the life cycle of the asset. It is even possible to track competitor assets sold to your customers in Salesforce to create a clear picture for the sales and service teams as to relevant equipment, software or licenses in use for each client.
Salesforce also allows for sales and service teams to create contracts, which may be tracked in Salesforce to ensure renewals do not come and go unnoticed and the terms are documented and clear to sales and service teams. Assets and Cases may be affiliated to Contracts to identify exactly what the contract is for and any claims, redemptions or service calls that might be associated with them.
In addition to out-of-the-box capabilities to track assets and contracts, Salesforce allows us to create custom onboarding, delivery and installation processes. Just like opportunities go through multiple stages before closing, many companies have complex post-sales processes from onboarding to installation that need to be carefully tracked and monitored by the service team. These processes are also of great interest to the sales team who sold the products or services and want to ensure successful delivery. A post-sales process that automatically kicks off when the sale closes which creates tasks and notifications for the relevant personnel in the organization is highly beneficial not only for sales and service, but also management who needs to ensure that these services are delivered correctly and on time. These processes can be managed via multiple options, including list view, Kanban view and dashboards to provide maximum visibility.
In short, Salesforce enables sales and service to work together on a single platform, which keeps everyone informed and aware of the status of post-sale processes through powerful reports and dashboards visible to all stakeholders.