Developing a Salesforce Career: From Trainee to Expert

Hello, my name is Ruslana Fedorchenko, and I'm a NIX United Salesforce Expert. I did a training course at NIX United three years ago as a student, and today I implement projects of any complexity on my own, talking directly with customers, determining needs, and effectively turning them into projects with the help of a team of other Salesforce specialists.

Salesforce is a popular platform for both developers and customers. All fields of business are moving to the cloud these days, and they all demand distinct solutions to meet their goals and operations. The software is incredibly user-friendly and can handle automation jobs of any complexity.

I'll go through the benefits of working with Salesforce and how a developer can get started in this field.

Large organizations no longer consider keeping track of things on paper or in Google Docs. Automation is the only way to save time and money. CRM systems (Customer Relationship Management Systems) are the link between developers, the customer's business, and its buyers, and they manage massive volumes of saved data.

It is feasible to enable the interaction of all participants and components of business processes successfully using CRM. It is possible to assign tasks, distribute them among specialists, and monitor their progress. Everything is kept here: details of negotiations, deal results, calls, and orders. Salesforce is a cloud-based platform for managing a range of business operations in a variety of industries, and the company has built individual solutions for each of these uses. The platform can be used to launch an ad campaign, send SMS or email messages, or match the program to specific business needs. Salesforce Clouds are these specialized Salesforce apps.

Salesforce's professional grade offers over 20 distinct certifications as of April 2021. Each level of your career corresponds to a different certification.

Salesforce offers a wealth of development opportunities. You can start with a simple admin or developer function and work your way up to marketing (passing the Pardot Specialist test) or consulting. Are you interested in business? Become a certified CPQ specialist. The esteemed position of Systems Architect is reserved for the most resolute and ambitious.

Salesforce's designers say, "To infinity and beyond!" Indeed, abilities can be enhanced in a variety of ways. However, for the sake of this post, I'd like to concentrate on the most basic roles: Salesforce Administrator and Salesforce Developer. Let's look at them more closely.

In Salesforce, this is a fundamental and critical role. Do not believe that this employment entails solely setting up computer networks, operating systems, and other similar tasks. With almost the entire crew, the specialist assists users.

The job entails a variety of tasks, including assisting users with the development of various analytics and reports, resetting passwords (when a user can't enter the right numbers correctly for the 15th time), maintaining data quality, adding new and editing existing database objects, and backing up the organization.

I can state from personal experience that this route will appeal to individuals who prefer not to start from scratch. The platform comes with a number of ready-to-use components that you may tweak and personalize. Native languages for the server-side are available, as well as a unique UI framework. You can always use the code editors Visual Studio Code and Salesforce CLI. If you want to be a Full Stack developer and enjoy both frontend and backend development equally, Salesforce is the place for you. This role allows you to customize the user interface as well as the backend logic, which aids in the system's automation.

Although an administrator's powers on the platform are broad, he still has access to only the usual point-and-click tools:

While Salesforce developers have complete control over the platform and can customize it to their hearts' content, these positions are inextricably linked. To customize the system effectively, the developer must first determine whether the admin tools are capable of completing the task. If they aren't sufficient, the programmer builds or customizes some components from the ground up.

Salesforce development entails tight collaboration with the client. Furthermore, this procedure will almost certainly become part of your routine. It's important to grasp the customer's business model and standard procedures, as well as the automation objectives and goals, and the process won't take long. Professional advancement is aided by the ability to negotiate effectively.

The platform itself encourages professionals to learn new skills and expand their knowledge by regularly releasing webinars and updating self-learning materials. Salesforce certification is another excellent (and familiar) approach to increasing your skills.

Since the company's inception, the total number of Salesforce cloud users has increased from 2 million to 70 million. The company has been the market leader in CRM systems since 2012, accounting for 20% of the total market. Salesforce has now surpassed Oracle and Microsoft as the most valuable companies in the world. DELL, Canon, Western Union, Adidas, Google, Bentley, BMW, Toyota, Spotify, CISCO, American Red Cross, and Vodafone are just a few of the world-renowned companies that have partnered with the platform.

Salesforce is much faster than its competitors and does not have the limitations of traditional CRM software. The site varies in that it allows programmers to add a variety of features, whereas Salesforce does not.

Buying a new apartment in a new building is a good analogy. Assume you're looking to purchase a home. "I want my own area where I can make repairs and renovate things to my liking," you tell the developer. Salesforce is a good example. Customers go to a company, buy their service, or organization, and then use the platform's current resources to automate business processes and build solutions.

I'll go through the basics of how the platform works and what tools can be employed just in case. Providers now provide the following levels of service in the internet service market:

Each one necessitates the use of a certain collection of tools and components. Each of the services listed above is intended to reduce the amount of time and money spent on deploying and maintaining an IT service (whether it will be a business site, a server in the cloud, or a large corporate project). Salesforce clients and developers are often placed in one of two places by the provider: platform and software.

As most of these services operate on a multi-tenancy basis (collective rental mode), it's crucial to keep in mind that each cloud system has its own scalability constraints. All resources are shared across all clients of the same vendor in Salesforce (multi-tenancy). As a result, you should avoid going overboard and overpaying for resources that the consumer does not use.

Salesforce is a flexible and cross-platform system, which means it may be used to add new features or modify current ones. The PaaS platform force.com is a different resource for developers. It includes tools for creating and deploying applications, as well as setting security access levels. This resource is used to configure the login process, the client UI, new application components from scratch, integrations, and much more—in other words, to accomplish everything related to the program's customization. Work "behind the scenes" can be done in a dedicated mobile app for end-users, developers, and Salesforce administrators, or from the desktop software over the web.

Although force.com was named Lightning Platform in 2018, the first name is still commonly heard in the development community.

Today, the platform is used by more than 12 different clouds and add-on applications. I'll go over the most common ones you'll come across on the job.

A platform for managing sales and creating analytics from sales data. By customizing the platform, you can analyze the sales funnel and focus on the most profitable deals, track contracts, receive notifications, and improve customer performance in every way.

The application provides as many channels of communication with customers as possible. If a company has a service department, this cloud is ideal for automating this team's work. You can, for example, connect to electronic telephony to quickly communicate with customers and solve their problems; connect to an online database that will prompt employees to what documents should be sent to the client; and how to explain what the problem is with a specific product. All of this is done automatically, with no direct employee involvement.

Clouds for marketing automation, advertising mailing lists and campaigns, and product popularity data collection. Salesforce allows you to create online stores and connect with banking to pay for products. Customers can use these clouds to make purchases from websites, social media, and smartphones. Buyers expand their business across all sales channels, B2B and B2C, and obtain detailed information on all customer actions, orders, baskets, and items in stock. For personalized sales, the platform makes use of all of today's artificial intelligence capabilities.

A social platform for customer-to-customer interaction.

One of my favorite clouds of all time. Combining systems and data from various locations is a complex task that is not always easy to complete. Salesforce's creators decided to make it easier for their users to handle a variety of tasks. BMW, for example, uses the cloud to assist customers in locating information about cars and equipment. There is a mobile application through which the user and company employees can share common information resources. The platform-based automatic integration connects all parts of the business process and data acquisition channels, as well as customer information.

Separate clouds are also available with the goal of automating the work of specific business domains. Consider the medical field or educational institutions.

The platform's services are regularly updated, and various benefits for various industries are released. Artificial intelligence-Salesforce Einstein was one of these "perks." This is currently a one-of-a-kind AI service for CRM systems. It aids in the implementation of predictive analytics in CRM, predicting which potential customers are most interested in working with your client's business, which products are most popular among the company's consumers, how to close deals faster and more profitably, and so on.

Salesforce-specific Outlook or Gmail extension for desktop or web-based Outlook or Gmail. All contacts, events, and customer information are synchronized between your email client and Salesforce. This makes it easier for the client's employees to send email newsletters, track messages, and schedule meetings.

The Pardot system's basic concept is to gather information about the customer. A marketing strategy is developed based on this data, which companies use for new customer attraction and proper product offering. It is also possible to track how many times a user clicked on a link in an email or on a website, how many times they opened an email, and whether or not they responded to an email. Furthermore, the system generates reports on sales and marketing campaigns based on transactions.

This Salesforce product makes it easier for businesses to enter into contracts and maintain a document flow. Contracts are created and sent to the customer for signature (via secure email channels, of course) before being returned to Salesforce. All activities take place on a single interface that is accessible to the company's employees and buyers. With CPQ, it is simple to find the product you need to sell or offer to a specific consumer. It also automates the pricing process.

Basic CRM systems are not as adaptable and do not offer the same range of features as Salesforce. Contact form management, trigger-based inbound/outbound email management, integrated and extensible call centers, and flexible application programming interfaces enable you to connect Salesforce to the system and replace existing modules with one cloud. Developers and administrators are responsible for all of this.

Salesforce's world provides limitless opportunities for digital business growth. As time goes on, more businesses will interact with the platform. As a result, there is an increased demand for Salesforce developers and administrators. Every engineer now has an excellent opportunity to enter a rapidly growing field and hone their hard and soft skills while working with clients from all continents.