The point that never ceases to amaze us. Because yes, you read that correctly: the world's most successful CRM cannot natively generate documents filled with data from Microsoft Office templates. In our experience, document generation is by far one of the biggest efficiency bottlenecks in our customers' business processes. Each of us has had to manually create a quote, presentation or invoice at least once. Input errors, the battle with formatting, conversion to the correct final format. All of this eats up one thing above all else: time.

The solution: work with external tools! These include popular AppExchange tools such as Conga Composer, Docomotion and WebMerge. Or our own solution, cloudworx.compose: automatically creates context-sensitive documents. PowerPoint, Word, Excel or HTML templates are turned into documents that you can use straight away. With data from Salesforce. In your required target format. In real time.

Another fundamental requirement is dynamic web forms that can be used to import or export data to Salesforce. These are needed for landing pages, feedback forms and, in particular, customer portals. In other words, whenever customers need to enter or retrieve data without having their own Salesforce access. Salesforce does offer its own native solutions in the form of Web2Lead and Web2Case. However, in our opinion, these leave too much to be desired. For example, data can only be transferred to Salesforce, but existing data cannot be read or updated. Forms are static and therefore cannot respond to customer input. Fields cannot be shown or hidden depending on other fields. Authentication is also not possible. This means that customer portals cannot be created.

The solution: In addition to AppExchange solutions such as 123FormBuilder and FormTitan, there are integrations (also via AppExchange) with online form services such as Formstack. Or our own solution, cloudworx.interact: Generates data records from landing pages. Sends online questionnaires to obtain process-relevant feedback from your customers. Creates a portal where customers can view and edit data. Synchronised with Salesforce. In real time.

Caution, this is getting technical. But it remains just as fundamental. For those who think of pirates when they hear the term ‘webhook’: Put simply, it refers to a web address that you provide to third-party services in order to transfer information to your own system. This can be useful, for example, if you want to find out from a third-party provider whether and when an SMS has been delivered. First, the good news: Salesforce supports webhooks. The bad news, however, is that they only work with authentication. And every third-party service we have implemented so far that can address webhooks has only done so without authentication. This means that when integrating with third-party systems, a break in the process is guaranteed.

The solution: Unfortunately, AppExchange is of no help here. However, our cloudworx.listen component is: It enables third-party services to transfer information to your own system. Via webhook. Without HTTP authentication. And thus 90% more compatible than native webhooks.

Would you like to send emails automatically? Would you like to send emails with attachments? Would you like to send attachments that are tailored to the customer? But is that possible in Salesforce? No, it isn't! At least not out of the box. Salesforce does not allow dynamically generated documents such as authorisations and invoices to be sent.

The solution: Salesforce provides half of it itself: Code/APEX can be used to program applications that enable automated email delivery with attachments. You can save time here with cloudworx's own intelligent code standards.

You realise that sending emails from Salesforce presents several challenges. Another one is that Salesforce no longer sends files with a total size of 3 MB or more, but links instead. This saves resources on the Salesforce infrastructure and is therefore a smart solution. However, many IT departments and email clients block these links for security reasons. Automated further processing (e.g. by providers who generate and send faxes or letters from emails) is also impossible.

The solution: Our own solution, cloudworx.send, helps here by sending emails via your company's SMTP server: Sends emails via your company's own SMTP server. Without the usual restrictions on attachments, sender marking, delivery rates and number of emails sent. Directly from Salesforce.

One of the biggest obstacles to efficiency in small and medium-sized companies is manually rewriting virtually identical emails every day. Using email templates saves 85% of this effort – emails only need to be personalised, rather than written from scratch. However, this only works if templates exist for all essential communication channels. Different process types, multilingualism and individual addresses can quickly increase the number of email templates to several hundred. This is fine in principle (after all, it saves time). But it's not good when employees drown in a sea of templates and choosing the right one becomes a source of errors and a time-consuming task. Salesforce does not offer native context-sensitive automated selection of the right template. Drop-down lists with all available email templates are unfortunately completely unsuitable alternatives.

The solution: Deviating from the standard provides a remedy here. Visualforce and Apex can be used to program custom interfaces for sending emails that solve this problem. Here, too, a lot of time can be saved by using existing code standards.

Email delivery via Salesforce? It works (with the aforementioned limitations)! Contextual documentation of outgoing emails also works flawlessly. This is essential for tracking communication with customers at all times. What is missing, however, is documentation of incoming emails. But this is just as important for keeping track of things. Think about an accountant who doesn't see a customer's email reply to a reminder and ends up calling them. Salesforce doesn't offer the option to monitor your employees' email inboxes and automatically document incoming communication in context. Unfortunately, this isn't available via AppExchange either.

The solution: With our cloudworx.receive component, we offer our customers their own solution to this problem: Monitor your employees' email inboxes and document incoming communication automatically and in context. Directly in Salesforce. In real time.

What happens to a process when no one knows exactly what the current status is and how to proceed? Correct: it gets stuck. Avoiding such process gaps is one of the most important tasks we consider our responsibility when advising our customers. And one process gap that everyone has had to deal with at some point is the processing of incoming payments. Sifting through bank statements in search of THE one payment can eat up valuable time. Automation provides a remedy here. The basis for this is the provision of account transaction data in Salesforce. Salesforce does not offer this natively. Some AppExchange plugins such as FinancialForce or AccoutingSeed offer a solution here, but always coupled with (in our opinion) overly rigid standardised accounting processes.

The solution: Simple and precise is the implementation of API services such as figo.io or finapi.de, which provide access to account data via programming interfaces, which can then be automatically evaluated. When payment is received, the process continues. Process gap closed.

Alongside WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and (good old) email, we tend to forget about text messages as a communication channel. In our opinion, their importance is growing. Why? Because this channel allows you to reach your customers independently of an existing internet connection and without getting lost in a flood of competing messages. Period. In our experience, this has proven particularly useful for status messages or two-factor authentication messages to customers. Unfortunately, Salesforce does not support this channel.

The solution: There are numerous providers that enable SMS messaging via interfaces. One of them (in our opinion, the most mature and reliable) is Twilio, whose service can be seamlessly integrated into Salesforce via Apex.

We analyse your business processes together and go through them step by step. We pay particular attention to the areas that require the most manual effort from you and your employees.

Together, we will develop a "digital ideal", i.e. a process that is efficient for your company. We will draw on our many years of experience and provide tips that can be applied immediately.

We compare your ideas with technical best practices and develop a feasible and sensible strategy for implementing them. You will know exactly what options you have and what exactly needs to be done.