Why technology and digital transformation established Salesforce as a CRM system

"Customer relationship management is not a technology, but a business strategy," claims Börsenblatt, arguing that CRM solutions are too technology-focused. We disagree.

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For us, technology and strategy are not two different things. Technology is our strategy. And it is by no means the worst.

Humans are beings who use technology and cannot survive without it. Even our ancestors were highly technological: in the days of hunters and gatherers, it was weapons that allowed us to defend ourselves against large animals and, from time to time, to eat them. Compared to other predators, humans are rather poorly equipped physically: we are not particularly fast or strong. From the very beginning, our strength has lay solely in inventing and mastering tools. In economic terms, the monopoly in the village was probably shared by the manufacturers of weapons and kitchen utensils. Demand is high when it comes to survival. And those who have the best tools survive, of course.

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In Game of Thrones, when asked why he is always reading books, Tyrion Lannister replies: "A mind needs books like a sword needs a sharpening stone." Tyrion invests in his intellectual capital at a time when there is a great demand for shrewd strategists in the face of ever-changing political intrigues. Tyrion's mind is in high demand. And he survives Game of Thrones – hey, if that's not an achievement!

However, we're not talking about life and death here. It's about how you can best manage the time and energy you have to gain the most in the end. Time and energy are your most important personal resources, but unfortunately they have the same problem: they are finite. And of course, your employees' resources, your ‘human resources’, are just as finite. Of course, you and your employees don't want to devote all your energy to your job; you also want to have some kind of life on the side so you can proudly put your feet up and spend some of the money you've earned. But at the same time, you want your company to grow – so how do you balance everything? Are the two mutually exclusive?

Technology should take work off our hands, not create more work. People invented technology to make their lives easier. Why plough a field with a rake when you can invent a machine that does the same thing in less time and with better results, while also saving your back, patience and nerves, and giving you time for things that machines can't do? Like being creative, for example.

In small businesses in particular, growth should be decoupled from employee growth. But large companies should also ask themselves whether it makes sense to waste time and money on activities that could easily be automated.

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This is where Salesforce comes in. And, most importantly, your very own Salesforce, tailored precisely to the needs of your company and your employees. This means that, in the end, everyone benefits.

The biggest time wasters are complicated applications that are not optimised to work together.

You spend a lot of time converting document formats, searching for relevant data, responding to emails – time that could be spent on more intensive contact with customers! Time that could be spent on creative new solutions! Time that could be used more productively.

So why should we settle for half-baked solutions when we need complete ones to move forward? We want 100% efficiency, so why compromise just because that's how it's always been done?

The good thing about Salesforce is that it is largely self-explanatory and intuitive. That is also what makes this solution so deeply satisfying. Companies and their employees often adapt to CRM systems and bow to their often illogical and overly complicated structures.

Despite CRM, a lot still has to be outsourced to other programmes because it cannot be integrated. So why not have everything in a single system? Salesforce is a particularly flexible CRM system, which we take advantage of. Our in-house tools are Cloudworx.components and, soon, Cloudworx.packages. These combine maximum simplicity and efficiency.

We have made it our mission to provide customised solutions that are not yet available on the market.

In our opinion, technology should simplify work, not complicate it unnecessarily – technology should serve us, not the other way around! It should enable us to do our jobs better, not saddle us with additional tasks because the system does not match the structure of our business processes.

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Many detours have been taken in the process of adapting technology to humans. Even during industrialisation and increasing mechanisation at the end of the 19th century, the bright minds of the time were convinced that machines would soon be able to do everything and feared mass unemployment. Similar thoughts are now emerging with digitalisation. Richard David Precht says that everything that can be algorithmised in theory can also be automated. Which jobs will remain? Which jobs will become redundant?

Ours will definitely be one of them once we have realised our megalomaniacal vision of digitising and optimising every single company, from the small bakery around the corner to large international corporations. For us, the two go hand in hand. Digitalisation and optimisation are mutually dependent, and we have made both our mission. However, the digitalisation project is so large that it is quite possible that we will still be working on it until we retire. And if not, so much the better!

As with industrialisation, many jobs will disappear, but just as many new ones will be created. The world of work is dynamic, and so should we be. Perhaps no one can predict exactly what new things will emerge, not even Elon Musk. But one thing is certain: new things will emerge.

Because change is already happening. And we are right in the middle of it.