Do you work in the energy sector? Do you find yourself bogged down trying to juggle marketing, sales, commerce, and customer service simultaneously? If the answer is yes, you’re not alone—but there is a way out of this operational mess.
Businesses can use technology to streamline their workflows thanks to automated processes available on platforms like Salesforce. Learn how Salesforce can save your energy business time and money.
What Is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution. In other words, Salesforce is a tool that helps businesses manage all of their operations, including marketing, sales, and customer service, in one place. Your business can personalize and enhance customer experiences within the integrated CRM platform.
Salesforce is designed to help businesses:
- Attract more buyers
- Convert more customers
- Deliver integrated shopping experiences
- Automate time-consuming business tasks
- Build, connect, and integrate apps
- Improve customer engagement
- Manage multi-channel customer support
What Is Salesforce Used For?
Businesses in many different industries, including the energy sector, use Salesforce. Salesforce helps companies understand their customers better and provide enhanced services by tracking customer success, reviews, support sessions, complaints, and more using real-time analytics.
Thanks to its accurate, data-led approach to reporting, employees can use Salesforce software for a wide variety of tasks. However, Salesforce isn’t just for reporting; it includes a range of applications that can assist with marketing, sales tracking, performance analysis, communication forums, and spending.
How Does Salesforce Work?
Salesforce is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application, which means that it uses cloud computing to host applications online and allows users to interact with a wide range of data in one place. This online data allows your business to connect with customers, manage business operations, track customer behaviors, and deploy marketing campaigns, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI) and the cloud.
Salesforce uses AI to streamline workflows with automated analytics and mobilizes the cloud for added accessibility and data storage. Because Salesforce stores information online, it allows you to track live data at any time and from any location.
Why Salesforce?
Implementing a CRM tool like Salesforce comes with many benefits, from added business scalability to enhanced productivity. Below are some of the advantages you’ll experience when you start using Salesforce for your business.
Growth and Scalability
Salesforce is a secure, easy-to-use, convenient, and scalable platform that you can use to grow your business. You won’t need to overhaul your IT systems for every Salesforce update or added app. Salesforce is fully customizable, and you can scale it up or down depending on your operational demand.
Productivity
Salesforce automates and analyzes data, allowing employees to do their jobs quickly and efficiently. Your business can save money by using Salesforce data to sell more products and optimize productivity.
Integrated Mobile App
With Salesforce, you can run your whole business from a single mobile application. Employees can use their mobile devices for various business processes, including closing deals, tracking metrics, sharing files, and collaborating with coworkers. Salesforce also allows users to view contacts, schedule meetings, and manage accounts from the app.
Automation
Salesforce uses powerful intelligence to shed light on customer experiences and employee workflows. You’ll gain access to business insights that can help optimize everyday efficiency, identify areas for improvement, and strengthen customer relationships.
High-Powered Analytics
To power its automated processes, Salesforce uses high-powered analytics like Shopify. Shopify analytics help businesses spot opportunities, identify areas for change, and make accurate data-led forecasts. Companies can use Shopify to home in on why something isn’t working and combat the problem head-on.
Digital Transformation in the Energy Sector
A lot has changed in the energy sector in recent years, and the industry is facing new challenges. Energy companies have found it difficult to fully embrace an operational digital transformation. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 has accelerated the need for technological change.
For many energy companies, particularly those in oil and gas, digitization is essential for financial and operational survival. Plus, digital transformation is vital if the industry wants to achieve an ecological and ethical redistribution of energy resources in years to come.
Today’s energy industry faces unprecedented competition, mounting complexity, and massive volatility, putting time and monetary resources under tremendous pressure. Some of the top challenges in the energy sector today include:
- Price volatility for oil and gas operators
- Difficulties with onsite generation and complex grids
- Global uncertainty over feedstock sources
- Changing patterns of supply and demand
- Growing competition for renewables developers
- Changing customer expectations
Energy companies are turning to digital innovation to solve these challenges. Predictive analytics and data-led technologies help industry leaders make better decisions for the future by maximizing time and minimizing cost.
Why Salesforce for the Energy Industry?
If you’re in the energy industry, Salesforce has the tools you need to optimize your business practices. Salesforce has developed an energy-focused CRM with new solutions targeted toward the needs of energy suppliers.
The Salesforce Energy CRM is designed to unite teams and help businesses create sustainable customer relationships. It was designed specifically for the changing needs of today’s energy businesses, including those in oil and gas, utilities, and renewables.
The Energy CRM helps companies manage their suppliers, customers, communities, and employees all on one agile platform. It can improve many aspects of your business practices, from employee satisfaction to field operations. Below are six ways the Salesforce Energy CRM can benefit your energy company.
1. Increase Employee Engagement
With Salesforce Energy CRM, you can connect your front and back offices at every point in the customer service process. Your employees can easily navigate Salesforce’s personalized user interface and use it to collaborate with coworkers.
2. Make Steps Toward Carbon Neutrality
Salesforce’s Energy CRM helps you reach your carbon-neutral goals by tracking, analyzing, and reporting environmental data. You can use Salesforce to help reduce your carbon emissions and achieve a more sustainable future for your company.
3. Enhance Utility Customer Engagement
Employees can improve customer engagement by transforming your customer contact center. Salesforce allows your business to create personalized customer experiences across every channel.
4. Drive Growth With Personalized Sales
Using Salesforce, you can customize the quote-to-contract process, accelerate your commercial and industrial sales, and tailor your offerings using Salesforce’s cutting-edge algorithms.
5. Reimagine Stakeholder Engagement
You can engage with clients and build trust among your suppliers, partners, and landowners using Salesforce’s real-time collaboration, knowledge sharing, and stakeholder analytics.
6. Streamline Field Operations
Salesforce helps you optimize your field operations and productivity. Your field technicians can use Salesforce on their mobile devices to connect with customers, coworkers, and your front office.
How To Implement Salesforce
At Abstrakt, we use our Salesforce consulting services to help businesses implement the platform and enhance their business practices. We’re not your traditional Salesforce consulting company—we’re a nationally recognized, sought-after partner for businesses operating in the energy, legal, professional, engineering, and construction sectors.
Our Salesforce consulting partners help you set up Salesforce, onboard new users, and develop customized roadmaps based on your business goals. We also help you change and enhance your platform as your business evolves.
Because we’re a recognized Salesforce Partner, we have access to invaluable resources, including:
By partnering with Abstrakt to implement Salesforce, you can gain a whole team’s worth of support. We’ll assign you your very own client success manager, Salesforce administrator, developer, and consultant.
Save Time and Money With Salesforce
The energy industry is changing, and the way we organize our workflows is evolving accordingly. To meet changing consumer demands, environmental targets, and rising levels of competition, energy companies rely on automated technologies like Salesforce.
Salesforce provides energy companies the opportunity for rapid digitization, easy implementation, digestible analytics, and increased workflow efficiency. Switching to Salesforce is a simple way to improve your energy business, and Abstrakt can make the process seamless. If you’re ready to transform your energy business through Salesforce, get in touch with us today.
