Salesforce is the #1 Artificial Intelligence-powered Customer Relationship Management (AI CRM) platform. From Fortune 100 best companies to mid-level enterprises, organizations are using Salesforce AI CRM to streamline their sales, marketing, commerce, and customer service operations and services.
However, the Salesforce’s advanced and intelligent functionalities come with significant costs. Organizations must implement cost optimization strategies to improve Salesforce licenses utilization and reduce costs. In this article, let's explore the strategies that will turn your Salesforce expenses into a cost-saving powerhouse.
Top 5 Strategies for Salesforce License Optimization
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Audit your Salesforce Licenses and Utilization
To get the most out of Salesforce, identify what features your users require and how often they use the system. Evaluate whether you need all the advanced features, or will the basic functionalities be enough. These insights will assist you in assessing how users engage with the product and how licenses are used, thereby determining areas where costs can be reduced.
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Optimize User Licenses and Roles
By right-sizing Salesforce licenses, businesses can prevent extra software expenses. Not all resources need access to every feature and function of Salesforce solutions. Based on the role of the user, assess user base and assign the proper licenses to eliminate unused licenses and save costs.
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Optimize Features and Integrations
Salesforce supports seamless and secure third-party integrations. However, a number of sophisticated features that organizations need are already natively integrated into the platform. From workflow automation to AI, Salesforce provides a strong array of native features that can automate tasks and eliminate the need for extra spendings on third-party applications.
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Salesforce License Reconciliation
License reconciliation is a key practice to ensure your Salesforce licenses usage is up-to-date and cost-effective. Salesforce license reconciliation enables organizations to monitor unused features and applications in order to identify cost-saving opportunities. Periodic Salesforce licenses audits enable enterprises to make informed decisions on what licenses are generating value and which can be substituted or dropped, leading to tremendous savings.
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Manage Salesforce License Types
It is essential to know the different types of Salesforce licenses for optimization. There are several types of licenses offered by Salesforce, such as user licenses and enterprise licenses for Salesforce products. Think about your company's and team's needs to ensure you are selecting the right set of products and licenses to satisfy your specific CRM requirements.
Work with a Certified Salesforce Consultant
To reduce Salesforce license cost and maximize returns on investment, hire a certified Salesforce services provider, who can assist you in navigating the complex deployments and licensing challenges into cost cutting opportunities.
5 Benefits of Salesforce License Optimization
Every dollar counts! Salesforce license optimization makes sure that you maximize your return on your Salesforce investment. It's not just about cutting costs, but also about optimizing productivity, customer satisfaction, and compliance. Here are the 5 best benefits of Salesforce license optimization.
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Increased Visibility
With Salesforce license optimization, you enjoy complete visibility of your Salesforce licenses and their utilizations patterns. This provides a transparent view of all licenses that are used, underutilized, or misallocated. It will help organizations optimize license allocation by limiting user access.
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Cost Savings
The most significant advantage of optimizing your Salesforce licenses is cost savings. Getting rid of redundant licenses and over-sizing user permissions can save costs on Salesforce subscriptions. Therefore, organizations can reinvest in other critical business aspects that contribute to productivity as well as excellence.
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Productivity Improvement
Salesforce license optimization is not only cost-effective, but it can also boost productivity for your business. By optimizing licenses, resources have the equipment they need to work more effectively on high-priority tasks with less disruption and fewer roadblocks in processes.
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Customer Satisfaction
Salesforce licenses optimization allows your in-house procedures to be more efficient and streamlined, helping organizations deliver services to the customers quicker. This results in superior customer satisfaction and improved client relationships.
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Compliance and Regulatory Assurance
Salesforce license optimization ensures that your organization is following industry standards and regulations. By auditing usage of licenses and having only the necessary features, organizations can avoid compliance risks or associated penalties.
Best Practices for Salesforce License Management
Proper Salesforce license management is the key to realizing the maximum cost savings as well as performance. With best practices, organizations can make the right investment decisions and ensure perfect alignment of resources and licenses with the operational targets. Let’s see how doing so will maximize your Salesforce investment to its full potential.
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Assign Right-Sizing Licenses
Ensure that all users will be provided with the correct licenses to complete their tasks efficiently. Mapping roles to licenses prevents companies from paying for additional features that they don't utilize or require, optimizing value and eliminating waste.
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Implement Role Hierarchy
Take control of user permissions across the enterprise. This will keep your enterprise Salesforce ecosystem organized and reduce security threats, so the right individuals get the right tools.
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Implement Salesforce Optimizer
Use Salesforce optimizer regularly to review your configuration and gain actionable insights on how to optimize performance and cost. This will enable you to concentrate on long-term business goals.
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Reports and Analytics
Utilize Salesforce's native reporting and analytics capabilities to monitor performance and track license usage regularly. This helps companies identify unused features, optimize resources, and maximize your Salesforce ROI.
Why V-Soft for Salesforce License Optimization
V-Soft Consulting is a leading Salesforce consulting and implementation partner for industry-leading organizations. Our Salesforce certified consultants assist you in addressing Salesforce license optimization challenges, resulting in substantial cost savings. We deploy custom solutions that track Salesforce performance and analyze license usage. This strategic process helps you turn your unnecessary costs into cost-saving opportunities.
Select the Salesforce services that you need, our expert Salesforce consultants are here to help you maximize success.
- Salesforce Consulting Services
- Salesforce Implementation Services
- Salesforce Data Migration Services
- Salesforce App Development Services
- Salesforce Integration Services
- Salesforce Administration Services
- Salesforce Customization Services
- Salesforce Managed Services
Ready to Maximize Your Salesforce Experience
If you want to derive more value from your Salesforce investments, we will help you achieve that through our Salesforce best practices. Let’s optimize your Salesforce licensing environment and improve your business performance and costs together.
Talk to our Salesforce experts!
FAQs
What is Salesforce license optimization?
Adjusting and managing your licenses to align them with your budget and business requirements to prevent technology and investment waste.
Why is Salesforce license optimization important?
Optimizing Salesforce licenses will help you to get the most return from your investment by avoiding or removing underutilized licenses.
What do I do with excess licenses?
Redirect unused licenses to new or current users who need them or remove or downsize them if they are no longer needed for optimizing costs.
How often should I review my license usage?
It is best to review your license usage quarterly to ensure that your licenses meet the requirements while also adhering to your compliance and regulations, making necessary adjustments if needed.
Which Salesforce tools are available to help manage licenses?
Salesforce's License Management App (LMA) and third-party applications can assist you in monitoring and managing your licenses efficiently.
What do I need to consider before buying new licenses?
Assess your present license usage and future requirements and investigate whether already purchased licenses can be redeployed or removed before buying new ones.
What are Types of Salesforce License types?
Salesforce provides several types of licenses to suit the diverse needs of a company and user roles, such as standard users, administrators, sales, or service teams. Below are the most popular Salesforce license types:
- Salesforce Platform Licenses: Access to custom applications, dashboards, and reports except for basic CRM functionality.
- Sales Cloud Licenses: Full sales feature set, such as lead management, opportunity management, and sales forecasting.
- Service Cloud Licenses: Support for customers in the form of case management, service console, and knowledge base features.
- Marketing Cloud Licenses: Marketing automation features such as email campaigns, social media, and customer journey orchestration.
- Experience Cloud Licenses: Enables businesses to build customer-facing, partner, and employee-branded portals that facilitate more productive collaboration and interaction.
- Pardot Licenses: B2B marketing automation including lead nurturing, email campaigns, and return-on-investment monitoring.
- Community Cloud: For developing and administering external communities or customer, partner, or employee portals.
- Features Licenses: Internal or external social collaboration features without full Salesforce licenses.
