You’re a financial services company? Find out why Salesforce is the right choice.

Why are companies choosing Salesforce for financial services over other CRMs?

Salesforce is a highly relevant choice for most financial companies, as the world's No. 1 CRM enables them to :

• Improve productivity

• Streamline customer journeys

• Obtain key information on customer accounts and portfolios. 

In this article, we take a look at some of the most useful features of Salesforce's Financial Services cloud. Let's start with one of the key benefits:

1.  Centralized management of financial data.

Salesforce gives you a permanent, accurate view of your business data. All within a secure framework for data protection and access. With all your business data in a single, harmonized location, you no longer need to navigate between different systems. You'll also be able to make clearer investment decisions, thanks to the multitude of reports and dashboards you can create with Salesforce.

It is through these tools that financial services professionals have the power to personalize their offers. The idea is to offer an original, innovative proposition that sets them apart from their competitors.

2.  Accurate financial forecasts

Here's a list of the biggest and most common difficulties faced by financial services management professionals, perhaps you're prone to one of these problems yourself: 

• Forecasting and managing renewals.

• Inaccurate sales or financial forecasts.

• Inaccurate reporting 

Salesforce CRM enables users to access the right customer data at the right time, so they can make financial decisions and budget forecasts with all the information they need. Data sorting and cleanliness are very useful features of Salesforce, giving you confidence in your figures. A report may be perfectly constructed, but if the figures it displays aren't accurate, it's useless. 

This situation enables finance managers to forecast future revenues, understand potential risks and opportunities, and take corrective action if necessary.

3.  In-depth data analysis and visualization

Real-time analytics in Salesforce enable financial advisors to accurately budget and forecast expenses, and take instant corrective action when necessary. With these AI-powered analytics tools, financial advisors can gain critical insights and unrivalled visibility into the unique customer journey, revenue, retention and churn.

What's more, Salesforce CRM enables data to be visualized in a digestible way for better understanding, in the form of customizable reports and dashboards.

Financial professionals can adjust the metrics they wish to display in these reports, so they can track the data they need precisely when they need it.

Salesforce was quick to recognize the immense potential of artificial intelligence. More and more of the services offered by CRM are already being boosted by the power of AI. In particular, this means greater precision for every piece of information.

4.  Team coordination

It's clear that high-quality coordination between departments within the same company will improve the quality of all departments within the same company. 

In particular, Salesforce explains that effective coordination between finance and sales departments can improve forecasting and maximize sales growth.

By way of comparison, CRMs that offer the same possibilities in terms of financial services are rare. Indeed, few CRMs can hold millions of records and serve financial officers, marketers and support teams in departments spread all over the world as effectively.

Most importantly, all these teams can have an overview of all customer data, regardless of the location of the customer and the team. Choosing Salesforce means choosing a solution that can link all data sources and enrich customer experience profiles to get a complete picture of your audience and understand customer needs.

5.  Platform flexibility

One of the complexities of Salesforce is certainly its complexity. The vast range of functionalities offered by the world's #1 CRM is immense. An inexperienced user could quickly get lost in the array of features on offer. However, we recommend that you enlist the help of a company specializing in Salesforce implementation. Such a company will be able to make all existing functionalities accessible to you, and together you can choose and implement what's right for your business. No other CRM system offers the same level of flexibility as Salesforce. With Salesforce, you can create a whole new working environment, tailored to your every need. Your company's processes can be 100% adapted in CRM. Please note, however, that it's not always ideal to reproduce your process 100% (ask an implementation specialist for advice on this point.) As you can see, Salesforce enables you to modify CRM functionalities to suit the individual needs of asset management companies, retail banks, insurance agencies and other financial fields. For example, you can create a customized commission calculator, or have the system highlight upcoming events.

What's more, its "click not code" nature - i.e., platform customization using predefined code blocks - means you can create customized workflows without the need for developers. This saves you time and money. 

It's this "low code" approach that makes it possible to build and reproduce a Salesforce work environment close to that used by financial institutions in the real world. And this without wasting endless days reproducing reality through complex functionalities. What's more, this unification of the system through pre-coded tools simplifies future evolution of the system without the risk of breaking previously created code. All that's required is an intelligent, clean structure, in which scalability has been thought out in advance.

6.  Safety and regulatory compliance

Salesforce integrates security into all its activities to manage risk and ensure regulatory compliance with the most secure models. Salesforce also offers features to regularly check the status of your data, such as "security health check", which will conduct audits of your security system to give you an overview of your working environment after each update.

This CRM for financial services also enables multi-factor authentication to protect your company and customer data at the time of identification. As a result, your team can carry out their tasks confidently and efficiently. (Two-factor authentication, for example, may seem cumbersome to some users, but it's a simple and effective way of ensuring that your private data is protected).

7.  Easy integration with third-party solutions

In addition to product functionality and Salesforce's strong internal customization capabilities, you can extend its functionality with over 4,000 complementary products in the AppExchange (Salesforce's application marketplace).

All these solutions are Salesforce-compatible, which means you can be sure that they will connect seamlessly to your platform, without any additional custom coding or system problems. Here too, you can enlist the help of an expert who will be able to suggest the most useful applications for the smooth running of your business.

With Salesforce, insurance agents and financial advisors can add the functionality they need, such as virtual document signing (DocuSign), multi-criteria search of financial records, or the generation of PDF versions of financial portfolios, making it considerably easier and faster to perform financial tasks.

Discover the potential of Salesforce CRM for different sectors of the financial services industry.

Salesforce is an incredibly versatile platform that can transform the way financial institutions, advisors and consultants operate. The biggest players in the financial sector, such as banks, insurance companies, wealth management firms, advisors and credit unions, are already using Salesforce to their advantage.

Asset managers

It has been studied that financial advisors spend a very large proportion of their time on administrative tasks.  Tasks such as : 

• Customer service.

• Planning and preparing meetings. 

However, it is clear that other tasks are more valuable in terms of developing a financial advisor's business. An asset manager, for example, needs to concentrate on such things as maintaining client relationships.

Thanks to Salesforce, this time management problem is no longer an issue. In fact, CRM provides asset management companies with all the tools they need to streamline their workflow and improve prospecting for new customers. It also enables them to maintain relationships with existing customers, prepare financial plans and effectively manage their clients' financial portfolios.

Financial managers can gain an overview of their customers' financial profiles, including assets, liabilities and investments. This will enable them to prepare more effectively for meetings and provide personalized financial advice that meets customers' requirements.

Capital market companies

Capital market businesses typically have complex workflows that require much more than a good memory and a spreadsheet to manage. In addition, the capital markets sector is highly regulated, requiring strict security and compliance measures.

The Salesforce platform provides financial companies with powerful tools to manage long and complex sales and trading workflows, enabling them to better engage with their customers. The platform also helps them reduce security risks, gain actionable insights into customer preferences and behaviors, automate workflows, and provide real-time reporting and analytics.

And if you don't have the time or resources to adapt your CRM to the needs of the financial markets, you can still harness the potential of Salesforce with solutions like AscendixRE for Capital Markets, which offers all the pre-built functions needed to within Salesforce.

Investment Managers

Investors can spend years nurturing their relationships with their clients in order to achieve the expected profits. However, during this time, they often accumulate hundreds of Excel files and thousands of notes, making it easy to miss important details.

Salesforce helps store and manage all the results of networking efforts to strengthen and secure investor relationships with their clients.

Using the Salesforce platform, private equity and venture capitalists can accurately segment their customer base, execute deal and investment management, and model customer behavior using data-powered tools. 'AI.

Investment bankers can easily track details throughout the transaction and investment cycle, analyze transaction stages, investment opportunities and client engagement on comprehensive dashboards, giving them allows you to find better opportunities.