Merrissa Herndon
CIS/207
November 25, 2014
Tatiana Walsh
Salesforce Changes University of Phoenix
Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) software is a cloud computing, analytics, knowledgebase, CTI integration and case management tool utilized by several departments currently and expanding into others. The system is highly customizable which makes it a great application to use in a corporation where so many departments have different functions and needs, Changes and updates can be made quickly and efficiently increasing productivity by limiting maintenance widows for updates. Salesforce has dramatically changed the way the university performs business functions. In my role as a technical support representative salesforce has changed how the department accesses information, tools, and documents student interactions.
Salesforce rings a great advantage to the university by being able to incorporate so many tools within one software. Before salesforce you had to access all internal systems separately and there was no real way to track the use of these tools by employees. When an individual logs in wither their corporate log in name and password salesforce generates based on roles set up by HR so employees have access to only what they need access to. Technicians have the ability to access student and faculty accounts with ease and when done through service cloud it allows the university to monitor and audit activity to ensure the tool is being used appropriately as well as other tools used by the department. It also alleviates having to search for links to access tools because they are all available within the service cloud application.
The case reporting feature is a very useful tool in service cloud. Each individual that calls in is identified generally by their individual record numbers and connected to that individual is call and previous case history which is extremely beneficial. This allows each technician to see what has already been done to resolve an issue in case of disconnect or other reasons the issue could not be resolved initially. Case reporting is extremely important to our department for a number of reasons, allows management to follow up on cases for coaching opportunities, access to history, and ensures that technicians are following scope of support.
The knowledgebase is a critical part of salesforce. It allows technicians to search a database, created by technicians in the department, to find information or troubleshooting steps to resolve technical issues. This increases productivity by providing articles to technicians to quickly and efficiently resolve technical issues without having to track down knowledge. Every technician also has the ability to make suggestions or create new articles when a new technical issue arises. When technicians use these articles they have the ability to attach them to cases so that similar cases will all be linked by the same article. The updates and