8 Must-Have Salesforce Apps in 2021
The introduction of the smart phone became an indispensable part of our lives, as it introduced an entire ecosystem of apps. There is an app for everything: banking, utilities, real estate and so forth. They, in turn, allow us to have a great deal of efficiency and access to information all in one place. Likewise your smartphone, Salesforce’s universe has its own galaxy of apps designed to enrich its core — CRM product. And our senior Salesforce consultant Chris Petersen shares her list of all-time favorite Salesforce apps.
In this digital age, it is hard to picture a time we didn’t rely on a phone or computer to direct our personal and professional lives. Mobile phones, before they became smart, were just flip phones; with very basic features like contact storage (or a virtual rolodex) and making outbound/taking inbound calls. Now, our phones became a full-fledge arsenal of multi-purpose apps: from lifestyle to business-oriented ones.
Think about your personal and professional day and the tools you use to boost your productivity.
Our AscendixRE CRM, built on the Salesforce platform, is just like your smartphone. It excels at helping you store, dissect, track, report, and analyze your data. However, imagine how much more effective you could be if you leveraged your investment by incorporating apps into your database.
Salesforce, being on the cutting edge of innovation, knew that businesses would need more than a CRM; they would need apps to make use of all the information collected in the database. Thus, the birth of the Salesforce AppExchange — a marketplace of business-to-business apps, that can plug into Salesforce to amplify the usage of CRM.
The AppExchange can be an overwhelming place, with thousands of apps, that are compatible with certain versions of Salesforce, and varying pricing levels — it practically takes a seasoned person to comb through those apps that may be useful to your business.
Having partnered with Salesforce for the last 7 years, Ascendix has had both the time and the experience to determine which apps are critical in amplifying our client’s CRM experience.
8 Best Salesforce Apps to Power Up Your Salesforce Org
- Ascendix Search
- FormStack
- MailChimp
- PhoneIQ
- ZoomInfo
- BOFC (Bulk Object Field Creator)
- Duplicate Check
- Salesforce Org Doctor
Here is our shortlist of apps for increased Salesforce Org productivity:
1. Ascendix Search — Advanced Search App
Extracting the necessary data can be an uneasy task in Salesforce, especially if you have to get information filtered by multiple criteria at a time. Ascendix Search app was created to enhance general Salesforce search functionality and enrich data management experience.
Our advanced search and filtration tool helps you to build lists of prospects, Salesforce related lists, search any objects and export these search results to Excel, save them or share with your teammates.
Extended search operators like maps and charts allow to filter results in a more visually convenient form within your Salesforce instance. With the map search you can create geometric shapes or a polygon over a map, measure distances between points, filter to create a query that displays a list view and with pins on the map.
In-built Ascendix Search ‘s features like mass update, mass edit, mass transfer, and mass email in a few clicks will streamline complicated and time-consuming tasks.
Moreover, our app is easy to set up and doesn’t require custom coding to start levering its benefits. Just download, deploy, and enjoy!
Ascendix Search app is compliant with Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Force.com, Performance editions and doesn’t have any special prerequisites for the system.
Its pricing starts at $15 USD per user/month and can be enhanced with additional features like automated lead capture, custom listing portal.
2. Formstack — Salesforce Document Generation App
With a plethora of data stored in a database, it is very common that this information could be useful to external constituents. Integrating Formstack allows the data from your Salesforce records to be merged into a Word, PDF, PowerPoint or Excel templated document, that you could then generate out of CRM and send to any external parties.
Due to Formstack you can import your existing documents and forms, or create professional-looking documents from scratch with a document generator. Multiple delivery options allow you to seamlessly integrate document generation into your workflows and deliver information to clients fast.
Formstack helps you merge your Salesforce data into a document to create:
This app is available for Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Developer, Performance editions and has no additional system requirements. Moreover, Formstack is Salesforce1 Mobile-friendly.
Subscription costs varies depending on the # of unique templates and # of merges per month.
Engaging in a discussion with Ascendix can help you determine which plan is best suited for your team. You may also want to purchase Salesforce integration services from Ascendix, to set up the templates on your behalf.
3. MailChimp — Salesforce Contact List Synchronizing and Mass Email App
“ How can I reach my target audience?” is a question many clients ask when looking for an email marketing solution. MailChimp for Salesforce provides a solution that allows you to segment data inside Salesforce into selectively targeted lists within MailChimp.
By syncing Mailchimp and Salesforce you can view campaign stats and subscriber activity history, manage your contacts and subscribers, access Mailchimp’s marketing tools, and more.
All you need to do is set the syncing criteria inside of Salesforce and tie it to an existing MailChimp list. Once a day MailChimp will then automatically pull all contacts from Salesforce that match your sync criteria into MailChimp.
As of editions, it is available for Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Force.com, Developer, Performance ones. The system requirements are the following: if you have enabled the built-in integration with Salesforce within Mailchimp you may risk adversely high Salesforce API call volumes when used in conjunction with Mailchimp Integration App so your org will also require API access.
4. PhoneIQ — Click to Dial/Salesforce Phone Integration App
If you find yourself making plenty of outbound calls to clients or prospects, this app will really enhance your efficiency. With Phone IQ, you can click to dial a contact’s phone # from Salesforce directly, and have that activity be immediately captured.
This telephony app delivers fully integrated voice, video and messaging across desktop and mobile and allows you to leverage automatic call logging, disposition codes, tags, click to dial, screen pop, auto dialing and much more.
You can create your own call lists, and power dial from one contact to the next. You can also have reports or dashboards set up so you determine to outcomes of your calls. You can capture inbound calls similarly. The best part is that it’s all cloud-based and does not require any complex set up or hard wiring.
Pricing varies depending on features you would like. It starts at $25/user/month and goes up to $75/user/month. You can mix and match user subscription levels or only apply this app to some users, and not others. Training & Onboarding is included.
5. ZoomInfo — Salesforce Sales Intelligence App
It goes without saying, sales intelligence is a critical part of the success of using a platform like Salesforce. How great would it be to have direct access to key decision makers that would influence your selling cycles?
A ZoomInfo integration allows you to search for any contact or company and quickly add that info to your Salesforce database. You can also update or enhance existing Contacts or Accounts if you believe the info you have is stale and could use some freshening.
With this sales intelligence tool you can uncover emerging opportunities from practical, predictive intelligence and improve and personalize conversations with insights about news, projects, installed technologies, initiatives, company attributes, and personnel changes.
This app is available for Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited editions and doesn’t have additional system requirements.
The ZoomInfo integration with Salesforce requires a separate Salesforce REST API for automated data Enrichment. REST API access to only required for automated Enrich.
6. BOFC (Bulk Object Field Creator) — Salesforce Administration App
BOFC app is designed for admins that must perform functions in bulk. Examples include, adding up to 200 fields at a time to a form. Bulk deleting fields. Bulk updating fields. Data analysis of which fields are most or least used in the database.
This administration app is available for Enterprise, Unlimited, Force.com, Developer, Performance editions and has no specific system requirements.
There is usually a subscription cost to this app, however it is free to Ascendix clients, as we have paid for it on the behalf of our clients. Contact our consultants to find out more about advantages of this.
7. Duplicate Check — Salesforce Data Cleansing App
Duplicate data is a very common problem across organizations. And despite all efforts to avoid duplicates from being imported into Salesforce, it ultimately is still a nuisance that can cause mistrust in the data quality or simply be a time-consuming effort to cleanse the duplicates.
Although, Salesforce does have a duplicate check for Contacts and Companies only, it is done on a record by record basis; this means you have to manually merge each duplicate record you come across.
With the Duplicate Check app you can generate reports so you can view all duplicates at once and you can auto-merge duplicates if you wish. You can also de-duplicate any other custom objects, beyond the standard Contact & Company.
Duplicate Check is compatible with Salesforce Shield and is available for Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, Developer, Performance editions. This data cleansing tool has no additional system requirements for the integration.
The most popular plan is Advanced, for $299 a year (for an unlimited # of Salesforce users).
8. Salesforce Org Doctor — An Admin Tool
Salesforce Org Doctor is a free tool that will scan your org and provide a PDF report detailing the health of your system. It includes metrics for comparing your org’s code against the best-practices benchmark values, such as how many different API versions you might be using or your total test coverage.
It can also help you with knowing what objects and record types are not being used to greater simplifier your org. You can even get insight regarding the usage of your system by seeing how many users haven’t logged in during the last 30 days.
Besides your production environment you can check health of your sandbox org before deploying it.
In conclusion, there are hundreds of apps you can comb through and try out, based on your business needs and requirements. Because that can be a time consuming process, Ascendix has vetted these apps and can verify that they are easy to use, won’t overly extend your budget and will be of great assistance in leveraging your day-to-day use of Salesforce.
Chris is a Salesforce-certified administrator with 7+ years of experience in Salesforce consulting services, administration, app integration, organization of clients’ trainings and data analytics and migration.
Originally published at https://ascendix.com on December 1, 2020.
