In early September 2024, Salesforce came up with a game-changing announcement – the launch of Salesforce Foundations. Now, don’t confuse this with Foundation, which is Salesforce’s charitable arm. Foundations is rather a no-cost enhancement to the existing Salesforce CRM. In this article, we are going to dive deep and understand what Salesforce Foundations is all about and how it impacts businesses and Salesforce agencies worldwide. 

What is Salesforce Foundations?

Salesforce Foundations combines sales data with marketing, service, and commerce data and presents it in a unified way. Your existing customers using Sales Cloud and Service Cloud platforms are going to benefit from Foundations as it is going to bridge the features of both platforms, plus a lot more. 

For example, Service Cloud users will gain access to Sales Cloud capabilities and vice versa. Additionally, it will unlock functions like marketing, commerce, data cloud, and Agentforce to the user. This will enable them to deliver seamless, connected customer experiences. The best part is that there are no extra upfront costs for availing Foundations. 

Salesforce Foundations isn’t a standalone product. It’s an upgrade that enriches the existing Salesforce tools with advanced features and a refreshed UI. It ultimately provides a more comprehensive 360-degree customer view.

Salesforce Foundations is available at no additional cost for your customers using these editions:

• Enterprise
• Unlimited
• Einstein 1

Key Features of Salesforce Foundations

Here are the key features of Salesforce Foundations under different business functions:

• Sales
  • Pipeline management
  • Quoting and pricing capabilities
  • Lead and opportunity management
  • Account and contact management
  • Sales Console
• Service
  • Service Console
  • Omni-channel routing
  • Knowledge Management
  • Macros and case management
• Agentforce
  • AI-powered conversational assistant. This will offer support for autonomous apps using LLMs.
• Marketing
  • Data integration from multiple sources
  • Customer segmentation
  • Campaign management through Salesforce Flows
  • Automated marketing journey customization
• Commerce 
  • Direct-to-customer (D2C) storefront setup
  • Pay Now links for fast transactions
  • Checkout experiences
  • Customer experience customization
• General UI/UX
  • Updated left-hand navigation 
  • Customizable homepage cards for quick access to top priorities 
• Extended Apps
  • Access to AppExchange trial apps, including Webex, DocuSign, and RingCentral. This is useful for different tasks like document management, collaboration, surveys, and video conferencing.

How are your clients going to benefit from Salesforce Foundations?

By adopting Salesforce Foundations, your clients can instantly benefit from increased productivity all around. They will gain deeper end-customer insights and achieve more vital team collaboration. After all, Foundations has consolidated multiple key tools into one platform, offering centralized data. 

Apart from this, your clients will also experience AI readiness and simplified case management. Moreover, by bundling robust functionalities at no extra cost, Salesforce Foundations reduces their dependency on third-party tools. This will help them save expenses while driving growth and innovation without added complexity.

For instance, your client’s marketing team will be able to leverage integrated insights from service cases and utilize the data to tailor their campaigns. Similarly, their sales team can streamline the buying process by converting closed deals into payments directly. 

What does this mean for Salesforce agencies worldwide?

While Salesforce Foundations, in itself, offers a myriad of benefits to your clients, you might experience certain downsides as an agency.

For starters, with Foundations combining features from multiple functions, you must ensure that your teams are proficient across all these domains. This demands upskilling, which can be time-consuming and expensive. Most agencies will struggle to meet client expectations for seamless cross-cloud experiences without strong expertise.

Secondly, while Foundations expands the capabilities of Salesforce ecosystems, tailoring these features to fit a client’s specific needs can be daunting. Complex requirements such as creating unique workflows or integrating external systems (even if fewer) will require more developer hours and specialized knowledge. This can stretch your internal resources thin.

Finally, your clients may face challenges adapting to the expanded capabilities and updated UI of Foundations. This can lead to an increased demand for agency-led training and onboarding sessions. You might also have to offer troubleshooting support, adding to your agency’s workload. 

Best solution: Partnering with external expertise

As we have highlighted in the previous section, agencies are going to face heightened workloads with Foundations in the picture. Meeting these demands will require external expertise to supplement your internal resources. This additional support can help you handle surges in client requests, such as configuring advanced features and troubleshooting complex workflows, ensuring timely delivery without sacrificing quality.

Moreover, as clients look to agencies for end-to-end solutions and strategic guidance, the demand for scalable resources will grow. External specialists can step in to handle routine tasks, such as system monitoring, reporting, and client onboarding, freeing your agency’s core team to focus on high-value activities. 

By leveraging external expertise, you can manage the increased workload effectively, maintain client satisfaction, and ensure you’re equipped to deliver on the promises of Salesforce Foundations without overstretching your in-house teams.

About Appglide

With extensive experience in delivering complex Salesforce projects, our team at Appglide understands the dynamic nature of agency workloads and offers scalable support to ensure your client’s needs are met with precision. Our flexible engagement model lets you access expert resources exactly when needed, eliminating the overhead of hiring full-time staff. Our highly skilled team can help you navigate the unique challenges of Salesforce Foundations and ensure efficiency, consistency, and excellence in every project. Contact us to know how we can help.