How is Salesforce CRM Different from Salesforce CMS?

Salesforce is a cloud-based software company developed to help businesses discover more prospects, accomplish deals faster and provide superior customer service. Salesforce offers a single view of customers with Customer 360, a complete suite of products consisting of apps for every aspect of the customer’s journey ranging from lead to loyalty. It seamlessly unites your sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT teams with a unified view of customer information, helping you build healthy relationships with customers and employees alike. According to Salesforce, over 150,000 companies irrespective of their size are expanding their businesses with Salesforce.  

Now coming to the discussion of Salesforce CRM vs Salesforce CMS, we have to keep in mind that the purposes served by both types of software help to shape business solutions. The acronyms may sound similar but they are used to fulfill different business objectives. But undoubtedly, both types of software are useful to businesses of all sizes.  

Before discussing Salesforce CRM vs Salesforce CMS, we will first look at the basic difference between the two.

CRM and CMS: The Difference  

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management which is a technology for managing your company’s aspects of relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. A CRM system efficiently connects companies with customers, streamlines workflow for businesses, and enhances profitability. 

 On the other hand, a Content Management System, CMS, is a software application that helps you to manage your content seamlessly without the necessary technical knowledge. CMS is used to create, edit, publish, record and collaborate digital content. It is mainly used for enterprise content management (ECM) and web content management (WCM).  

What is CRM?

CRM is suitable for any company CRM that is willing to enrich their sales opportunities and capitalize on them. Any organization or company looking for insights to enhance lead management and customer management can opt for CRM solutions.  

With CRM, Sales teams can benefit immensely. Sales Managers as well as Sales Representatives can close more deals way faster than before. In a way, it is very effective for the sales teams to plan and improve their business strategies. Besides, Customer support and service staff can also benefit from CRM. Customer Service Representatives can access contact information and support ticket systems with dexterity. 

A marketing team too can make use of CRM to plan their marketing strategies. Marketing teams can conduct their campaigns by utilizing email marketing automation. Other than salespersons and customer service executives, marketing specialists too can find CRM software extremely convenient and invaluable.   

CRM has a number of providers in the market ranging from open source to proprietary dealing in both simple and sprawling tasks. Among the providers, some of the popular vendors are HubSpot, Salesforce, Insightly, Keap (formerly Infusionsoft), Pipedrive, etc. CRM tools provide a comprehensive approach to their business requirements.  

What is CMS?

As the name suggests, CMS is helpful for anyone who needs a hand in managing website content. This range of content covers everything from blog posts and articles to online e-commerce stores. Graphics, audio and video content too also require CMS solutions for effectively managing their quality content. This implies that CMS have a very wide and diverse range of potential users. 

Individual creators like Website designers, marketers, editors, SEO and digital marketing specialists, small-scale entrepreneurs, and freelancers too make effective use of CMS software. This means anyone with a website requires CMS for planning business strategy and maintaining content sequence.  

CMS is extremely helpful for collaborating on website content creation. This is an indispensable element for all independent digital creators as well as teams working with web operations. A CMS enables teams to collaborate and coordinate all sales, service, support, and marketing activities.  

Well, there are many providers of CMS spread across the market. But unlike CRM, only a small number of vendors dominate the market. In this case, some of the platforms are also free and open-source while others are paid and proprietary. Some of the well-known CMS providers are WordPress, Sqaurespace, Weebly, Drupal, Joomla, Shopify, etc. Some of these are developed for flexibility with an extensive range of practical applications while others focus on specific types of websites.  

CRM and CMS are worlds apart in terms of their services and utility but we can’t deny the fact that both are complimentary. In fact, sometimes the same vendor offers both software solutions. HubSpot is a prominent example in this regard. In 2019, the world’s top-ranked CRM provider, Salesforce also announced their own proprietary CMS. This is why we can say that both the solutions operate hand-in-hand.  

Now we will closely analyze how Salesforce CRM is different from Salesforce CMS.  

Salesforce CRM vs Salesforce CMS 

Salesforce has both CRM and CMS software. But as already mentioned, Salesforce started as a Software as a Service CRM company. But gradually it evolved with time and provides various software solutions and a platform as well for the users to design and distribute custom software applications. It provides a multifaceted architecture and enables customers to share common technology that operates on the latest developments. When Salesforce CRM is already on board no one has to worry about application or infrastructure upgrades because those are done automatically. On the other hand, CMS is a baby software solution within Salesforce as compared to CRM. 

Salesforce came up with the idea of CMS to help novice or expert teams to create content and deliver across multiple channels. It is a hybrid CMS developed to create, edit, organize and manage digital content from a centralized location. The most important aspect of the Salesforce CMS is that everything remains connected to customer data. Only CRM was not enough to provide the customers with a consistent experience, this is why most companies are creating, delivering, and personalizing content to their customers using traditional content management systems which are either outdated or do not fit well for all channels. This is why Legacy Content Management Systems are designed for only a single touchpoint, not an ever-evolving, omni-channel customer journey.  

It has been found by the State of the Connected Customer that 76% of customers expect consistent experiences across departments. This is why Salesforce developed CMS where a user can choose a content type or create custom types, and quickly draft the content in the app where no technical chops are required. CMS is equipped with multi-language and translation support which helps you scale, and permissions help you collaborate while managing brand standards. At the same time content creators can also develop content collections, which are like playlists of content that can be added to different experiences. 

Apart from the objective difference between the two, it has been noticed that the connection of Salesforce CRM and CMS paved the way for better customer service. Andy Jones from NOW, a streaming service from Sky in the U.K opined that “The advantages of connecting CRM and CMS were immediately clear. We saw an obvious path to a better experience.” He is one of the active users of Salesforce CMS who finds it very convenient to create and manage content faster by combining the two solutions.  

Wrapping Up  

Salesforce is one of the most popular and leading CRM solutions now providing a powerful yet simple CMS solution to offer personalized and customer-oriented content. Salesforce CMS enables you to transform your data into content.  Moreover, other than just creating content blindly, teams can embark on the content creation process being informed by customer data. Just think of accessing a CRM record and translating the rows and columns into rich, visual content like a banner, a tile menu, or an engaging promotional CTA. With Salesforce CMS, every team can be an experienced team. This implies that in the long run content creation as well as management and customer experience will be largely benefitted by both Salesforce CRM and Salesforce CMS despite the purposive differences between the two.  

Do you need a Salesforce CRM or CMS solution or both? Can’t decide which one would be appropriate for your organization and website? Get in touch with our experts at Webuters to help you out with the requirements. We at Webuters can guide you to choose the right solution for your business and write your success story.