Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) just announced the release of Essentials providing small businesses for the first time with a variety of apps for what the company calls the number one global CRM platform. Sales Cloud Essentials and Service Cloud Essentials are the first Salesforce Essential apps available.

The apps are backed with the power of Salesforce Trailhead, Einstein AI, Lightning and AppExchange, which will give small businesses access to enterprise-grade CRM solutions. Salesforce says this is going to future-proof businesses in a rapidly evolving digital environment while allowing them to work smarter and faster with a strong focus on customers.

Small businesses spend a considerable amount of time on manual processes. According to Salesforce, this can amount to 23 percent of an averages small business’s workday. This means a quarter of their time could be better used to drive more productive business initiatives, such as growth. Salesforce Essentials has been designed to overcome this challenge in an easy to use platform small organizations can capitalize on.

In a press release, Mike Rosenbaum, Executive Vice President of CRM Applications at Salesforce, said, “With Essentials, we’ve taken the full power of Salesforce and tailored it for the unique needs of small businesses. Essentials is easy to set up and use — and it’s future-proof, so small businesses can add new capabilities quickly and easily as they grow.”

Salesforce Innovation for Small Business

Salesforce Essentials delivers the same innovative solutions and CRM platform used by 83 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Salesforce said the only difference is it has been optimized to address the needs of small businesses.

The tools include using Trailhead to quickly get started with Salesforce and learn what you can do with the technology. Once you know your way around, you can use Salesforce’s AI platform Einstein to work smarter and also work faster with the Salesforce Lightning platform and the Salesforce Mobile App.

When you are up and running, and ready for your next step, scalability will not be an issue because Essentials is built on the world’s No. 1 CRM platform.

The New Apps

Sales Cloud Essentials gives small sales teams the ability to work smarter and sell more quickly by increasing efficiencies in the sales process. Teams can access comprehensive customer history, including activity history, key contacts, customer communications and internal account discussions in one place with Lightning Sales Console. The information, which includes reports and dashboards of company performance, can be accessed from anywhere with the Salesforce Mobile App.

Service Cloud Essentials makes it easy to set up a help desk to deliver personalized customer service instantly. It gives service agents a complete view of all customer interactions in a single and unified desktop view. This lets agents understand the history and context of each call so disputes can be resolved quickly and accurately.

Customers can make contact via phone, email, Twitter or Facebook. And the Service Cloud Mobile app lets agents provide customer service from anywhere.

Salesforce Essentials Launched – Pricing and Availability

The Salesforce Essentials apps, Sales Cloud Essentials and Service Cloud Essentials are available now. They are priced at $25 per month per user, but you can try them at no cost for 30 days.

Image: Salesforce

This article, “New Salesforce Essentials Gives Small Businesses Enterprise Level Tools” was first published on Small Business Trends