Sales reps aren’t known for loving details. Details can drag down their central goal: making sales.

As a result, sales reps want to close deals, not spend time inputting the notes from a client meeting or details on a customer account that needs action. Having reps enter data like this has often been a nonstarter.

The aim of the Salesforce Sales Cloud is to change that problem, since data is the currency of all business operations today. The application strives to make data entry easy, requiring a limited number of mouse clicks. It’s also relatively easy to share data between the app and other Salesforce apps, such as the Marketing Cloud and the Service Cloud or with third-party, such as email or mobile applications.

The Sales Cloud is also the most proven of all Salesforce apps, though there are pros and cons of Salesforce. According to the “State of Salesforce” report, 85% of respondents have adopted the Sales Cloud. Conversely, 51% use Salesforce Service Cloud and 40% use Marketing Cloud.

Much of the success of the Salesforce platform hinges on its usability. According to the State of Salesforce report, 75% of respondents say that Salesforce offerings make it easy to do their jobs. As a result, the quality of account data can improve: Instead of having sales accounts with only partial, duplicate or outdated information, sales reps can fill out all the fields and be part of creating CRM data that is clean, accurate and complete.

And if there is any doubt that clean, accurate data is an issue for sales teams — and for organizations as a whole — consider these numbers: According to Gartner, CRM departments that lack data management tools can come to false or wrong results that alienate customers, resulting in a 25% reduction in revenue. And Experian Data Quality found that inaccurate data undercut the bottom line for 88% of companies.

But Sales Cloud can present some challenges. According to the “State of Salesforce,” mobile CRM is still an area of improvement for respondents, with 61% of Sales Cloud users saying they want an easier mobile experience. In this guide to the Sales Cloud, we look at some of its virtues and its sticking points. First, SearchSalesforce explores how Sales Cloud has helped bring together disparate data systems under one roof. Next, we look at how Sales Cloud is bringing together previously siloed departments, such as sales and service. Finally, we sit down with William Moxley, Salesforce’s senior vice president of product management, to discuss the Sales Cloud roadmap.

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