Meet research needs with Salesforce

Salesforce is a robust and powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that is highly configurable and extremely customizable. Salesforce helps develop cloud-based applications, often to replace legacy systems and manual processes. Tools like desktop applications (Filemaker, MS Access), Excel, or just plain manual tracking on paper without a single source of truth can be challenging to track. Salesforce can help track your pipeline and create standard reports for your metrics to help serve your customers better.

Services

Depending on your research needs, you may require an out-of-the-box (OOTB) Salesforce application or a custom-built application.

  • OOTB: An out-of-the-box application gives you standard, already available Salesforce features to use without requiring any custom coding. This includes tracking leads, opportunities, and contacts, replacing applications such as Microsoft Excel, Access, and more.
  • Custom-Built: Certain features, such as integrations external to Salesforce (i.e. integrating people data with Salesforce) and advanced reporting and dashboards, require custom coding.

Pricing: A UCSF Salesforce license can be acquired at no cost. Configuration of an OOTB application can typically range from $20K-$40K and take 4-6 weeks, depending on requirements. Custom builds can range from $40k-80K and take 8-16 weeks, depending on the complexity of the project. Keep in mind that this cost does not include ongoing support, maintenance, or a systems administrator to manage and secure the application.

Directions

  1. Think about what value you are getting from building this app, if it is meeting your business needs, and if it is worth the cost -- not just cost in development, but time and effort to train your staff to become power users, and ongoing support and maintenance.
  2. Contact the Dean’s Office Strategic Programs & Digital Innovation (P&I) unit for an initial consultation or to inquire about Salesforce application builds by reaching out to [email protected].
    • Include high level information about the problem you are looking to solve.

Support

More information about Salesforce at UCSF can be found here.