Salesforce AppExchange: A Complete Guide

Introduction

Talking about Salesforce, it is a cloud-based software company that has headquarters in San Francisco, California. It provides an array of services for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools for all the different business segments like sales, marketing, etc. These tools enable them to provide a personalized and smooth experience to all their customers as well as the leads.

In the early 2000s, CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff got into a conversation with Steve Jobs, who then advised him to create a cloud software ecosystem for his platform. In later years, this idea to create a place over the web wherein from all over the world, developers could easily showcase their apps for the Salesforce platform while any Salesforce user could easily access and download them, came to Marc Benioff’s mind.

As a result, AppStore became the first Salesforce store which was launched in 2006 as an extension of Forcedotcom. It was the first applications-based store where one could easily sell off and move towards the distribution of the apps that were built on the Salesforce platform. But, after the launch of the App Store by Apple in 2008, the Salesforce marketplace was renamed as ‘AppExchange’. Salesforce AppExchange Development Company aims to provide optimum Salesforce AppExchange offers to companies in order to provide better support to them when it comes to better potency as well as remarkable profits.

Now, let’s move to the main point of discussion and know about  Salesforce AppExchange Apps and related information in detail. 

What is Salesforce AppExchange?

The Salesforce AppExchange is Salesforce's marketplace for everything related to cloud computing. This further includes cloud applications as well as the consulting services related to Salesforce. The end-users of the Salesforce AppExchange can easily access the marketplace while also being able to download and install apps. The Salesforce AppExchange apps offer both free and paid ones for its users. Applications and services are kept well-organized under various collections within the marketplace, based on their specific categories and industry solutions that include various fields.

For any application or service to be available publicly to prospective customers, the organization that has created the application or service needs to be a Salesforce partner. For the buyers who browse for particular software over the Salesforce AppExchange marketplace, there are many well-known software vendors who offer applications as well as services that would be easily accessible on the marketplace. As these software vendors are companies that are also Salesforce partners, they are further termed as Salesforce App Development Companies.

Cyntexa provides a Salesforce app ChargeOn that is also listed on AppExchange. ChargeOn makes global payment processing and online trade easy by Integrating Stripe with Salesforce.

Don't forget to check out: Publishing an App on Salesforce AppExchange

How big is the Salesforce AppExchange Marketplace?

Salesforce AppExchange is a complete enterprise marketplace solution that aims to provide several cloud-computing applications, solutions, along with consulting services. In 2019, the website recorded 7.5 million installs, 4,000+ solutions, and 90,000 reviews. Furthermore, there are new products launched every week. As discussed in the previous section, a lot of different applications, both free and paid ones can be found here, among which the users can choose the appropriate ones as per the business requirements. 

Moreover, all the Salesforce AppExchange apps and services are divided into four main directions:

• Product Collections: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Platform, Einstein Analytics, Financial Services Cloud, etc.
• Top Categories: finance, human resources, enterprise resource planning, sales, etc.
• Solutions by Types: Apps, Bolt Solutions, Flow Solutions, Lightning Data, and Components
• Industry Collections: communications, education, government, media, retail, etc.

Benefits of Using Salesforce AppExchange Apps:

The main benefits of utilizing Salesforce AppExchange apps to maximize the usage of Salesforce CRM have been discussed briefly as follows:

• Assisting the service agents to offer personalized customer experience: The Salesforce AppExchange apps further helps in providing a better experience of customer services in several ways. Some quite powerful and productive applications always support omnichannel customer service, provide services through the medium of SMS, live chat, telephone contact centers, and more. With direct integration to the Salesforce platform, this application aims to provide service agents with more information that they would require to make the required improvements in customer service.

• Elimination of manual data entry processes and spreadsheets: One of the biggest advantages of the Salesforce AppExchange apps across its various categories and industries is that the manual data entry has been eliminated that has often bound the employees for extra hours or even days. For instance, the Salesforce-based financial apps help in moving spreadsheet data into Salesforce, which in turn helps in minimizing the risk involved with the errors that could occur while performing data entry.

• Managing and tracking projects directly from Salesforce: With the Salesforce AppExchange apps that are further specialized in project management, one could easily begin with the creation of projects from objects, starting the workflows that are based on triggers, centralizing several reports, and also managing projects while using the mobile Salesforce application.

• Onboarding the employees more effectively and efficiently: The Salesforce AppExchange apps also helps the HR (Human Resource) teams of any organization to further become more effective. This is done by providing them appropriate Salesforce training by assigning training modules wherein specific roles and tracking progress will be mentioned and that too within the Salesforce dashboard.

• Automate lead assignment and routing: The Salesforce AppExchange apps also helps in supporting lead routing and related workflows so that there can be automatic lead allocation that is based on any number of criteria, even while managing any contingencies involved.

How to get your application published on Salesforce AppExchange?

There are many companies that provide Salesforce AppExchange Development Services aims at helping companies with the following steps that are involved in getting any solution that is published or consulting service listing on AppExchange:

1. Connect a Packaging Organization to the Publishing Console: To add any package to an AppExchange solution listing, first, the packaging org associated needs to be connected with that package to the Publishing Console on Salesforce Platform.
2. Create or Edit Provider Profile: A provider profile is a key part of initiating customer trust in one’s app, component or consulting service and this is why they are required to be polished as well as accurate. On this profile, one can easily share a mission statement and let the customers know about your location, the number of employees currently, and so on. The users that would be browsing the listings would be able to see this information on the ‘Provider tab’.
3. Create or Edit Your AppExchange Listing: While listing the app on AppExchange, one can also market their solution or consulting service. Furthermore, the listing could be created or edited in a way that it could stand out in front of the customers.
4. Add a Business Plan to an AppExchange Listing: A business plan should be added to the AppExchange listing, before submission of the product for security reviews. This business plan would further include all the necessary details about the company and its related operations, architecture of the product, along with compliance-related information. To add any business plan, go to the product listing in the Salesforce AppExchange publishing console.
5. Make the AppExchange Listing Effective: A great application, component, or consulting service should have a listing that matches it effectively. After accumulating feedback from customers as well as Salesforce marketing experts to impart a list of tips that will eventually help the software vendors to make their listing stand out from the lot.
6. Select an Installation Option: As soon as it becomes quite easier for the customers to install the solution that the vendor is providing, it would become more likely for them to eventually become a paying customer. For the same, one has to ensure that the option so offered to the customer would eventually become their best installation experience.
7. Register the Package and Choose License Settings: If one registers a package and eventually sets up the License Management App (LMA), a license record would be received by them every time a customer moves on with installing that specific application or component. These licenses help in letting one track exactly who all are using their app or component and for how much duration.
8. Complete the Security Review Cycle: For the solution to be distributed over the AppExchange, it has to pass Salesforce’s comprehensive security review. One has to further use the ‘security review submission’ interface in the Salesforce Partner Community to manage these reviews. One needs to submit their solution first for an initial review. Also, ensure to re-submit the solution that needs to be revised to correct the security issues that were detected in a previous review. With the same, security review has to be paid along with the AppExchange listing fees.

If there’s still an issue in understanding or moving forwards with the above-mentioned steps, one can easily take help from a Salesforce App Development Company.

Check out an amazing infographic by Cyntexa here: Different Salesforce Marketing Cloud Products

Conclusion:

In short, Salesforce AppExchange apps aims to be a one-stop solution to increase the customer base along with providing a customized customer experience to the clients and prospective clients every time. The Salesforce AppExchange apps can also help the employees of an organization across several roles, departments, and industries and help them to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. 

Are you looking for some expert guidance on the steps required to build cost-effective yet powerful Salesforce applications on AppExchange? As a Salesforce Silver Consulting Partner, we at Cyntexa would help you to define your AppExchange App idea in a better way, formalize it, devise the best way to build it along with helping you figure out the best strategy to monetize it.

We are the best Salesforce Appexchange partner and the leading Salesforce Application Development Services company and will ensure that your Salesforce AppExchange App is properly developed and listed.