It’s the world’s most ubiquitous customer relationship management platform, yet “what is Salesforce used for?” is one of the most searched questions. Salesforce has become a central nervous system for modern business operations – from sales to service, marketing, data strategy, and even AI-powered automation. However, we want to know how customers are actually using it in real organisations.
The Big Picture: Salesforce Adoption at Scale
- Over 150,000 companies worldwide use Salesforce – from startups and SMBs right up to the biggest global brands. It’s the world’s most widely adopted CRM platform.
- It’s entrenched in over 90% of Fortune 500 companies.
- Salesforce holds roughly 23–24% of the global CRM market – more than its next four competitors combined.
Who Uses Salesforce?
There are some commonly cited breakdowns of internal usage that give a good sense of where the platform really gets used – beyond the usual “sales, sales, sales” narrative:
Departmental Usage Estimates
- Sales teams use Salesforce to manage all customer lifecycle stages from lead capture through pipeline and opportunity forecasting (~40% of usage).
- Marketing teams build and track campaigns, segment leads, and monitor engagement (~20%).
- Customer service/support manages cases, issues, SLAs and service histories (~20%).
- IT/Admin teams handle integrations, security, and configurations (~10%).
- Finance & HR are used to a lesser extent for billing workflows, reporting and internal HR processes (~5% each).
This shows that, while Sales Cloud remains the most recognised product, Salesforce isn’t just a sales tool in practice – teams across the business are actively using it.
Product Usage and Adoption Patterns
Salesforce itself breaks down product adoption in useful ways:
Product Adoption Shares
- Sales Cloud is still the most widely deployed product (~40.6% share of product usage).
- Service Cloud’s usage is even slightly bigger (~45.3%).
- Marketing Cloud is growing, but less widely adopted (~14.1%).
While Sales Cloud gets the headlines (and the name recognition), Service Cloud often has a larger footprint. That’s because many organisations prioritise customer service automation, case management, and support tracking – especially as after-sales experience becomes a key competitive differentiator in the modern business landscape, therefore…
Salesforce Isn’t (and Shouldn’t) Just Used for Sales
Despite “Sales” being in the name, the real usage landscape is more varied. If we look at the core suite:
- Service teams are using Salesforce nearly as much – or more – than sales teams in some setups.
- Marketing campaigns and customer engagement tracking via Marketing Cloud and its B2B counterpart, Account Engagement, are major use cases, not just add-ons.
- IT teams play a big role behind the scenes – because Salesforce often becomes the central platform for an organisation’s data, not just a CRM tool.
Industry makeup shapes how Salesforce is used, for example:
- In professional services and consulting, CRM is often used for client engagement and project workflows – not just sales pipeline tracking.
- In financial services, regulatory and security requirements drive Salesforce adoption for compliance, case management, and customer lifecycle tracking.
- In manufacturing and retail, it’s used not just for sales but for operations and supply chain/customer data integration.
How Are People Using Salesforce?
There is evidence to suggest that plenty of businesses aren’t using the Salesforce platform to its full potential. As a consultancy, we see first-hand how, when leveraged correctly, Salesforce transforms from an overhead into a strategic asset. What sets Salesforce apart from many other CRM platforms is its flexibility. You don’t just get a product – you get a platform. Salesforce’s declarative coding (clicks, not code) is highly appealing to users who want a job done quickly and effectively, but now more than ever, leaders are looking for innovative ways to create custom, agentic solutions that set them ahead of the competition.
Low-Code / No-Code
Salesforce Flow allows non-developers to build automated workflows, approvals, integration logic and cross-system processes without writing code. The platform has a substantial breadth of functionality at users’ disposal, without the need to reinvent the wheel. It’s a bit like Lego for business logic.
Custom Development
For more innovative or bespoke needs, developers can build custom apps, APIs, and extensions using Apex and Lightning Web Components. Many organisations essentially build whole line-of-business apps inside Salesforce.
AI & Agents
Salesforce has doubled down on AI with offerings like Einstein, Agentforce and Data 360. These products are at the core of the ‘agentic enterprise’ that can proactively reach out to leads, resolve customer issues, or run marketing tasks on behalf of users. We are still in the early stages of the adoption S-curve with this technology, but it is undeniable that this is the future of work. We at Performa are very excited to see even more companies leverage this aspect of the Salesforce platform and how they go about it.
Underrated Features – And Where Companies Lose Out
Salesforce comes with a boatload of functionality, but most organisations use only a fraction of it. Many teams stick to leads, opportunities, dashboards and basic automation, completely ignoring deeper (and very useful) capabilities.
Underused (and Valuable) Features
Data Cloud & unified profiles: bringing together data from across systems for real-time insights. A missed opportunity here means marketing and sales still don’t actually know their customers.
Advanced analytics & AI forecasting: powerful predictors left turned off are lost profit opportunities.
Process automation beyond email: complex multi-step flows that could shave hours from operations go unused.
AI & automation: Salesforce now prides itself on being a leader in AI, not just ‘CRM’. Artificial intelligence features are now baked into the platform itself, and teams should certainly investigate the plethora of features (even beyond Agentforce) that could be boosting their ROI.
Salesforce has so many features that, according to seasoned admins, most people rarely unlock even half of the platform’s potential. It’s like buying a Formula 1 car and only driving it in school zones.
So, what is the takeaway?
Salesforce is a platform to run an entire business on, not just a Sales tool, and we have started to see other products (Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Agentforce) ramp up on adoption. Businesses are starting to see that utilising Salesforce’s full potential can be a strategic asset, but, on the whole, it is still predominantly used for Sales and Service. The results of leveraging the full 360 suite are irrefutable, so perhaps those uptakes on other products besides Sales Cloud demonstrate that customers understand the potential of the platform more than ever, and using more of the functionality is providing a competitive edge.
With all the whisperings of Salesforce being renamed Agentforce, even if it is all a marketing campaign, Salesforce is clearly confident that ‘Sales’ shouldn’t be the sole focal point.
If used correctly, Salesforce helps teams stop working in silos and start working in concert. That’s the pitch, anyway – and it works remarkably well when properly adopted. And that means leveraging Salesforce outside of the preconceived confines.
Keen to leverage your dormant functionality or get the full picture of what Salesforce could do for your business? Book a call with one of our experts today or visit www.performa-it.co.uk for more info!
More Articles
Don’t Sleep on Salesforce Einstein!
References
Deloitte (2025) Tech Trends 2026: The Agentic Enterprise. [Online] Available at: https://www.deloitte.com/insights [Accessed 21 January 2026].
Enate (2026) 5 reasons why digital transformation projects fail. [Online] Available at: https://www.enate.io/blog [Accessed 21 January 2026].
Gartner (2024) Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center. [Online] Analyst: P. Rathnayake, W. White, D. Kraus. Available at: https://www.gartner.com [Accessed 21 January 2026].
Gartner (2025) Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation Platforms. [Online] Analyst: A. Zijadic, G. Wood, S. Rietberg. Available at: https://www.gartner.com [Accessed 21 January 2026].
IDC (2025) Worldwide Semiannual Software Tracker: CRM Market Share 2024 Revenue. [Online] Available at: https://www.idc.com [Accessed 21 January 2026].
Integrate.io (2026) Salesforce Data Integration ROI Figures: 50 Statistics Every Business Leader Should Know. [Online] Available at: https://www.integrate.io/blog [Accessed 21 January 2026].
Morgan, T. (2025) ‘Salesforce Data Cloud Named Top Leader in IDC MarketScape Report’, Salesforce Ben, 5 February. [Online] Available at: https://www.salesforceben.com [Accessed 21 January 2026].
Salesforce (2024) Salesforce Unveils Agentforce: Autonomous AI Agents for the Enterprise. [Online] Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/news [Accessed 21 January 2026].
Salesforce (2025) State of Data and Analytics Report: The Chasm Between Data Demands and Realities. [Online] Available at: https://www.salesforce.com/uk/news [Accessed 21 January 2026].