ServiceNow Vs Salesforce: Which Career Path To Choose?

IDC has ranked Salesforce as the #1 CRM in 2024, while the ServiceNow market is predicted to reach a whopping $23.6 billion by 2028. Both cloud platforms are prominent names in the industry with promising growth opportunities. However, they cater to different business needs and functions. Choosing the right career path between these two leading platforms can be challenging. To make this decision-making process simpler for you, this blog aims to provide a comprehensive comparison of both technologies. 

Before we learn more about ServiceNow Vs Salesforce, let’s understand what each of these platforms are aimed to do. 

About Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud-based platform primarily for Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It is focused on enhancing customer interactions, sales, and marketing efforts for an organization, irrespective of the industry. It offers a suite of applications like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, etc. It can help you effectively manage customer data, track sales activities, and automate marketing campaigns. All of these features are aimed to improve customer satisfaction and profitability of the organization.

While it is a CRM tool at its core, it does have some ITSM capabilities. However, we can confidently conclude that it is designed more for sales and service agents than IT teams.

About ServiceNow

ServiceNow started as an IT Service Management (ITSM) tool, which has now evolved into a cloud platform with multiple offerings. Being an ITSM, it does not manage sales, leads and conversions; rather it enhances operational efficiency within an organization. It provides digital workflows to streamline and automate business processes such as IT operations, Human Resources, Customer Service Management, and more. With these functions integrated into a single system, it aims to optimize issue resolution for customers and internal teams. 

It has limited CRM capability and mainly functions on the ITSM module. While it does offer customer management tools like customer profiles, direct email capabilities, agent workspaces, customer self-service, and actionable case flows, it doesn’t provide robust sales pipeline capabilities as Salesforce does.

ServiceNow vs Salesforce: Key Differences Explained

While both platforms operate in the cloud and help improve business processes, their primary functions are different. As we mentioned above, Salesforce is centred around CRM, and ServiceNow focuses on ITSM. The former manages customer relationships to drive sales growth, and the latter automates workflows to improve internal processes and service delivery. 

However, there are many features and factors to compare these two platforms. See the table below for a ServiceNow vs Salesforce comparison:

Salesforce Career Paths

Salesforce has multiple cloud solutions for businesses in every industry. Thus, it offers a wide array of career opportunities as well. You can begin your journey in Salesforce as an admin and then proceed to follow the path that interests you and compliments your skills. 

A career in Salesforce can lead to various roles, including:

• Salesforce Administrator: An Admin manages and customizes the Salesforce platform for organizations while handling user permissions. 
• Salesforce Developer: A developer in Salesforce builds custom applications and integrations on the Salesforce platform. This role requires coding and technical knowledge.
• Salesforce Quality Assurance: QA takes care of testing the customizations or applications built by developers. They are important in maintaining the SFDC. 
• Salesforce Business Analyst: If you are more inclined towards managing the smooth functioning of business processes in an organization using Salesforce, then the Business Analyst profile is suitable for you.
• Salesforce Consultant: They advise businesses on how to implement and optimize Salesforce solutions. This role requires both technical and business knowledge.
• Salesforce Architect: An Architect is a professional role with years of experience and expertise in Salesforce. This role requires you to know all Salesforce solutions.

Future and Growth

The demand for Salesforce professionals continues to grow as more businesses adopt CRM solutions to enhance customer engagement. The Salesforce economy is predicted to generate 11.6 million jobs by 2028. It has a strong market presence in the CRM industry, and thus, opportunities revolve around CRM. Due to continuous innovation and AI integration, Salesforce has become a standard in the industry with a promising career trajectory.

ServiceNow Career Paths

The possibilities in the ServiceNow career are endless. With ITSM as a core solution, it has diversified into many other domains through the years. This presents ample opportunities, such as a ServiceNow Admin Career and a ServiceNow Developer career. 

Here are the major ServiceNow career paths and the roles:

• ServiceNow Administrator: Similar to Salesforce, ServiceNow Admins oversee and manage the platform. They ensure that it meets the requirements of the organization.
• ServiceNow Developer: In this role, you will be responsible for developing custom applications and workflows within the ServiceNow environment. 
• ServiceNow Consultant: with knowledge of both administration and development, you can move to consulting ServiceNow solutions for businesses.
• ServiceNow Implementor: This profile will require you to guide organizations in implementing and optimizing ServiceNow solutions. This profile entails various specializations such as ITSM, ITOM, HRSD, CSM, etc. 
• ServiceNow Architect: The Architect role is the highest profile in ServiceNow. If you gather knowledge and credentials for all other career paths, then you can be an Architect. You will be designing solutions and orchestrating the execution. 

Future and Growth

ServiceNow is a well-known name in the ITSM industry. As organizations increasingly seek to automate internal processes and improve IT service management, the demand for ServiceNow professionals is on the rise. It is set to bring in demand for 34 million ServiceNow professionals in the next five years. The platform initially started with ITSM but has now expanded into various business functions. This further enhances career prospects for beginners as well as professionals looking for job opportunities.

Which Career Path to Choose?

So, now that you know the difference between ServiceNow and Salesforce, which career path should you choose?

The choice should align with your interests and career goals. Both industries have great opportunities and various options available. 

• Choose Salesforce if you are passionate about customer relationship management, sales processes, and marketing strategies. The platform is tailored to bring customers and businesses together, and you can be the one helping them. From admin to development, the demand for each role is high and comes with great compensation. 
• Choose ServiceNow if you are interested in IT service management, workflow automation, and improving internal business processes. If you want to build solutions for large organizations for their functioning, then you should go with ServiceNow. With its diverse cloud offerings for ITSM, Operations, Human Resources, and more, it allows you to explore domain-specific roles. 

To Sum Up

Both Salesforce and ServiceNow are robust cloud platforms with a multitude of solutions in the tech industry. The opportunities available in the market for both career paths are also amazing. Understanding the key differences between both of them is important to make an informed decision. This will help you come to a conclusion based on the alignment of your career aspiration with each ecosystem. The above guide will help you follow the most suitable path in the future. No matter what platform you choose to master, guided training from experts will be beneficial to step into the job market. Certifications can further enhance your prospects in either field.