With around 22 percent market share, Salesforce is a leading name in CRM. Over 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies also rely on Salesforce for daily operations. However, only a few utilize this platform to its full potential. Businesses have to overcome various challenges while leveraging the platform. Most companies need help defining goals, which causes uncertainty and a lack of focus. In contrast, others may need help tracking and measuring progress. Businesses must also confirm that the Salesforce deployment advances their objectives.
However, how does one Implement Salesforce within the organization? It is a complex process. It is precisely where the “hacks” or best practices are helpful. They optimize and streamline the deployment process, allowing companies to tailor the platform to their unique needs. So, let’s dive in and explore the top five essential hacks you must be familiar with to excel at the implementation process.
Understanding Salesforce Implementation In Detail
Salesforce implementation involves rolling out the CRM while integrating it with other core business deliverables. This process incorporates three attributes: operational, analytical, and collaborative. Implementing Salesforce CRM for your company should begin with a well-rounded strategy. Salesforce is the greatest CRM system available today in an ever-changing market. But you must do more than purchase, install, and start making profits.
It is designed to integrate with other customer touchpoints, thereby ensuring a seamless experience. However, businesses must adopt a holistic approach, as the road ahead with Salesforce for a company is more complex. The platform boasts numerous features that can help your business soar. Still, you need an in-depth understanding to extract the complete potential.
Before discussing hacks for successful Salesforce implementation, let’s touch on the benefits you get from practical implementation.
Why Effective Salesforce Implementation Is Worthful?
A global report has revealed that companies using Salesforce have shown 25% IT cost savings and a 26% increase in employee productivity. These numbers signify why implementing Salesforce is worthwhile for your business.
Boost Email Click-Through Rates
With the Salesforce email marketing tool, marketers can track metrics like CTR, open rates, and conversions. Further, Salesforce assists you in designing and sending personalized campaigns to better align with the customers’ needs. It also helps with automated emails, thereby saving both time and effort. Advanced analytics and report generation tools make it easier to measure the success/failure of your campaigns. It seamlessly integrates with Salesforce to generate proper customer insights.
Improvement In Lead Conversion Process
Research has revealed that firms that proceed with Salesforce services have been able to improve their lead conversion by up to 30%. Leads generated through marketing hold the potential to generate revenue for a business.
However, some people need help bridging the gap between generating inquiries and closing the deal. Lead conversion, a Salesforce feature, helps businesses slowly transform promising leads into closed deals. It consists of a set of steps that a sales representative takes, from lead records to accounts, contacts, and opportunities.
Easy Integration With Existing Apps And Systems
Salesforce has a comprehensive infrastructure with a wide range of native products. These include Sales, Marketing, Service, and Experience Cloud, each designed to offer various categories of sales and marketing services. Integrating Salesforce with e-commerce platforms, customer service software, and marketing automation platforms is also easy.
Quickly Customizable Based On Business Needs
Every business is unique in terms of challenges and goals. Therefore, they need highly customizable solutions. The ability to customize the CRM to meet the company’s unique needs falls under the general category of “flexibility,” which is a fundamental aspect of Salesforce. It allows businesses to personalize singular elements like data fields, layouts, and report generation features.
Strong Support And Community Ecosystem
The platform enables users to access a thriving community for support. Salesforce also offers massive documentation, FAQ support, and training resources to help you on its platform. Call anytime and ask for support regarding any issue you face.
Implementation includes migrating the existing data, overcoming stakeholder resistance, overcoming integration obstacles, and much more. With the appropriate strategy and assistance, common obstacles are readily overcome. You need to understand at the onset that the implementation of Salesforce is not just another software rollout but a key to organizational growth and successful customer relationship management.
Crack The Success Formula With These Five-Step Salesforce Implementation Hacks
Design And Discovery
Before you start deployment, you must thoroughly understand your goals and what you want to achieve. It includes identifying personas and prioritizing requirements.
A design sprint is essential for understanding your target audience and industry trends. It’s also critical to comprehend their wants and difficulties in this situation. Organize all your points and align them with the audience. A comprehensive development plan at this stage will help you tackle various issues in the project architecture.
Discovery involves planning the tasks at hand and working out the deliverables. It includes a complete system walkthrough, analysis of business challenges, identification of gaps, and a technical review. Management reviews several reports to finalize the ultimate requirement for deployment.
Development And Deployment
Once you have everything documented, you can start adopting the measures laid down by the Salesforce implementation guide. Agile and waterfall are the primary development methods that can help with documentation. These methods offer distinctive advantages for iterative progress and flexibility. First, the backlog is established, followed by the development process, which paves the way for production.
These form the framework for managing decisions, risks, particular actions, and uncertainties related to software deployment. Various tools, including change sets, SalesforceDX, and the DevOps center, are used in the deployment stage.
Testing And QA
Once the development is done, the following steps are testing and QA. The product demonstration occurs at this stage, where the stakeholders share the model. After that, feedback is taken, and changes are implemented. Bugs are fixed during this stage. Testing also includes code review covering both functional and non-functional testing. The former covers the application’s core functionality, while the latter covers scalability and usability.
Launch And Support
Once you have fixed all the bugs, it is time for a live beta and product launch. After you fix all the bugs found in the last stage, you can move ahead with beta live. Before launching to the general public, a beta version must be made available. This stage proceeds with identifying bugs again and fixing them. Changes are incorporated into the backlog for further deployment.
Set Up Metrics For Measuring Success
Adhering to the requirements outlined for the four steps mentioned above is crucial. The project’s success is directly linked to a clear understanding of the customized configurations or changes Salesforce brings to your organization. Therefore, discussing and reviewing every feature you plan to implement with the Salesforce implementation team is essential, ensuring everyone has complete visibility into all new developments.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure, so it’s also essential to define clear goals and metrics to gauge the success of your CRM implementation. Set specific targets, such as increasing lead flow by 20 percent or reducing customer churn rate by 10 percent.
Best Practices For Salesforce Implementation
Here are a few Salesforce implementation tips to help you successfully deploy the process in your organization.
Identification Of Important Goals And Challenges
You must involve various teams across the organization to discuss expectations and challenges and then identify whether they can be resolved through software deployment. It will help prioritize tasks and set realistic expectations regarding the software.
Recording All Internal Processes And Daily Tasks
It is the stage where you need to understand and write down your team’s daily workflow, ask your team members to document their processes in writing, and identify areas for improvement.
Deciding On The Project Duration And Costing
You must also ensure that your Salesforce project is distinct from others, which can lead to resource shortage. You must write down the critical timelines and plan the implementation phases and testing schedules.
Establish Clear Communication Channels
It would help if you also ascertained the communication channels critical to meeting the Salesforce implementation goals. Effective communication is highly desirable among those implementing the software, the stakeholders, and internal teams.
Assigning Key Roles And Responsibilities
Some key stakeholders you must include in the process are senior management, users, sales and marketing teams, channel partners, IT teams, and customers. A primary stakeholder takes charge of the project, while the others may assume the single point of contact role.
Checking Of Business Data
Before initiating the Salesforce CRM implementation, you must ensure all your data is correct and up-to-date. It will help ensure smooth integration and migration. You must also develop a change management plan to help things move smoothly without disrupting the typical workflow.
Understanding Salesforce Features
Before the transition, you must clearly understand the CRM’s aesthetics and usability. This understanding helps analyze system capacities and manage expectations surrounding the new business processes the company will eventually have to adjust to.
Concluding Remark
For businesses all over the world, Salesforce has changed the game. For business optimization, almost every company uses Salesforce these days. Hiring a Salesforce implementation specialist might help lower the likelihood that you won’t be happy with the finished outcome. Seek partners who understand the ins and outs of your particular sector. So, why do you hesitate? Put Salesforce into practice right now.
About Us: Algoworks is a B2B IT firm providing end-to-end product development services. Operating chiefly from its California office, Algoworks is reputed for its partnership with Fortune 500 companies such as Amazon, Dell, Salesforce, and Microsoft. The company’s key Salesforce Services include: Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Experience Cloud, AppExchange Apps, Salesforce Consulting Services etc. For more information, contact us here.
Pratyush Kumar
