CRM

Customers continue to be the most important assets for any organization and to ensure long-term relationship with your customers, it’s important to cater to their needs in the best possible way. One of the most effective ways of doing so, is to constantly upgrade your products and services, in a way that fulfils the evolving requirement of your customers. In other words, create new version of your products through new releases and upgrades. If you are leveraging the Salesforce platform, you will have to keep pace with all the upgrades that it keeps releasing time and again. What is Salesforce Upgrade? Salesforce releases new upgrade from time to time and to improve the performance, logic, and usability of your software, it is essential to upgrade it to the new version. Besides releasing regular upgrades that could be used to improve a products functionality and performance, Salesforce has illustrated seamless upgrades that are critical to customer success. Salesforce takes up to five minutes for upgrades and users will not see any difference when using the new Salesforce release. Changes with the new release will not activate by default and only salesforce admin can activate the new features using the Setup menu. What is the Impact on Interface? During the upgrade, our customizations are preserved, and Salesforce gives the same effects having the same consequences. During the upgrade, the Session Id is inactivated, and if any interface is running at that time, we’ll get ‘INVALID_SESSION_ID’ error. We cannot run our batches during the upgrade period, as the upgrade window can break our batch, we’ll have both valid and invalid data in our org. To manage this, what we need to do is: Monitor the validation/deployment results and check the post-deployment steps. If we need to run a batch after deployment checks the execution result of the batch. If it failed, we have to run it again. This has an impact on our scheduling (stop cascade batches and implement a retry every 30 minutes for example) We need to plan our batches after or before the upgrade period. We need to implement to run the same batch once again to continue the process without altering the data already processed. For a batch update to keep data consistency, we need to use transactions. It is native for batch Apex, but when using the API (custom development, ETL connector (i.e. TALEND, dataloader, etc.), we are not able to keep data integrity. The only way to keep it is by creating Apex Webservices that will be accessed by our batch. Is there any impact on Connected Users? During upgrade all the users need to invalidate their Session Idso that they are unable to connect the Salesforce until the upgrade process has finished. Users receive an error message letting them know that the service is unavailable during the upgrade and are prompted to log in again when the upgrade is complete. To manage this, we need to do: Share an upgrade timeline plan with all users so they know when you will upgrade, and how often Inform the user when they can log in into the system Share the new document, if any, if there is a change in the Salesforce UI/UX Best Practices to be followed If the Salesforce upgrade is not planned, there might be cases where end-users may not be able to access Salesforce after the completion of the update. In order to avoid unexpected service disruptions, we may need to take the following actions: 1) Enable “My Domain” NOTE: “My Domain” is required for customers who have requested the org migration. 2) Update the hard-coded references if any, for e.g. test-abc.salesforce.com and make sure to update them to the right URLs (for example, <yourdomain>.salesforce.com, abc.salesforce.com) prior to the org migration. Also, if there is any hardcoded Id in the code, make sure to update them dynamically. 3) If the Salesforce org has set up corporate network settings or any email security filters to restrict the access to only certain IP ranges, make sure to update the lists to include the newest ranges. You can whitelist the IP ranges in the Network Setting of Salesforce. 4) If there is an issue in integration following the maintenance, prepare to refresh integrations. Why to Upgrade and what are the benefits? Salesforce has the capability to work with earlier released features even if those features are supplanted by new functionality. Salesforce keeps all customers on a single version—i.e. the most recent version—of the product. Therefore, Salesforce provides the same experience, coolest Feature, advancement on compatibility and the latest bug fixes. Conclusion It is very much required to upgrade the Salesforce version to the latest release as it can eliminate the technical risks involved during the implementation. We understand that there could be a service disruption for couple of minutes but it is must have for your organisation since it could also increase your productivity. As we know that Change is the only Constant, hence we all must go with the flow and suggest the users/clients to upgrade to the newest version as soon as it is live. About Girikon:  Girikon is a Salesforce Consulting Partner, committed to deliver excellence by providing customers with wide array of quality services including Salesforce implementation, Salesforce consulting and Salesforce support.

Gartner predicts that by 2020, all new entrants and 80% of historical vendors will offer subscription-based business models, regardless of where the software resides. The challenge which companies following the subscription based model faces is of having a strong sales pipeline.    A sales pipeline is a journey with a set of stages that a prospect moves through, in order to become a customer from a lead. Once each pipeline stage is completed, the prospects are advanced to the next stage till it reaches the final stage i.e. Closed Won/Won.   These days’ companies spend enormously on building their Sales Pipeline as having a strong sales pipeline helps companies generate more revenue. It won’t be incorrect to say that the sales pipeline acts as a backbone of a business. By having Bulk Rebook feature in your CRM you can build a strong sales pipeline with just one click. It will help you create asales pipeline where initial nurturing of the leads will be already done and they will be on the lateral stages. Your 70% work will be taken care by the Bulk Rebook and you will be on the Proposal/Quote generation stage(as you can see in the below image) from where you will generate the Proposal and send it over to the prospect. Advantages Below are few advantages of having Bulk Rebook in your CRM; It will ease your work of building a strong sales pipeline as it will create a sales pipeline with all the potential buyers with their exact needs. It will reduce the number of clicks in closing the deal as all the important information related to prospect will be captured by the Bulk Rebook. It will save your time and efforts to nurture the Leads as it will already be nurtured and hence it will save your money. It will even bring in all the information associated with the prospects like the past requirements, new requirements, glimpse of their budget etc. With all the important information present, the Sales Rep will be able to pitch the right product/services. It will enable bettersales and revenue Sales Reps will be able to create better quotes within no time. Negotiation time will be reduced significantly. It will provide us early insights of salesin the next subscription period. Proposal generation time can be reduced and hence will result in reducing the time to convert the prospects to customers. Bulk Rebook can be customized; companies can bring in the information associated with the prospects of their choice for quick and effective decision making. Conclusion The importance of having Bulk Rebook is evident from the fact that it leads to significant improvements in the levels of sales closures, sales administration time, and sales cycle timing. All these and many more advantages of having Bulk Rebook in your CRM software undoubtedly help you stay at the top of your league. About Girikon Girikon a Salesforce Consulting Partner based out in the USA with presence across Australia and India. They house a team of Certified and experienced Salesforce Consultants, administrators and developers who offer end-to-end services to global clientele.

Salesforce is very handy in terms of integrating it with different platforms. It has allowed various platforms to sync resulting in enhanced user experience. This package is also an integrated package resulting in an outstanding outcome. This package utilizes Twilio API to enable direct SMS from Salesforce as more than 50% prospects prefer SMS over emails. This package is developed on the Salesforce platform, allowing scheduling of Single / Bulk SMS / MMS campaigns from Objects and Reports. It empowers organizations to reach out to more customers quicker with Salesforce via scheduling features that use workflows to send the customize customer-specific messages. The features of this package include, ● Individual & Bulk SMS / MMS ● Customized email template ● Interactive Chat window ● SMS notification on email ● Schedule SMS / MMS on the weekly/monthly basis ● SMS from Reports ● SMS History ● SMS usage tracking ● SMS OptOut feature The user can create customizable SMS templates with dynamic field values and interactive emojis that give users an individual touch and allows tracking of all the SMS sent to their customers that provides a consolidated repository of SMS activities. The businesses can keep the record of SMS usage in a graphical arrangement determining Outgoing SMS, Incoming SMS, etc.

A lot of business users work on the Salesforce CRM. If you are a Salesforce admin then it is important to create a system which eases the process of adding leads, working on the opportunity, creating reports, etc. Small factors, proper display of primary fields which needs attention if taken care can lead to a smooth & glitch-free system.

Salesforce Community – A branded space for your employees, customers, and partners to connect. Different business encounters different problems and consequently in order to fulfil the varied business requirement we need a hundred different solutions. Salesforce is the most commonly used CRM tool around the globe, introduction to the community helps business users collaborate among staff, funders, members, volunteers and other supporters. The launch of such platform has made business users connected with all the customers on a single place as per their shared interest. Some businesses have also adopted this platform as a standalone platform in managing their client relationship. What is Salesforce Community Cloud? Community Cloud is a social platform from Salesforce.com that is designed to connect and facilitate communication among an organization’s employees, partners and customers. For example, if your customer wants to know how many different products are there for choice, he doesn’t have to wait for your team to respond, he can see all the list on the community portal. If the company had a million customers and had to face a million requests a month its satisfying to present the customer with an updated database. The solution to the problem is given by Salesforce in form of Community cloud that gives all the customers access to the Salesforce data so that they themselves can reach the product list and can also filter them as per their significance. Apart from this, the business user can manage the access level of all the customers as per their association with the business. This is all taken charge by the Salesforce in order to maintain specific information visible to the users as there may be millions of customers and all they have the different type of involvement with the business. It is an awesome way to share information, collaborate internally on projects/tasks, or communicate with customers in a more personalized way. Salesforce community cloud is accessible with Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer editions of Salesforce. Communities can serve a business by, 1. Driving more sales by connecting your team with your distributors, resellers, and suppliers.> 2. Delivering world-class service by giving customers one spot to get all their solutions within least time. 3. Managing social listening, content, engagement, and workflow in one place. The use of community cloud may vary business by business, however, in the nutshell, it’s a way to share information accumulated in Salesforce without building costly users. There are many features on the community cloud and many tricks on how it can help drive your business smoothly. Communities allow creating user ID and Passwords, or access for the users. However, instead of manually creating access, a business can leverage Salesforce’s Social Sign-on features. This allows access to the community through different social networks like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Google, or even leverage Salesforce, Amazon, or even Azure Active Directory to permit login. Salesforce also supports OpenID Connect standard. It also has some pre-built templates for business use and also gives the advantage to create front-end templates for community portal. For most simple use-cases, the user can customize it little for specific needs. However, giving it better look and feel business users prefer designing it via custom Visualforce force pages. The custom template allows the customized way to log-on users to the community. The login and logout screen can be customized to match your website or brand UI. It also enables users to register themselves for a community through self-registration pages. We as a Salesforce Consulting Partners has observed how our clients get profited after practising Community.

Salesforce is world’s game changing technology and CRM cloud software addresses all your customer interface concerns. It is a company specializing in software as a service. Salesforce.com is a global cloud computing company which has also expanded into commercial applications of social networking through acquisition. Salesforce.com is generally used to refer to the CRM functionality (the sales, service and marketing applications) and Force.com is generally used to refer to the underlying platform (the database, code, and UI on which all the apps are built). i.e. Force.com is a platform where you can develop your own application. Salesforce.com is Sales(CRM) and Service applications which were developed and running on the Force.com Platform. Salesforce.com is SaaS(software as a service) and Force.com is Paas. Force.com is Salesforce.com’s cloud computing platform as a service (PaaS) development framework. Salesforce.com CRM is broken down into several sections: Sales Cloud Service Cloud Data Cloud Marketing Cloud Collaboration Cloud(including Chatter) Analytics Cloud And Custom Cloud (including Force.com) Girikon provides Best Salesforce Consulting Services. Cheers! Pramod