Technology is in a constant state of flux and Salesforce, the world’s leading CRM platform is on the front lines of innovation to bring transformative technology to businesses worldwide. Here is a look at how AI is poised to transform the way we work and a sneak peek into the disruptive power of generative AI.
AI will transform the future of work
Generative AI presents an exciting new opportunity for businesses to tap into the creativity and innovation of their workforce like never before. Here are 6 predictions from Salesforce leaders on what the future workplace will look like.
1. AI will transform how we imagine and measure human productivity.
According to a State of Work report published by Salesforce, 60% of business executives say their primary method to measure team productivity is by tracking work hours and email communications. But this is set to pivot around AI. With AI at the workplace, much of the mundane, repetitive work regarded as productivity inputs up until now will be replaced by AI.
In the months to come, companies will see a transformative shift in the way performance and productivity are measured by focusing on tangible outcomes such as products launched or leads generated. To achieve this, businesses will need to measure impact rather than measuring activity. Business leaders will have to clearly define the results they want and back their teams to align efforts in the backdrop of these clear goals.
2. AI will free up employee time for more meaningful work.
AI is on course to becoming the primary choice for automating workflows so that businesses can achieve full autonomy over the next year or so. There is huge potential for AI to automate mundane tasks across the organization, from marketing and pre-sales to order processing to customer support.
By identifying repetitive tasks and leveraging organizational data to drive intelligent predictions and generate automated next steps, AI is well placed to automate and optimize traditional work patterns to free up employee time to do more meaningful profitable work.
3. AI will offset a persistent and recurring challenge for businesses – Agent attrition.
Retaining customer service staff has been a thorn in the flesh for businesses. With generative AI, they can automate multiple aspects of customer service and boost the adoption of self-service, translating to a significant reduction in recruitment costs and an improvement in agent productivity.
4. Companies will leverage data and AI to boost productivity.
The average employee is fraught with information overload. Siloed data is responsible for over 10 wasted work hours every week. In the next months, businesses that adopt generative AI will see the real impact of this technology on how they work and interact with that data.
Companies have already started deploying AI-powered knowledge bases to drive self-service, assist field teams, and get more out of customer data. In the longer term, the productivity of teams will go up a few notches with more advanced generative AI capabilities like task automation and automated trends and insights.
5. The workplace will become smarter with AI.
Future-looking businesses have already adopted chatbots and AI-powered virtual assistants to simplify and augment customer service. Going forward, generative AI will also provide quick replies to inquiries, provide guidance to employees, and expedite service requests. It is predicted that AI will play a significant role in driving employee engagement, predicting the services they need to thrive before they even know they need them.
6. Businesses will adapt to an AI-driven re-imagined workplace.
Today’s top talent want more from their employer over and above a paycheck. To address this demand, organizations will invest more time and resources in creating a work culture that supports employees beyond the confines of the workplace. These investments will eventually translate to greater employee satisfaction (ESAT), higher employee retention, and overall success. Organizations that focus on these areas will lead the way.
Five ways generative AI is poised to reshape the future of business
Over 75% of business leaders say they are worried their organization is missing out on the promise offered by generative AI, not just in terms of what the technology can do, but the snowballing effect it can have on the industry. Here’s how some of Salesforce’s sharpest minds see the impact of generative AI in the coming year.
1. Generative AI will become fully operational across the enterprise.
Starting with empowering sales, marketing, and customer service teams, and writing code for engineering teams, AI will eventually impact every department. The next big leap will be when generative AI is leveraged not just for content generation, but analysis, decision-making, and business automation. With advances in AI and the wide adoption of chatbots and virtual assistants, businesses will see a marked improvement in efficiency across all workstreams.
And while initial Large Language Models (LLMs) will continue to be the backbone of generative AI, organizations will also start adopting custom, domain-specific language models for cost and latency benefits.
2. AI will transform every industry.
AI will be embedded into every layer of product engineering to deliver value to customers. Not just that, AI will also transform the way these products are built. By generative AI powered code development, engineering teams can improve their productivity and ability to focus on solving more complex problems. As products evolve, so will customer needs and preference. In short, AI will impact every aspect of the tech industry including market dynamics and customer behavior.
3. Generative AI will supercharge efficiency.
Advancements in semantic prompt processing, a machine learning technique in which a question written in natural language is interpreted by a machine will transform customer service. Companies will be able to deliver quick, personalized service at scale with AI using rich media such as images and video. This will set the stage for a more intuitive digital economy benefitting businesses as well as end users.
As AI grows more proficient at surfacing insights from organizational data regardless of their original structure, we will witness a surge in businesses adopting semantic prompt processing capabilities with the amalgamation of structured and unstructured data, such as sales figures and customer reviews, customer demographics, and social media activity.
4. Businesses will focus on customer-centric strategies
Today everything is digital – whether engaging with a chatbot, a mobile app, a website, or social media, and this includes generative AI. The value to the customer is the experience and its efficacy. To the business, the value is in the business outcome. The technology of generative AI is not the end in itself but a means to deliver that value to customers and businesses.
5. Embrace generative AI or perish
Gartner expects that by 2026, more than 80% of businesses will use generative AI in the live environment, compared to less than 5% in 2023. Generative AI will percolate to every organizational layer, whether it’s for making informed decisions or performing routine daily tasks. From sales forecasting to talent acquisition, all departments across an organization will witness a transformational shift in the way they work.
At Girikon, a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner, we believe that the generative AI revolution will level the playing field regardless of the size of the enterprise. By 2025, AI won't be a good-to-have tool anymore but the axis around which businesses will revolve, signaling an era of unprecedented transformation.
Digital transformation is not a goal post. It’s a continuous journey involving the evolution of people and processes. Here are some of the steps you could take to transform your business digitally and advance your business growth.
How can you advance transformation in an hour?
Do your homework. Education is the first step to empowerment. Study about organizations that have had a successful digital transformation. There are many great case studies to explore. Comb your network and identify someone that you might know at a senior level who was part of the digital transformation at one of these companies. Schedule a time for a discussion to pick their brain. In fact, do one better. Become a customer of these businesses if you are not one already. Use their app, social media pages or other digital touchpoints to get a first-hand experience of what they have created and how they deliver the customer experience.
Get conversational. For most people, the phrase digital transformation can seem ambiguous. It’s a broad term and a discussion on it may revolve around technology, business models, and emerging trends. Businesses are embracing new technologies to reinvent how they work, to connect with customers, and to innovate. It would be prudent to invest an hour in reading the latest about how business leaders see the future of work, navigating through change, and the impact of technology on the economy from renowned publications and organizations such as the World Economic Forum.
Identify a champion. Even before COVID19, many digital transformation initiatives did not work out. In fact, some of them failed miserably. And this evidence became immediately tied to digitization without clearly defined purpose, outcomes, or ROI. Avoid these pitfalls by identifying a champion for your digital transformation, be it the CTO or someone else, who can own and drive the change from the very start. They should have clear and to the point discussions with all business units about what digital transformation implies and what they will get out of it. And while you identify that champion, also come up with a responsibility matrix for cross-functional overlap and ownership.
How can you advance transformation in one quarter?
Run an innovation pilot. Choose a customer journey that you recognize must be digitized. Put together a small cross-functional team (take the help of an external consultant if required) and throw them the gauntlet. Ask them to build a digital journey prototype in three or four iterations. Hand over this pilot to real customers to do a test drive to demonstrate what’s possible.
Automate a single business process. A simpler way to imagine digital transformation is through automation of a business process. Put together a cross functional team to use collaboration and workflow tools, for instance Salesforce Slack, to streamline or redesign a business process that is manual, repetitive and causes pain for your team today. For instance, scheduling meetings with team members spread across multiple time zones can be a difficult task. If a technology tool can help teams collaborate asynchronously, it may free up meetings stacked up in your calendar and free up staff inboxes. This improves work efficiency, augments capacity, and enables better coordination between your teams.
Identify the gaps. More often than not, business leaders don’t know what data they have access to, or where it lies. Spend time to get a complete view of data across the entire organization. Don’t just ask the senior management. Ask your peers and subordinates. The further down you go in hierarchy, the more likelihood of finding honest answers. To measure the digital transformation you seek to bring to the organization, you need to understand the true picture of all data.
How can you advance transformation in a year?
Renovate one business function. Whether it’s making your supply chain more visible by integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technology or if it’s renovating your data systems to support better production planning and analysis. Choose one key business function and rebuild it digitally from ground up. Set challenging goals, timelines and identify measurable criteria, and use objectives and key metrics to drive effort and outcomes.
Create a roadmap. Do achieve the desired outcome from your digital transformation, your vision and plan require critical inputs from customers and employees, to establish how technology innovation can help you meet their expectations. Eventually, driving innovation requires a great deal of perseverance built on a powerful foundation of data, tools, and skills. And digital transformation is not just the implementation of technology. It also necessitates changes in user behavior, and for that a fresh perspective may be necessary. So, don’t attempt this digital journey alone. Collaborate with technology agencies, systems integrators, consultants, and independent software vendors that can help you throughout your digital transformation journey with strategic planning, change management support, implementation best practices, training and upgrades.
Reimagine your relationships. On the other side of digital transformation lies relationship transformation. Define how you want an ideal customer and employee relationship to be, and then guide the transformation. The following questions would guide you along the journey:
How have the operational and technology changes impacted your relationships with your customers?
How can you improve staff efficiency?
How can you ensure staff wellness?
What are the areas of improvement?
What are the areas of friction?
What are the new ways to add value to customers and employees?
Study other companies. Not just the ones in your industry, but across the business landscape. Everyone has customers, identify who is delivering the best customer experiences. Learn from them and bring those learnings on board.
Re-imagine the way you use data. Static dashboards are a thing of the past. Instead, explore using real time data in meetings, driving the discussion with dynamic data. Augment your internal communications with data-driven insights and be transparent. Include the uncertainties these data reveal. Ensure all employees have comprehensive training on data fluency and measure the training objectives at the end of the training as a key business objective. Promote a culture of making data driven decisions. Be aware of when your employees can’t make decisions because data isn’t available, and work diligently to fill those gaps quickly.
Girikon is a Gold Salesforce Consulting Partner. We have worked with businesses across the globe and delivered success for over a decade. To know more about how Digital Transformation can benefit your business, contact an expert today.
Most businesses have realized the significance of going digital. However, the digital landscape is extremely competitive and sustenance requires businesses to automate their processes while ensuring operational efficiency. This is where the need for a robust CRM arises. As a cloud-based platform, Salesforce enjoys huge popularity and widespread adoption.
However, unlocking the actual potential of a Salesforce platform can be challenging for businesses without the support of a Salesforce professional. It’s crucial for organizations to partner with a reliable and experienced Salesforce consultant that can help them overcome their limitations and unlock the immense potential of this platform.
A consultant can provide necessary support and guidance regarding upgrades and customizations that can make your organization more productive across your business processes. Their ability to troubleshoot problems through Salesforce can help you deal with unique challenges while figuring out solutions that will help your business flourish.
Why Should You Engage the Services of a Salesforce Professional?
A Salesforce consultant has extensive experience in handling this robust customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Being professionals, they remain up-to-date on the latest product upgrades and applications while ensuring quality, productivity, and reduced costs.
The services offered by a reliable Salesforce consulting partner include more than just the basic platform functions but can also help create custom tools, manage integrations, and leverage the complete capabilities of the platform. From nonprofits to building services to businesses in the financial and healthcare sector, almost every industry can take advantage of these optimizations.
Listed below are some of the key benefits of Hiring Salesforce Consulting services:
Data Migration from Other CRM platforms to Salesforce: If you haven’t used Salesforce before, you would not just require setting it up for the first time but also migrate your data from an outside source. A professional can help you set up the CRM seamlessly besides managing the migration in a way that every component is handled optimally. Additionally, they will help you keep your data organized and clean so that it becomes easy for you to sort through them.
Setting Up Customized Dashboards: To draw maximum value out of your CRM, it’s important to get your dashboard customized. For creating customized dashboards based on your business needs, Salesforce offers multiple options. However, creating customized dashboards in Salesforce isn’t easy and requires custom fields for accommodating certain tools and calculations, which your team might require to find quality leads. A professional service provider can enable you to design a dashboard as per the unique needs of your business, which will maximize data analysis and ultimately give a boost to your business. With a dashboard, it becomes easy to filter your data, quickly find the information you require, and track your prospects.
Providing Training and Support: The upgrades and updates of Salesforce make the platform valuable. However, several organizations struggle to keep up with these changes. To understand which upgrades will have the maximum benefits, you must consider getting in touch with a reputed consultant who will manage essential updates and upgrades for you that will increase productivity and benefit your unique. They also assist in training your employees so that user productivity on the platform increases. This will empower your team to bring in more customers and close more deals. Proper support for training and Salesforce implementation will allow everyone to work more efficiently.
Maintaining an Organized System: Data gathered by sales reps when organized from time to time plays an important role in upholding the usefulness and functionality of the Salesforce platform. Some organizations end up deserting their Salesforce integrations when their data becomes unsystematic and unmanageable. This problem usually arises when several sales reps log in at the same time and enter records incoherently. An experienced Salesforce partner can help by auditing the records while preventing a buildup of unusable records.
They also help in sorting data and taking necessary steps to prevent the accrual of glitches in the first place. They can assist in the creation of custom wizards that will guide sales reps through data entries, creating uniformity and consistency within the data entry irrespective of who created the entries. Custom wizards can be used to streamline the Salesforce quoting process, which requires several steps and doesn’t assure uniformity.
Augments Your Ability to Find New Leads: Salesforce empowers your sales reps to collaborate easily with prospects and several new customers irrespective of where they are. The robust CRM promotes communication skills along with collaboration within teams thereby boosting productivity, as well as the ability to find leads.
Salesforce consultants play a significant role in motivating your internal sales team members. You can create healthy competition among your sales reps through gamification. Based on key metrics from the CRM, consultants can help create leaderboards so that all your sales reps can view each other's results, as well as bests in different categories.
Final Words:
Salesforce has emerged as the number one platform in the CRM space. With its wide array of features and functionalities, Salesforce has become the preferred choice of businesses. However, to make the most of this amazing platform, it’s important to partner with one of the best Salesforce consultants who can take customer communication to a new level. They can help businesses utilize the tools that can automate processes and ensure operational efficiency.
Managing superior customer relationships is no longer a choice but has become a necessity in today’s era. This is easier said than done as businesses are engaged in multiple activities including but not limited to managing multiple business processes. Salesforce – a robust cloud-based CRM has become one of the most popular and widely adopted CRM platforms across the globe. The innovative platform is endowed with multiple features, functionalities, and components that can be leveraged by businesses to resolve their business issues.
There is a general consensus in higher education that institutions of nearly all types and sizes need to improve persistence and completion rates. While there have been slight improvements in recent years, data indicates that only half of the students complete degrees at the institution at which they start. Studies have suggested that many students complete their degrees at other institutions, taking completion to about 62%. Student departure remains a mystery for most educational leaders. They feel a compelling need to understand and fix the causes of attrition.
There is no shortage of knowledge or reference on what works in student retention. Given all that, it is surprising that rates have only gradually improved. This could be for two reasons. First, institutions are flooded with data points and may not be able to identify the ones that must be tracked or which ones help would explain the persistence patterns of their students. Second, we may lack the connections between institutional supports and students who need them to see if we are truly doing something about it.
Organize the Data Points with a Model
Student success models can be helpful for educational leaders who wish to identify the key aspects associated with student success, persistence and completion. While there are many models to choose from, one of the most talked about is Tinto’s “Theory of Student Departure”. The model helps track the student lifecycle and identifies areas where both student and college attributes can impact the decision to stay in or leave an educational program.
Tinto’s model, when analysed and condensed, suggests that there are five key areas where students may encounter challenges that disrupt their educational careers. Likewise, they may identify areas where students may have strengths that boost their success:
Academic Integration
Academic Integration in a college can be segmented into three parts: preparation, transition, and performance. These three can be connected sequentially, meaning lack of preparation can lead to a poor transition and weak ongoing performance, or they can occur in isolation, disconnected from one another. Experienced faculty and advisors probably know several cases where poorly prepared students were highly successful, well-prepared students failed, and those from both groups realized a trajectory in line with their levels of preparation.
Social Integration
Social Integration addresses the extent to which the student is able to connect with peers within the educational ecosystem. Adult learners often bond with other adults through common programs. The extent to which students have successfully bonded with their peers can be hard to read; it is not usually a one-size-fits-all model of social integration and student information systems are not typically built to collect and report the data that may be associated with this important area of student success. This aspect may also be useful when working on student faculty engagement. This form of social integration in which students feel heard, seen and accepted by faculty is important especially for under-represented groups to feel a sense of belonging at their institution.
Financial Support
Financial Support is critical to enable a student to be able to afford education at that institution.. For those who complete annual aid applications, the resulting calculations serve as a proxy for the ability to pay. The data collected for this purpose does not include factors that can help a student afford costs such as support from family or those that can hamper affordability such as need of a student to work to support a elderly dependent household. We often have a different perception of need-based aid than how students view the issue: the amount of the education bill, less the aid is the amount to be paid or financed. More often than not, it is this bottomline number that impacts students’ real or perceived ability to remain in an educational program. It can also impact the value perception of the educational experience. Is this experience worth it’s price?
Goal Clarity
Goal Clarity indicates the degree to which a student recognises why they are enrolled in certain college, and the end goal of the program being pursued. Certain institutions might assume that a chosen program or subject translates to goal clarity but data often shows that students change subjects two to three times before getting a degree.
A few of the factors that can determine whether a student may have clarity about program they have chosen are its requirements, their personal ability to meet required standards and their practical experience in that field. Faculty and advisors will spot a common situation of students feeling lost when they are unable to pursue a popular program.
Support of Family and Friends
One of the least investigated areas for measuring student persistence is the support of family. As the number of college students grows, the perception of the college experience amongst their friends and families may differ than those who come from families where college attendance is common. However, that does not mean all families don’t support of first-generation students across the board. In fact, many families place high value on college education. Having said that, there may not be an obvious relation between the program curriculum and career, time spent away from class, student services, and the potential of associated programs for providing key career skills.
Create a Framework of Indicators for Lagging
Using these five aspects of higher education as a model, it is possible to establish a data framework that measures what we know about students and their probability to continue and succeed. Lagging indicators are most commonly available data points that reflect things that have already occurred. These include grade point average (GPA), which don’t reveal student successes and struggles with certain concepts and skills. They also include the marks of courses finished in a term, unpaid fees that disallow registration for another term, abandonment of courses midway etc.
While these data may support analysis of past activities, rarely do they provide understanding of current students. For insight that is “current”, institutions need data indicators that reveal outcomes in real time.
Lagging indicator data is important. It allows the institution to conduct detailed, multi- parameter analysis to reveal student groups that may enter into high-risk situations. It may also aid in identifying remedies and support structures to support future students who may have the same characteristics. Too often, these analyses are univariate, such as GPA and one-year retention rate. Even while doing multivariate analyses, the data silos and not sufficient to form regression models with retention values high enough to explicitly establish the differences between students who continue and those who don’t. Human behaviour is complex and is driven by many factors. Consequently, analysis needs to be detailed and based on comprehensive data to allow analysts to investigate multiple factors to understand the patterns of their students.
Leading indicators allow institutions to impact persistence in real time. Awareness of a student not connecting with faculty as expected, assignments, fellow students, lets the institution to intervene and attempt to resolve the issue before the student feels isolated to a degree that compels him/her to leave. Identifying students who have pending program fees within the term, which usually happens because loans applied on parent creditworthiness, have not been approved, allows the institution to intervene and find a solution. The institution can support in bridging the gap and mitigate the stress felt by the student before it becomes overwhelming. These are but a few examples of how leading indicators can be used to impact student persistence.
Identify and Address Gaps
There is typically more data available on lagging indicators than leading indicators, which implies that we have been more attuned to collecting and using data that reflect information on something that already occurred. It must be re-iterated that lagging indicators are help in analysing patterns and suggest interventions for future students. There is far less data available and used as leading indicators, however, and this implies an emerging area of practice that demands more attention.
Analyses need to have robust and comprehensive data, yet those tend to exist in various systems/data silos. Institutions that have data warehouses are one step ahead; identifying the important data and extracting them from those systems may still be a challenge, even with solutions in place. Many other institutions that lack these data tools find themselves wishing for better insights and tools to help them collect, assemble and analyze their data. Certain areas suggest polls or surveys. While there are a number of solutions available today, these can also have limitations.
One of these is the timing of offering a survey to new or current students, when receive the data back and place those into the hands of those who need it (especially advisors). Some of these instruments allow comparisons of student responses at your institution to others, which can be helpful, but that may be outweighed by the timing, where these data then become lagging, not leading, indicators. Short polls, such as those that ask students to rate how they are doing that day with facial emojis, may capture those who are feeling overwhelmed. Longer polls, that tease out the nuances of family and friend support, shouldn’t exceed 10 questions and five would likely increase response rates. Survey overload can be avoided by good planning and timely distribution of short polls and surveys.
Connect the Dots (and the Data)
Collecting, assembling, analyzing and acting upon a robust dataset is an evolutionary process. Institutions should start with what they have and gradually augment and enhance their data and its usage as part of a quality development process. Knowing what the desired state looks like is important to creating a strong road map toward it.
Assembling a robust set of lagging indicators means getting data from multiple systems, modules and tables in to a unified dataset. Once aggregated, data analysis and visualization should reveal the interaction of the data categories within the framework. Human behavior is often complex and more often than not the decision to stay or leave a program is a mix of multiple factors originating from various parts of that experience. And there may be outside factors as well such as childcare, work pressure etc. External factors may be harder to capture through these data collection mechanisms and may not reveal the true picture. A proper assessment of the internal factors within the control of the institution will augment the analysis and sidestep simplistic, one dimensional solutions about why students are staying/leaving.
Assembling and using a robust set of leading indicators is often a tremendous challenge at the most forward-thinking institutions. Is anyone following up to check if any student needs help on unpaid balances? Does the financial aid office, who may be equipped to discuss solutions, even know that this has occurred? Is financial stress causing the student to look for additional outside work, such that they have less time to read and complete assignments? Is the early alert system complicated to use by faculty? Do residence hall advisors have a similar alerting mechanism for issues they might spot? Who is following up on these and what data do they have that will help them facilitate an empathetic and inform conversation with the student before they make a decision to leave?
Adopting a case management methodology to understand student persistence and success has been used by institutions in first-year programs. Some of the more remarkable results have linked students to institutional resources, as well as community services and supports, in a “wrap-around” approach to student success. These approaches can only work when cases are surfaced and those empowered to act have sufficient information to meaningfully interact with the student. It requires that the information from disparate systems is brought together. Improving student outcomes also requires that the care teams and staff can see the relationship between suggesting services and resources and the student’s engagement or lack thereof. Higher education. student support has been based upon a “build it and they will come” approach, as well as an invitational approach to student referrals.
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Whether you are already running a Salesforce instance in your organization and would like to upgrade it, or you want to set up a Salesforce implementation from scratch, you will probably need the expertise of a Salesforce consulting partner.
With the global adoption of the world’s No.1 CRM platform, the Salesforce consulting partners network has been growing over the years, ranging from individual consultants to global partner firms, offering extensive expertise across Salesforce products and industries and third-party apps.
But, how do you find a consultant that is best suited for you? Here are the top 9 mistakes companies usually make when Salesforce consulting partner and how to tackle them.
Mistake #1: Not having a clear definition of business goals
As a business leader you are expected to show the way. It’s not the job of a consultant. Before you decide what type of implementation you want, it is critical to understand why you need the proposed solution in the first place. How does it address your business goals? What problems is it going to resolve for you? What direction do you want your business to take post implementation?
Without a clear understanding of these aspects, you may end up squandering time, money and effort on an underutilised Salesforce implementation and never really realise its full potential.
To set the right direction for your business with the help of your Salesforce implementation, you need to clearly define:
Determine Business Objectives – Enlist what you wish to achieve with the Salesforce platform, just in the immediate term, but over a 3-4 year period.
Define Optimal Project Schedule – Set realistic expectations you’re your project execution timeline. Typically, implementation times take months for for mid-size businesses.
Define your budget – Do thorough research and establish the budget range you are willing to invest into Salesforce implementation and administration going into the future over a 3-4 year period.
Establish your Partnership Model – Determine the implementation scenarios of your project based on budget, time and resource constraints: will your Salesforce Implementation Partner perform complete implementations, will you split responsibilities with your partner, or you will do everything with internal resources while being guided by your partner.
Define Project Stakeholders – Identify key people from your team who you want to involve in your project implementation. Amongst them, identify a champion who will drive the project.
Define Salesforce Partners Roles – Identify the project roles and responsibilities that can be outsourced to your partner. Draft an RFP based on these roles which will help you to simplify discovery sessions with your prospective partner.
Mistake #2: Lack of Basic Salesforce Knowledge
This step is often overlooked. To be on the same page with your implementation partner or consultant, you need to be familiar with the most common terms and capabilities of the Salesforce platform. Educate yourself with product demos, Case Studies and Whitepapers on the Salesforce websites to know about the features relevant to your business domain. Knowing how Salesforce has helped companies around the world in your domain, will help you speak the same language as your partner.
Mistake #3: Prioritizing Price over Quality
Yes, you would like best Salesforce Consulting Partner your money can buy. And there is always a tendency to attracted to cheaper offers.
But sometimes, when you hire a low cost alternative with tight budgets, there are costs overruns and hiring that consultant may actually result in even higher running costs than originally planned, schedule overruns or worst case, project failure.
Eventually, you may decide to invest only in Salesforce developers. Initially it may seem financially viable. However, if your developers do not have holistic expertise on the domain as well as the product, you may end up with an implementation that may either be underdeveloped or well developed but under-adopted by your end-users.
Which is why Salesforce recommends working with Salesforce Certified partners so that there are no surprises in the long run. It is an expensive option compared to others, but the chances of success are much higher.
Mistake #4: Underestimating the power of reviews
All companies design their websites to look great. And why wouldn’t they? They want you to think that are the best at what they do. However, that’s not the entire story. But what are their clients saying about them? Customer reviews on AppExchange are a great indicator of customer satisfaction levels. Read reviews to know what’s good and what not about a product or app. There are also third part websites which publish reviews of companies for their services.
Mistake #5: Rushing into a decision
Investment into a Salesforce implementation is a huge decision. There is absolutely no reason to rush into it just because your competitors are doing it. Take your time, understand how a partner can help you and make an informed decision.
Ping your network for references, surf through Salesforce platforms like AppExchange and the Trailblazer Community to access a larger pool of consulting companies. Go through their portfolios in detail. Browse through their client case studies for similar projects, determine how their work experience matches with what you need and compare.
Mistake #6: Ignoring the marketing background of a Salesforce partner
At the core of its business, Salesforce is a digital marketing company that empowers businesses to manage customer relationships and enables marketers to launch campaigns, track conversions, and measure ROI.
However, not all Salesforce consultants have adequate digital marketing experience, and while it’s not mandatory, in order to maximize utilization of the power of Salesforce, you should find one that does.
Solution implementation customization and administration are not the onoy things you need help with. You need to know how your business goals align your marketing goals.,
Mistake #7: Hiring a Salesforce Consultant with inadequate relevant experience
You will find that there is no dearth of skilled technical experts on the AppExchange platform. But are technical skills and certifications enough to ensure the success of your project?
No doubt, relevant technical knowledge is critical for successful Salesforce implementation, and you should always pay importance to the proper certifications of the consultants on your partner’s team. However, domain expertise is equally important.
What if Salesforce doesn’t offer out-of-the-box solutions for you line of business. You will then need to identify experts that can customize Salesforce for your unique business needs.
Lack of relevant and adequate industry experience may lead to an implementation with cracks and consequently impact adoption by your team and your ROI.
Besides domain knowledge, you should also look for partners who have enough resources to work with a company of your size and have worked on similar projects.
Your due diligence on your prospective partner’s technical and marketing background will augur well in the long run. Take your time and do a thorough investigation into identifying the best fit partner for your project.
Mistake #8: Not Choosing an Expert
Why do you need to hire an implementation partner? Because you don’t have that level and kind of competence and experience available within your organization, right? And the last thing you want is a partner that readily agrees to every suggestion you make.
What you need is a real expert who has the technical as well as the industry expertise to examine and inquire your business in-depth, and will confidently take the lead and suggest the path forward.
Certified Salesforce Consultants avoid common mistakes, because they’ve learned the hard way, and will suggest the best path forward even though it may not appear right to you. In other words, they will not hesitate to disagree with you.
Mistake #9: Not looking long-term
One of the most common misconceptions amongst businesses is that their engagement with their implementation partner finishes with the deployment of Salesforce.
The truth however is quite to the contrary. Post implementation, your project will enter a phase where you will need expert support of a different kind: to drive user adoption of the platform, ensure that your platform is configured correctly after each Salesforce release, and troubleshoot all solution-related issues.
Your organization is going to grow over the years, and so should your CRM. When new enhancements or customizations are needed, it’s much more efficient and easier to work with a tried and tested Salesforce partner who know your project ground up.
Smart businesses today are focussed on fostering meaningful long-term relationships, that complement their core offerings with innovation.
Investment in Salesforce is a huge step, and should be undertaken with proper planning. And Salesforce partnership is a handshake, where both client and partner work on common goals with shared responsibilities.
Girikon, a Gold Certified Salesforce Implementation Partner, provides expert guidance and support throughout the client’s growth journey. We will assist you with your Salesforce initiative and deliver your unique CRM implementation solution working hand in hand with you
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Customer-centric experiences are the cornerstone of business, and to be truly customer-centric, you have to know your customers’ preferences and the context in which they engage with your organization. Today’s CRM tools are stacked with features that foster collaboration and accessible data to drive smart decision-making. The right tool should enable companies to target diverse audiences, design intelligent automation based on a prospect’s activity, and proactively manage relationships. The advantages of CRM software are evident: It keeps all historical data in one place, making it easier to manage customer relationships. A CRM software should offer limitless possibilities to organizations to proactively engage teams, collaborate on goals and deliver powerful customer-centric experiences. Salesforce does all that for you, and much more.
The Salesforce platform is a framework with amazing capabilities and virtually endless possibilities. It truly has the power and flexibility to do exactly what you want it to do. And on most occasions, effortlessly. It is only normal to be intimidated by the technology and its possibilities offered by the World’s No 1 CRM platform. Hence, it is imperative that you find the right Salesforce Consulting Partner to walk guide you on your stairway to success.
Here are a few areas where the best Salesforce Consulting Partner can help you:
Improve Business Performance
Salesforce CRM is designed with the customer in mind, empowering organizations to break new ground with customers, address concerns, resolve problems, and provide value. Your Salesforce Consulting Partner will help you to put customer success first, and in the process, focus on your own business performance improvement.
Improved customer visibility
Salesforce provides a user-friendly platform for managing all of your customer-related information, thereby enabling you to prioritize every customer as though it were the only one. By understanding your customers better, you'll be empowered to better forecast their future actions.
Superior time management
Salesforce combines all of your agents' activities, calendars, schedules and helps make those engagements better serve customers. This means less downtime and significantly lesser deadline-related stress.
More efficient sales pipeline
Salesforce allows you to track individual prospects effortlessly, including their pain points, their expectations, and any other information that might be useful in working with a potential customer. You will always be able to see exactly where a lead is in your pipeline, as well as know what their next step should be. The end result is improvement in your overall sales.
Enhanced collaboration
Having a cloud-based, cross-department platform means that any and every authorized user can work together to ensure customer success. With multi-device access capability, Salesforce allows your teams to access relevant data across departments, communicate efficiently, and collaborate together to provide a seamless customer-centric experience.
Better support
Salesforce provides excellent support, and with the entire platform based on the cloud, maintenance can be done remotely, avoiding the expensive costs associated with in-person maintenance visits.
Increased efficiency and productivity
Between automating time-consuming tasks, enabling collaboration, and eliminating the need for micro-management by line managers, Salesforce trims away at unnecessary processes and wasteful effort, setting up a supremely efficient system that will deliver real value to your organization and your customers, consequently driving up organizational productivity.
Faster Decision Making
With Salesforce’s powerful data modeling and visualization tools like Einstein Analytics and Lightning, teams can have access to sales and service KPIs. Your Salesforce Implementation Partner can empower you with a deeper insight into market trends and opportunities. Customer analytics can help you blend science with data to make decisions that enable you to stay ahead of the curve.
There are way too many features in Salesforce and it's just not possible to list them all. However, with a top Salesforce Consultant, you can maximize the use of its power and flexibility and send your organizational productivity into overdrive. Get a distinct advantage over your competition with the World’s most complete CRM platform. Take advantage of the best security, the most-effective customization options, the highest-quality apps, and the most innovative business solution, all at a cost that will delight you.
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Contact our reps to discuss your needs today.
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