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.
Customer Relationship Management Software, widely referred to as CRM software, is playing a vital role today across enterprises of various sizes. By aggregating and managing customer data, Salesforce CRM enables enterprises to manage a wide range of key business functions such as lead generation and conversion, sales and marketing, tracking customer engagement and automating workflows. As enterprises are able to streamline their business processes with CRM software, each of these individually separate functions and activities are now better streamlines and integrated, resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Implementing a Salesforce CRM within your organization can be a bit of a challenge. Although Salesforce CRM is the world’s most advanced and innovative CRM platform, there are always implementation and migrations challenges associated with working with a new system, as your team migrates key information to the new platform and adapts to work with it. This transition however, can be simplified significantly if you have a dedicated Salesforce Consultant to help your teams adapt to this new system.
What is a Salesforce consultant?
A Salesforce Consultant can help you overcome limitations, unlock the Salesforce CRM platform’s full potential, and augment Salesforce’s out-of-the-box functionality.
A Salesforce consultant is an experienced professional with significant expertise implementing the Salesforce CRM platform. And because this is their area of expertise, they would be more than likely to stay up-to-date with the latest product updates and tools, to enable them to deliver agile implementation and drive productivity.
Salesforce Consulting goes beyond the basic implementation of the Salesforce CRM platform. Third party integrations, creating custom apps, and leveraging the platform’s full capabilities and driving adoption of your users are also some of their key responsibilities. Almost any business in any industry can take advantage of these customizations, from nonprofits to manufacturing, financial services to healthcare, and more.
Why should you hire a Salesforce consultant?
Hiring a Salesforce consultant can help you maximise the potential of the CRM platform. You would be able to connect with and understand your customers better, and deliver personalized experiences for your clients and prospects. As an organization, you’ll also be better prepared to provide agile support to your customers. And you will be able to track the entire customer experience and improve further.
Before we go into what are the roles of a Salesforce Consultant, let us understand some of the constraints they have to work with.
Salesforce CRM implementation is a resource-dependent process. Therefore, the consultant must address the resource needs associated with is before going ahead with implementing a solution.
1. Workforce Constraints
The Salesforce consultant needs to be aware of the workforce constraints that exist in the organization. The organization and the consultant must arrive at a common understanding or how much of the organizational workforce can be used to implement the solution. Conversely, the solution has to be designed keeping the workforce size in mind. The consultant needs to understand the work responsibilities of each staff member so that an optimum solution can be developed. Workforce availability constraints must also be considered during the implementation, training, and go-live processes.
2. Time Constraint
Every technology solution is designed for under a specified timeline and for a specific purpose that must be fulfilled at the earliest. The CRM solution has to be designed based on the established timeline with all checks and balances in place to address any schedule deviations at key milestones.
One of the key challenges for the consultant is to stick to the timelines so that the implementation is relevant and useful. The implementation should not add delays to the existing schedules. In fact, it should optimize the existing schedules to augment efficiency.
3. Skill Constraints
The Salesforce Consultant needs to have a good understanding of the gap between the desired skill set and the existing skill set of the workforce. Not only should the CRM solution be usable by the workforce, but it should also trim the gaps in sills for better productivity. Th user experience should be such that it is easy and effective.
Roles of a Salesforce Consultant
The Salesforce CRM platform is a suite of complex tools and features and tools if properly implemented can maximum profits. It comes with a high degree of flexibility to ensure alignment with almost any business requirement. It is the prerogative of a Salesforce Consultant to be aware of the scope of customization so that the implementation is smooth and effective. Having said that, the organization needs to first identify which of its business processes it wants to customise and/or optimize in Salesforce. Here are some of the key roles and responsibilities of a Salesforce Consultant for an effective CRM implementation.
1. Relationship Management
The Salesforce Consultant has a key role to play in the client company equation. The Salesforce consultant brings a certain value to the organization that can potentially be extended to their clients. Salesforce Consulting can help evolve the sales process and affect the clients for the better.
Clients are the key touchpoints for an organization since they generate revenues. The relationship between the organization and its clients is a make-or-break deal. It is vital to create and maintain a relationship of mutual trust and business ethics for long term growth.
A Salesforce Consultant can utilise specific features of the Salesforce CRM platform to generate more sales opportunities. One of the key responsibilities of the Salesforce consultant is to develop a deep understanding of the client-company relationships and advise the company on how to augment that relationship further. With the powerful Salesforce CRM platform, the Salesforce consultant creates more efficient business process to drive productivity. It allows the client to feel that he is an equal partner in the process of change. In fact, in several cases, the Salesforce consultant is the first point of contact for customers.
2. Organize meetings and keeping the teams updated
The Salesforce consulting partner is a key contact point for clients and client companies. Even though organizations prefer automation and intelligent, innovative, feature-rich systems, they want to meet and discuss with someone who has a good understanding of what all the CRM platform can do and how those features can be extended to its users. The Salesforce Consultant should organize meetings with clients and share status updates of how the implementation and adoption is going. While it is easy to provide status updates on multiple projects in a single dashboard, a consultant ensures accurate, consistent and periodic sharing of updates with the users.
3. Building and deploying Salesforce
The primary role of a Salesforce consultant is to build and deploy a Salesforce CRM solution that is customized for the company and its clients. The Salesforce Consultant has to ensure that all business processes that have been discussed and agreed upon by the company have been implemented.
4. Providing training and support
Like any other enterprise platform, Salesforce updates its platform thrice a year to make it more available to its users. However, most businesses find it a daunting task to keep up with these upgrades, or they don’t know which upgrades will have deliver the greatest benefits to them.
A Salesforce Consultant will help you with that. They will help you in understanding which updates will benefit your organization the most and boost productivity based on your unique needs.
This assistance also needs to extend to your staff. Not only do you need a user friendly and efficient system, but you also want your staff to know how to access the information they need to fulfil their work responsibilities. They should feel fully capable to navigate and use the CRM platform. Your consultant will provide the necessary training to boost user adoption and productivity on the platform, empowering them to close deals faster and also acquire more customers. A thorough Salesforce implementation, training and adoption program across your organization is the foundation of a customer-centric business.
Finally, you will discover that greater the support you get from your consultant, the lesser the number of queries you have about the platform. The consultant can provide you with the necessary help and support, which means having to submit lesser help tickets. You have your own in-house expert who can all answer your questions related to the CRM platform and provide the necessary training as and when problems arise. Hiring a qualified Salesforce consultant creates a more seamless experience for everyone in your organization.
If your business could do with more customers, working with a Certified Salesforce consultant might be the key to tapping into that potential market. Turn to Girikon to implement a solution that can help you drive growth for you. With a large pool of certified professionals, and a global delivery model, Girikon makes it easy for you to focus on what you want to do – deliver customer delight.
In today’s business landscape, a successful enterprise must adopt a system that seamlessly integrates all departments and their respective business processes to enable them to interact and collaborate effortlessly. This is where Salesforce has established itself as the market leader in the CRM space.
Salesforce CRM sometimes popularly referred to as the Customer 360 platform, is a user-friendly solution with virtually limitless flexibility that connects teams across departments in an organization and drives growth. As a result, companies that use Salesforce see improvements in growth and efficiency.
But to get the most out of what Salesforce CRM has to you need professional expertise.
While most of the Salesforce products are centred around sales and customer service, Salesforce can be used for almost anything. And while the key Salesforce functions haven’t changed much – consultant, administrator, architect and developer, the specializations required based on the unique business needs of an organization have become quite apparent. One needs to have specialization on some of the key aspects of Salesforce to make the implementation count.
Consultants don’t just bring in the necessary skills and experience for implementing the CRM platform. They also add significant value in being able to understand the customer. Not only in terms of business processes within the organization but also outside of that realm, such as the people who drive those processes. And they are an intrinsic part of the customer’s growth journey onwards of implementation.
While businesses can provide the Salesforce implementation team with data and insight, certain things can only be understood by a specialist. This is where the Salesforce consultant role becomes important. They are trained with skills like attention to detail, analytical thinking and problem-solving along with hands on expertise on the platform.
Why Is Salesforce so Popular?
Salesforce upgrades its product offering three times a year. Which means every year they add new features and functionality to help existing and new business innovate rapidly.
Salesforce is founded on a Customer-360 vision and promotes a collaborative work culture that brings people together and promotes productivity.
The Salesforce online community provides help and support to the entire developer community to solve any business challenge
The Salesforce platform has virtually limitless flexibility and businesses can create any number and kind of custom apps and integrations to support their business
Salesforce allows you to automate routine business processes which frees up employee time to focus on core tasks.
Salesforce is powered by an advanced AI engine which delivers qualified analytics on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of your business.
Here's where Salesforce Consultants add value across various phases
As Part of an Implementation Team
CRM implementation is a time-consuming effort and requires coordinated team effort. It would be a wise decision for a business to hire a specialist with extensive experience in Salesforce implementation since the Salesforce platform is complex and offers virtually limitless customization possibilities.
Consequently, Salesforce consultants are in high demand across businesses that need the Salesforce CRM implementation. Here are the phases that require the services of a Salesforce Consultant:
The Pre-Implementation Phase
Before preparing a draft of the Salesforce implementation plan, a Salesforce consultant needs valuable insight from within the company. Information on the type and number of employees, the working structure of the company, regular business processes and workflows, are all important to understand how the organization works and what are its vital parts. The consultant needs to work closely with the business leaders within the organization to understand goals and expectations and current challenges and workflow bottlenecks
During the Implementation
Consultants play a vital role during the implementation phase as well. They are the link between the technical team – architects, administrators and developers who install and configure the platform and build and deploy custom apps, and the company. Their role is to maintain good communication between the two groups and ensure everything is well captured.
After the Implementation
The implementation is not over until the customer starts seeing results. After all, the technical implementation is just side of it. Once the technical tasks are completed, the implementation team also needs to train the users on the platform. Typically, this is another key responsibility area of a Salesforce consultant. It requires good communication skills, teamwork and leadership skills.
Businesses are evolving continuously. And the software that they use needs to keep pace with it. Businesses need to add and upgrade their apps and workflows on an ongoing basis to stay ahead of the curve. If you are already using Salesforce in your organization, the presence of a Salesforce Consultant will help you to upgrade rapidly by building and deploying apps in an agile framework. And do to that you need a strong team of specialists.
Moreover, just like every other complex platform, Salesforce also requires maintenance time to time. This is another key responsibility area of a consultant.
As part of the organization
Salesforce consultants also work in organizations that don’t do implementation for others. They just have enough in house needs. These are regular businesses that use the Salesforce platform and a small team of consultants to oversee the implementation, upgrades and maintenance activities.
In this context, a Salesforce Consultant’s function is to make sure system performs perfectly and the users are able to use it easily. On top of that, they also discover methods to further enhance the customer experience through the use of the platform and make sure teams continue to communicate with each other.
Shortage of Salesforce Professionals
Currently, there just aren’t enough people trained in Salesforce to meet growing demands of this ecosystem. One of the key reasons is that Salesforce isn’t your run-of-the-mill software. It’s a specialised and complex product and unless you're a service provider or you are a part of an organization that uses Salesforce, it’s unlikely that you know much about it.
Many of the Fortune 100 companies use Salesforce. IDC published an article in October 2017 saying that over 3 million jobs are expected to be there in the Salesforce ecosystem by end of 2022 through its network of partners. Salesforce has been growing at a brisk pace year on year, and so are their customers, consequently driving up the demand for Salesforce professionals to support that growth. And the skills one acquires as a Salesforce professional are highly transferable in case one wants to switch over to another industry.
Developing Salesforce Skills
Irrespective of your available budget, there are multiple options available to help one get familiar with Salesforce and develop skills in a certain are:
Developer organisations— Sign up immediately for a free developer licence and start practising
Trailhead, which is a Salesforce powered only community where one can get hands-on exposure to Salesforce and learn the technical and business skills one needs to succeed from anywhere for free.
Girikon is a dedicated Gold Certified Salesforce Partner. Our relentless focus on understanding the unique needs of our customers combined with our rich expertise and experience on the Salesforce platform allows us to deliver value driven solutions to our clients. Contact us today to know more.
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.
Customer relationships are the cornerstone of an organisation's growth, and you need to nurture and manage them efficiently and smartly.
Salesforce is the world’s No1 CRM platform for businesses of all sizes. Salesforce provides out-of-the-box solutions that let growing businesses implement cutting-edge technology with minimum effort and connect all of the systems that are important to them. And has been recognised by leading user review organisations and industry analysts and as the market leader in CRM technology,
Before we go deeper into what CRM technology can do for you, let us answer the basic question – Does my business need a CRM solution?
If any of these is true for you, then the right CRM solution could make your job a whole lot easier.
1.You don’t have a single source of customer information.
Does your company have customer and order information in multiple locations? If yes, then that's one glaring reason why you need a CRM.
A CRM brings together all of your customer data from sales, marketing, service and support into one place allowing you to access, track, analyse, and act on it straightaway, from anywhere. If you store customer data in spreadsheets, then not just your sales reps but anyone who interacts with your customers is at a disadvantage. When information is modified in one system, other systems do not update automatically. There is no holistic, unified view of all of your customer data such as contact information, purchase info, and communication logs.
2. You have very limited visibility of customer interactions.
Do you have a complete, single view of all customer information? If not, then you don’t have insight into what your salespeople and customer support teams are doing. It’s hard to help your sales and service teams be successful and accountable if you’re not sure what they are doing.
3. Reports are tedious and painful.
Does your team go through the arduous process of creating reports manually? If that is true, your performance-tracking capabilities are extremely limited. You should be generating reports automatically and view real time analytics of your sales team’s progress versus their targets.
4. You’re losing valuable customer data.
IF you are not sure what you’re following up on, it is going to be very hard for you to schedule follow-up interactions with customers and prospects. If your interactions across touchpoints aren’t being tracked, important details get lost through the cracks, especially if a key staff member leaves your organization.
5. It’s challenging to stay in touch on the go.
Can you sales reps quickly and easily find the information they need to close a deal when they are in the field? When they are meet prospects and come across valuable information, does the rest of your organization have access to it? Information captured in handwritten notes and on PCs is a potential gold mine.
6. Every customer is treated the same.
Are your customers and prospects getting similar types of messages and offers from you? If that is true, you’re missing out on potential opportunities. You want the to be able to target prospects based on their industry, geography, and the value they can bring to your business to make the most of every interaction.
7. Can you scale fast?
If you company grows rapidly, can your business processes scale just as quickly as the demand? You cannot afford to let your own processes be the impediment to your success.
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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As an entrepreneur, if you are looking to scale up your business, you must work on streamlining your business processes while ensuring operational efficiency. With its wide array of features and functionalities, Salesforce can be leveraged by organizations to manage their processes efficiently. However, suppose your Salesforce solution fails to address your unique business needs. You can either turn to a ready-made App from App Exchange or opt for custom Salesforce Apps to achieve the desired functionality. Although AppExchange is an easy way to get the desired functionality, a custom Salesforce app is undoubtedly a better option. It’s better to seek Salesforce support from a reliable service provider to learn more about the custom Salesforce App.
Listed below are some of the compelling reasons why the Salesforce Custom App is preferred over an AppExchange App:
Cost-effective: Getting a custom App developed is a more cost-effective option than buying one from AppExchange, especially with multiple users and a constrained budget. This is because AppExchange Apps require paying monthly subscription fees. On the other hand, a one-time payment for development, testing, and deployment is made irrespective of the number of users. However, before you choose, make sure you compare your subscription fees with what a developer or a test engineer would charge for one-time work.
Covers Industry-specific Business Processes: If you are looking to integrate some industry-specific processes into your solution, creating a custom App with specific techniques per your unique needs is a better option. AppExchange apps, on the other hand, can help add universal functionality, for instance, one that allows clients to sign contracts sent in their inbox from Salesforce.
Allows Integration of Salesforce with niche software products: To get access to certain marketing or designing materials, you may require a custom integration App for integrating your Salesforce solution to an online platform. AppExchange Apps, on the other hand, has several ready-made integration applications for connecting that can be used to integrate your Salesforce solution to a third-party system.
Additional Scope for Customization: When you opt for a custom-developed App, you leave the scope for tailoring your application in the future due to a change in business process or an increasing number of App users. On the other hand, an AppExchange App offers no such guarantee or assurance for modification in the future.
How to Manage Your Customization Project?
It is essential to organize the customization process to get your customized Salesforce solution aligned with your business needs. Although Salesforce customization isn't rocket science, it may require extra effort than anticipated. By following the sequence of the steps mentioned below, your chances of success will increase:
Seeking Input of End-user: It is crucial to seek your employees' feedback regarding the CRM challenges they might be facing, the features they consider useful, and the ones they are missing out on to comprehend the scope of a future customization project. This helps you figure out the functionality gaps that require elimination.
Engaging a CRM Manager: Make sure you appoint an experienced and qualified CRM manager who can help define the scope of customization, plan the customization process, and provide custom features besides managing the ongoing support to a tailored solution.
Choosing the Right cooperation model: It is essential to define the scope of your project and your business requirement before selecting the right cooperation model. You have two options, i.e., an FP (Fixed Price) contract, which agrees with a one-time delivery of custom features with fixed scope, and the T&M (Time and Materials) contract.
Hiring the Right Salesforce Services Provider: Choosing a Salesforce service provider with thorough consulting and development skills is essential. While the consulting skills are vital for detailing the effective ways of addressing your business challenges, good development skills are required to make Salesforce solutions work just as needed.
Keeping Costs under Check: To check the cost involved in customization, you should take a reasonable approach to customization by prioritizing custom features that are sufficient to meet your business needs while doing away with the need for excessive code-based customizations.
A quick wrap-up:
Salesforce customization is a practical way of making your Salesforce CRM a profitable sales and customer service tool that can curb the concerns associated with poor user adoption. To ensure your customization process is a success, make sure you note the aforementioned best practices. If you are looking for an app designed specifically to meet your business needs, investing in a cost-effective and custom-developed Salesforce App is better. Consider partnering with one of the best Salesforce App Development Companies to get the most out of your investment. By developing a custom-developed App, organizations can enjoy the business process and operational efficiency.