Salesforce Consulting

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 Questions? Our reps have answers. CONTACT AN EXPERT

Today, organizations, irrespective of their size and business domain, prefer to use robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software to manage customer relationships and their business processes. However, they are also using several other apps, which can help them reap several benefits that can help them attain their business goals quickly and efficiently when integrated with their CRM. As leaders in the CRM space, Salesforce integration holds significance.  Today, several organizations across the globe are leveraging this CRM to ease business operations and provide better service to their customers. Salesforce integration allows easy management and execution of these activities through third-party apps. Several such business beneficial apps are available on the Salesforce AppExchange platform. Users can easily download and configure these applications to streamline their business operations. Salesforce integration services helps CRM users or employees switch between Salesforce and other apps to access all functionalities of the third-party app. Listed below are some of the benefits of Salesforce integration: Easy Access to Data: Through the integration of apps, it’s easy to access the data of other apps. With access to meaningful data, actionable insights can be derived, which in turn can allow you to make better business decisions. Enhanced Productivity: Since data processing can be done in several ways, it can be used by different systems that are related. Compared to the manual compilation of data, automated data processing can significantly reduce errors, allowing you to get error-free results.  Meaningful Insights: Managers are empowered to make informed and intelligent business decisions as they access managed and meaningful reports.   Automated Workflow: Businesses can quickly achieve their goals through point and click automation of workflow as apps and integrated systems function collaboratively.  Things to Consider Before Salesforce Integration: Frequency of Data Transfer between Systems: Once the data that needs to be transferred is extracted, it’s essential to know the time required for data movement between systems to understand the frequency and speed of synchronization and the direction of data movement.  Identify the Integration Type: In the case of a real-time system, the information is updated as soon as a record is created. However, batch integration might not occur on an immediate basis but occurs at a particular time. So, for any integration project, knowing the type and frequency of the same is essential. Integration Fields: Finally, identify the fields that need to be integrated and mapped with other fields. Schema or structure may be required to understand the relationship between two fields or objects.                 Quick Wrap-up: Every business has to follow multiple steps to ensure successful integration. The Salesforce owed AppExchange platform offers several Apps that provide successful integration. Through well-planned and tactical processes, organizations can enjoy several benefits. Keeping at bay the aspects that can lead to unsuccessful integration makes it possible to reap multiple business benefits. It is essential to connect with a reliable Salesforce consulting partner to ensure successful Salesforce integration.

Salesforce Financial Services Cloud lets Bankers, Insurers and Advisors build trust by unifying the customer experience to grow their business and deepen customer engagement. Financial services managers can accelerate digital transformation by delivering a personalised service that customers expect. Get a single view of each customer’s activity across channels, geographies, and lines of business, both consumer and commercial. Now everyone across your financial institution, can visualize customer relationships and associated key information in one place, to drive trusted customer interactions. Provide your customers with a consistent and engaging experience across channels. Salesforce Financial Service Cloud makes it easy for your customers to connect with you from anywhere at any time with customizable communities. It allows you to manage goals, cases, policies, and documents in a unified platform to create a single source of truth for your customers. By identifying live events and areas of opportunity to drive contextual action for investments, lending, mortgage, and insurance right out of the box, the Customer360 platform empowers you to build trusted customer relationships for your financial institution.   Deliver experiences that drive client loyalty.   Scale-up your business. Deliver personalized advice from any time, anywhere with smart customer insights and engagement tools. Delight clients at opportune moments by collaborating with them on their financial goals.   Benefit from greater and clearer visibility into existing household opportunities and get a holistic view of all financial assets. Track referrals from Centers of Influence, and transform your client base into a potent referral network. Work smarter and maximize work efficiency   Manage compliance with confidence. Instantly access all of your client data at one central location. Free up time spent on routine administrative tasks and invest more time in fostering client relationships. With a device-friendly custom app, advisors can maximize every hour on the go.   Drive collaboration across the entire organization. Get secure access to client and household profiles and manage compliance. And get instant visibility on client interactions and information shared with them.  Let’s look at some of the core benefits delivered by Salesforce Experience Cloud: Lead Tracking Financial Services Cloud allows you to keep a close watch over leads and referrals. It comes with productivity-enhancing tools and integrated apps that help your teams keep track of all opportunities from generation to conversion. Activity Tracking Financial Services Cloud eliminates communication gaps amongst team members. It automates critical tasks to meet the specific goals which can be auto-assigned to appropriate team members based on their profile. As a business owner, it will give you a bird's eye view of progress. Advisor Analytics Salesforce Financial Services Cloud is powered with the Lighting Dashboard that is designed to assist financial advisors to make smart and informed decisions for their clients, driving growth. Users can effortlessly customize their dashboards to deliver relevant snapshots for assisted decision-making. Unified Data Model With Financial Services Cloud, financial advisors can effortlessly manage their customer's data model, household models, individual data model account, or personal account data model, all on a single unified platform. Turbocharge Customer Care One of the most powerful benefits of Salesforce Experience Cloud is its intuitive customer care. Customers always expect more, including advice, prompt query resolution, open communication, and more. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud allows companies to meet all these expectations. Experience Cloud keeps a track of all of the customer's activities, visualizes customer relationships, streamlines coordination among stakeholders, and delivers complete transparency. Enhance Engagement Salesforce Experience Cloud enriches the engagement amongst all business cycle constituents – customers, advisors, partners, employees. It unlocks new opportunities and augments the whole digital experience. By leveraging the power of AI, Salesforce Experience Cloud delivers reliable and trustworthy analytics, empowering companies to make swift, informed, intelligent decisions. Conclusion Salesforce Financial Services Cloud is a powerful tool for wealth managers, bankers, insurance advisors, and business and IT executives. It empowers them to make faster and smarter decisions thereby driving up productivity. In simple terms, it allows you to stay ahead of the curve. So if you are in the business of financial services, and want to turbocharge your productivity and growth, talk to a Salesforce Consultant today and begin your new journey. Questions? Our reps have answers. CONTACT AN EXPERT

In today’s digital era, businesses across different industry verticals are leveraging technology solutions to manage their business processes and streamline operations, and the financial services industry isn’t any exception. The shift towards digitization has pushed the financial services sector to accelerate its processes by leveraging robust technologies and adopting digital transformation initiatives such as cashless payments. According to a survey conducted by Gartner, around 67% of senior finance leaders advocate the need for digitalization and focus on the optimization of finance technology.  Apart from this, other disruptive technologies such as Robotic process automation; Artificial intelligence, cloud services, and other financial business models have made their way. One such technology solution is the financial services cloud by Salesforce that provides tailored services to enterprises. The Salesforce financial services cloud has helped wealth management stakeholders ensure enhanced customer satisfaction through accelerated digital transformation. It is essential to seek Salesforce support to know more about this robust platform.  What is Financial Services Cloud? The Financial service cloud is a platform provided by Salesforce and is available in the Lightning Experience. The platform is designed to create long-term customer relations while helping financial consultants offer high-end services. The cloud platform runs in a secure environment and can be leveraged by organizations to manage the assets and liabilities of their customers besides the accounts of investment and wealth management firms.  The platform is ideal for small and large enterprises as it allows financial advisors to deliver high-end solutions and technologies with tailor-made services. The platform is endowed with advanced features that enable consultants to spend less time gathering doing mundane tasks and focus on providing high-end assistance. The Financial service cloud encompasses several sub-verticals such as banking, mortgage, insurance, wealth management, and more. Features Offered by Financial Service Cloud: Enables Commercial Banking: Salesforce Financial Service Cloud facilitates commercial banking visibility in various aspects of wealth and finance, making it easy for consultants and relationship managers to make business-to-business referrals. This feature provides relationship managers with a customized layout that offers an optimum display of data and permission sets to access the Commercial Banking application. This allows relationship managers to manage their mortgage reports, referrals, treasury management, etc., more efficiently.  Helps Achieve Compliance: The Cloud infrastructure has helped organizations monitor customer relationships while following every interaction with a customer data model at the heart of the financial services cloud, which helps achieve compliance. The robust cloud solution helps the clients find new customers, grow their accounts, and close deals quicker while ensuring the security of client data and assessable client interactions across several channels. Provides Better Visibility: Companies can access client profiles to view client interactions and the information shared. With this, the wealth ecosystem of the clients and their families can be accessed, allowing financial consultants to grow their business across multiple channels. This insight provides relationship managers a better know how of the personal and financial product needs of the customers and how it can be used to achieve their goals. Enables Data Security: Before adopting new technology, organizations must fortify the security infrastructure. The Salesforce financial service cloud ensures robust security infrastructure for clients who have to undergo stringent security checks, inspections, and audits at regular intervals.  The Bottom Line: Salesforce financial cloud built on the Salesforce CRM platform has revolutionized the wealth management ecosystem. The robust cloud solution enables the wealth management team members to access information drawn from various sources, including the financial interactions of clients. This provides companies with a 360-degree view of the client. So, if you wish to deploy Salesforce financial cloud for wealth management, you must partner with a certified Salesforce consultant.

Salesforce is a leading name in the CRM space due to the wide array of features, functionalities, and components offered by it. Regardless of their size and business domain, businesses across the globe are leveraging this robust platform to resolve their unique business while ​enjoying operational efficiency. However, implementing Salesforce is easier said than done as user adoption problems arise due to cultural change in the organization. It is worth partnering with a certified Salesforce consultant if you wish to ensure a seamless implementation journey. Let's discuss in detail the common Salesforce adoption problems and ways to tackle them: Resistance to Change: Employees usually show resistance when they are expected to handle a newly implemented system, primarily when they haven't dealt with the same beforehand. It is essential to understand the reasons behind this resistance, which mainly includes the absence of understanding and training. Before embracing Salesforce, abundant training and support should be provided to the users. Data Inconsistency: Several users associate their CRM with different users, which may impede their data inconsistency. It's suggested to use Salesforce as the center of all their data and acquit themselves with different frameworks from that point onwards. It is crucial to note that old, fragmented and obsolete data decreases the legitimacy of their Salesforce reports and frameworks and drives sales reps crazy. Complicated Entries: It becomes difficult for Salesforce users to work on long page layouts and unwanted fields as long page layouts require too much scrolling. At the same time, too many areas contribute to insufficient data. It is essential to keep it short and straightforward to ensure that users can gather data without hassle.   Absence of meaningful reports and dashboards: Salesforce reserves a vast amount of data, and it can be leveraged to generate actionable insights. However, users tend to lose interest if the reports generated are vague, which drastically impacts the adoption rate. Not Leveraging the Complete Potential of Salesforce Workflows: Not utilizing Salesforce workflows is a common blunder, which Salesforce users usually commit as Salesforce workflows can help increase productivity by sending reminders for renewal, auto emails, notifications regarding stale opportunities, and more. How to Tackle Issues Related to Adoption? Begin with a Pilot Project: It's essential to do a pilot project before implementing a system. In this way, testing can be performed, gaps can be identified, and user's requirements and practical issues can be understood. To run a pilot project, it's important to select a user group and provide them with the necessary training materials to run the platform effectively. Understand End-user Requirement: To implement Salesforce successfully, it is important to loop in the Sales team and discuss with them the dashboards, reports, features, and functionalities. By considering their viewpoint, it will be easy to streamline Salesforce configuration while increasing the user adoption rate. It is crucial to articulate the arrangement and set their expectations from day one. Users need to focus on a strategy that not just fits all the requirements of the stakeholders but is also consistent with their workforce.       Training: Quality training should be provided to users to understand the basic motive behind implementing Salesforce and how it can benefit them. With proper training, users can tackle errors that might arise during the Salesforce journey.  Quick Wrap-up:  In a nutshell, it can be inferred that the success and failure of a newly implemented system depend mainly on how well users are accustomed to its' usage. The better the users are adapted to the system, the greater are the chances of achieving higher ROI. By partnering with one of the best Salesforce consulting companies, organizations can ensure a greater adoption rate.

As a cloud-based platform, Salesforce continues to rein the CRM space as it occupies a market share of around 20 percent. It is indeed the most popular and widely adopted CRM system due to the vast array of valuable features and functionalities offered by the platform. What makes it unique and one of the most preferred platforms is the release of new products and features year after year. With several new releases and acquisitions back and forth, Salesforce has come a long way. With such an evolution, users of Salesforce technology should learn to stay ahead of the curve. Instead, customers need to understand how they can use technology to increase business ROI, which significantly impacts the bottom line. Listed below are some great features that can help organizations optimize their Salesforce implementation for mitigating costs incurred due to customer and employee churn. It is always a good option to seek support from a reliable Salesforce consultant to know more about these features: Lightning Page Performance: This powerful feature allows users to deal with inconsistent lightning pages that aren’t optimized while working in a Salesforce org. The Lightning page performance is built natively into the Lightning App Builder responsible for doing all the analysis. This feature provides analysis about the performance of the pages on desktop/ mobile while providing tips to enhance performance and user experience. By benefitting from the Lightning Page Performance and optimizing the placement of the lightning component, end users can accomplish their duties much quickly and efficiently while dealing with the urge of distractions while opening multiple pages to fulfill their daily tasks. In-App Guidance: This feature assists employees with reminders, tips, and gradual walk-throughs to help them navigate the system appropriately. This feature can be configured to display a floating message or a prompt message in the utility bar. To measure the effectiveness of your implementation, data about the interaction of employees about guidance messages is recorded. This feature provides resources to users even before they recognize the need, thereby increasing the company’s ROI. This not just saves time but also improves efficiency. With supporting resources, and efficient workflows, employee morale is increased, and productivity is optimized. Salesforce Survey: For an organization to improve their ROI, they need to understand where the opportunities for enhancement are. Shortcomings usually exist in lengthy sales processes, product-related issues, slow response time, and more. However, identifying the bottom of the matter is necessary for implementing change. To understand customer experience regarding their products and services, organizations can directly gather customer feedback by using Salesforce surveys. This feature is endowed with a wide array of functionalities and the ability to automate the sending of the survey, customize email templates, and more. By gathering and analyzing survey results, organizations can better serve their customers. Social Studio: This feature is leveraged by organizations to connect with prospects and customers on social channels such as Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, and more. Eventually, this feature connects the sales, marketing, and service teams with their customers, enabling employees to develop meaningful relationships with customers and communicate with them on a common platform used both inside and outside of the workplace. Social Studio allows organizations to identify what prospects/ customers are speaking about the company, respond and track prospects as leads, and much more. With Social Studio, data-driven insights can be gained, which provides a deeper picture into how your customers engage with your social strategy, which can lead to enhanced lead generation and sales opportunities with the likelihood of maximum closure. Final Words: Businesses are seeking ways to save time and money by removing operational bottlenecks. The cost incurred as a result of employee and customer churn as a result of poor customer experiences can be alleviated by optimizing Salesforce and making the most of all the great features. To know more about these robust features, make sure you get in touch with one of the best Salesforce partners.

Ever since its’ inception Salesforce has made several new acquisitions. With every new acquisition, the company is improving its performance. Its compatibility with the AI platform i.e. Salesforce Einstein is due to the 12 acquisitions that it made in the year 2016. All the acquisitions made by the company till date has made it compatible with all the latest technologies and applications, platforms, and business types. It is in your interest to partner with one of the best Salesforce consulting partners to know more about Salesforce and its collaborations. Let’s take a look at some of the most successful and popular acquisitions made by Salesforce: ExactTarget: This tool was acquired by Salesforce to expand its pre-sales and marketing department services. This robust application has become a popular business tool as it is comprehensive and can provide them with email marketing services. In fact, this tool empowers the core marketing functionalities of Salesforce and improves its marketing suite. The complete product suite can simplify many operations such as SMS, emails, digital advertising and more. MuleSoft: The in-built API’s of this tool can be leveraged by organizations to build application network. Users of this tool can converse and exchange data with each other. Though, this acquisition had been one of the most expensive acquisitions, it provided Salesforce with a new direction by allowing it to provide enterprise-level solution to its users. The middleware connectivity offered by Mulesoft APIs helps enterprise to migrate to the cloud. This robust tool can provide organizations a complete view of their integration.   Tableau: The acquisition of this Seattle based company has been one of the most significant acquisitions as it has helped improve organizational performance considerably. Tableau is a robust and one of the best data visualization tools that has turned out to be extremely profitable for both companies. This acquisition has helped Salesforce users get access to user database of Tableau. With the help of Tableau, Salesforce users can know about their ambitious customers, which in turn can help them make intelligent decisions. Quip: This document management tool is used to gather, amalgamate, and store documents and spreadsheets thereby improving efficiency. Though, document processing tools like spreadsheets aren’t preferred any more, users are familiar with them. Salesforce CRM spreadsheets can be stored on the cloud. Quip is able to provide bi-directional collaboration of document together with synchronized data from Salesforce. Quip users can send videos, texts, and images apart from simple documents.  Bonobo: This tool can help users to gain deep insights about customers in form of texts, support calls, speech and other modes of communication. Bonobo was acquired by Salesforce to support Einstein, which is an AI powered platform that uses its self-learning capabilities to support various business operations. Griddable: This powerful tool helps in seamless integration of data across all cloud platforms of Salesforce. The tool offers users of Salesforce to get a grid view of data while ensuring smooth and quick migration of data. Salesforce users can access data from different sources and use it as and when required. With such availability of data, Salesforce has become a reliable CRM that can enable users to gather data from different sources and make the most of it. Quick Wrap-up: These are few of the many acquisitions made by Salesforce that are not just popular but also some of the most used ones. However, the list continues to grow as Salesforce is trying to team up with many more brands to provide better services to its existing customer base. To know more about the acquisitions made by Salesforce and the benefits that can be leveraged out of them, it’s prudent to seek Salesforce support from a reliable service provider.