Customer service has become the cornerstone of every business and to ensure superior customer service, businesses should leverage the capabilities of a robust CRM platform. One such robust CRM platform is Salesforce, which is a cloud-based platform that assists businesses to streamline workflows while driving digital transformation. However, implementing Salesforce isn’t easy and requires expertise to tailor the platform as per the specific needs of an organization.
That’s where the need for a certified Salesforce Consulting company comes in. These companies are not just service providers but are certified by Salesforce to manage everything from system setup and customization to long-standing training and support. In fact, these professionals have the skill to translate the goals of an organizations into tailored solutions by leveraging the robust capabilities of Salesforce.
What are the Roles and Responsibilities of a Salesforce Implementation Partner?
Before engaging the services of a reliable partner, it’s essential to understand their roles and responsibilities to ensure seamless implementation. A reliable partner helps organizations to create effective strategy for utilizing Salesforce besides setting short-term, as well as long implementation goals. They are also responsible for setting up the system and tailoring it as per the needs of an organization. For ensuring seamless transition and improvement in workflow, a reliable partner will help organizations to integrate Salesforce with their existing systems. They also provide consulting services and end-user training after the accomplishment of implementation.
Factors to Consider Before Shortlisting a Salesforce Partner
Listed below are some crucial points to consider while selecting a Salesforce implementation partner:
Assess Experience and Expertise: It is crucial to look out for partners who have a proven track record of several successful implementations. It’s crucial to verify their experience, as well as expertise of working on projects like yours, their industry knowledge, and the number of certified professionals in their team. It also makes sense to look at client reviews to get insights about their prior performance.
Consider Certifications and Technical Skills: It’s important to ensure that the professionals you have shortlisted to work with are certified and possess the necessary Salesforce certifications. It’s also crucial to assess the technical proficiency through diverse project case studies. This will provide a better understanding of their practical experience.
Evaluate the Cultural Fit of Your Partner: Besides the technology skillset, it’s crucial to evaluate whether the partner in question has the same company vision, language and culture for communication. A partner who shares the same values, culture, vision, and communication approach will accomplish all the tasks while offering valuable insights through the implementation process. This enhances collaboration and contributes to a more successful project outcome.
Scalability: Before zeroing in the right engagement model for Salesforce implementation, organizations need to identify a partner who can provide the flexibility of quickly scaling up or down as their business evolves. Besides having adequate manpower to meet the evolving demands of an organization, they should have the technical prowess to meet those demands.
Ensure Transparency in Budget: While cost is a crucial factor, it’s equally important to focus on the value that a partner delivers. A partner that delivers results and aligns with the goals of an organization is worth the investment. It’s also crucial to ask for a cost breakdown to ensure there are no hidden costs besides getting an idea of market prices by comparing the pricing with other partners.
Training Capability: A good Salesforce partner will offer training and support to secure a strong adoption within your organization. Whether it’s marketing cloud creating educational videos or offering after-training support, this aspect of the Salesforce marketplace is crucial for long-term success.
Benefits of Engaging the Services of a Certified Partner
Listed below are some of the benefits of engaging a certified and trained implementation partner:
Real World Experience: One of the compelling benefits of engaging the services of a Salesforce implementation partner is the real-world experience and in-depth knowledge, which they bring to the table. In fact, they have years of practical experience of implementing Salesforce across various industries.
Customization Abilities: Certified partners understand that one-size fit all approach doesn’t fit with respect to Salesforce implementations. They have the know-how to develop solutions that are tailored to the specific needs of a business, which in turn is crucial for maximizing the benefits of the Salesforce system.
Reduces Employee Downtime: Implementing Salesforce is taxing and time-consuming, which can divert employees from performing their core responsibilities. A certified partner does all the heavy lifting by allowing teams to focus on their everyday tasks. This ensures smooth business operations for organizations.
Long-term Support: Reliable partners do not discontinue their support after the initial set up. Rather they continue to offer ongoing support to help businesses scale their system as their business evolves. Such an association is crucial for maintaining a responsive and agile business model.
Increased ROI: Salesforce Implementation Partners with their in-depth knowledge can restructure the deployment process thereby reducing time for implementation while increasing their return on investment (ROI). With this their chances of costly mistakes are reduced significantly.
Final Words:
A Salesforce implementation partner serves as a strategic resource that enables organizations to optimize the benefits of Salesforce through the successful delivery of Salesforce implementation services while making the most of the benefits that come with it. Therefore, engaging the services of an implementation partner isn’t just a wise decision but also an essential one. Their expertise and ability to tailor solutions besides overall support to minimize the possible challenges while ensuring sustained growth makes them a must have asset for every organization.
In today’s competitive era, businesses must consider integrating and synchronizing products, their pricing, inventory, and other business details to fulfill the evolving needs of modern consumers. To meet these demands, businesses require robust tools such as Salesforce Commerce Cloud and MuleSoft. You can seek Salesforce support from a reliable service provider to know more about these platforms.
The integration of MuleSoft and Salesforce Commerce Cloud ensures a connected commerce experience and allows organizations to unify commerce data from any system, and quickly launch into new markets while providing enterprise-grade security to ensure the safety and security of corporate data. In other words, MuleSoft and Salesforce Commerce Cloud can provide a connected commerce experience.
What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is an e-commerce solution that empowers organizations to sell their products and services across different channels, including social, mobile, and the web. This cloud platform helps retailers provide a superior shopping experience to their customers.
This platform provides brands the agility to remain competitive and ensure the following:
Proficiently launch and manage stores across different channels, geographies, and dialects through a cloud-based commerce platform.
Test and deliver changes.
Modernize while prioritizing actionable insights that drive better business decisions.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud Is Only as Powerful as the Data That Lies Behind It
With Salesforce Commerce Cloud, businesses can take the online shopping experience a notch higher than that of a traditional e-commerce platform by capturing customer data. In fact, this innovative platform has transformed the way organizations conduct their business by launching into new markets faster while ensuring security from threats.
This is possible through API-led connectivity that amalgamates crucial data from legacy systems, CRM, ERP, and partners like delivery logistics providers. However, digital transformation via API-led connectivity depends significantly on the data that backs it. This is where Salesforce Commerce backed up by MuleSoft comes into the picture as it connects all the commerce systems and creates a steady customer view across the organization. MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform allows you to centralize data while creating an omnichannel experience.
Since customer data is an asset that can be leveraged by organizations to improve customer service by using digital technologies and integrating data while making it accessible in real-time. Real-time data ensures quicker customer support and increased satisfaction.
APIs help in integrating different systems together and creating a data-driven model. This ensures precise decision-making. In addition, such an approach to data provides insights by tracking customer engagement patterns and gathering more data. By integrating customer data with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, you can get a comprehensive view of your customers while furthering your brand loyalty by having all customer data gathered in a single solution.
What is MuleSoft?
MuleSoft is a reputed provider of Enterprise Integration Platforms. MuleSoft connects all the data, applications, and devices across different business entities. They enable organizations to gather their data in real-time, actionable, and secure information.
MuleSoft along with its Anypoint Platform is one of the best integration platforms available and allows businesses to connect with different applications while ensuring system-to-system integrations are easy and cost-effective. Additionally, the platform provides a unified platform to help organizations manage their business process activities to enable efficient connectivity across people, devices, and systems.
MuleSoft has put an end to point-to-point legacy integrations that hinder digital transformation.
The Influence of MuleSoft and Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
If the solutions that you are using currently do not allow you to tap into data from various sources, you're stuck inside one system. If you are willing to venture into new markets then it would consume more time and money. The right solution would be to combine your requirements in a single system, which is possible with Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Mule Soft which allows you to connect with other systems quickly.
To Wrap-up:
To succeed in today’s competitive era, businesses must create great customer experiences, which is possible by having ready access to customer data. However, brands are likely to stay behind if they fail to centralize their data. Salesforce and MuleSoft together are a perfect match as they both are dedicated to leveraging APIs and connectivity to help organizations succeed through digital transformation. To know more about the benefits of these platforms, it’s essential to get in touch with a certified Salesforce implementation partner.
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.
Salesforce Energy and Utilities Cloud gives energy and Utilities providers a digital interaction platform to personalise customer engagements. Utilities can meet new customer expectations by delivering great experiences like easily guiding customers through enrolment, transfer and activation of services through a self-service website. And using out of the box drag and drop tools, to configure complex processes. With data integration with existing back-end CIS and MDM systems, to ensure a streamlines service experience. A utility has a comprehensive profile view of each customer to deliver a highly personalised and predictive experience. Like sharing special offers for programs or new rates for products. Digital tools are available to tailor customer experiences and help customers make informed decisions. With chatbots for the first level of customer support, accessible at anytime from anywhere. So service agents can pick up the case for the right level of assistance when needed. Agents have a thorough view of each customer account and can navigate between multiple residential or commercial accounts. With all the information they need like full chronological history, account and billing information, usage and more. And al data can be consolidated from back end systems so agents always have access to a single source of truth. Agents can also see into process and actions initiated on other channels and can use that information to better serve customers from finalising a purchase to liaise scheduling field service appointments. Utilities now have insight through interactive dash board to real time data to keep customers at the core of their business. And can provide developers a library with hundreds of pre built business processes and integrations to accelerate time to value and digital transformation.
Chart a new course for the future of energy by streamlining your business.
Meet the needs of all energy eco-system stakeholders -customers, suppliers, partners and employees with a platform that fosters agile innovation across your entire business lifecycle.
Adapt and cater to rising customer expectations.
Adopt a digital first approach and scale fast with easy integration with your existing systems. Deliver customer first service to your customer community.
Streamline your Oil and Gas business and prepare for the future of energy.
Connect stakeholders and assets across the service journey and collaborate in real-time. Drive on field decision-making with on-th-go access to vital data and information.
ENERGY AND UTILITIES CLOUD
Drive customer service and engagement on a single, connected flexible and scalable platform.
Be the trendsetter for transition to energy transformation with centralized customer data, and on-time, personalized, pro-active service from anywhere, from any device.
Energy and Utilities Cloud delivers a scalable, digital and secure energy solution that adapts and scales for future energy needs.
Get access to a process repository of more than 100 preconfigured and extendable best practices
Easily connect to back office utility Billing and Customer Information Systems (CIS) with easy, drag and drop integrations
Utilise a data model with access to more than 350 extended objects specifically designed for the utility industry
With Energy and Utilities Cloud, you can take advantage of purpose-built innovations designed for an dynamic and evolving energy landscape.
Transform agents into advisors and deliver a whole new way of customer engagement.
Empower service agents with the resources they need – tools, analytics, and AI based insights, to deliver personalized customer service anytime, anywhere, from any device.
Deliver personalized customer service on a digital-first platform.
Support the entire spectrum of customers, ranging from residential customers to large commercial customers. Get a single, scalable and secure solution that delivers connected journeys and promotes self-service.
Turn customer freedom into a competitive advantage.
Offer quotes and tariffs faster than ever, by quickly processing current market pricing and customer information with a 360-view of the customer and data-driven tools.
Improve acquisition and trim churn.
Easily generate complex, multi-locational and multi-product quotes to acquire customers faster. Retain customers longer with personalized offerings.
POWER AND UTILITIES
Adapt and thrive in a dynamically evolving Power & Utilities industry.
Easily navigate the intricate utility landscape with seamless and powerful digital transformation.
Revolutionise the Utility customer experience.
Embrace digitalization and drive into future of energy transformation with a customer first approach.
Make advisors out of agents by giving them the tools that deliver a customer-360 view.
Encourage self-service and engage customers across the journey with AI, and offer multi-channel personalized service
Deliver next generation service operations and customer experience by going beyond the contact center.
Service customer needs faster in the Retail sector.
Deliver a more connected experience for customers by bringing existing systems on a single platform.
Deliver quotes and tariffs faster than competitors with data-driven tools and easily navigate multi-locational, multi-account structures.
Evolve offerings, accelerate customer acquisition, and improve customer retention by designing competitive products and services with just a few clicks.
Boost customer experience with personalised engagements and streamlined field service operations.
Become the trendsetter in sustainability.
Get ahead of your competition with innovative digital transformation that drives your business during the energy transition.
Drive energy efficiency program adoption and help customers reach their energy goals.
Educate customers and partner with them to adopt sustainable offerings and services that foster new revenue streams
Go beyond commoditization and stay current with new offerings
OIL AND GAS
Connect stakeholders and assets across every touchpoint throughout the Oil & Gas value chain. Optimize your organization for the new era of energy transformation.
Drive digital optimization across the upstream ecosystem.
Optimise communication and engagement with stakeholders across the value chain. Seamlessly connect landowners, suppliers, customers, shareholders, and the relevant compliance organizations.
Augment staff safety with tools that empower you to attract, retain, upgrade, and engage the dynamic workforce.
Reduce costs with analytics and AI to drive smarter connections across the energy lifecycle.
Boost on-site efficiency and safety.
Optimise commercial processes and deliver better service
Empower teams with digital tools that drive safety
Streamline operations and optimise asset digitization
Transform downstream enterprises.
Increase customer retention with a platform that drives personalization and growth
Optimise stakeholder relationships across all distribution channels
Lower maintenance costs, boost plant efficiency and reduce less downtimes
Remodel and enhance oilfield equipment and services.
Personalize contracts, quotes and bids and win high-margin deals
Operationalize existing investments in IoT with analytics and AI to drive business intelligence and reduce costs
Deliver value to customers with simplicity and transparency by investing in digital transformation strategies.
Develop and execute an actionable sustainability strategy.
Scale Social, Environmental, and Governance excellence to boost stakeholder engagement
Fast track progress towards achieving your sustainability goals with optimized greenhouse gas emission tracking and accounting across all your assets and locations.
Get ready for a sustainable future with a unified agile platform that allows you to pivot quickly, fast track business models, and adapts to new processes, workflows and integrations.
Common questions that we get asked often. Here are the answers.
Who can use Energy & Utilities Cloud?
Energy & Utilities Cloud is for any energy and utilities provider who wish to revolutionise the customer experience and connect the customer journey across every touchpoint.
Irrespective of what type of business model you have, whether a regulated energy company or a retail energy provider, Energy & Utilities Cloud can help you deliver connected engaging, personalized digital-first experiences across the customer lifecycle.
How do I use Energy & Utilities Cloud with my current Customer Information and billing systems?
Energy & Utilities Cloud is not a replacement for billing or CIS systems. However, you can easily integrate your existing utility enterprise systems with Energy & Utilities Cloud using out-of-the-box integration solutions driven by utility-specific data models and a repository of pre-built processes to fast track your digital transformation.
How is Energy & Utilities Cloud different from competing products?
Energy & Utilities Cloud is founded on the design methodology that built the world’s #1 CRM platform. It has been developed specifically for the energy industry. Now you get faster time to value with data models, custom industry specific apps, and out-of-the-box integrations. Build on the experience of our industry leaders for click based implementation and guidance throughout your digital transformation journey.
How so other Salesforce products work with Energy & Utilities Cloud?
Energy & Utilities Cloud plugs in easily with Marketing Cloud Experience Cloud, Service Cloud, and more. Now you can innovate faster than ever, with the full power of the Native Salesforce Customer 360 platform.
Girikon is a Gold Certified Salesforce Implementation Partner that can help you deliver an engaging digital transformation journey to your customers. Contact us today!
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Companies of all sizes are transforming the way they do business digitally with innovation in technology, in an attempt to engage customers in a new way. Enterprises are adopting a go-digital first approach with best in class out of the box software. Salesforce CRM happens to be one of them.
Educating yourself about Salesforce is one thing. Understanding which products, applications best suit your unique business needs is another matter. Which is why almost most Salesforce customers turn to Salesforce experts to seamlessly enter the Salesforce eco-system. These experts are called Salesforce Implementation Partners. Over the last decade, Salesforce has nurtured a vast network of it’s implementation partners across the globe that help businesses achieve their business goals.
Here's a look at some of the typical questions early adopters have about working with a Salesforce implementation partner.
What is an implementation partner?
To put it simply, an implementation partner is an firm that has been vetted and approved by Salesforce to implement their solutions for businesses on their behalf.
Every implementation partner specialises in certain areas of technology, industry, or application. Which means, there are Salesforce implementation partners to address every need, business, industry and product.
Why engage an implementation partner?
Salesforce CRM solutions cover the complete spectrum of business operations. These include but are not limited to sales, marketing, service etc. Each product can be further expanded by third party add-on applications and cross-platform integrations.
To put it in a nutshell, the Salesforce ecosystem has endless capabilities. The challenge is of aplenty – to select the right product with the features and functionality that best suit your needs.
A larger organization may already work with multiple technology-based solutions because of larger budgets and diversity in lines of business. They may need guidance in understanding how a particular Salesforce product, say, Sales Cloud, can seamlessly integrate with their existing systems without causing any conflict.
A smaller company on the other hand may be scaling up rapidly and will quickly realise that continuing to work with spreadsheets will not support their growth objectives. They would soon realize that they would need to automate some of their processes, and/or develop more personalised and engaging customer experiences. Implementing a CRM solution for the first time can feel intimidating.
It is almost impossible for your internal teams or staff with no prior experience with Salesforce to consider all the variables involved in an implementation and also be able to implement a new instance of a highly configurable CRM platform. Hiring full-time resources to embark on the implementation process can also prove be an expensive option.
These are some of the operational reasons that most of the Salesforce customers depend on Salesforce Implementation experts.
Bringing in a partner late in the game may prove to be detrimental to your growth plans. For you to derive maximum benefit of such a powerful and configurable platform requires close collaboration not just internally, but also with your implementation partner. The best way to do the implementation is when the journey begins together.
When is the right time to hire an implementation partner?
As early as possible.
As is true with any big investment, first you need to do your due diligence. Understand what needs should be met, gaps to close, or issues that need to be addressed. Establish a vision of what you want to achieve with the Salesforce implementation. Next, determine how would you execute your vision with Salesforce, which is where the partner comes in.
As soon as you estabish your goals, it’s time to bring in a partner. The right Salesforce implementation partner won’t just expedite the how, but they will also help you to sharpen your vision. They’ll help you get a clearer understanding of success metrics, establish realistic goals, and provide guidance on appropriate products. Finally, they’ll chalk out a sound project timeline for your entire implementation journey.
Meet with multiple prospective partners. Assess them on key parameters like industry experience, certified consultants, years in business, reviews, number of successful implementations, their post-implementation training and support strategy. Get a sense of who they are and how they work. This is a crucial relationship for your business, so don’t compromise.
How do I know which is the right partner for me?
Some Salesforce Implementation Partners have generalised Salesforce capabilities. And some would specialise in particular areas or functions of the Salesforce platform. Some might specialise in Sales Cloud and Financial Services Cloud. Others might have expertise in harnessing the combined powers of Marketing Cloud and Einstein.
Here are some pointers to guide you on what to look for in a Salesforce Implementation Partner:
Industry expertise
Does the Salesforce partner have experience working in the same industry as yours for other customers? Can they offer customer testimonials or case studies from similar projects?
Salesforce expertise
Does the partner have enough experience with the specific Salesforce solution that you wish to implement?
Technical expertise
Does the partner have the necessary technical capabilities to implement your Salesforce solution through customization, third party app integration or integration with other business systems within your organization?
Proven Methodology
Does the partner have a proven process methodology for Salesforce implementation and training? Do they implement using an Agile framework evolving with every iteration using a collaborative approach?
Ongoing support
What level and type of support are they providing to their existing customers? Do they provide 24/7 support?
Pricing and Budgets
What is their pricing model? What is the average size of the projects they have executed? Do they fit into your long-term budget?
What a Salesforce Implementation Partner Does?
Here are some of the things your Salesforce Implementation Partner will do as a part of their overall implementation:
Work with you closely to establish your long-term and short-term goals for your implementation
Document your existing business practices and make a detailed note of your specific requirements
Assess your existing systems and business operations and recommend any changes that may help you to achieve your goals and improve the efficiency of your workflows
Work closely with key stakeholders, adopting a collaborative approach to integrate Salesforce with your existing systems
Train your teams on the new platform
Salesforce implementation partners have extensive experience on the Salesforce platform across industries solving unique challenges in varied business environments. They know what it takes to execute and deliver a successful Salesforce implementation. A qualified partner can help you to avoid common pitfalls and get you up and running quickly.
What challenges might I encounter during implementation?
Salesforce has been around for decades now and it’s a known fact that bringing in a partner early in the game mitigates may of the implementation risks and challenges that may emerge along the way.
What is also important is to be clear on what you want to achieve over time and how you measure success over that journey. Most often, confusion or dissatisfaction arises from a lack of understanding on part of the customer on clear goals and measurable metrics.
If both you and your partner are not on the same page, its opens doors for unnecessary assumptions, and confusion and misunderstandings on timelines and system features can arise. This only complicates the process of achieving objectives and reaching success benchmarks that your set out with. Salesforce implementation is an expensive roll out and it’s a two-way street. Both you and your partner need to be transparent and work in close collaboration to make it a success. Never hesitate to ask the same questions. The Salesforce implementation process can be highly technical and it is only natural to seek precise clarification.
Just as you place your customers at the center of your business, partners place you at the center of theirs. They measure their success by your satisfaction levels. Customer success translates to partner success.
As it true with any successful relationship in life, this implementation partnership too thrives on open, honest communication from day one.
Girikon is a Gold Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner that provides expert guidance and support throughout the client’s growth journey. Get in touch with one of our experts today to know more about how we can help you.
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Salesforce can be transformational. Provided you implement it right. It has the power to change the way your organization functions, helping you transition to a smarter, efficient, data-driven, and impactful business.Salesforce can be transformational. Provided you implement it right. It has the power to change the way your organization functions, helping you transition to a smarter, efficient, data-driven, and impactful business.
But it‘s common that the same set of hurdles keep popping up repetitively. Technology based perfection is relatively easier to achieve. An expert team of Salesforce Consultants may execute challenging implementations on time and within budget. But it can become transformational only if it meets the business objectives of the organization.
Assessing the success of a Salesforce powered organization necessitates a holistic approach. The implementation team needs to have a clear understanding of the various forces at play, and prepare themselves for long-term, sustainable success. Here are 6 key Salesforce implementation challenges with tips on how to resolve them for post-implementation success.
Implementation and Adoption Roadmap
Lack of clarity of purpose and want of understanding of its impact can lead to a failed implementation of Salesforce. Without expectations being set, organizations tend to implement and adopt Salesforce with inadequate resources and expertise, and often without the buy-in of the right people. The result is a half-baked system that does not compliment organizational goals and staff needs.
When stakeholders do not agree on the requirements or scope, for lack of time or prioritization, the implementation team eds up confused with a blurred vision of the organization’s goals. Frequent scope changes lead to a faulty implementation with declined productivity.
Detailed and meticulous planning will drive 80% of your success. Spend time to freeze requirements before commencing implementation. Get buy in from stakeholders and management. Make a clear implementation roadmap upfront. Align it with the company’s strategic goals. Establish a clear roll-out strategy.
Data Migration and Validation
Data powers Salesforce. Without the right data, Salesforce cannot deliver what it is designed to. As it is, It’s a challenge for staff to learn a new system and adopt it as part of their regular work routine. And when data is incomplete or inaccurate couple of things happen. First, the trust is broken in the system. Second, when you feed your systems with faulty data, it’s even more challenging to get any valuable data out of it. And if users aren’t getting valuable information from the system, chances are slim they will be keen to enter it in the first place.
A definitive approach is required to work out the data migration strategy with the Salesforce implementation team. User mapping, data security and cleaning up data is a time intensive activity and requires an experienced team.
To overcome this data challenge, double-check the integrity of data that you wish to migrate. Clean it up before importing into Salesforce. Use relevant tools wherever possible. Look at data mapping closely to map relevant fields, Engage the team members who know your data well to assist with data migration validation.
One of the keys to maintain healthy data is to have smart detection systems, regular clean ups and training.
Customization
With Salesforce’s endless capabilities, there is a tendency to overdo customization to get maximum features on board. In a manner of speaking, tendency to bite more than you can chew. This only complicates the implementation. Customization without a thorough understanding of your business needs leads to a faulty implementation.
To overcome this, adopt an incremental approach. Split the features into basic, essential, and so on, in order of necessity. A phased approach saves costs and ensures the system retains its integrity after each stage of customization and mitigates implementation challenges to a large extent.
Use the Lightning App Builder from Salesforce and Apps from the AppExchange to build custom applications, fast. The Salesforce1 platform and Salesforce SDKs facilitate development of mobile apps quickly. Salesforce Canvas allows easy integration of other systems with Salesforce screens. Use Lightning Process Builder to create complex business processes without any need for coding.
User Acceptance Testing
No implementation is perfect. And despite the best of efforts of implementation teams, errors do creep in. Gaps in communication, bugs, unsuitable tools, and other issues often result in the system not being up to expectations. Testing is the best way to ensure any IT implementation meets its pre-defined goals. Catching bugs early makes it that much easier to fix them.
Empower subject matter experts with expertise in your line of business. Encourage them to take up leadership roles in the implementation, and become champions for its smooth roll-out and organization-wide adoption.
Document test cases and test plans and execute. Fix the bugs, and retest as and when needed. Simulate use cases and do thorough testing to ensure the code meets the objectives. Conduct sandbox testing to work out the kinks before go-live, mitigating the deployment risks.
Adoption
Most often, much of the focus and effort in a Salesforce implementation goes to the technical side of things. While this is necessary, it might come as a surprise that even after a really good implementation, it can still be a challenge to get your staff to actually use the system! More often than not, adoption is one of the biggest challenges across all types of businesses.
Adopting a new system with the power and flexibility of Salesforce requires a significant level of organizational change. And it requires some well thought out “change management” planning.
It is crucial to have an organizational adoption plan as much as it is to have a technical one. This includes getting staff and leadership buy-in, communicating clearly about the vision and value of the project, and having a thorough plan for training staff and supporting them as they get trained.
Training
Training of staff to use Salesforce is one of the biggest challenges post implementation. What’s the point of investing time, resources and money in implementing a powerful software like Salesforce, if your staff can’t use it to its fullest potential?
To master features in salesforce, users should undergo thorough training with your Salesforce Implementation Partner. Focus your training on custom built features or functionalities in your implementation. Without proper training and support even the most trivial issue can become a stumbling block in organization-wide adoption. To overcome this difficulty, the implementation team should distribute documentation about the new features developed and provide hands on classroom training, department wise.
The true power of Salesforce is not just about entering or populating data into it. Equally important is how you pull data out of it.
A Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner will approach your Salesforce implementation with 3 key elements — accurate assessment of expectations, detailed attention to data, and a thorough adoption/training plan, putting you 3 big steps ahead.
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Salesforce – a cloud-based CRM has a record of being the most widely adopted CRM platform by businesses of different sizes and domains. With its wide array of features and functionalities, Salesforce has helped businesses achieve their business goals. Salesforce has helped businesses supercharge their selling process by augmenting collaboration, creating personalized experiences, and removing data silos. Like any other sector, Salesforce has revolutionized the healthcare sector by ensuring better collaboration among health care teams, augmenting patient-provider relationships, and eventually attaining enhanced health outcomes.
The Salesforce Health Cloud released in 2016 has exhibited several advantages for the healthcare sector. To know more about Salesforce and its benefits, it makes sense to partner with one of the best Salesforce consultants. Let's explore some of them:
Get a Complete View of Patients: It is possible to get a clear picture of every individual's profile, including their data (non-clinical and clinical), communications, demographics, and other essential information from claims system, EHR, and more from a central location.
Empower Patients: This cloud solution empowers patients and healthcare providers to track the progress of health goals. It is possible to connect in real-time to address patients' queries or family members' queries from a single device.
Provide Quicker Personalized Care: With this cloud solution, it is possible to monitor cases and prioritize tasks based on instant needs and degree of importance. Apart from this, it is possible to section inhabitants in terms of demographics, risk, and other parameters while collaborating across the entire network of care providers while setting reminders for patient follow-up.
Enhance EHR: Since it is possible to access the right data at the right time, earning patients' trust becomes easy. Health Cloud enables users to unravel EHR systems and integrate apps securely and flexibly.
Why Should Healthcare providers use Salesforce?
Connect Disparate Data Sources: Removing data siloes is what Salesforce is known for. An average system uses multiple systems such as EHR, Insurance claims system, billing information, lab reports, etc. This wealth of data is scattered across several systems and therefore isn't very useful. By using APIs, all types of data can be integrated securely with Salesforce. Besides this, tools like Mulesoft Accelerator reduces the burden on IT teams. By efficiently bringing together disparate patient data in a single place, healthcare providers are empowered to make better decisions and spend more time on patient care.
Make Intelligent Use of Data: Salesforce can be leveraged to improve health outcomes by using its analytical capabilities on data. Tools like Tableau, formerly known as Einstein Analytics, provides healthcare providers with actionable insights so that patient need can be proactively fulfilled by anticipating their needs. It is also possible to identify high-risk patients via risk stratification to get enrolled in the right health care management program. In other words, Salesforce empowers healthcare providers to make data-driven decisions, ultimately leading to greater patient-provider satisfaction.
Collaboration of Care Team: Salesforce empowers healthcare providers to create a team that would include members of the patient care community, including physicians, household caregivers, or any one part of the healthcare journey. This becomes possible as Salesforce Health cloud develops on the capabilities of the service cloud. Individuals can assign tasks, send messages from any device, or view care management plans based on their team position. In short, it is a win-win situation for patients and providers.
Personalized Experiences: Consumers today expect personalized experiences across their journey with a brand. With Salesforce, it is possible to personalize every step of a customer's healthcare journey. Contact center agents can offer precise and tailor-made answers to patient queries as it is easy to access relevant information from visual care timelines and patient data cards. By consolidating clinical and non-clinical data in a single place, personalized care plans can be created. Besides this, healthcare providers can also address specific requirements of patients even before patients bring them up.
Moreover, based on patient preference, patient communication can be handled through calls, messages, or an online Salesforce portal. The innumerable opportunities of personalization offered by Salesforce can deepen patient-provider relationships, build trust and lead to better health outcomes.
Data Security: For healthcare organizations, data security is of utmost significance. Breach in data security will not just put patient safety at stake but can cost millions. Salesforce allows organizations to stay in control of their data by staying HIPAA and HITRUST compliant. Healthcare organizations can ensure that electronically protected health information (ePHI) is encrypted and can be accessed only by authorized users using Health cloud associated with Salesforce Shield. Irrespective of the restricting nature of the regulatory guidelines, Salesforce paves the way for advancement. Healthcare companies can pick from the vast array of the available native Apps present on the App Exchange platform to add functionality to improve processes without compromising on data security.
The Bottom Line:
As we step into the New Year while enduring the pandemic, healthcare providers require operating as efficiently while offering first-rated care. Besides ensuring the aforesaid, Salesforce Health Cloud can provide a 360-degree view of a patient, which paves the way for intelligent data usage at every stage of the patient care journey. This empowers healthcare providers to offer services that best meet patient expectations. Healthcare providers should consider contacting certified and experienced Salesforce Implementation partners to implement Salesforce Health Cloud.
By creating innovative healthcare solutions, implementation partners will empower organizations to meet the evolving needs of today’s healthcare industry. All the healthcare players such as hospitals, nursing homes, pharmaceuticals etc. can benefit from custom solutions offered by these service providers.