Every customer is unique. And they are demanding too! In general, customers like to know if the experience they are going to have is personalized for them or not. In fact, in a survey conducted by Salesforce across customers, it was found that 86% of them admitted that personalization played a role in their purchasing decisions. But customers aren’t the only ones who prefer customization.
Businesses around the world are equally uninterested in consuming products and services that are designed for mass consumption. They want something that fits seamlessly with their unique processes and is flexible, intuitive, and effective.
Salesforce does all this and more. The World’s No1 CRM Platform was designed specifically for configuration and customization. It comes with a plethora of unique features, tools, and resources enabling businesses to create custom apps that are aligned with their business goals and objectives. However, unlocking its true power requires a deep understanding of its customizable nature across different industries. And this is exactly where a competent Salesforce Implementation Partner comes in. With the right Salesforce Consultant and a methodically executed implementation plan, you can send the productivity of your teams into overdrive and unlock the real value of your business.
If you can’t trust a CRM platform to meet your unique business needs, then it’s likely you won’t get much use out of it. Salesforce features a totally open eco-system, which means you can extend Salesforce to accomplish any task, with apps for every business need.
CRM + UX: The ultimate customer experience
Customers aren’t just demanding vanilla products and services anymore; they are seeking an enriching experience. They are demanding convenience and deeper engagement throughout the business lifecycle. With exponential growth in technology-related products, tools, and services, coupled with today’s dynamic and unpredictable context, it is imperative for businesses to live up to these demands and offer their customers the ultimate experience.
How your business delivers products and services to your customers is as important as what you deliver. Salesforce provides you with that elusive combination of power, flexibility, and tools at your fingertips to effortlessly execute code-less customization to suit your needs.
So how does one go about customizing Salesforce to align with your business goals?
Identify opportunities and bridge gaps
An important step before the Salesforce implementation begins is to conduct a thorough assessment of current business processes and identify inadequacies and redundancies. Focus on processes that are a drain on your resources. Identifying gaps and shortcomings early is critical to a successful implementation. This is where the role of a Salesforce Consultant becomes so important. Discuss with your Salesforce Implementation Partner and answer some key questions like -How do you customize Salesforce to enhance adoption? How do you maximize your ROI? How do you reduce the learning curve? Discuss with your Salesforce Implementation Partner to understand which features are most helpful to address these gaps. Add additional functionality into your implementation by using custom codes or extended features, that is more end-user-focused and aligned with your overall goals and objectives. Look beyond standard Salesforce functionality. Customize! It’s a certain way to drive adoption.
Businesses must understand that a successful Salesforce implementation is a result of team effort as well as collaboration across departments and stakeholders. The implementation plan needs to be communicated to all concerned teams and all stakeholders need to buy into this new process of doing business.
Focus on usability
Salesforce has countless features and options, and this can be a deterrent to early adopters. Work with your Salesforce Consultant to configure the software in a way so as to present relevant data and components to optimize your business workflows. Salesforce Lightning (discussed later) can be used for enhancing productivity and drive adoption rates.
Automate
Automate repetitive tasks. By customizing templates, standardizing workflows, and automating repetitive tasks, you can significantly improve adoption rates. Businesses can now automate faster using something called Flows. You can download configurable prebuilt processes with flow templates and use the flow builder to integrate stand-alone building blocks.
Leverage AppExchange
Salesforce AppExchange is a great place to find relevant tools and plugins to get you off the blocks quickly. AppExchange is a unified ecosystem that is used for creating and running all of the personalized applications that an organization might need. Whether you are a new user or an existing one, you can discover free, customizable, customer-recommended solutions built by Salesforce developers to help you address common business issues. Whether it is tracking employee progress, oversight of projects, streamlining repetitive tasks, fast-tracking automation, or kick-starting app building, chances are that you will find a solution to your problem on AppExchange. You can effortlessly customize these tools with an intuitive drag and drop interface and get going.
Although it is possible for businesses to build and run their own apps without the Salesforce platform, AppExchange has certain inherent advantages over other potential options:
Intuitive interface. You may have a clear understanding of what you want apps to deliver for you. However, on most occasions, knowledge transfer of your goals and vision can create gaps in understanding between your developers and you. Leading to ineffective creation of apps. AppExchange features an intuitive and easy-to-master interface, so that your teams can build and deploy precise apps. This means more effective systems, and as a result, more productivity
Short development times. AppExchange provides users with effortless, drag-and-drop elements empowering users to quickly create custom, business-centric apps, potentially in a matter of hours.
Multiple development tools. Organizations are no more restricted to a limited choice of development tools. Salesforce brings together three powerful development tools — Force.com, Heroku Enterprise, and Lightning — empowering app developers with the flexibility to choose what they want in order to get the job done.
Prebuilt apps. Why re-invent the wheel? It’s likely that what you are seeking to deploy is already there on the AppExchange. You can discover thousands of existing third-party apps in the world’s largest enterprise app marketplace. Customize as you want and deploy in an agile framework.
Limitless possibilities. AppExchange is the solution across departmental needs – Marketing, HR, IT, finance, operations, and more. Businesses can build and deploy apps that can scale across a limitless number of devices and users.
Scalable Meta Data Driven Platform
As your business grows, your CRM needs to adapt right along with it. By using a single code base, Salesforce makes it possible for customers to customize and scale their CRM solutions with tools that work on the meta data layer. Whatever the need, Salesforce provides customizable, configurable solutions, and does so effectively, quickly, and with minimum effort.
Conclusion
Salesforce is committed to providing businesses of all sizes with the tools they need to empower themselves. Of the many advantages offered by the World’s No 1 CRM platform, perhaps the most valuable are comprehensive solutions, high security standards, customizability, innovation-centric design, and specifically designed apps that allow usability with limitless possibilities. With an ROI on par with the best in the industry, there’s no reason not to give it a try.
Looking for Pricing?
Contact our reps to discuss your needs today.
CONTACT AN EXPERT
The retail sector is figuring out new ways to stay at the top. Given the rise in online sales and digital buyers, retailers require introducing robust digital solutions that can help eCommerce businesses gain an edge over their competitors. One such solution that is tailored to meet the specific needs of online retailers is the Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Companies should consider leveraging Salesforce Integration services.
What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?
Salesforce Commerce Cloud, earlier known as Demandware, is an eCommerce solution that was designed to help retailers provide a unique shopping experience to users irrespective of the channel they are using. The robust solution offers rich features to help retailers better engage with shoppers and ultimately convert them.
What are the Key Solutions Offered by Salesforce Commerce Cloud?
Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers numerous solutions that are customizable as businesses can pick functionalities and services to suit their specific business needs:
B2C Commerce: This solution is designed to transform the digital shopping experience for customers across different channels. Its primary purpose is to engage the brand and the shoppers irrespective of which channel they purchase from. This functionality covers everything from handling order lifecycle, creating marketing campaigns and customer-oriented promotions. These solutions help organizations improve their customer support teams, augment the rate of customer satisfaction, personalize customer experience while providing them with relevant information before and after they have made the purchase. B2C commerce cloud utilizes AI technology to predict customer behavior and provide recommendations to help clients find the products they are looking for.
B2B Commerce: Capturing the attention of business buyers might be difficult. B2B commerce is a solution to meet the complex needs of customers while entering the market spread across various industries. B2B commerce helps businesses respond to the growing competition and constantly evolving requirements while introducing innovation in their business operations. The robust solution provides buyers with a self-serving buying experience while simplifying online shopping by automating invoicing, billing, and reordering operations.
Order Management: The key to online sales success is proper order management. Organizations can leverage Salesforce Order Management solutions to automate multiple operations related to the management of inventory, fulfilment of orders, payments, etc. Besides this, the solution also covers challenges related to return and refund policies allowing customers to feel more comfortable while shopping online.
Benefits Offered by Salesforce Commerce Cloud:
Predict Customer Behaviour: Salesforce CRM with AI integrated within it and known as Salesforce Einstein eliminates the need to analyze data gathered manually. It does away with the need for third-party integration. The AI-powered CRM also predicts customer behavior, recommends personalized product offers, and automates repetitive tasks to save time and money. Providing customers with special offers, loyalty programs, and discounts makes it possible to enhance their overall experience.
Improved Marketing Management: When combined with the marketing cloud, the Salesforce commerce cloud solution allows marketers to create promotion and marketing campaigns to create more clients. The cloud solution can manage everything from social media campaigns, paid promotions, email marketing, and reporting. Apart from this, another benefit of using this tool is the ability to run A/B tests to optimize conversions.
Mobile Experience: To sustain this competitive business landscape, retailers require a mobile-friendly website with an intuitive design. With Commerce Cloud, marketers can deliver the best possible shopping experience for mobile customers irrespective of the device they use. Commerce Cloud follows a mobile-first approach to allow its users to access features anywhere and anytime.
Scalability and Customization: For businesses looking to venture into new markets or have attained a certain level of growth when they need to scale up their resources, Commerce Cloud offers customizable and scalable solutions. Businesses can start with essential features and allow more functionality on the go. It means that companies will have to pay only for answers that they need without including any useless features.
Final Words:
Solutions offered by Salesforce empower businesses of all sizes to expand and meet the constantly growing customer demand. So, if you wish to remain competitive in the retail industry, driving digital transformation across the entire organization is a must. Suppose you are looking to implement Salesforce commerce within your business ecosystem. In that case, you must seek professional support from one of the most experienced and reliable Salesforce consultants who can help your business grow and thrive.
Compared to yesteryears, customers today are more aware and informed and thus expect a personalized experience besides quality services and products. Since customers are the lifeblood of every business, retaining them, especially the existing ones, is crucial as they spend 31 percent more than the new ones. This calls for a robust customer retention strategy that will not just ensure an increase in revenue but also a decrease in overall cost. It is possible to acquire a higher level of customer retention by implementing a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform like Salesforce.
According to a survey conducted by Salesforce, it has been revealed that acquiring new customers or clients is more expensive than retaining the existing one.
How to Boost Customer Retention Using Salesforce?
Tracking Customer Interaction: It is possible to keep track of your customers with Salesforce integration. From where your customers are, when they made the last purchase to what they are looking for on your website, Salesforce helps you know everything about your customers and prospects. This will help you understand customer behavior and preferences while helping you respond to their needs appropriately. Moreover, you will be able to engage with your customers by sending them personalized messages/emails while introducing them to your products and services.
Unify the Database of Your Customers: Since Salesforce helps gather, organize, and analyze all your customer data in a single location, which helps in customer retention. Your sales team will access all the data easily while staying informed. With this, data accuracy is increased, and data duplicity is reduced. Moreover, client satisfaction is ensured as transparent communication is ensured between business and customers. By partnering with a Salesforce consulting company, you will be able to make the most of this fantastic platform.
Power of Personalization: For every business, customer data is a mine of gold. By centralizing this wealth of data to be personalized later, it is easy to resonate with your customers. By leveraging Salesforce integration services, you will be empowered to take control of your customer relationship by using tools such as Pardot dynamic content that allows you to personalize emails, subject lines, and more. By personalizing communication, you show your customers that you care for them.
Engaging Inactive Customers: Salesforce enables you to interact with inactive customers by keeping track of their customers by consolidating emails, calls, etc., by checking their purchase history and buying preferences, keeping them engaged via personalized messages, and more. This way, you will save money and acquire new customers.
Integration of Customer Service Tool: Several customer service applications such as service cloud, desk.com, etc., offered by Salesforce can be leveraged to eliminate silos ensure collaboration between teams, especially the account management and customer service departments. By leveraging these tools, overall customer experience can be improved.
Quick Wrap-up:
Businesses should consider harnessing the power of Salesforce to grow their revenue and profit. So, make sure you get in touch with a certified and reputed Salesforce implementation partner to ensure the successful implementation of this platform, which will ultimately help you retain your customers and build a strong relationship with them.
What are the important questions you need to ask yourself before setting up or managing an existing in-house Salesforce Development Services team? Here are some questions I have heard from discussions with colleagues and customer during my time managing software businesses. It is common across all software applications and industries where organisations are always looking for cost effective development service solutions which delivers a quality result.
• What is the experience level requirement for technical staff and what industry should they have worked in prior to joining the team?
• How do I train these resources and keep them producing quality outcomes?
• Would I require specialist consultants’ roles such as Architects, Business Analysts, Senior Developers, application Developers, UI/UX developer, Scrum masters or testers? The list goes on!
• How many of each resource would service our organisational needs?
• Can I employ graduates from a local university or even outsource this whole services?
• What is the best approach? How do I establish a function which services the organisation’s needs and provide a quality outcome for the business?
Many organisations who require Salesforce Developers or Consultants usually start with the employment of a Certified Salesforce Consultant usually a Salesforce Administrator or Salesforce App developer to configure and/or make changes to the Salesforce product(s) that are in use. The company often believes that they will avoid paying hefty premiums of in-demand Salesforce Consultants on an adhoc or regular basis from the larger consulting firms. Yes, in the short-term organisations do achieve the peace of mind of having an in-house team and substantial cost advantages.
The downside is that in-house teams’ members often require the appropriate level of professional development and training to keep abreast of technology changes, new products, new features and releases. In-house staff also often require clear progression paths and motivation to stay at the organisation. Retention is sometimes very challenging when the organisation’s Salesforce Consulting Services is not a core business offerings.
There are many challenges facing organisations who have made the decision to setup a Salesforce Consulting Services or Salesforce Development Services Team as part of the IT department, PMO or standalone. I personally have fielded these questions and challenges coming from my colleagues across a variety of industries, prospects and clients. Girikon believes it has developed a cost-effective offering which will answer every question above and provide you with the peace of mind, quality of service and have testimonials from a wide variety of organisations to prove their method works.
Now let’s look at the options……
Imagine you had access to a range of Salesforce Consultants including Architects, Salesforce Developers and Salesforce Administrators working within your time-zone onsite and/or offshore to ensure all your Salesforce Development needs are all addressed.
All your Salesforce consultants are certified and with a wide range and relevant experience levels and offer up to 50% of the cost of an inhouse team. Girikon believes local presence is essential when dealing with complex software packages and business critical systems. Girikon is fast becoming global with offices in the USA and now in Australia/New Zealand and Development Centre in India.
Girikon’s Salesforce Consulting Services in USA and Australia provide a reach and local presence to organisations around the globe and are anticipating further growth in the future with offices planned in the UK/Europe as the next frontier.
Girikon are Salesforce Experts and an excellent choice to be your Salesforce Development Partner. Girikon, a Software Development Company will meet your requirements with a variety of additional services such as Salesforce Implementation, Salesforce Support and Services including customization and Salesforce Integration.
Also, as a Salesforce Implementation Partner, our experienced and Certified Salesforce Developers, Administrators and Architects are available onshore and offshore. We ensure the Offshore Salesforce Development for your implementation or business as usual is made simple, less time-consuming and comparatively Cost-Effective.
Girikon’s delivery models provide the flexibility to establish a balanced onshore/offshore model with proven agile development processes. Our Salesforce Development Company provides the assurance of a high accelerated delivery timelines driving huge reductions in Time-to-Market and costs.
The questions posed at the start of this article are all relevant and important when you are deciding to establish an in-house Salesforce team, determining what the team would look like including optional questions to reduce overheads.
Girikon’s offering above addresses all the questions including our Salesforce Consultants experience levels, industry exposure, commitment to continuous improvement include training, have a variety of roles deployed within reasonable timeframes and more cost effective than graduate programs and pure outsourcing models. More importantly Girikon have a proven approach and model that has and will continue to address our partner’s needs.
Find out more at https://www.girikon.com/offshore-salesforce-development/. Please share your feedback for this article, in case you need Salesforce Consultant, Salesforce Implementation Partner or Salesforce Development Services then please feel free to reach out to us at sales@girikon.com
How imperative is it to get the right level of Support for your third-party software? What level and type of Support do you need to underpin your whole business?
There are a few options including setting up an internal support team, relying on the third party software provider for all levels of support which could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or engage a specialised support partner with the same level of knowledge and experience as third party software provider with added benefit of in depth industry experience and spends time with their customers to understand the business and its processes. Below I will examine the options and provide some examples where a Salesforce Support Services partner such as Girikon could be the answer to all your support needs.
Internal Support Teams
Internal support teams often struggle to keep up with internal stakeholder demands and in some instances lack the capacity and capability to deal with issues, defects and enhancement requests from their third party software providers.
Setting up an internal Support teams can sometimes be a long and tedious process. Firstly, the organisation needs to determine an appropriate support framework to underpin the business including the level of support to be provided, providing an effective interface between the organisation and the third-party provider and setting up the capability and systems to underpin the internal support structure.
Once the support framework is designed, suitable and capable operational staff are required to implement. This will include selecting the right candidates, assessing appropriate skill sets, training regimes, familiarisation and understanding the business and what is unique about the business.
In some cases, organisations setup internal support teams with ease. This is due to effective planning and experience in house. Girikon offer these type of organisations with highly skilled, certified and experienced Salesforce Consultants to work collaboratively with internal Support teams at cost effective rates with the flexibility of onshore or offshore models to suit.
Software Support Providers
Entering an annual support contract from the organisation’s 3rd party software provider such as Salesforce can sometimes be costly and gives the organisation access to a level of support which may or not suit the organisation’s needs.
In some cases, the software provider’s support team resources often differ from the project team who successfully managed the software implementation. How often do we encounter a sub-standard handover from Implementation to BAU where there is little to no documentation or the lack of enough training to support staff? In these instances, there is a requirement for Subject Matter Experts (SME) to be internally selected to champion the software support, acting as the interface between internal stakeholders and the software provider and in some cases triaging issues coming through from internally stakeholders. SME must then in turn determine if the issues are appropriate to log, the priority of issues and follow through on service levels.
Usually the SMEs are employed to do a specific role outside of support in the organisation and taking up the SME title is usually casual or part time due to many reasons including showing a level of interest, being a conscientious employee, the employee’s technical abilities or just being thrust into a position due to resource constraints.
When an organisation chooses to proceed with the option for 3rd Party Software support it is important to ensure that all business processes are well documented and how the software is used including who will be completing updates after every upgrade, a support process is established to ensure all responsibilities are known and communicated to all stakeholders. This will ensure the unnecessary pressure is not placed internally on SMEs and the level of support and service is in line with the organisation’s expectations.
In some cases, organisations work through the Support process early in the journey with their 3rd party software providers and have a well-established support framework to underpin the organisation’s operations.
Girikon offers an alternative to this type of support service for organisations using Salesforce. Girikon will spend time understanding your business processes, document required artefacts to ensure knowledge about the business is not lost. Girikon’s end to end Salesforce support process includes a robust support model, best practice framework and highly skilled, certified and experienced Salesforce Consultants to deploy immediately. Girikon works with your staff at cost effective rates with the flexibility of onshore or offshore models to suit any size business.
Specialised Salesforce Support Services Partner
When it comes to Salesforce Support Girikon offers a cost advantage by using both onshore and offshore resourcing model blended to ensure maximum efficiencies. Girikon’s quality is guaranteed, extensive experience across industries and Salesforce products and most importantly customer testimonials to provide a level of confidence to all stakeholders. As a Salesforce Implementation Partner we focus primarily on providing the highest of service to our customers;
• Through Girikon’s on-shore presence it takes the time to understand the business, the processes and the culture of the organisation
• Girikon’s Salesforce Consultants design a bespoke support solution to ensure maximum effectiveness in set up and BAU.
• Girikon a Salesforce Consulting Partnerunderstands the importance of providing consistency through the implementation and go live period and prefers to be involved early in the project to ensure this consistency.
• Girikon provides Salesforce Supports across time zone which is ideal for globally diverse companies
If you are searching for a Cost-Effective Salesforce Support Services, your search can end here!
Find out more at https://www.girikon.com/salesforce-support/. Please share your feedback for this article, in case you need Salesforce Consultant, Salesforce Implementation Partner or Salesforce Development Services then please feel free to reach out to us at sales@girikon.com
A popular term that we constantly hear today in the tech marker is Cloud Computing. Salesforce is one of the technologies that is dominating among all the the cloud computing solutions.
In this blog, I ( A Salesforce Consultant) will give a brief introduction of Salesforce and will answer few questions: Why Salesforce? What is Salesforce? What are the services offered by the Salesforce?
Why Salesforce?
1.People who are using Salesforce say it’s unique for three major reasons:
• Fast: If we talk about the legacy CRM system, it takes year to deploy. But Salesforce provides you a fastest path from Idea to App. You need not to think about the infrastructure but building your app.
• Easy: In easy to use category Salesforce is the Boss. You need to spend more time on developing rather than figuring it out.
• Effective: The ability of customizing Salesforce to meet your business needs, consumers find it very effective.
2. Salesforce is handy, it is there on cloud, a device and internet connection and your team is good to go.
3. As compared to other CRM’s, Salesforce is easy to integrate. You can integrate Salesforce to your Outlook as well as your accounting software.
4. Salesforce is highly scalable to your growth.
5. Salesforce is for all, even the startups and small businesses can use Salesforce.
Salesforce is affordable considering its vast variety of services.
What is Salesforce?
I hope I have answered the above question well, why should we use Salesforce. Now it’s the time to discuss what is Salesforce?
Salesforce.com is a company and Salesforce is a technology. Salesforce.com started as SAAS (Software as a Service) CRM Company. Along with various software solutions, now Salesforce.com provide a platform named Force.com for the developers for building and distributing custom software (PAAS).
Salesforce is the technology which works on Multitenant Architecture, that describes multiple users can share the common access to the software instance. On Salesforce platform, software and infrastructure upgrade happen automatically. So your organization need not to worry about managing technology, rather focus on innovation.
What are the Services offered by the Salesforce?
The importance of Salesforce in Cloud Computing market cannot be understood completely, without knowing about the wide variety of products and services that Salesforce offer. Below are the cloud services that are offered by Salesforce:
• Salesforce Sales Cloud
• Salesforce Service Cloud
• Salesforce Community Cloud
• Salesforce Marketing Cloud
• Salesforce Commerce Cloud
• Salesforce Analytics Cloud
• Salesforce App Cloud
• Salesforce IOT Cloud
I tried to touch the basic technical aspects of Salesforce in this article. We as an organization and Salesforce implementation partner provide Salesforce development services in all the major areas.
The success of any software implementation depends on the user adoption rate. In any organization, a new system is implemented for the betterment of its employees as the new system eliminate some or all redundant process, manual efforts.
Well, it is not necessary that the newly implemented system does the above-mentioned work. In short, it helps in boosting the employees’ efficiency.
The same goes for Salesforce Implementation . If your employees’ are not used to Salesforce environment, then it will be quite difficult for the users to adopt the system and work on it on the daily basis.
“There are innumerable reasons determining why users are not adopting a new system. In the below segment we will be discussing those factors and solution for solving them and getting more and more users onboard.
Training Sessions for the End Users:
It is important to provide full-fledged training, especially to the immediate end users before switching to a new Salesforce solution. Video, tutorial, live demo, webinars on UAT Mode proves to be quite beneficial and helps a lot in adapting.
One can also provide customized training for different users depending on their permission, groups. When the employees attend the training, they share their doubts, feedback about the solution which in turn helps in making the solution even better for the employees.
Prepare the End-users:
It is important to keep your users notified that a new system will be introduced to them for their daily work. You can do this 1 month or 15 days prior to the implementation depending upon the system.
You can start with pamphlets, newsletters, etc., and as the implementation day approaches you can organize one to one training so that user adoption is smooth and the user will also not find that hard to settle with the new system.
User Manual for the users:
It is a good practice to provide User Documentation of newly developed system so that the end users can refer that document whenever they get stuck. User manual with system images gives more clarity and helps the end users to find the solution easily.
Realize your users the need of new system:
It is vital to explain the need for introducing a new Salesforce solution to the end users and what benefit can one achieve from the new solution so that the adoption is less complex.
Implement the new system in sync with the existing business flow so that the users can understand it and find it not hard to adapt it.
Provide support to the end users after implementation:
After the implementation, provide hands-on training to the users and resolve all the queries asked by the users. Sometime, a user may get confused by seeing new user interface may end up asking minor questions. All you have to do is be patient and answer all the questions asked and show them how to achieve it.
That’s all for this article, in case you need a Salesforce Consultant , Salesforce Implementation Partner or Salesforce Development Services then please feel free to reach out to us at sales@girikon.com
Girikon is a one-stop destination for Salesforce Development related work having its offices in USA, Australia and India