Managing superior customer relationships is no longer a choice but has become a necessity in today’s era. This is easier said than done as businesses are engaged in multiple activities including but not limited to managing multiple business processes. Salesforce – a robust cloud-based CRM has become one of the most popular and widely adopted CRM platforms across the globe. The innovative platform is endowed with multiple features, functionalities, and components that can be leveraged by businesses to resolve their business issues.
As an entrepreneur, if you are looking to scale up your business, you must work on streamlining your business processes while ensuring operational efficiency. With its wide array of features and functionalities, Salesforce can be leveraged by organizations to manage their processes efficiently. However, suppose your Salesforce solution fails to address your unique business needs. You can either turn to a ready-made App from App Exchange or opt for custom Salesforce Apps to achieve the desired functionality. Although AppExchange is an easy way to get the desired functionality, a custom Salesforce app is undoubtedly a better option. It’s better to seek Salesforce support from a reliable service provider to learn more about the custom Salesforce App.
Listed below are some of the compelling reasons why the Salesforce Custom App is preferred over an AppExchange App:
Cost-effective: Getting a custom App developed is a more cost-effective option than buying one from AppExchange, especially with multiple users and a constrained budget. This is because AppExchange Apps require paying monthly subscription fees. On the other hand, a one-time payment for development, testing, and deployment is made irrespective of the number of users. However, before you choose, make sure you compare your subscription fees with what a developer or a test engineer would charge for one-time work.
Covers Industry-specific Business Processes: If you are looking to integrate some industry-specific processes into your solution, creating a custom App with specific techniques per your unique needs is a better option. AppExchange apps, on the other hand, can help add universal functionality, for instance, one that allows clients to sign contracts sent in their inbox from Salesforce.
Allows Integration of Salesforce with niche software products: To get access to certain marketing or designing materials, you may require a custom integration App for integrating your Salesforce solution to an online platform. AppExchange Apps, on the other hand, has several ready-made integration applications for connecting that can be used to integrate your Salesforce solution to a third-party system.
Additional Scope for Customization: When you opt for a custom-developed App, you leave the scope for tailoring your application in the future due to a change in business process or an increasing number of App users. On the other hand, an AppExchange App offers no such guarantee or assurance for modification in the future.
How to Manage Your Customization Project?
It is essential to organize the customization process to get your customized Salesforce solution aligned with your business needs. Although Salesforce customization isn't rocket science, it may require extra effort than anticipated. By following the sequence of the steps mentioned below, your chances of success will increase:
Seeking Input of End-user: It is crucial to seek your employees' feedback regarding the CRM challenges they might be facing, the features they consider useful, and the ones they are missing out on to comprehend the scope of a future customization project. This helps you figure out the functionality gaps that require elimination.
Engaging a CRM Manager: Make sure you appoint an experienced and qualified CRM manager who can help define the scope of customization, plan the customization process, and provide custom features besides managing the ongoing support to a tailored solution.
Choosing the Right cooperation model: It is essential to define the scope of your project and your business requirement before selecting the right cooperation model. You have two options, i.e., an FP (Fixed Price) contract, which agrees with a one-time delivery of custom features with fixed scope, and the T&M (Time and Materials) contract.
Hiring the Right Salesforce Services Provider: Choosing a Salesforce service provider with thorough consulting and development skills is essential. While the consulting skills are vital for detailing the effective ways of addressing your business challenges, good development skills are required to make Salesforce solutions work just as needed.
Keeping Costs under Check: To check the cost involved in customization, you should take a reasonable approach to customization by prioritizing custom features that are sufficient to meet your business needs while doing away with the need for excessive code-based customizations.
A quick wrap-up:
Salesforce customization is a practical way of making your Salesforce CRM a profitable sales and customer service tool that can curb the concerns associated with poor user adoption. To ensure your customization process is a success, make sure you note the aforementioned best practices. If you are looking for an app designed specifically to meet your business needs, investing in a cost-effective and custom-developed Salesforce App is better. Consider partnering with one of the best Salesforce App Development Companies to get the most out of your investment. By developing a custom-developed App, organizations can enjoy the business process and operational efficiency.
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.
To sustain in today’s digital era, organizations need to indulge in the development of robust and indigenous applications that can help them in making their business super productive while serving their customers in the best possible way. However, redressing business-critical issues expeditiously using normal CRM applications isn’t possible and thus requires the development of cloud-based CRM applications. Since, software development isn’t a simple task; it becomes all the more challenging to develop, test and deploy a cloud-based system such as Salesforce on a cloud environment.
To understand a typical Salesforce development lifecycle, it’s important to seek Salesforce support and know about the various actors involved in the process. Some of the most common ones include the following:
Product Manager: One who is responsible for coordinating and finalizing the business requirements.
Release Manager: One who coordinates the release schedule with the client and the development team.
Developer:One who does the main coding, and produces deliverables.
Quality Analyst: One who tests and confirms various features.
Trainer:One who provides training.
Listed below are steps that are involved in the Salesforce Development Lifecycle:
Discovery Phase: It is the first and fundamental phase that contributes to the successful execution of Salesforce implementation. During this phase, the groundwork for the Salesforce Implementation is done and all the crucial information required for the implementation is gathered, reviewed, and deliberated. During the discovery phase the following factors are examined:
The goal and objectives of the business and the project at hand is analyzed
Gaps, risks, and critical requirements are identified.
Analysing the existing systems that require CRM integration
Get a detailed overview of the scope of the deployment
Understand the reporting requirements etc.
Source Control Set-up: In this step, the release manager sets up the source control repository. It’s always beneficial to have a separate Git repository for each project while the default branch can act as the master branch where production metadata can be stored. Post this; different branches are created for different features by the release manager, which will be used by different developers. The release manager also creates the package.xml manifest and uses the same to populate the master branch with metadata and uses Force.com for data migration.
Development Phase: Developers create their sandboxes that usually have a copy of the main production app and all the related Salesforce configuration information. The developers start developing within their sandboxes and use Force.com to connect with their sandboxes and recover metadata from the sandbox to the IDE. After doing necessary coding and initial unit testing, developers obligate the code to the Git repository.
For the next steps of development, the freshly committed code can be migrated to the Sandboxes while they carry on with further development. The latest development should be committed to the repository. However, if more people are working on the same code then they should check for conflicts before committing the code to the repository.
Testing: Once the development is completed, it is followed by testing. Just like the developers, QA’s or testers migrate the code from the repository to their sandbox environment for testing. Testers use partial copy sandboxes when they are assigned the task of testing a specific feature. QA’s require sharing their sandbox environment if they are required to do more thorough testing of crucial features, which largely depends on the workflow pattern of the organization. However, changes recommended at this stage will take it back to the initial development phase.
Acceptance Testing: After the aforementioned level of testing is accomplished, another level of testing i.e. user acceptance testing is conducted wherein apart from testers and QA’s product managers, developers, and other users perform the final testing. Partial sandboxes are being created by the release managers for testing, which are then used by the product managers for carrying out ad-hoc testing followed by preparing a final presentation for the clients or the end-users. However, any changes suggested during this stage can take the entire process to the initial development phase to integrate the changes.
Product Release: The app that has undergone all the testing processes is tested for performance in an intermediate sandbox environment, which has all the data and configurations of the production environment. Since, this sandbox isn’t partial; it has all the features of the app. After the final performance and regression testing is performed by the QA team, the app has to pass all service level agreements. Post this; the app is ready to be deployed in the production environment.
Patch Releases: Even after the deployment of the app, some of the other requirements for bug fixes, tweaking of a feature, or a minute change may pop up and are taken care of during the patch releases. The patch release cycle has a cycle of its own but has faster processes as compared to the app development lifecycle.
Quick Wrap-up:
So, if you are looking for robust apps that can help you streamline your business processes and increase business productivity then it’s important for you to partner with a certified Salesforce partner for Salesforce app development.
Girikon’s Salesforce support team are regularly asked questions about WalkMe interfacing with Salesforce where they initially need to highlight capabilities and benefits once integrated. Girikon, a Salesforce Implementation Partner is proactive and with the assistance of their Salesforce Support consultants outline WalkMe’s benefits such as acceleration time to competency during training, improvement of data integrity, promotion of new Salesforce features and productivity gains. Girikon’s team work closely with existing clients to integrate Salesforce to WalkMe with the knowledge that as a Salesforce Implementation Partner there is a high probability that these type of integrations will be within project scope for new clients.
WalkMe is a cloud platform that assists product managers and customer success managers to create product tours and manage in-app experiences. Without a doubt, WalkMe is one of the first in the user onboarding market. Because of its huge and recognisable brand, it is probably the first choice for many companies. It helps you to onboard and adopt more users by creating different walkthroughs inside your application. Through WalkMe’s dashboard, you can easily see all your user onboarding data and analytics. Because of its strengths and powers, WalkMe is a great tool for larger enterprises. But because of its pricing and hard to use, it isn’t the best option for start-ups, SaaS or small and medium businesses.
Using the Salesforce integration, you can push WalkMe Insights data to Salesforce objects to enhance your understanding of end-user behaviour. Girikon’s Salesforce Consultant Deepanshi takes us through a step by step guide to set up WalkMe and Salesforce integration below.
Requirements
The following items are required before attempting to setup WalkMe:
You must be a Salesforce admin or contact your Salesforce admin in order to add custom fields to your targeted Salesforce object(s)
You must have a Salesforce user that either has Salesforce admin access or ModifyAllData permissions to grant WalkMe access to OAuth 2.0 authorization to read and update the metadata of Salesforce objects (this access can be revoked by the Salesforce Admin at any time)
Walkme is an on-premise solution – so for different purpose you must install it before using it. This can become a little bit messy, since installing Walkme inside your system requires a lot of technical knowledge. So, you need to put a lot of effort just to see how Walkme works.
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