Salesforce implementation – what to pay attention to?

Salesforce is one of the most popular cloud-based CRM platforms, used for faster and more effective sales. It offers numerous possibilities for configuration and gives easy access to use both ready-made and more advanced and custom solutions. This makes it desirable for different organizations, regardless of the industry, needs and scales of their operations. To enjoy its benefits, it is necessary to be well-prepared for the implementation process, to avoid situations where the tool does not respond to the real needs of the company, a project takes more time than expected, and if the costs have exceeded the budget. What is to be done when such situations happen, and above all, how can they be prevented?

Digital transformation for efficient business  

Salesforce is a market-leading, comprehensive CRM system that provides a 360-degree view of the customer, combining ready-made solutions for customer service, sales automation and unification of marketing within one platform. It helps companies to find out what customers really want and increase business results at every stage of the organization’s growth. It helps companies to meet customer needs and improve business results at every stage of the organization’s development. To be sure that the system will be implemented correctly and let you use its full potential, it is worth to take advantage of the experience of experts who can adapt it to specific, even the most advanced requirements. 

Sii Poland as its certified partner with over 70 Salesforce experts uses Salesforce’s platform products to help companies create intelligent, omnichannel solutions. What’s more, it also provides maintenance and solution development, data migration, integration with systems like ERPs or CTIs as well as offers tests and trainings. Thanks to more than 10 years of experience, Salesforce cloud specialists use the best practices, providing their services to companies from all around the world. 

– Our Salesforce Competency Center supports clients in digital transformation – explains Anna Rębelska, Business Development Manager at Sii Poland. – We know how crucial it is for the successful implementation to properly recognize the client’s needs. In order to propose a tailored solution and ensure effective implementation, we need to understand the specifics of the organization’s operations and its technological environment. Therefore, regardless of whether we implement or optimize a Salesforce solution, we provide analytical scoping, business process design, business case assessment, and a transparent transformation plan – adds Anna Rębelska, having broad experience in working with clients on Salesforce-related projects.

Implementation – what can go wrong and how to fix it? 

Depending on the needs, the CRM system can be configured and modified in many ways. Such flexibility is a huge advantage, but also a big challenge when we create very complex solutions. ATS-Orwak has recently found out about it by itself.  

This company is a market–leading supplier of waste and recyclable materials compaction equipment in Sweden and a part of Sulo Group hiring over 2 300 employees, number one European leader in waste pre-collection solutions. Due to the large number of products offered, a wide range of their configurations and additional services, the client needed a CPQ (Configure-Price-Quote) system that allows users convenient offers preparation and generation and processing of orders. The tool that was previously implemented on the basis of Salesforce Sales Cloud did not meet the customer’s requirements. 

– A Salesforce Account Executive contacted us at the end of 2019, asking if we were willing to contact  ATS-Orwak – says Mikael Stattin, Business Manager at Sii Sweden, a subsidiary of Sii Poland. – It turned out that the client was dissatisfied with the result after a Salesforce-CPQ implementation project done by another provider. The CPQ-solution did not live up to their expectations, lacked several important functions and was not user-friendly. Also, they had gone more than  300% over the budget. It was a big challenge to convince the client that it can still be fixed and turned into a high-quality solution that meets all the requirements the business needs – adds Mikael Stattin.

Sii representatives managed to prove that Sii can provide expected business synergy. To do so, they ran a workshop to identify the most significant pains and proposed solutions for:  

• Expanding quoting possibility 
• Reconfiguring the custom CPQ 
• Improving quote layouts
• Automating sub-processes within Sales Cloud
• Making reporting more accurate 

– The workshop gave us the opportunity to fully understand ATS-Orwak’s situation, analyse the work done so far – says Anna Rębelska. – The final outcome is the Salesforce App that actually helps salespeople with everyday work. We eliminated all the problems that the client’s users identified and planned further development of the instance to make sales processes more user-friendly. It is essential, since raising adoption of the solution was our number one goal for the whole process – sums up Anna Rębelska.

– To be honest, I am very surprised in a good way. We met very competent specialists who provide us with a good quick solutions, fast answers and fast bug fixes. What’s more, they do all of this within even under the quoted timeline – says Rikard Eriksson, Product Owner at ATS-Orwak engaged in the project.

Now ATS-Orwak and Sii are planning further cooperation. 

How to make Salesforce implementation pain-free and successful? 

No matter how big your organization is, successful Salesforce implementation requires planning, commitment, and strong sponsorship from your executive team. Not enough time, resources or attention may result in implementation difficulties and longer implementation time due to misunderstandings of process maps, their correlations etc. 

1) Good plan is the basis 

Planning is always paramount for successfully completing a project. At this stage you need to:   

• Define the specific objectives and outcomes of the implementation for your business and key metrics that should be improved. Those metrics for success should be specific, measurable and realistic for your organization. The answers will provide direction for the entire project and establish benchmarks for measuring progress.  
• Find an executive Sponsor of the implementation within your organization, who will influence and support the project since the very beginning until the go-live.
• Get your team involved from the beginning. Select the team of potential power users to be the Salesforce ambassadors within your organization. Share the overall vision and goals with all stakeholders and highlight the benefits (e.g. less confusion about the status of potential customers, better communication with customers, easier tracking of progress in achieving goals, etc).
• Understand in detail the needs of all stakeholders and users before getting started.  

2) Time is money – invest in it 

Don’t be afraid to invest time of your company stakeholders in workshops focused on exploring and explaining your business. Although you think that e.g. the sales process is so obvious, actually each organization has its own specificity. Workshops are a step towards painless implementation. They not only help people engaged in the process to correctly recognize the expectations and needs of your organization, which you may not have discussed before because they were trivial for you but also help you to achieve the goals set out at the beginning by creating an implementation plan that is the result of the workshop. 

3) The power of communication 

Was the implementation successful? Create a training plan with details and provide training for all end-users to feel comfortable with Salesforce and use its full potential. Also, if you plan to constantly develop your solution with new functionalities – remember that communicating these changes company-wide on a regular basis is crucial as well as informing your organization about the general improvements that come from Salesforce Platform updates 3 times a year. 

If you want to be sure that the entire implementation process or optimization will run smoothly, find an experienced and trusted implementation partner like Sii who delivers even the most complicated and tough projects.  

– Our Salesforce Competency Center offers complementary services so we can help not only drive engagement of our clients’ customers by personalizing their journeys, empower their service teams and extended service with omnichannel self-service, but also modernize legacy business applications and fully support the digital transition of the organization – adds Anna Rębelska.

Visit our website to find out more. Contact our Salesforce specialists who can their best practices so that you could take your business to the next level.