Why You Need a Salesforce Implementation Partner

Salesforce has been revolutionizing business for 20 years. From its inception as a (non)software tool to streamline, automate, and manage the B2B sales process, to its modern incarnation — a feature-rich, full-service SaaS platform capable of, well, everything.

Across industries, departments, roles, and processes, the power of Salesforce comes from its versatility, configurability, and the ecosystem of creative solutions and applications that’s blossomed around it. There’s no shortage of success stories, case studies, and formal reports touting its effectiveness at improving every area of business — but that ubiquity and flexibility also raises questions, most commonly, “How can we be sure that our organization will capitalize on Salesforce’s full potential?”

Unlike prescriptive solutions, Salesforce isn’t a way to do things, it’s a tool that empowers you to use technology to accomplish the things you want, the way you want to. And, while incredibly empowering, that freedom and flexibility can also make for a daunting experience, especially when you still have your business to focus on.

In today’s post we’ll talk about one of the biggest predictors for Salesforce success — choosing an experienced and effective Salesforce Implementation Partner.

ROI

First and foremost, the metric on everybody’s mind: return on investment. Salesforce wouldn’t be the world’s leading CRM if it didn’t produce more value than it cost, but a successful implementation, configuration, and deployment can have a dramatic effect on just how quickly (and by what multiple) you recoup that investment.

Online you’ll find several expected-ROI calculators, formulas, and your sales rep likely shared a collection of industry and module-specific case stories to help you identify the areas where you’ll experience the biggest benefits, but once you’ve made the decision to buy, your rollout will dictate your organization’s actual, real world returns. The three biggest obstacles to capturing those returns are efficiency (both of implementation and, ultimately, execution), adoption, and understanding. And that’s where having an effective, experienced consulting partner will make the biggest difference in your success.

Experience

The sheer scope, potential, and versatility of Salesforce is tremendous and, while there are several tools to help make it easier for new users to get familiar with the system, there’s no match for the knowledge that comes from conducting real, boots-on-the-ground set-up and administration.

Implementation begins with identifying your core business processes, then determining what will need to be built, configured, and coded, who will need access to what data, creating roles, records, objects, and their corresponding permissions, identifying opportunities for automation, and recognizing (then eliminating) duplicated efforts — it’s less a step by step process than it is a web of dependent and related requirements. Even knowing what to ask in your initial meetings with your organization’s stakeholders benefits tremendously from an understanding of Salesforce’s underlying data model and industry best-practices in execution. If you’ve never done it before, there’s a lot to learn because you won’t know the best way to put all the pieces together until you know what all the pieces are, and how they interact.

Just like building a house, there’s more to consider than wall placement — you need to design for structural integrity, building codes, have a plan for where you’ll run power and plumbing, how you’ll connect to the city’s power grid and sewage system, what materials you’ll use, what tools, equipment, and talent you’ll need to get the job done, etc… If you just start building on Day 1, you’ll end up wasting a ton of time (and effort) tearing down your just-finished work to make room for the things you hadn’t realized you’d need.

Implementation partners then, are like architects and contractors in this metaphor. We’ve built houses before. Tons of them. On all sorts of soils, slopes, and to thousands of different specs. Huge homes built from scratch. Tricky additions to existing structures. Plumbing overhauls in operating hospitals. You get the picture.

We know the questions to ask to get to your core requirements, we know Salesforce’s best practices for scalable, effective design, we know how your competitors and industry peers have approached the same goals, we’re certified, knowledgable, and up-to-date on the latest feature releases and functionality, and, most importantly, this is our full-time job.

Instead of taking your staff away from their regular roles to try to learn a new system, language, and tool set — your implementation partner gets you rolled out quickly, and then provides the training your staff needs to hit the ground running.

After all, adoption and effective use are two of the biggest drivers of ROI in a CRM implementation, so you don’t want your staff bogged down trying to figure out what they have to learn before they even get started. If you think of it like hosting a board game night, if no one’s played the game before it can be a tough job to try to read the rule book and explain the game to the other players as you go. Bringing in an implementation partner is like inviting a friend who’s played before to show you the ropes and to get the game rolling smoothly.

Effectiveness and Efficiency

Beyond helping your users becoming proficient system users, implementation partners maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of your CRM-rollout in several other areas, as well.

Salesforce is less ‘one-size-fits-all’ and more ‘infinite options, endless possibilities”. Like a box of Lego, building the model on the box is the fast and easy way to go, but it’s unlikely to be your favorite color or fit in perfectly with your other existing, imaginative builds.

Whether you want to track and report on your sales funnel, or manage your customer service caseload, or generate 360-degree visibility into your inventory, pricing, and logistics performance, Salesforce can be engineered to do it all. But, if you just follow the instruction booklet, you’ll end up with a more generic system you have to adapt your processes to as oppose to a system that’s been adapted to fit your workflow. That’s a recipe for inefficiency as your staff needs to “relearn” how to do their jobs, as opposed to operating normally and having their pain points and obstacles automated away.

Implementation partners can help you do just that. With configuration and customization, your existing processes can be rolled into your org. Clicks and duplicated efforts can be replaced with workflows, triggers, and automated processes. Integrations between your other systems and your Salesforce org eliminate data entry needs while still maintaining your information and putting it all in one place for reporting and transparency. By freeing up your team to focus on their work, and not on system or process “management”, you essentially increase your workforce without adding head count. Organizations also typically experience reduced burnout and increased morale when employees are liberated from process drudgery and the system can do the repetitive lifting.

The other big benefit of sharing your Salesforce responsibilities with implementation partners is the built-in longevity of knowledge. When you go it alone, you’re always exposed to the risk that your resident expert might move on. As more and more organizations implement Salesforce solutions, the demand keeps increasing for employees with the know-how, certifications, and experience. If you don’t have a pipeline of prepared admins in the works, you risk having your system stagnate if you lose your go-to Salesforce staff.

With a consulting partner, not only do you get a guaranteed consistency of expert input, you never run the risk of losing the “only” people who know the idiosyncrasies of your system. Beyond educated, experienced staff, you also benefit from the institutionalized memory and documentation specifically built for your organization. No digging through ex-coworkers hard drives or hand-written notes looking for their self-drafted “how-tos”, just ask your consultant for the system documentation and they’ll have everything from your first training slides, to notes from your most recent configuration changes. Having an organized audit trail and codified change management documentation is key to keeping the wheels turning smoothly, even when unexpected staff shake-ups arise. And, with a system like Salesforce that rolls out new releases 3 times a year, knowing what was changed, what was broken, and how it was fixed is more important than ever.

ROI

Which brings us back to where we began, return on investment. The metric so sought after that it earned a double-billing.

Now that we’ve run through the tangible and institutional benefits of utilizing a Salesforce implementation partner, the ROI picture becomes a lot clearer.

Their expertise and experience helps you get up and running fast, without pulling staff away from their existing work to try to learn everything from the ground up. Familiarity with similar business and best-practices ensures effective implementation, and an in-depth knowledge of Salesforce’s capabilities and potential ensure that your system will be configured to meet your requirements, not the other way around. Adoption and effectiveness driven by experienced training, documentation, and institutional knowledge guarantees that your system will be embraced by your team, producing the benefits that got you to buy-in in the first place.

In short, bringing in an implementation partner provides you the best opportunity to produce a Salesforce org that will work — now, and after each new release.

If you’re thinking about implementing a CRM, or have an existing Salesforce org that could use a little configuration and customization — drop us a line! We’re happy to discuss your options, goals, and requirements, to share where we’ve had success with similar projects in the past, and help you get on the road to that expected return on investment.

In the meantime, keep working hard, smart, and happy. We’ll see you in the cloud.