This Salesforce Admin Shares Her Top AppExchange Apps and Insights
Imagine having 18 years of manufacturing experience, six years of financial services work, and eight years working as a Salesforce admin, while still having time to run, read anthologies, and move to San Diego during COVID. This is the life of Salesforce admin and Trailblazer, Kim Wargo.
Kim Wargo is the Salesforce admin with FineMark National Bank & Trust. “It’s difficult to benchmark Salesforce against anything else because there is nothing else to compare it to,” shares Kim. She finds the beauty of Salesforce to be the customization. “With Salesforce, you can build as a company, instead of customizing your company to suit something else.”
In this admin role, Kim manages several AppExchange apps in Salesforce. For Kim, a big reason for using AppExchange apps is to keep everything as native in Salesforce as possible. “This makes it easy and more secure, with less room for error,” advises Kim.
I opened up a Google Meet to virtually chat with Kim and learn about how she uses AppExchange and her latest apps of choice.
How to use the AppExchange
Throughout Kim’s Salesforce journey, she’s experienced different Salesforce orgs, with different needs for enhancements. “With AppExchange, you can leverage a wide variety of apps that benefit and enhance the Salesforce process.” That’s why In the last five years, Kim has brought nearly 15 different AppExchange apps into Salesforce, including paid and free apps, as well as apps specifically to help her in the admin role.
“My first recommendation is to go to the AppExchange, and search for products that customers have been using, recommending, and have a true integration,” advises Kim.
When you’re working with users, Kim recommends asking questions to truly understand their needs. “They don’t know what they don’t know, so have a conversation to extract that information,” advises Kim. Questions such as:
- What do you need?
- What are you looking for?
- What is the end result that you want?
- How do you want to get there?
Then, Kim goes to AppExchange for relevant apps, and the Trailblazer Community to find out who’s addressing these challenges and how.
Once Kim has a shortlist of apps, she tests the free version or trial. This uncovers what she can provide to her users, how it will look and work. Once Kim develops her use case and determines how to bring it to the next level, she is ready to ask for funding.
Kim’s tried and true AppExchange apps include DocuSign eSignature and CLM, Rollup Helper, Dashboard Pal, and Salesforce Maps. Here’s a look at how Kim uses each app and how they can work together.
DocuSign eSignature
“The integration of DocuSign and Salesforce means that my users never have to leave the platform. We’ve built eSignature into the workflow, so we send any document to a client, and have it signed in Salesforce. DocuSign enhances security because we don’t have to move sensitive information or documents outside of Salesforce, a trusted platform. We chose DocuSign for the brand credibility, the integration, ease of use both in set up and on the day-to-day user experience.”
DocuSign CLM
Due to the success of DocuSign e-signature, Kim started using DocuSign CLM (formally SpringCM). “I had seen DocuSign CLM quite a few times on the AppExchange, so when we were ready to make that switch, we remembered them,” says Kim.
With the strong Salesforce integration, Kim can look at multiple objects at one time, and build workflows quickly with DocuSign CLM. Kim generates a document, sends it out via DocuSign for signature or internally for approval, while never having to leave Salesforce. “That’s one of my driving factors. If I can keep it inside of Salesforce, that’s going to be a big percentage of my purchasing decision,” advises Kim.
Rollup Helper
The first app that Kim introduced into Salesforce, Rollup Helper extends the rollup summary field functionality beyond a parent-to-child object. It looks across Salesforce, to connect objects and rollup information.
Kim started with the free version, and in three days, built five configurations. With the purchased app, Kim has 100 different rollups, from child to parent, child to child, the household to the account level, and cross-object. “It not only locally creates sums, counts, but it helps me look for opportunities to avoid creating duplicate records. It’s an easy, valuable tool.”
Dashboard Pal
Kim uses Dashboard Pal for reports and dashboards to showcase different areas of the banking groups or specific users. “With the Lightning experience, it’s so much easier to just drop that dashboard onto a user’s homepage,” says Kim.
Dashboard Pal also keeps track of their day, to make sure that employees stay on time with documentation and processes. “Dashboard Pal has absolutely helped us with managing our day,” notes Kim.
Salesforce Maps
A few years ago, Kim was working on data for a presentation to her Board of Directors. They’d seen tremendous growth year over year and wanted to present how far they’d come, including a geographical map to show client locations. “With Salesforce Maps, we had everything generated in the same day. The conversation started at 9 AM and I was able to present all of the documents and images by 5 PM,” shares Kim.
Watch this video to learn more from Kim:
Kim feels empowered to get the right apps and technology to her users because of Salesforce. “Salesforce has opened the door for women in tech. Once upon a time, 20% of women were in tech, and today, it’s 50%. It was once difficult for women to move up in the tech environment because it was a male-dominant environment for so many years,” says Kim, “Salesforce has given so many opportunities for women to be an equal part in tech, and that is so appreciated.”
Learn more about Kim and her favorite apps on AppExchange.
