In part three of our blog series, we discussed selecting and implementing the right CRM. Currently, there are many excellent CRM’s that can manage your business effectively and efficiently. Throughout our 19 years of industry experience, we have found Salesforce to be the clear leader among the current CRM platforms. The Salesforce platform offers limitless flexibility to allow companies to work from anywhere, and an experienced implementation partner can guide your company to optimize your system for your business needs while ensuring user adoption is achieved.

Implementing Salesforce – The Right Way

Companies typically face three big obstacles when implementing Salesforce: implementation, adoption, and platform capabilities. The sheer scope of a Salesforce implementation is tremendous. Implementation starts with mapping out your business processes, determining what needs to be built, configured, or coded, who will need access to data, accounts, record pages, identifying opportunities for automation, and much more. Rather than taking your staff away from their usual tasks to set up, learn, and configure a new system, your implementation partner can have you up and running much faster and provides the training your employees need to succeed.

Experienced Partners Save Salesforce Customers Thousands Yearly

What your business can do with Salesforce is truly limitless. Rushing through an implementation or using templates as a baseline foundation will come back to cause mid to long-term scalability and poor user adoption issues. As Salesforce pushes three major releases a year, it quickly becomes a complex CRM system with hundreds of new features. Great Salesforce Implementation partners have thousands of successful implementations completed that can be leveraged for best practices throughout your implementation and training. These best practices and knowledge can’t be found in online Salesforce training classes. Through our 12 years of experience helping companies implement their Salesforce systems, we’ve found that the best way to maximize your Salesforce investment is with an experienced Salesforce partner.

Implementing Salesforce Since 2008

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,100 Salesforce projects. If you are interested in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2 or contact us today!

In part two of our latest blog series, we mentioned the importance of ensuring your new business culture supports work from anywhere. The 2020 pandemic accelerated the future of work as the work-from-anywhere mentality has to be considered when deploying a new CRM. Once your new business culture is established, it’s time to select the right CRM based on your business needs and research.

Choosing the Right CRM

When selecting a CRM, it’s critical to choose a platform that can adapt and modify as your business’s needs, products, services, and partnerships evolve. The business processes you currently have in place will change within a year. Having a CRM that is flexible to digital workflow changes will be critical for your business’s success. Secondly, choose a platform that is a leader in CRM with years of experience. It’s essential to make sure your platform has the financial capacity to continue to evolve the products every year. For example, Salesforce has three major releases every year that delivers new innovations across their Customer 360 Platform. Finally, it’s essential to make sure you select a CRM with a secured platform. In today’s world, cyber threats are becoming more and more prominent. You must partner with a company that has a robust, secure, and backed-up platform in case of any cyber-attacks. Through our 13 years of experience, we have found that Salesforce is the clear leader among CRM platforms.

Implementing Salesforce: Leverage a Partner’s Expertise!

Whether you have decided to pick Salesforce as your CRM or are strongly considering doing so, questions that regularly follow are, “Can I self-implement? Why do I need to hire a consultant?” You can self-implement, but it’s not recommended unless you have had years of hands-on experience with that specific solution. Even with experience, implementations are a full-time job that takes months. Having a Salesforce consultant team implementing your platform will provide years of knowledge to ensure that your Org is optimized and performing to its full potential, rather than spending more money to fix potential bugs and issues as they come up.

The next question that comes up is, “How do I choose the right partner?” The right Salesforce implementation partner should have a list of different criteria that must be met before partnering with them. For example, review the record of successful implementations and online reviews from customers. Do they use the Salesforce platform for their own business? Do they implement the Salesforce products I’m using? At the end of the day, it’s important to partner with a company invested in your vision. A Salesforce implementation will be the foundation of how your business will run.

If you are interested in learning more about Implementing Salesforce, please visit our website for a FREE consultation.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,100 Salesforce projects. If you are interested in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

In part one of our latest blog series, we mentioned the need for businesses to move to a cloud-based system. Once your company has decided to move in that direction, it’s now time to develop a new culture for your staff. It’s essential to have an internal team committed to evolving their processes as a business with your new CRM technology.

Defining Goals/KPI’s

In every business, there are certain goals or KPI’s that are established to track your success. A public company’s goal may be more focused on shareholders, while a private company could solely focus on revenue. Regardless, you should have 3-5 KPIs that you are tracking year in and year out to measure performance.

If your company has a revenue goal, sales and marketing should be focused on achieving that mutual goal. If it’s a customer satisfaction goal, sales and your customer service team should be focused on getting perfect customer CSAT scores. It’s vital to have your KPIs established because if not, it becomes hard to measure whether or not your company has succeeded or failed in reaching those metrics. Especially in the work-from-anywhere world, it becomes crucial that you have analytical data that can easily define your success or lack of success.

Mapping Out your Business Processes

Once you have agreed as an executive team to move to an all cloud-based system, it’s essential to have all your business units map out plans of how they will support the company’s KPIs. A CRM system alone will not magically streamline your business processes from the start. Being able to define your entire Business Process Optimization (BPOs) on paper is critical. You have to clearly articulate the journey you would want a prospect, customer, or support customer to go through. A CRM will allow you to achieve your goals, but you first have to become your own business’s subject matter expert. Once you feel like you have your hands around your perfect business processes, it’s time to start looking at budgets, guidelines, and what CRM is right for you.

Picking your CRM

If your company hit a speed bump during the pandemic, you could get back on track to become even more efficient with a CRM system like Salesforce. Choosing a CRM system is as essential as picking your financial package. Your business will have to be prepared to put the time in up front to ensure everyone is bought into this new culture. Moving to a CRM will result in a much more collaborative and connected culture, especially in the work from anywhere world.

If you are interested in discussing more about moving to a CRM or setting up your new business culture, please visit our website for a free consultation.

About Corrao Group

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every business department. We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,100 Salesforce projects. If you are interested in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

One crucial lesson the pandemic has taught most business owners is that you can’t rely on people working in the same physical building anymore as working from home has become the new norm for most companies. With this new reality, it’s time for companies to reevaluate how they are running their business. The days of tracking leads and customers in spreadsheets are gone. Whether you are using a legacy system or current cloud-based apps, it’s time to reevaluate your tech stack.

Moving to a Cloud-Based System

Currently, there are a great number of companies still managing their business on spreadsheets. As we’ve entered the all-digital working world, spreadsheets do not allow your company to be quick, nimble, and work from anywhere. Additionally, running your business on spreadsheets doesn’t allow you to keep up with your ever-changing BPO’s as the spreadsheets data can become obsolete the next day. Not having full or real-time visibility into your data can become arduous if your data is siloed across multiple spreadsheets or systems.

As a business owner, moving to a cloud-based system from spreadsheets or old proprietary systems may bring some fears and doubts. Some common questions and thoughts we get from business owners thinking about moving to a cloud-based system are:

• • Will a cloud-based system make my business more efficient?
  • Will I be able to onboard people more efficiently? (Pain point during the pandemic)
  • How do I control my costs?
  • Is the work from home/anywhere the new norm?

Many business owners balk at the idea of moving to a cloud-based system because it is the fear of the unknown as they do not know what cloud-based systems can do. A cloud-based system allows your company and employees to work in real-time and connect with customers from anywhere in the world.

Cloud-Based System Benefits

According to a Deloitte survey of more than 500 IT leaders and executives, the number one reason for companies migrating to a cloud-based system was security and data protection, data modernization, and cost/performance of IT operations. There is a misnomer with CRM’s that they are just pipeline and contact management, which is not the case at all. Cloud-based systems allow for companies to have more connectivity and accessibility, increased collaboration, and improved efficiency. With a centralized location for all your data, your entire company can track and keep up with your customer’s entire journey. More benefits of having a CRM include:

• • Customer Visualization
  • Opportunity Tracking
  • Organization of Data
  • Automation Benefits
  • Easy Customization
  • Sales Forecasting
  • Increased Engagement
  • Better Customer Service
  • Seamless Outbound Marketing

Some of the best CRM’s in 2021 include Salesforce, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Oracle CX Cloud, and Hubspot. If you are thinking about moving to a cloud-based system and would like to learn more, please call us for a free consultation.

Corrao Group is here to help

Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes successfully optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every department of your business. We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,100 Salesforce projects. If you are interested in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

It’s that time of year again as Salesforce is close to releasing features from their exciting Summer ’21 Release. We’ve reviewed the release notes and highlighted eight of our favorite, and most valuable, new features. It’s important to note that most of these newly released features are only available in Salesforce Lightning. Read our previous blog post on why your company should be using Salesforce Lightning.

Currently, the Summer ’21 release notes are in the pre-release program. On May 7th and 8th, Salesforce sandbox environments will be upgraded so that companies can get a feel and look at the new release.

Pipeline Inspection

Pipeline Inspection provides sales representatives with a single view of their pipeline’s key opportunities and metrics. It can display changes in the amount, stage of deals, and forecast categories. Utilizing these insights, sales reps can focus on the most important deals, and managers can find opportunities or representatives that need more help.

Download a Dashboard Image to a File

Dashboards can now be downloaded as a PNG file that can be used in presentations, documents, or anywhere else.

Dynamic Actions Bar

You can now access all your most critical actions in one convenient bar. Add, drag, and configure the Dynamic Actions Bar component on your app page with the Lightning App Builder.

Mass Actions in Split View

Save a lot more time with Mass Actions in split view. Now within Salesforce Lightning, users can act on several records at once in split view, eliminating the need to open a separate list page.

Custom Lightning Component Analysis

On your Salesforce Lightning record pages, you can now view insights into your custom lightning components. The ‘analyze’ button provides performance predictions and insights to improve your page’s performance.

Inline Editing in Salesforce Reports (Beta)

Inline Editing is will now be available in reports! When data for a report gets out of date, you can now update certain types of numeric, checkbox, and text fields without leaving the ‘Report Run’ page.

Record Access Reasons

You can now see why a user in Salesforce has access to a record. In the Lightning Experience, click “Record Sharing Hierarchy” to view who has access to the record.

Native Sales Navigator Integration for LinkedIn

Salesforce has built native integration for Sales Navigator, including a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Component that can be added to the contact, opportunity, account, and lead objects.

If you are interested in learning more about the Salesforce Summer ’21 Release notes, please contact Corrao Group at edavis@corraogroup.com

Sources/Photos

https://resources.docs.salesforce.com/232/latest/en-us/sfdc/pdf/salesforce_summer21_release_notes.pdf

Salesforce Quickstarts Aren’t for Everyone

As businesses have had to dramatically transform to “work from anywhere”, it has become even more critical to ensure key business processes and KPIs are set up properly. The Salesforce family of solutions offers limitless flexibility to allow companies to work from anywhere, and an experienced implementation partner can guide your company through best practices during your launch journey. According to Salesforce.org, Salesforce QuickStarts are “Aimed at helping budget-conscious organizations get up and running quickly on Salesforce CRM, and include dramatic improvements in a short period of time.”

Salesforce QuickStarts have been around the ecosystem since 2010. The main objective of a Salesforce QuickStart is to help organizations get up and running with Salesforce as quickly as possible. QuickStarts can be beneficial to companies that are looking to have a limited pilot program to see the capabilities of Salesforce’s features and to learn the basics of the CRM system. However, our 19 years in the Salesforce ecosystem have found that QuickStarts often hurt the long-term growth and success of organizations as they do not allow proper time to customize the applications for the organization.

Salesforce QuickStarts: Fast and (Sometimes) Cheap?

QuickStarts are generally fast, and with the speed of implementation typically comes a lower price. However, there is a misnomer that all QuickStarts are cheap and fast. Some Salesforce consulting partners offer a QuickStart package that ranges from $5,000 to $15,000+. Getting your Salesforce Org up and running isn’t harmful for the short-term period but most customers quickly come across growing pains and the QuickStart no longer helps them. In reality, it’s just not scalable for the future of your organization. Rushing through an implementation or using templates as a baseline foundation will come back to cause mid to long-term scalability and poor user adoption issues. As Salesforce has three major releases a year, it quickly becomes a sophisticated CRM system with tons of new features. QuickStarts end up failing organizations because you will end up with a simple implementation that isn’t fully customized to your business processes.

Salesforce Implementation With a Trusted Partner

The whole premise of Salesforce is a customized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. What your business can do with Salesforce is limitless due to all the new features and functions added in recent years. A great Salesforce implementation partner starts by taking the time to understand their customer’s current business processes and where they would like to go in the future with Salesforce. A good Salesforce partner has been in the ecosystem for over 10-12 years and has 1,000+ Salesforce implementations that you can leverage to your advantage. Time spent upfront diving into the details of customers’ business processes generally results in a maximized and fully customized Salesforce instance. Salesforce QuickStarts don’t allow for this time upfront, so most QuickStarts produce cookie-cutter projects for a system that can do so much more.

In the all-digital/work from anywhere world, Salesforce WILL completely transform your business. Why skip a big step of the implementation process just to be set up quickly? QuickStarts only utilize a fraction of what Salesforce can accomplish and by not using the rest of the system, it can cost companies thousands of dollars. The best way to maximize your Salesforce investment is with an experienced partner with thousands of implementations across all industries.

Implementing Salesforce Since 2008

Since 2008 we have been helping companies implement Salesforce, and we have found that Salesforce QuickStarts do not maximize your Salesforce investment. Completing over 2,100 projects, we’ve learned that a well-thought-out implementation strategy is necessary for a successful deployment. Salesforce, without a detailed and customized plan, can lead to wasted time and money. Since 2002, we have been helping B2B organizations of all sizes successfully optimize their business processes with Salesforce and their third-party applications. As everyday Salesforce power users, Corrao Group understands how flexible the Salesforce platform is to support every department of your business. We’ve worked with nearly 1,000 customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,100 Salesforce projects. If you are interested in learning more about how Corrao Group can help your company, read our reviews on G2!

If you need assistance in getting your Salesforce implementation planned or back on track, please contact Corrao Group at jcorrao@corraogroup.com.

SurfaceTrends™ has recently been approved by Salesforce and is now featured on Work.com’s website and AppExchange. We are excited to be a trusted partner of Salesforce’s Work.com platform and look forward to helping companies get back to work safely. SurfaceTrends™ brings to life the value of 3M™ Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) testing and empowers you with real-time analytical data to drill down into the bacterial health of the surfaces around your facility. Click here to watch a 1-minute demo of SurfaceTrends™.

SurfaceTrends™ provides your company with:

• • Data into how clean and unclean areas around your facility are from ATP testing
  • Test trends overtime to pinpoint what location is failing or succeeding in the past week, 30 days, 60 days, etc.
  • Percentages highlighting the scores of the areas/surfaces that passed/failed
  • Failure notifications sent out automatically based on failing test results

 

Visit our website to learn more about SurfaceTrends™.

We hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. As we step into 2021, Salesforce has started to release its Spring ‘21 Release. We’ve highlighted the most popular features circulating around the Salesforce community with a short description of each new release. It’s important to note that most of these newly released features are only available in Salesforce Lightning and not Classic.

Sales

Salesforce Meetings

• • Help your sales reps prepare for meetings and engage attendees like never before with tools to enhance their interactions. The Meeting Digest feature collects information about who’s in a meeting, their relevant recent online activities, and ensures sales reps have seen the info before their meeting. Leave a memorable impression with a well-organized meeting.

High-Velocity Sales for Opportunities

• • Users can now use sales cadences on any top sales object, at any phase of the sales deal. Using best practices from Sales Cadences, users can now track and engage directly and automatically on the Account, Contact, Lead, or Opportunity. Click here to learn more about High-Velocity Sales.

Einstein Conversation Insights

• • Sales managers can now get valuable insights into their teams’ sales calls. Managers may play conversation recordings to gain insight into competitor mentions, products, keywords, pricing conversations, next steps, and more. Click here to view a short video about Sales Cloud Einstein.

Forecasting Adjustments on the Salesforce Mobile App

• • Salesforce users now can view and make adjustments to forecasting using the Salesforce Mobile app from anywhere.

 

Service

Einstein Recommendation Builder

• • Service users can now build customer recommendation models, combining any two service objectives that improve CSAT, revenue, and more. Einstein’s best next action/recommendations can be given to agents in the console or to customers using the self-service portal. Click here to learn more about Einstein Recommendation Builder.

Field Service: Appointment Assistant

• • Now let customers know when help is on the way by eliminating the 4-5 hour wait window and delivering real-time alerts on the channel of their choice. Click here to learn more about Field Service: Appointment Assistant.

Pardot

Retiring Feature – User Authentication

• • Pardot is discontinuing User Authentication on February 15th, 2021. After this date, Pardot users must use Salesforce single sign-on (SSO). SSO makes it easier for users to transition between Sales Cloud and Pardot. Enable SSO for your users in just a few steps.

Cross Business Unit Leads and Contacts

• • According to Salesforce, “Additional platform flexibility allows customers to prevent sync conflicts on the Pardot proprietary fields (score, grade, etc), ultimately allowing a single lead or contact to sync to more than 1 business unit.”

Campaign Cloning

• • Pardot users can now reuse marketing assets with campaign cloning. Easily clone forms, form handlers, landing pages, and links related to a campaign to save time and boost efficiency. Click here to learn more about Pardot Campaign Cloning.

Salesforce Anywhere Advanced (Previously Quip)

• • Use Document Creation within Salesforce Lightning to quickly create a document and link it in the record you are viewing for others to see right away.
  • Quip Slides are being retired on January 31st, 2021.

Tableau CRM

• • Einstein Analytics has now been renamed to Tableau CRM. Everything about Einstein Analytics still works the same, it just has a new fancy name.

The Salesforce Spring ’21 Release Notes brings exciting new features for Salesforce employees and customers. If you have any questions about the spring release notes, please visit our website. If you missed out on our Salesforce Winter ’20 release blog, you can read it here.

Sources / Resources

https://help.salesforce.com/articleView?id=release-notes.salesforce_release_notes.htm&type=5&release=230

https://www.salesforce.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/documents/release-notes/spring-21-release-in-a-box.pdf?d=cta-header-2

https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/content/learn/modules/spring-21-release-highlights

https://www.youtube.com/user/SalesforceReleases

Photos – Salesforce Release Notes/Videos