Category: Tips & Tricks

Why Salesforce Is the Ultimate Work From Home (WFH) Platform

When it comes to working, there’s nothing more relaxing than responding to emails, making phone calls, and reviewing reports all from the comfort of your home. Being a stay-at-home employee has its benefits, such as having more control over your schedule, fewer distractions and more productivity, and everyone’s favorite reason, no time spent in traffic! Working on the Salesforce platform since 2008 ourselves, we know how relaxing it is to work from home. There’s almost nothing you can’t do from home while working on Salesforce. You’re still working, but it’s tasks from the comfort of your own home without any office distractions. Here are a few benefits from working from home across Management, Marketing, Development, and Sales.

Management

Our Managing Partner, Jack Corrao, started by saying, “People working in the office is nice, but it’s not necessary in a lot of businesses. Many of my employees could work from home because Salesforce is a cloud-based system. No servers required, which means if something happens in the office, like the internet goes down, you can just head home and work. We think soon all businesses will have to evolve with the coming times, that means moving away from their multiple systems for each department and onto a software like Salesforce, which supports: Human Resources, Marketing, Sales, Support, Operational Linguistics with each having a customizable cloud.“ He finished off by saying this, “You shouldn’t be handcuffed to your building, having freedom will make you a better and harder worker.“

Salesforce allows managers to track and display all their KPIs within Dashboards. With the company updating Salesforce in real-time, reports aren’t only ready at the end of the day, or week – they’re available 24/7 with live stats. All the information and conversations regarding projects are tracked and recorded within Salesforce.

working from home with coffee and a laptop

Marketing

Our Marketing Specialist and Social Media Manager John Carroll said, “If everyone had to work from home tomorrow, we would still be a functional and successful company. We all have access to the same data in real-time, so we don’t have to wait for reports, documents, or files from co-workers.” He also brought up this tweet from Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, who said, “While we are all working from home during this time, we are using quip to help other remote teams across the globe collaborate.” He is talking about the documentation software, Quip, where documents, spreadsheets, slides, and chat are all combined and connected to Salesforce records. At Corrao Group, we use Quip to communicate with each other, even if it’s a few desks away or from one of our remote offices such as Seattle or Canada. 

We can create a campaign asset inventory for emails, landing pages, and more within Quip, where our entire team can collaborate in real-time, anytime. Quip should be in the everyday marketer’s toolbox, especially those already on the Salesforce platform. Fields in Salesforce can map to information in Quip, so when users update one piece of info, the other connected piece is automatically updated so there’s no discrepancy. It’s perfect for working from home because all the content is live, and team members can get notified when updates or tasks are assigned. 

Sales

“With Salesforce, working from home is as easy as it gets”, Ellis Davis, Sales Operations at Corrao Group. All the information and tasks are inside Salesforce so forgetting any notes at the office are a thing of the past. It’s all inside of Salesforce and easy for the whole company to access in real-time. With Chatter being the main communication on projects, she and everyone else can jump into the conversation and catch up or give updates with everything being in one place. “We’ve always known how to work from home because we’ve always had Salesforce, so it’s easy to hop on during a weekend and home and work like you were in the office”, she ended with. Tyler Keil, Sales Operations, has always lived by the phrase, “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” All notes are put into Salesforce and associated with the appropriate location, whether that’s a Lead, Contact, Account, Opportunity record, or something else. Having instant alerts when someone updates one of your records or tasks that you’re working on helps speed up everyday processes while working from home. “Salesforce is much more than a virtual Rolodex, it tracks conversations, the entire pipeline, historic deals and much, much more.”

When working from home, sales reps can’t quickly ask if a co-worker spoke with, or emailed a new lead. With Salesforce, all calls and emails are logged right on the contact record as they happen, so there’s no confusion. This way, reps can catch up if they need to without having to wait for someone to explain the updates themselves. Salesforce eliminates the need for unnecessary meetings and allows users to continue being productive at home.

Salesforce - the ultimate work from home platform

Salesforce: The Ultimate Work From Home Platform

We’ve had the ability to offer the option for our employees to work from home since we started using cloud-based solutions in 2002. Since then, we’ve adjusted and created an infrastructure within Salesforce so our team can work from home and not skip a beat. While Salesforce isn’t required in order to run a business from home, it can incredibly boost the progress and success of each department, all while making your employees’ jobs easier. We understand how flexible the Salesforce platform is and how it supports every department in your business. If you’re struggling to run your company from home, please email us at wfh@corraogroup.com. We can jump on a call to discuss your current and projected business situations and suggest assistance.

Manufacturing Cloud: Reporting on Performance

Tracking the overall performance of your company is an essential component for a successful business. Full visibility into your reports can become arduous if your data is siloed across multiple spreadsheets or systems. Manufacturers should move to Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud for a “More predictive and transparent business” (Salesforce). Manufacturing Cloud becomes your central location to house all your data, KPIs, metrics, reports, and more.

Reports are Difficult to Create

It’s important to have a dashboard of reports that identify the business’s health, performance, and areas for improvement. Reports such as KPIs, run-rate, financial reports, forecasting, and sales pipeline are all critical to track in real-time. Reporting may seem impossible if you don’t have full visibility into your business’s data or metrics. Additionally, it can be frustrating for manufacturers if creating reports is difficult or demanding. Both pain points can lead to performance reports being indistinguishable from each other. For example, your run-rate reports may be mixed with your new logo reports, which results in you not being able to understand your actual business performance or sales costs. Manufacturing Cloud gives all your users a reporting vehicle that captures your entire business ecosystem.

A Solution Built for Manufacturers

Manufacturers now have the ability to operate in a much more profitable point of view as Manufacturing Cloud delivers efficiency, speed, accuracy, and consistency. Additionally, it integrates with your Salesforce and other users to have everyone on the same page. Manufacturing Cloud combined with Einstein Analytics gives your users a complete 360 view of your customers, data, and reports. Utilize Einstein Analytics to gain crucial insights into your account health, demand planning, product penetration, sales agreements, and your KPIs. Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud provides your company with the predictability and consistency that is needed in the manufacturing industry.

Manufacturing Cloud Reporting made easier with Einstein Analytics

Working With Manufacturers Since 2002

Working with Salesforce since 2002, we’ve seen the invaluable benefits that a CRM can have for companies, especially those in the manufacturing industry. Salesforce’s new Manufacturing Cloud will allow customers and their partners to have company-wide visibility into all their business processes. With tools such as sales agreements and forecasting, data can be analyzed faster and effortlessly. Reporting on performance becomes easier with Salesforce’s Manufacturing Cloud. Salesforce consulting services have been just as important to us as business process optimization, and we strive to help businesses maximize their investments into their CRM and Manufacturing Cloud.

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Sources

Salesforce (Einstein Image and Logo)

 

Manufacturing Cloud: No Longer Negotiating Blind

Salesforce’s announcement of Manufacturing Cloud has given manufacturers the tools needed to take control of their business. Before the release, it was difficult for manufacturers to have full visibility into sales agreements. Negotiating blind occurs for companies when their sales team doesn’t have what it needs to plan, sell, or close the right deal. As a result, negotiating blind was the first significant pain point that Salesforce solved for the manufacturing industry.

Outdated ERPs and Forecasts

Ongoing changes to sales orders that are not communicated back to the original sales agreement are a major challenge for manufacturers today. The changes to sales orders are not fully visible to manufacturers because the sales agreements are managed outside of the ERP, or the deals are across multiple ERPs. In addition, inaccurate forecasting becomes an issue when updated sales orders are not synced directly to the sales agreement. Without accurate data in real-time, manufacturers tend to create forecasts based on their own best interests rather than relying on accurate data from past or present performances.

Salesforce’s Solution: Manufacturing Cloud

Manufacturing Cloud provides a central location to surface orders from multiple systems. All your employees and partners have real-time visibility into planned orders that can be compared to actual orders. All of your important data housed under one single source of truth will help Manufacturers improve their forecasting as employees cans see changes made to sale orders in real-time. With the help of Salesforce Einstein, forecasted data on the agreement can outline the internal assumptions that went into the contract so that you never forget crucial insights from your previous deals. In addition, Einstein can generate insights automatically to help you plan, sell, or close a deal when you store all your customer data into Salesforce. Manufacturers should no longer have to negotiate blind with the ability to have one single source of truth.

How Forecasts Help You

Let’s say you’re the Managing Partner of a manufacturing company that makes reading glasses. In order to make the glasses, you need to engage with a metal company for the frames and a plastic company for the lens.

After reviewing your forecasts without using the insights from Salesforce Manufacturing Cloud, you estimate you will require 10,000 eyeglass units. With the ability to forecast accurately in real-time with Manufacturing Cloud, you’re alerted you have the potential to make more than 12,000 and save in costs. Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers better confidence in their actual production units because of the ability to have accurate forecasting that can be broken down per month.

Now, you’re able to circle back to your vendors and negotiate a better price for your company based on the volume of material that’s coming in. Manufacturing Cloud takes the guesswork out of forecasting.

Corrao Group Can Help You

Solving the first pain point of the current Manufacturing industry is a significant accomplishment for Salesforce. With the recent release of Customer 360 Truth, Salesforce is giving its customers a single source of truth that houses all your customer’s data. Much like Customer 360 Truth, Manufacturing Cloud gives Manufacturers a more precise picture of their entire business with additional features that will help improve their company. If you would like to learn more about Manufacturing Cloud’s capabilities or features, please reach out to the Corrao Group team. The Corrao Group team is here to help you integrate and advise you on the best practices involving Manufacturing Cloud.

The Importance of Manufacturing Cloud

The release of Manufacturing Cloud is a fantastic accomplishment for Salesforce. Manufacturing Cloud takes the current pain points of the industry and turns them into an experience that is flexible in reacting to the customer’s ever-changing demands. In this blog, we are going to share with you the importance of Salesforce’s latest release.

Forecasting

Salesforce knows that the manufacturing industry contains more than just customers. Suppliers, contractors, dealers, service technicians, distributors, and internal warehouse and factory all play a crucial role in the development of your product and the experiences of your customers. Manufacturing Cloud helps users collaborate in real-time across the ecosystem to ensure your forecasts are accurate and updates to your schedules are automatically communicated to warehouse and purchasing departments.

According to Salesforce, “Manufacturers need a clear understanding of all past shipments, current production plans, and future production forecasts.” Forecasting in Manufacturing Cloud is all about taking control and allowing flexible releases to your customers’ needs. Manufacturers often have very different sales and forecasting processes that your supply and chain teams must know when to deliver new items. Manufacturing Cloud gives users the upfront awareness of what you think you’re going to sell, and when you are going to sell it. Having critical insights into the timing of selling your product will make every part of your business sufficient.

Forecasting in Salesforce isn’t just about how you’re going to sell your product on your unique timeline. It’s about knowing how you need to staff your factory: Do I need a second shift, or can I get by with the first shift? Manufacturers always have absurd spikes where their employees are forced to work long hours to get their product out. Forecasting in Manufacturing Cloud gives manufacturers an overview of all their businesses, allowing them to take control and make smarter decisions.

ipad_forklift_v2

Partner Collaboration

Manufacturing Cloud extends benefits to all your partners to collaborate across the same forecast order and demand data in one single source of truth. For example, the Partner Community allows your vendors and partners to see and engage in real-time updates to your sales forecasts. Additionally, analytics will be tied directly to order data with additional information into the territory, customer, agreement, product line, or product performance. Improving inventory management allows manufacturers the chance to analyze their customer data, and gain insights into every product and territory performance.

A New Era

Manufacturers for far too long have used old proprietary systems that have never been scaled. In addition, these systems are not cloud friendly. Salesforce being able to tie manufacturing into the leader of the cloud is a big deal. The era of using and exporting spreadsheets or pivot tables is over. A new era is emerging for manufacturing, and it allows manufacturers to have complete control over the ability to operate their business in a much more profitable point of view.

Our experience with manufacturing dates back to our Managing Partner, Jack Corrao. Jack has developed numerous operational infrastructures to support hardware and software companies to deliver the best in breed solutions. As our #1 vertical, we are here to help you integrate and train you on best practices involving Manufacturing Cloud.

Over the next couple of weeks, we will be releasing a new blog related to Salesforce’s new Cloud. We’ll cover manufacturing pain points Salesforce solved, our favorite features, and how to integrate Manufacturing Cloud. If you would like to learn more, please contact us.

Sources

https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/09/introducing-manufacturing-cloud.html

All Photos can be found here: https://www.salesforce.com/products/manufacturing-cloud/overview/

The Effects of Bad Data

Did you know poor data costs businesses on average around $700 billion annually, equivalent to 30% of the company’s revenue (Salesforce)? Having a powerful CRM platform like Salesforce doesn’t automatically ensure business success. Keeping data inside Salesforce healthy takes a lot of time and effort for your employees. Clean and quality data ensures that all high-level data related to marketing campaigns, sales forecasts, project management, pipeline reports, and dashboards are accurate.

But what happens when the data in the system is unreliable?

What is Bad Data Quality?

Unhealthy data is information in the system that can disrupt a company’s business process through missing, inaccurate, or duplicate data. A recent Salesforce study found, “The average contact database is composed of 90% incomplete contacts, with 20% of records being useless due to several factors, 74% of the records needing updates, and more than 25% of those being unintentional duplicates.” In essence, poor data includes:

    • Missing Data: Empty fields that data is required to be in.
      • Example: Missing phone/email, title.
    • Inaccurate Data: Wrong information put in the fields.
      • Example: Wrong address, phone numbers, emails, titles.
    • Duplicate Data: Contacts, accounts, or leads that show up more than once.
      • Example: Two leads with the same number or email.

IPad showcasing bad data

How Poor Data Effects You

According to RingLead, the 2nd largest issue among Salesforce customers is bad data. Companies start making poor business decisions because of inaccurate data producing misleading results. Here are just three ways that bad data can hurt a company:

    • Inaccurate Reports and Dashboards: Inaccurate data negatively impacts the sales or marketing teams to stay on top of qualified leads or opportunities. Employees could be wasting time on the wrong opportunities. False reports can lead to the company’s top decision-makers making choices based on inaccurate data.
    • Wasted Time and Money: Spending money on campaigns will be inefficient if the ROI reporting is incorrect. Bad data can report that your advertisement campaign only sourced $6k worth of deals when it could have actually been $80k. Not seeing that proper ROI could lead to missing out on the chance to rerun successful campaigns and efforts.
    • Decline in User Adoption: Users might use another system to keep track of their data if they have little to no confidence in the quality of data. Employees tracking data in another system is another example of time and money wasted on a powerful CRM system.

How to Improve Your Data Quality

According to Salesforce, “Because the quality of the data affects the entire organization, data quality metrics should be a company-wide responsibility.” Improving your data quality starts with training employees on the importance of data. The Corrao Group can help you standardize your Salesforce process and implement data requirements throughout your Salesforce sales process. Healthy data brings better results for the company in terms of customer experience, reports and dashboards, shorter sales cycles, and more. Your company can expect great results when employees start inserting data of high quality into your CRM system.

Bad Data across the world in different countries

Corrao Group x RingLead Data Solution

RingLead is the #1 data quality platform for sales and marketing, and has a suite of products dedicated to removing and preventing duplicates, improving data quality, and performing system-wide data scans. Partnering with RingLead has given Corrao Group an easy to use platform to consistently improve lead quality by providing tools to help prospect new leads, standardize records, and clean unhealthy data. Corrao Group ensures your sales and marketing efforts are reaching the right people with accurate information.

Corrao Group Health Check

One of the ways Corrao Group can help your company improve bad data is through a Health Check. A Health Check is a reverse Salesforce system demo to ensure you’re getting the most out of your current investment. Health Checks help ensure your system is up to date on the latest Salesforce release and enable you to learn best practices from a certified Salesforce implementation expert. Corrao Group can help standardize your Salesforce process and implement data requirements throughout your Salesforce Sales process.

Please contact us to take your first step towards optimizing your data and maximizing your Salesforce investment!

Sources

Salesforce.com 

RingLead 

The Importance of Salesforce Training

Salesforce Training Clipboard Wouldn’t it be nice if all the employees at your company were Salesforce power users? Imagine the ROI your business would receive. None of this is possible without some kind of training. It’s a fundamental key to every business’s success. Yes, training means spending more time and resources; however, it’s required because Salesforce is a platform that is very complex and powerful. As a Salesforce Consultant, we view training as a big part of our success. It’s paramount that every single one of our employees are power users. The first question that might pop up in your mind is: How do I become a power user, or where do I even start with training?

Salesforce Training Basics

Because of how vast and intimidating Salesforce can be, it’s best to start with basics definitions in the system. Learning the basics of what accounts, contacts, or leads are can increase your team’s knowledge of the system right away. Give a value proposition of why it’s important to Salesforce, so the employees know the significance of each term. During these training sessions, it’s a good idea to physically walk-through what each definition is and to show them where they are in the system. You have to remember that every employee responds differently to training. Some might like visual presentations, while others may want more hands-on training. Find the right balance so that every employee has their best chance to learn. Our suggestion would be hands-on training because they can learn the basic key terms while physically engaging with the system.

After basic definitions are taken care of, give examples of how to navigate through apps and tabs in Salesforce, or show them how to make a new opportunity. Salesforce Training is something that will take time for employees to learn, but over time, these training sessions will become quite helpful for your company overall. If you don’t have the time or resources to do the training on your own, you should look into a reliable Salesforce consultant who is a power user.

Salesforce training session

Becoming Salesforce Power Users

Becoming a Salesforce power user is not something that will happen overnight. It takes years of training and implementing Salesforce systems to find what works and what doesn’t. We’ve worked with over 1000 customers, implementing, optimizing, and customizing their Salesforce system to fit their needs or goals. That’s why training is a fundamental key to our company. With over 2,050 successfully completed projects and 78,500 implementation hours, our development team can maximize your Salesforce investment to see higher ROI.

However, it’s not just our development team that makes a difference here at Corrao Group; it’s everyone in our company. It starts with our leadership. When the executives show interest in Salesforce training, everyone else at the company will as well. It is the follow-the-leader type of philosophy. Salesforce was purchased for a reason, so it should be imperative to the executives/leaders to maximize the investment they put in. The only way that happens is to learn and use Salesforce every day like power users.

Salesforce Training San Diego

Salesforce Training with Corrao Group

If your company wants to maximize the ROI on their Salesforce investment, we recommend hiring a Salesforce consultant. These experts become a part of your company by learning your current business processes and then create a personalized Salesforce strategy tailored toward your goals. At Corrao Group, we specialize in custom integrations that are based upon your unique needs and business requirements. We scope, deploy, and train to enhance your system. Secondly, we have 6 or 12-month agreements (Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud) that provide guidance and support after projects are completed. We work with you and your team to ensure your system users adopt the system so your organization generates results.

Training with Corrao group is the first step towards maximizing your Salesforce investment. As Salesforce Consultants, we have vast experience in implementing and optimizing customers systems. When we complete a project, we offer Salesforce training that can benefit your company. These training sessions can take up to 8 hours as we physically walk you through everything we did to your system. These sessions allow time for you to ask us questions so that you can learn and transfer the information to your employees. If you would like to have your entire team on the call, that is fine with us as well. If you would like to learn more about our implementations and training, please visit our website.

Automating (More than) your Marketing with Pardot

Pardot or “to sell,” in Latvian, is, appropriately, the name of a marketing platform that ultimately serves to lead you closer to the sale. However, nurturing your prospects from initial touch to that sale is a delicate and often lengthy process. Pardot provides a number of tools that allow you to automate the marketing process from start to finish, but the open-ended nature of the platform can also lead to the confusion surrounding best practices. Below, we’ve put together a basic structure for you to follow while automating your processes in Pardot.

Tracking

Before your prospects are prospects, they could just be visitors on your website. A variety of tools in Pardot support you to track visitor activity on your website and begin associating data with these future prospects right from the start. You’ll then be able to view all of their Pardot tracked activities once they convert from visitors to prospects.

pardot support

Converting

Forms on your web pages and landing pages act as the primary instrument for conversion from visitor to prospect status. Using Pardot forms or form handlers allows you to automatically update prospect records for use in sorting and customization as you start to develop your marketing campaigns.

Grading

The prospect grading process should really begin before you dive into the many features of Pardot. Automating a grading process for your prospects allows your team to capture information surrounding the suitability of each of the prospects in your system. You can significantly improve your conversion rates by marketing to prospects who will see the relevance of your products and services. The platform provides you with a default grading model that may serve as the foundation for your prospect grading strategy, but it also presents the opportunity to customize grading profiles for an approach that will more directly apply to your unique offerings.

pardot support

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EZ-AR™ – The First Accounts Receivable Software

accounts receivable

The invoicing process of today is heavily based around manual work that requires chasing down payments. This problem has been set as the standard rather than the exception. A lot of companies are living in this vicious cycle; having to follow-up and intervene with the majority of their outstanding invoices.There are multiple solutions to remove the majority of these manual tasks. We’re going to dive into how an accounts receivable software is supposed function in today’s cloud-based environment.

Introducing EZ-AR™; the first automated invoice generation and accounts receivable collection software built on the Salesforce.com platform.

This software solution utilizes automated-tracked email templates within custom-flexible journeys that react to the recipient’s behavior. In doing so, it significantly improves cash in-flow and reduces average Days Sales Outstanding (DSO).

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