Category: Updates

Salesforce has just released its Summer ’22 release notes and we’ve compiled some of our favorites below. Keep scrolling to see when these features will become available to you.

Sales Cloud

• • Close cases quicker with Einstein search – Help case agents find solutions and knowledge articles quicker through an optimized search manager.
  • Estimate your ROI for Lead Scoring – The Einstein Readiness Assessor estimates the value of Einstein Lead Scoring for your custom instance. It’s based on your lead acquisition and conversion numbers.
  • Create Custom Address Fields – You are now able to create custom fields that mimic the same behavior as standard address fields. This comes at an extremely fortunate time when many people work from home, but can also be used to track multiple warehouses and other offices.
  • Clean up inactive picklist values – Users are able to bulk delete inactive unused picklist values rather than having to do so one at a time. You can also activate, deactivate, or replace multiple custom picklist values at once.
  • Find the best report type for new reports – Have you ever created a Salesforce report only for it not to display the specific data and objects you were expecting? A newly enhanced report type selector allows users to quickly access recently used report types and view the objects and fields that are available.

Consumer Goods Clouds

• • Schedule Visits to the Right Stores at the Right Time – Use Einstein Visit Recommendation to keep your products front and center. Sales managers can select a group of stores to receive recommendations on which ones to visit, and when.
  • Ensure Timely Deliveries to Stores – Managers can prioritize orders that the highest selling stores to make sure they’re restocked first. Delivery tasks can be assigned to drivers, who receive instant notifications on their mobile devices.

Service Cloud

• • Deflect cases with Einstein Article Recommendations for Flows – Enable smart email auto-responses to quickly answer customer questions, providing knowledge articles within minutes. Accessible from within Flow Builder.
  • Make Smarter Routing Decisions – Designate a queue or skill-based information about your agents’ capacity to automatically designate new work requests more efficiently. For example, if an agent has more than 3 cases in their queue, the system can automatically route the new case to someone else.
  • Save Agents time with Einstein Article Recommendations – Use AI to recommend relevant knowledge articles to agents as live conversations happen. Reduce the time agents spend on each case while increasing customer satisfaction.

 

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot)

• • Send Slack notifications with Completion Actions – Marketers can now use a completion action to notify a Slack channel to speed up your pipeline. Beat out your competition by responding to leads first and adding this action to your most important assets and forms.
  • Automate More with Completion Action Enhancements – You can apply completion actions to subsets of prospects who meet certain criteria. For example, you can assign prospects who live in Washington to your sales team located within Washington.

 

• • Drip Programs are being retired in June 2022. If you have active programs, convert them to Engagement Studio.
  • Don’t forget about the recent name changes!

Pre-Release Org Feature Testing

A pre-release org is the safest way to test the new features before it comes available in your Sandbox. Please click here to sign-up. Remember that pre-release orgs will not have the customizations that your current live system has.

Sandbox Feature Testing

On May 7th, users will be able to test the new Summer ’22 features within their own Sandbox. This allows users to test out how the new features will work with their fully customized system and processes. Most Sandboxes will be automatically updated on Mayth 7th.

Salesforce Summer ’22 Feature Release Dates

Salesforce plans to release the Summer ’22 features across all live instances on the following dates:

• • May 21st, 2022
  • June 4th, 2022
  • June 11th, 2022

Features will be released in your Salesforce depending on your instance. Visit Salesforce Trust, select your instance name, and visit the “Maintenance” tab to see the date your org will be updated. To find your instance, visit the company information tab within setup in your Salesforce.

Full Summer ’22 Release Timeline

On April 6th, Salesforce changed the name of their B2B marketing automation tool, Pardot, to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. You may be familiar with Marketing Cloud, Salesforce’s B2C digital marketing automation and analytics software. We’ll take a look at the “why” behind the big name change, and look at a few other new name changes as well.

All Name Changes

• • Salesforce CDP → Customer Data Platform
  • Interaction Studio → Personalization
  • Email, Mobile, Ad, Journey Studios → Engagement
  • Pardot → Account Engagement
  • Datorama → Intelligence

The “Why”

With these name changes, Salesforce is making Marketing Cloud more consistent and more understandable to marketers looking at the entire platform. It’s not just name changes either, Salesforce is continuing to integrate with these best-of-breed technologies, making their CRM even more powerful than before.

• • Aligning with the marketer’s language – Salesforce has aligned its Marketing Cloud products with terms that marketers use in their day-to-day activities to help make their values easier to understand. For example, “many marketers are looking for the capability and value of real-time Personalization, not an ‘Interaction Studio’” (Salesforce). Marketing Cloud’s previous naming convention came from add-ons that have been acquired by Salesforce and kept their original name.
  • Continued unification – Salesforce’s unified platform is one reason it’s the #1 CRM.  This renaming further shows users that Salesforce continues to integrate best-of-breed technology within their system. Products are continuing to receive advanced integrations within each other, giving users access to quality data and technology they’ve never had before.
  • Future enhancements –  These changes create new pathways down Salesforce’s product roadmap. Recently, Marketing Cloud added WhatsApp and Snapchat for advertising, targeting, messaging, and more. Integrations like these continue to be made, as the marketer’s strategy changes frequently.

Takeaways

• • Blending B2B and B2C – Pardot has always been labeled as the B2B marketing automation tool, whereas Marketing Cloud is for B2C marketing. Recently, B2B and B2C marketing have never been closer than before, overlapping in many buying qualities and strategies. With the recent trend of B2B and B2C blending, this takes another step in the right direction.
  • No Account Access – One of the most frequently asked questions since the name change has been “does Account Engagement (Pardot) now have more than read-only access to Account objects”? Currently, Account Engagement still only has bi-directional updates with the Lead and Contact objects within Salesforce. Nothing in Salesforce’s current roadmaps state otherwise, but this could be the beginning of that process!
  • Some things stay the same – Most things are staying the same, especially underneath the Account Engagement hood:
    • Pricing and packages
    • SKU names on your Salesforce contract
    • Features and functionality

Pardot’s name change to Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is a big deal, but don’t forget all of the other name changes listed earlier. As Salesforce continues to integrate its products even more than before, these names should stay. For now, how do we best say the new name after knowing it as Pardot since 2007? Marketing Cloud Account Engagement Engagement Studios doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue as Pardot Engagement Studios does. Account Engagement? MCAE? That’s for us to decide and have fun with. The new “Pardashian” term is just around the corner!

Salesforce’s full article on Marketing Cloud’s name changes.

The Salesforce Summer ’22 sandbox preview is arriving in late April! Below are the key dates for the Summer ’22 release so that you can mark your calendars and prepare.

Depending on your instance, the major release dates for the Spring ’22 features are:

• • May 20: First release
  • June 3: Second release
  • June 10/11: Final release

Other key dates through the Spring ‘22 Release include:

April 21: Sign up for the pre-release environment

In this test environment, you can try new features to figure out which features are right for your organization.

April 27: Preview release notes are available

All release notes become available. Head to Salesforce Help to scan and review the new release notes.

May 5: Sandbox cut-off date

Utilizing a sandbox environment can help you get early access to new features before your scheduled production upgrade. You must have an active sandbox environment before May 5, 2022.

May 6: Salesforce Summer ’22 release site is live

The release site becomes live! Trailhead modules are also available to quickly learn new features.

May 20: First release weekend

Salesforce and a small number of customers will be upgraded.

May 20 to May 27: Release readiness live broadcast

Salesforce admins and developers kick off the Summer ’22 release with their favorite features from the release. The Salesforce team will discuss and demo new features around this time.

June 3: Second release weekend

Another wave of Salesforce instances gets upgraded. Salesforce’s Trust page has the information on the timing of your upgrade.

June 10-11: Final release weekend

All remaining Salesforce instances will be upgraded on these dates.

To show the date of the Salesforce Summer ’22 release reaching your org, visit Salesforce Trust and click on your instance name and click “Maintenance”. If you don’t know your instance, go to your company information within setup in your Salesforce org.

About Corrao Group 

For over 20 years 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, we understand 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 we can help your company, read our reviews on G2 or contact us today!

Sources:

Don’t Miss These Key Dates: Summer ’22 Sandbox Preview

 

In January of 2002, Jack Corrao assembled in his home office in San Diego to begin the Corrao Group. He would build a company based on reinventing how companies operate, communicate, and interact with customers. Coming from two decades in the corporate world, Jack felt that too many data silos and lack of processes inhibited most companies from growing and ultimately provided poor customer satisfaction. The vision was to assemble hands-on experts, in a virtual fashion, that allowed a Work From Home mentality.

Twenty years later, Corrao Group’s employees continue to drive digital transformations for companies of every size and industry. Driven by our core values — Trust, User Adoption, and Giving Back — Corrao Group has helped transform businesses across the United States. On this 20th Anniversary, we want to say thank you to our customers, employees, partners, and Salesforce. We couldn’t have done any of this without you.

If you would like to learn more about Corrao Group, please visit our website!

According to Salesforce, “Poor quality data costs businesses around $700 billion a year, or 30 percent of the average company’s revenue”. Poor data quality can include missing data, inaccurate data, duplicate data, and more. Bad data management can lead to costly business decisions because of misleading/incorrect data. Inaccurate reports and dashboards, wasted time and money, and a decline in user adoption are all ways bad data can affect your business. We recommend using any downtime to clean your Salesforce data during the holiday season.

8 Salesforce data cleanup ideas Include:

Deleting Data Duplicates

• • Look for and pinpoint duplicate data in your system. Duplicates in your system could include contacts, campaigns, accounts, reports and dashboards, and more. Run a report to identify how many duplicates are in the system. Salesforce Data Loader can help the records be queried and deleted from Salesforce.

Validate Your Data

• • Use this time to ensure all the data in your org is accurate, consistent, and effective. Your company can expect improved business results when employees start inserting high-quality data into Salesforce. Data validation should be a recurring project that can be done yearly or even multiple times per year.

Data Updates

• • Fill in important missing information on your Accounts and Contacts. Fields that could be missing include job title, location, phone number, and more. These pieces of information are critical for your team, and having incorrect or missing data slows the team down.

Data Rules

• • If you do not have rules on data entry into the system, this would be an excellent time to set up best practices for your employees on entering quality data into Salesforce. Data validation rules/requirements can help verify the data your employees are entering are meeting your business standards before the user can save the record.

Campaigns (Outdated and New)

• • Look through your Salesforce campaigns and clean up any duplicates, members who don’t belong in the campaign anymore, close outdated campaigns, and create new campaigns for 2022.

Reports and Dashboards

• • Reports and Dashboards in Salesforce can quickly become obsolete. Any reports or dashboards that are outdated or not in use should be removed from your org.

Pardot Landing Pages

• • Go through your Landing Pages in Pardot to review if there is any outdated content that needs to be updated. If you are not utilizing the landing page anymore, the best practice would be to archive the page to remove it from list views.

Outdated Content

• • Utilize this time to go through all the current content across your social channels. Find out if you need to update any of the data before 2022 arrives. Some of the most popular updates occur on blog posts.

The 2nd largest issue among Salesforce customers is bad data. If you are struggling with Salesforce data issues, schedule a free assessment with us today! We can walk through your system and provide best practices to clean up your Salesforce data.

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, we understand 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 we can help your company, read our reviews on G2 or contact us today!

We hope you had a great Thanksgiving! The Salesforce Spring ’22 sandbox preview is coming up in early December. Below are the key dates for Spring ’22 so that you can mark your calendars and prepare.

Depending on your instance, the dates for the Spring ’22 Release are:

• • January 14th/15th, 2022
  • February 4th/5th, 2022
  • February 11th/12th, 2022

Other key dates through the Spring ‘22 Release include:

December 16: Sign up for the pre-release environment

In this test environment, you can try new features to figure out which features are right for your organization.

December 22: Preview Release Notes are available

The release notes become available. Head to Salesforce Help to scan and review the new releases.

January 6th: Sandbox cut-off date

Utilizing a sandbox environment can help you get early access to new features before your scheduled production upgrade. You must have an active sandbox environment before January 6, 2022.

January 7: Spring ’22 Release site is live

The release site becomes live! Trailhead modules are also available to quickly learn new features.

January 14: First Release Weekend

Salesforce and a small number of customers will be upgraded.

February 4 to 11: Release readiness live broadcast

Salesforce’s admin’s and developers kick off the Spring ’22 Release with their favorite features from the release. The Salesforce team will discuss and demo new features.

February 4: Second Release Weekend

Another wave of Salesforce instances gets upgraded. Salesforce’s Trust page has the information on the timing of your upgrade.

February 11 and 12: Final Release Weekend

All remaining Salesforce instances will be upgraded on these dates.

To show the date of the Salesforce Spring ’22 release hitting your org, go over to Salesforce Trust and click on your instance name and click “Maintenance”. If you don’t know your instance, go to your company information within Setup in your Org.

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 1,047+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150 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!

We created an 8-part blog series highlighting the journey for new customers looking to digitally transform their company with Salesforce. Moving to a cloud-based system is a big change for companies working in spreadsheets or homegrown systems every day. Our blog series helps your company make the right decision through every phase of the Salesforce journey. In order below are the 8 blogs with a short description and a link to each blog. Feel free to reach out to us if you see any area where we can assist.

It’s Time to Reevaluate Your Tech Stack

The days of tracking leads and customers in spreadsheets are gone. As a business owner, moving to a cloud-based system from spreadsheets or old proprietary systems may bring some fears and doubts. However, 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.

Support Work From Anywhere

After your company has decided to move to a cloud-based system, it’s time to develop a new culture for your staff. You should have 3-5 KPIs that you are tracking year in and year out to measure performance and ROI. Additionally, during this time period, your staff should be documenting all their business processes. 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.

Selecting and Implementing Your CRM

The 2020 pandemic accelerated the future of work as the work-from-anywhere mentality has to be considered when deploying a new CRM. Having a CRM that is flexible to digital workflow changes will be critical for your business’s success. Through our 13 years of experience, we have found that Salesforce is the clear leader among CRM platforms.

Why You Need a Salesforce Implementation Partner

Companies typically face three significant obstacles when implementing Salesforce: implementation, adoption, and platform capabilities. The sheer scope of a Salesforce implementation is tremendous. Rushing through an implementation or using “quickstart” templates as a baseline foundation will come back to cause mid to long-term scalability and poor user adoption issues. We’ve found that the best way to maximize your Salesforce investment is with an experienced Salesforce partner.

Choosing a Suitable Sequence of Salesforce Implementation Phases

Salesforce is best implemented in phases, setting up and training users from each department. Doing so helps boost user adoption and allows for the correct transfer of business processes into Salesforce. Ensuring each department is set up on Salesforce before moving onto the next department is key to a successful implementation.

Planning Your Budget and Time for a Salesforce Implementation

The amount of budget and time you will need to allocate will vary depending on your Salesforce requirements. An excellent consulting partner will spend time upfront to walk you through your time and budgeting needs. Spending quality time with a consultant to detail out a phased approach will help you maximize your Salesforce investment.

7 Salesforce Implementation Risks to Avoid

Through our experience of over 2,150+ projects, we’ve identified 7 key Salesforce implementation risks. Take a look at the 7 most common pitfalls that costs companies thousands of dollars.

3 Best Practices to Ensure Salesforce Adoption

Salesforce adoption is not an easy task to deal with. Without successful user adoption, your employees will struggle to use Salesforce to its full capacity. Obtaining executive buy-in, knowing your-end users, and continuous training will help your company achieve Salesforce adoption.

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 1,047+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150 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 our previous blog, we mentioned user adoption as a common Salesforce implementation risk. Salesforce adoption is not an easy task to deal with. Salesforce is a brand new complex system for your employees to learn and work in every day. Without successful user adoption, your employees will struggle to use Salesforce to its full capacity. With over 2,150+ successfully completed Salesforce projects, we put together three best practices to ensure Salesforce adoption.

Obtain Executive Buy-in

Having executive buy-in is critical for great user adoption. Executives and managers must lead by example and use the product every day. If employees recognize that their managers are not using Salesforce because it’s tedious to learn, employees will do the same and revert right back to what they are most comfortable with. This leads to some employees using Salesforce and some not, completely disconnecting business processes. One way of showing executive buy-in is to utilize Salesforce within meetings. Take advantage of sales meetings by reviewing the pipeline, analytics, leads, and more, all within Salesforce. By using Salesforce in meetings, you’ll reinforce the significance of using it to your employees and show them the platform’s value. Adjusting to a new system is hard enough, but having executives set the everyday standard of “Living Within Salesforce” will improve your adoption and, ultimately, ROI.

Know Your End-Users

Salesforce empowers employees to do their jobs quicker, better, and faster. When your employees start to use and learn Salesforce, it’s important to get constant feedback on their experience. Finding tedious manual tasks that Salesforce automation can take care of will save your employees an enormous amount of time, allowing them to focus on more meaningful responsibilities such as selling or customer support. Some ideas on how to collect feedback from your employees are 1 on 1 meetings with them, building a community within Salesforce, utilizing Quip for suggestions, company surveys, and more. Ongoing enhancements to your Salesforce org are expected as you are trying to build a user-friendly CRM that helps users in their roles daily.

Continuous Training

Going from spreadsheets to Salesforce can be very challenging for employees. Attempting to work within Salesforce at the same time they’re still learning the system can be frustrating. Everyone learns differently, so it’s essential to take a multi-stepped approach to ensure Salesforce adoption. Some examples of different training approaches are lunch and learns, 1 on 1 training sessions, group training, Trailheads, Salesforce videos, and more. The key to Salesforce adoption is continuous learning and training. At Corrao Group, we’ve used Salesforce for over a decade and our employees, both new and old, still learn more about the system daily as there are always new ways to enhance how we do business.

If you would like to learn more about Salesforce Adoption, please contact us!

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 1,047+ customers, implementing, customizing, and optimizing over 2,150 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 6 of our blog series, we discussed the time and budget needed for a Salesforce implementation. In this article, we want to dive deeper into why Salesforce implementations fail. Since the early 2000s, the implementation failure rate of CRM’s has been disturbing (See photo below). Why are companies investing in a CRM like Salesforce only to fail throughout implementation and adoption? Through our experience of over 2,000+ projects, we’ve identified 7 key Salesforce implementation risks: failure of executive buy-in and support, not establishing an internal Salesforce team, disconnected business processes, reviewing references if you get a partner, data issues, lack of training, and adoption, and continued feedback/enhancements.

CRM Failure Rates from 2001-2014 (via Salesforce)

Failure of Executive Buy-In

We’ve mentioned the need for executive buy-in in recent blogs, but it’s truly the first implementation risk your company could face. For example, if you are implementing a pipeline management system for your Sales team, it’s not good enough just to have the support of the VP of Sales. The CEO, CFO, and CIO all need to understand the reason why the company is moving to a cloud-based system. If the executive teams do not see and share the value, the rest of the team will not either.

We’ve seen many executives not understanding the value of Salesforce because maybe they want to appease their employees or they could be stuck on their homegrown system. Executives sometimes miss the point of a Salesforce. It’s an efficient tool that can drastically streamline processes and improve every department within a company. Moving to Salesforce is a major business change and the executives need to step up to the plate for the best results. Lack of sponsorship and commitment is a guarantee of any project failure and not just a reason why implementations fail.

No Salesforce Champion Team

When implementing Salesforce, it’s crucial to establish an internal Salesforce team that thrives on change. We like to call this team the “Salesforce champions” of the company as they can adapt on the fly to business adjustments. Salesforce champions can be department heads or technical team members. You need to be sure these team members can help connect their teams’ wants and needs with required features in Salesforce.

Disconnected Business Processes

Salesforce is a tool that can be used by all departments within a company. When processes are disconnected, technology can’t be looked at as the magic wand that fixes everything. The most critical part of your Salesforce implementation is clearly defining and communicating your business processes, not the technology. Due to the flexibility of Salesforce, it’s not recommended you get a free trial to try to figure it out yourself. Therefore, all business processes need to be optimized to reveal new ways it can be improved, even before implementing them within Salesforce. It’s best practice to find a knowledgeable partner with expertise in the technology. For example, If you are implementing a pipeline management system, you must share everything about your Sales process! From where your leads come from, all the way to your customer surveys (after the project).

Check References!

We always recommend getting a consultation partner while implementing Salesforce. If you decide on getting a partner, make sure to check references from end-users, other companies, G2 Crowd, and even employee reviews. Find a company that you feel is going to invest in your company and Salesforce. Salesforce is a very customizable system, so it’s essential to take your time and find the right partner. One tip is to stay away from Quickstarts or Fastracks! You’re spending a lot of money on Salesforce, so there should be nothing quick or fast about your setup!

Data Issues

Any existing data you have in current systems or spreadsheets will need to be migrated into Salesforce if needed. Companies typically wait until the very end of the implementation process to start preparing the data. However, we’ve found it is more efficient to have the data prepped and ready to go before the final stage of your implementation. You want to have your data in the system to start using Salesforce with meaningful data immediately. 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.

Lack of Proper Training and Adoption

At the end of the project, your executives and any other key members should walk through the newly configured system for approval. Additionally, your company should be going through some training sessions on how to use Salesforce and its features. It’s not good enough to do one or two training sessions as ongoing training greatly helps adoption rates. Reports and dashboards can be set up to show if your employees are actually using the system as well. Companies struggle to ensure adoption because their employees either don’t use the system or do not know how to. Great Salesforce implementation partners have thousands of successful implementations completed that can be leveraged for best practices throughout training and adoption.

Internal Feedback/Ongoing Enhancements

A lot of times companies go live with their initial implementation and think their Salesforce is complete. Getting the initial implementation done is a fantastic step, but you are not done! What your business can do with Salesforce is truly limitless. Make sure it’s easy for your staff to submit potential enhancements for Salesforce because your employees are the ones that will make your org accelerate.

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 or contact us today!