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Salesforce is the most powerful CRM system to help you grow your business: it can host most of your business processes and can also be smoothly integrated with many other external applications and websites. However, the success of a Salesforce implementation, like any other tool, also depends on human factors.Ensuring a new technology is well implemented and adopted in a company is always challenging and not seeing the results expected can be very frustrating. Luckily, there are a number of signs that you can easily spot that indicate you are not making the most out of Salesforce.
Salesforce adoption must start with the managers in your company. In order to maximise the benefits of using Salesforce, your managers need to be engaged with it and learn how to use it well. They need to understand it is a tool that will help them do their work more efficiently. In return, Salesforce will give managers more business intelligence that will support them in making more strategic decisions. For example, sales managers will be able to forecast sales more accurately through the sales funnel while also tracking the performance of sales teams. With Salesforce, managers will be able to coordinate marketing, sales and support teams better and identify in advance productivity issues that can be solved with more training and support. If managers are not using Salesforce, their team will not be bothered learning how to use it properly and entering all data in it. Adoption must be top-down,i.e. Managers are the first ones who should embrace Salesforce.[caption id="attachment_712" align="alignnone" width="640"]
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User adoption is, in general, challenging, so it is vital that teams are well trained and supported after a Salesforce implementation. Changes are usually not welcome by employees so, if they fail to see the benefit that a new tool brings, they will not be motivated to make the best use of it. Salesforce must be the substitute of all users’ notebooks and calendars to avoid the loss of important business data. Any details they need to write and every meeting or phone call they schedule must be in Salesforce. Only if your employees are motivated to keep their data right you will have full visibility of what’s happening in your company.
Automating every single action that does not need to be taken manually is a rule of thumb. If users waste time doing repetitive tasks that could be automated, it is very likely that Salesforce data will contain errors. Investing in automation will always result in higher user satisfaction and productivity.In addition, it is very important to limit the actions that users can take in order to preserve data accuracy. A too permissive Salesforce setup increases the chances that users will end up taking actions that they should not take. A second rule of thumb is to start off by creating profiles with the most restricted access possible and grant more permissions later on when it is clear that they are necessary for a certain group of users to do their work.The previous are just two examples of things that need to be taken into account when implementing Salesforce, but there are many more practices that should be followed if you want to make the most out of Salesforce.
One or more of the previous three points can lead to bad reporting. When your database contains duplicate records and / or missing data, you cannot trust the data you see and you will end up making decisions that are not funded on real data. By solving the three above-mentioned issues you will gain business intelligence and will be able to act on it. You can find more tips on data validation practices in this handy article.
To ensure user adoption, the most important thing is implementing good training plans across all the teams that are working with Salesforce. These plans must include not only initial trainings for new users, but also further trainings, such as, specific trainings when major changes have been introduced to the platform, and periodic recap trainings on how to use Salesforce. Testing Salesforce skills is also critical to identify which users are having trouble and provide extra training for them.Building reports to check data accuracy is also recommendable. This can help you spot patterns of wrong data that might indicate what needs fixing in your Salesforce setup. Asking users what they would enhance in Salesforce is another great way of finding out which parts of Salesforce need to be improved.Using only Salesforce data to assess business and management performance is important if you want managers to be engaged. Applying the “if it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist” rule is always helpful to gain the engagement of both managers and their teams.
If you have not got the results you expected when you implemented Salesforce in your company, it is very likely that the reason is internal: managers that do not know how to use Salesforce, employees that do not bother learning either or have not been properly trained, companies that have a bad Salesforce implementation, etc. Asking for expert advice is always an excellent investment when you bring a new tool into your company, especially if you are experiencing any of the above-mentioned points. Companies like Empaua can help you ensure you get the best results after a Salesforce implementation.Author Bio: Maria Benavent – Maria is a freelance Salesforce Consultant with a crush on clean data.Do you need more information about Salesforce Implementation?
