The growing number of companies choosing to incorporate the Salesforce system within their business can be attributed to the fact that since Salesforce has already established their name and credibility within the field, it has also undeniably become a trend for companies to at least try it in hopes of boosting their company’s sales productivity.
The pandemic situation can also be attributed to the increase of Salesforce’s visibility in almost all of the large companies today. But first, what is Salesforce?
Salesforce is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that directly connects the company to its clients through a cloud-based technology. This system gives you digital inputs of your company’s operational capacity through a dashboard.
But how can you at least assure your team that implementing Salesforce in your company can work as well as the stories you heard about it?
There could already be a hundred ways and tips that you can easily find through the internet about Salesforce implementation, but let us try to narrow this down into three of the most important questions that you need to ask and consider before implementing Salesforce on your team.
Will it fit my business?
Of course, in every new venture, the first thing to ask is if it can conform to the nature of your business. For this matter, your company’s initial step is to re-evaluate your targets, composition, and dynamics.
While Salesforce can encompass a huge variety of business types, it will still be best for you to customize a dashboard that can best fit your company’s desired outcome. There can be a lot of overlapping answers for this question but to be specific, you may:
Get an experienced consultant
Getting support from an expert in the field can never go wrong as this will give you a detailed explanation of the things that you need to know especially, if you’re too unfamiliar and new to digital transformation.
Review your business objectives
Aligning your plans and strategies with your business objectives will either make or break this initiative. Before you consider implementing Salesforce in your business, you must specifically be able to first determine what objectives and targets you want to achieve.
Salesforce will only be able to deliver if there will be a clear set of sales objectives. Providing a project timeline for the whole implementation and launching process can also help you in getting a clear picture of your business goals.
Do I have the financial capacity for the whole implementation process?
The expenses for incorporating Salesforce within your team won’t end after the dashboard or system development. Along the implementation and even on the monitoring process, there can still be a lot of related expenses that you should consider.
In the long run, you would even need to think if you have enough financial capacity for Salesforce implementation and if it adheres to your company budget. To set things straight, these are few of the budget-related things that you need to check:
Right Hardware
Salesforce offers a variety of versions which will work on certain types of hardware only. If you are about to upgrade all of your current hardware to fully utilize Salesforce, then intensive research must first be done so that you won’t end up investing in the wrong hardware.
Hardware upgrade costs can either become a net loss or net gain. So getting an expert in the field like what we mentioned in the first question’s answer is THAT important.
Right Software
Since you have already checked if you have the right set of hardware for Salesforce implementation, it will also be best for you to check if you will be getting the right software that will fit your company’s capability. Newly released and comprehensive software versions are definitely more expensive and useful. But do you really need them?
No, because you don’t need to get and pay for a software that will go beyond the needs of your business. Software will only be useful if it’ll be fully utilized and managed effectively.
Who are my users?
Certainly, your top users will be your whole team and your clients. For both users, it will be important to make an adaptable and flexible system for them to use considering their different technological knowledge and background. So for this concern, one thing you need to do is:
Choose an adaptable data model and layout
For your in-house team, the need to hire a technical support and trainer for the usage of the system is a requirement before fully launching the system in your company.
Given that the operational functions of the system will be mostly managed by your sales team, then the more you need to make sure that the system you implemented will not be “too much” of a work for them.
The training cost for your whole team can also overlap with your financial-related concerns. That is why determining your financial capability happens before determining the users.
As for the end users, which are your clients, their feedback regarding the system usage will also determine the success of Salesforce implementation. Thus, assuring that you requested and designed user-friendly layouts will also be necessary.
As previously mentioned in this article, there could still be many more tips regarding Salesforce implementation around the internet today. However, I hope that the questions and answers that we provided in this article will help you get the right Salesforce system and team in your company.
Consulting firms like us can also give you more detailed support and advice regarding your sales and marketing concerns. Try and reach out to us if you want to have a major digital shift for your business.
