Friday, March 20, 2020

Checklist for prospecting Salesforce system administrator for your organization

Many organizations report that they failed to see any payback on their Salesforce investment and going by several surveys documented online, as much as 70% of CRM implementations fail. Certainly, there is much more to CRM implementation than simple license purchase, data migration, and custom implementation. The missing piece of the CRM success puzzle is usually expert administration after the project has been deployed.

Salesforce System Administrator is the key resource that is responsible for optimal operation of the Salesforce system, streamlining the concerned business processes in sync with the stakeholders, and maintaining system upkeep through annual updates.

Since a Salesforce Database Administrator is critical to CRM success, it is important to invest time and effort in shortlisting the candidates for the role and choosing the one that has all the characteristics to fit best. In this blog, we have listed the fundamental checklist for prospecting the Salesforce system administrator for your organization. Read ahead to know what attributes are a must-have for the most significant resource of your Salesforce set up.

  • Understands your business processes
Salesforce Administrator is the key cog of the whole Salesforce set up, whose job is to utilize the Salesforce potential to meet the organizational goals. It would add another layer of challenge if the candidate doesn’t understand your business processes and how they communicate with each other. Therefore, it is important that he/she must have a fair idea of what is the overarching objective of the products/services offered by the organization, what are the chief processes, and how Salesforce maps to the existing operational environment. When the candidate has a broad understanding of the business processes, his/her adaptation time is shortened and can immediately begin coordinating with stakeholders.

  • Experienced in Project Management
Salesforce system administrator is responsible for developing and maintaining the complete customer funnel from the technical point of view. He/she should be deft in multitasking, handling deadlines, coordinating with cross-functional teams and people with limited technical know-how of the Salesforce system.

Unless the candidate has a proven record of project management in a similar or related sector, it would be difficult for him/her to juggle with myriad tasks while managing the core Salesforce responsibilities. Moreover, when working as Remote Salesforce Administrator, one needs to collaborate with global cross-functional teams and experience with project management comes handy.

  • Familiar with Sales workflows
The principal application of Salesforce CRM is streamlining Sales workflows. Hence to ensure that the investment in the platform meets the intended objective, the Salesforce database administrator must be familiar with the existing sales pipeline. In case, the organization aims to streamline an ill-defined sales funnel then it is even more important to hire a resource who is well versed with the sales process. If the candidate is technically proficient but not well versed with real world sales funnel, then he/she would frequently need assistance of sales professionals.

  • Interested in learning new features
Salesforce is an actively evolving platform and releases three major updates in a year. It is therefore essential characteristic of a Salesforce admin candidate to be a curious learner. There are great official learning resources provided by Salesforce and several other unofficial forums where users can learn, discuss and help each other. Experienced Salesforce professionals invest significant time in browsing these sources for keeping them updated with new functionalities.

  • Supportive and Team Player
While these qualities are fundamental for any corporate team member, these become more relevant for the role of Salesforce System Administrator. As he/she is pivotal in driving the whole team to customer success, qualities like willingness to support and team player gain significance. Many organizations opt for a Remote salesforce administrator and when teams are globally distributed, it becomes critical for an admin to be encouraging and flexible.

Bonus Tip

When it becomes overwhelming to find the right candidate, organizations can either opt for Salesforce managed services or hire third-party Salesforce Administrator services. Both aim to circumvent the paucity of experienced Salesforce talent in diverse industries and save the hassles of recruiting and onboarding the right candidate.

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Scale Your Business through Salesforce Custom Application Development


The most pressing challenge of growing businesses is the requirement of IT infrastructure to keep up with the growth. With the expansion in clientele and operating locations, they need ready-to-deploy technology solutions to address the requirements of new and established processes alike.

Salesforce AppExchange is the largest marketplace of business applications that are developed over the Salesforce platform. Around 85% of Fortune 100 businesses employ apps available through AppExchange to improve their workflows. Salesforce apps are available for implementation through Salesforce AppExchange Partners, the companies that offer paid or free solutions over the marketplace. You can either opt for direct app download and implementation or contact the partners for customized integration.

Salesforce Custom Application Development helps organizations to quickly scale-up their IT infrastructure with growth. Here is how:

  • Range of Solutions to Choose From

Apps available at AppExchange offer solutions to different industries and business processes. With elaborate classification, the customer can browse apps, test them in the trial period, or use a free version for estimating suitability in his/her business scenario. For example, a company seeking Field Service Solution can search for the app that fits its budget, number of users, or specific use-case and get a quote for customization with required features. It is also easy to upgrade subscription based on the business needs.
 

  • Pre-built Solutions

Apps available at AppExchange are ready-to-integrate, thereby circumventing the need for hiring developers, bearing the cost of development, testing, and maintenance. This helps in optimizing the cost of expanding the IT infrastructure. Usually paid apps or the ones available under the managed package are upgraded and maintained by the respective Salesforce Appexchange Partners. Unmanaged packages are open-source and mostly offer the basic layer of code to build sophisticated apps.

  •  Seamless Integration into the Salesforce Ecosystem

Since AppExchange solutions are built over the Salesforce Platform, they are seamlessly integrated into various Salesforce offerings so that the users can gain a 360-degree view of their processes. For example, a customer service app can be integrated into Salesforce CRM, enhancing customer service agent’s efficiency and improving customer experience. Through Salesforce Custom Application Development, users can request functionalities suiting their workflows.

  • Cross-device access and Multichannel Workflows

Most Salesforce apps are available for tablets and smartphones as well. This enables users to access and process information easily irrespective of location. Through Salesforce Android app development, organizations can instantly deploy custom Android solutions utilizing pre-built and custom components. Salesforce-based mobile apps are robust and scalable with a true out-of-the-box experience. Organizations can also engage customers over different channels such as SMS, email, WhatsApp, etc.

Summing Up: Salesforce AppExchange Partners enable organizations to solve their impending challenges and augment core capabilities in a much shorter span when compared to the solutions that are developed from scratch. The apps come with the same level of security as Salesforce CRM and therefore reinforce good practices of data management.