Updated March 15, 2022
If you have recently completed a Salesforce implementation, congratulations! You’re on your way to greatness. Unfortunately, the greatness doesn’t come automatically. Like nearly anything worthwhile, Salesforce takes work. It doesn’t succeed on its own.
To help you optimize your system, we’ve put together a list of some top mistakes we’ve seen organizations make after completing their Salesforce implementation. If any of this sounds familiar, don’t despair — we also share ways to get back on track.
Salesforce does several major releases each year. Keep your system in top condition by taking advantage of all the releases, major updates, enhancements and customizations available to make it a perfect fit for your organization. Salesforce is designed to be customized, so leverage the opportunity to make the solution work the way your business requires. Additionally, host internal training webinars or leverage experts to help train new staff on all the unique aspects of your company’s setup.
If everything about your Salesforce system feels complicated, user adoption will be low. Nobody likes endless mandatory fields and constant changes. When it’s too complex, your users will be reluctant to log in at all.
Remember what your needs are and find a happy middle ground, avoiding excessive dropdown options, notifications and pop-ups. Keep it simple with consistent, easy-to-use navigation so your team embraces the new system. If the user experience is solid, they’ll love it and will want to be logged in from the beginning of the day though the end, which keeps your data fresh and your reporting up to date.
Don’t let your system get isolated from your other applications. Salesforce is a powerful tool and is even more powerful when it’s integrated with other business systems, such as marketing and enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools or even your website and chat bots. Integrating Salesforce with critical business applications such as your accounting software (for example, Sage Intacct or Microsoft Dynamics 365) will help you meet your business needs today and your growing functionality needs tomorrow.
When your organization is juggling multiple systems, you are also juggling multiple sets of insular, self-contained data. Because these disparate systems become silos of information, you miss vital opportunities to get a holistic perspective of your financial and operational data.
Unifying your data will give your business a single source of truth, reduce blind spots and enable you to make better-informed decisions. You can also easily connect your Salesforce account with tools like Tableau or Microsoft Power BI, which gives you a cohesive view of your most critical data and helps you transform data insights into compelling, interactive reports.
Additionally, many organizations can benefit from a complete lead-to-cash process. Using Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) for key lead-to-cash functions helps your sales team optimize your quoting process and lets you pass transactional data to an ERP system for reporting, billing and revenue recognition. Link up as many platforms as possible, and you’ll love the results even more. By connecting these solutions, you will avoid data entry mistakes and gain a single source of truth for forecasting and a streamlined contract renewal process.
You know the situation. It’s a weekly sales meeting and the sales manager logs onto Salesforce to take a look at the pipeline. But what if the conversation was bigger, about market trends or historical patterns, and prospect data and news? Then it becomes a strategy discussion to help identify patterns and help close more business. If you enhance the system and user experience, your sales team will find it indispensable.
Enable Sales Cloud Einstein to help drive insight-based decision making to boost your close rate. Einstein Lead and Opportunity Scoring uses data science to assess and score your data, helping you target leads more likely to convert, identify upsell opportunities and prioritize opportunities that are more likely to close. Einstein Forecasting then takes the guesswork out of forecasting using your own sales history and AI to predict your forecast and share intuitive insights behind the predictions. Finally, enable Pipeline Inspection to get an all-in-one single pipeline view, to help you identify deals that need more attention and recent changes to amounts, close dates, forecast categories and stages.
As workforces grow increasingly remote, employees are no longer tied to a desktop computer from nine to five. And because workers are no longer confined to one location, office hours within your organization may vary due to differing time zones. So, it’s more important than ever that you are enabling anytime, anywhere access for users and customers. Make mobile access nimble and enable email so everything needed is integrated into Salesforce, keeping important data in one place for everyone, no matter where they are.
If your company uses collaboration tools outside of Salesforce, this can mean that crucial updates are being recorded in different platforms. The Salesforce tool Einstein Activity Capture helps keep these updates in one spot, reconciling the data between Salesforce and your email and calendar applications. It can automatically log your emails into Salesforce, ensuring that, no matter where updates have been made, the latest information is always at your fingertips.
The same is true for tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams, allowing you to bring Salesforce into the collaborative workspaces that your employees are already comfortable working in. With both Slack and Teams, you can link specific Salesforce records, allowing your team to make quick updates without switching systems and ensuring that your sales opportunities are staying up to date.
The deadly sins we just outlined are some of the more common mistakes that Salesforce users experience. However, to use Salesforce proactively and most effectively, it should be tailored to meet your specific needs. Working with an experienced partner can help you eliminate costly errors, maximize your return on investment and drive long-term value from your Salesforce solution.
As a member of the Salesforce Partner Network, Armanino has a team dedicated to helping you fully utilize your Salesforce solution. Whether you have already implemented Salesforce or are just getting started, our experts can help you get the most value out of your software.
