According to a 2021 IDC report on its economic impact, Salesforce can deliver an average return on investment of 300% to 500% over four years. Additionally, Salesforce helps businesses reduce IT expenses by 43%, cut down on emails by 26%, and decrease the need for in-person meetings by 25%, allowing you to concentrate on strategic growth.
According to the same research, using Salesforce can also reduce IT costs by 43%, emails by 26%, and personal meetings by 25%, allowing you to focus on more important core tasks.
What is Salesforce Implementation?
Salesforce implementation involves setting up and customizing Salesforce to fit a business’s unique needs. This process includes several key steps:
- Assessment and planning to understand business requirements and set clear goals
- Customization to tailor the platform with specific fields, workflows, and dashboards
- Data migration to cleanse and transfer data from existing systems
- Integration to connect Salesforce with other tools and systems
- Deployment to launch the fully configured platform after thorough testing
However, before implementing Salesforce, evaluating your organization’s vision, challenges, goals, and priorities is important. A clear understanding of what you want to achieve with Salesforce will help you make informed decisions about customizations and reporting requirements.
Ask these questions:
- What is your organization’s overarching vision, and how can Salesforce align with it?
- What specific challenges do you need Salesforce to address?
- Which objectives can be accomplished through Salesforce?
- What benefits will executives, managers, and everyday users see from using Salesforce?
- How will you measure success and track progress toward your goals?
- What is the order of priority for these goals?
It’s also essential to have a detailed understanding of your company’s sales process. This insight will enable you to configure Salesforce to align with your sales strategy and effectively support your team in closing deals.
This article does not cover the matter of Salesforce implementation costs and timelines. You can find detailed information on this in the article by Twistellar, the Salesforce Consulting Partner. This post has been designed to highlight eight steps to Salesforce implementation and setup that bring value.
8 Steps To Successfully Implement Salesforce
Let’s break down the implementation process.
- Define Your Goals and Strategy
Start by clearly identifying your business goals and what you aim to achieve with Salesforce. This helps you determine the scope of your implementation, align stakeholder expectations, and set measurable outcomes.
For effective Salesforce implementation, involvement at the middle management level is crucial. Here’s a streamlined breakdown of recommended team roles:
For smaller businesses:
- CEO/Shareholder sets goals
- Head of Department oversees the automated function and contributes to planning and user acceptance testing (UAT)
- Line Employee focuses on user-facing aspects to ease adoption (e.g., Sales Rep for Sales Cloud)
For larger companies:
- Business Analyst defines project scope and manages internal communication
- Project Manager coordinates interactions between the team and stakeholders
- Technical Architect ensures compatibility with existing IT infrastructure
- Trainer develops training materials and educates staff on the system
- Plan Your Implementation and Create a Timeline
Develop a detailed implementation plan that outlines the necessary tasks, timelines, and responsible parties. Include all stages from initial setup to user training and go-live. Ensure your plan accounts for the time required to test features and gather user feedback.
The implementation timeline varies with the project scope and features. Ideally, the project should be rolled out in stages, each phase delivering incremental value and easing user adoption. Typically, initial setups for Salesforce Sales Cloud or Service Cloud take 4-6 months, or you can choose a quick start.
- Add and Manage Users
Begin by adding users to your Salesforce organization. This step is crucial to ensure that existing records are matched with the correct users and that each user has the appropriate permissions and access.
- Fine-Tune Pre-Existing Features
Customize Salesforce’s standard fields, objects, and tabs to align with your business practices better. Adjust the standard setup by renaming fields and changing what data fields can contain to accurately reflect your organization’s specific needs.
- Import Your Data
Prepare and clean your existing data before importing it into Salesforce. For more advanced data handling, consider methods to set up Salesforce ETL to ensure a smooth, consistent, and efficient data transfer process..
- Set Up Basic Reporting and Automations
Configure basic reports and dashboards to track key metrics and provide valuable insights into your business operations. Set up automation rules to perform actions based on data changes, such as sending notifications or approvals, to streamline your processes and improve efficiency.
- Roll Out Salesforce to Users
The key point is that people often approach new tools and technologies skeptically—the more involvement from trusted representatives, the smoother the adoption process.
Develop a rollout strategy to introduce Salesforce to your users effectively. Provide comprehensive training and resources to help users understand and adapt to the new system. This ensures a smoother transition and higher adoption rates.
- Monitor, Optimize, and Stay Updated
After the initial rollout, continuously monitor user feedback and system performance. Optimize configurations and processes as needed to improve user experience and system efficiency. Stay informed about new Salesforce updates and features to ensure your organization benefits from the latest innovations.
To Wrap Up
In summary, Salesforce implementation involves careful planning, customization, data migration, integration, and deployment.
Successful Salesforce implementation can be a time-consuming process, and businesses should be ready to invest time and resources to tune up the CRM and ensure it aligns with their goals.
Another option is to collaborate with a Salesforce partner company that will take responsibility for most of the steps described above and deliver a custom-tailored solution within the agreed-upon time frame. You choose.
