You’ve decided to utilize Salesforce, but what now? What are the things you need to know? What is pre-built, and what needs to be customized? Which processes in your company can Salesforce automate, and which ones must you implement? In this article, we’ll go through every piece of the fundamental knowledge you’ll need to integrate Salesforce successfully into your business.

Custom Fields

Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, and Tasks are the principal Salesforce items you’ll probably work with. You can add, update, and delete records for each object with only a few clicks. While all specific fields businesses need to maintain, such as names, contact details, and status, are already present in all standard Salesforce objects, you may create custom fields to capture extra data. In our experience, Opportunities, Accounts, and Tasks are the most modified objects; however, practically any item can be altered to monitor the information you need. Your sales team will have access to the information they need to perform their duties effectively and efficiently thanks to the additional fields, which can range from straightforward data entry to intricate computations.

Customized Items

Although you can modify common Salesforce objects to suit your needs, occasionally, you need more than simply new fields. Thankfully, you can also make unique Objects. It would make sense to create a new object called Dependent if, for instance, you were an accounting company keeping track of a contact’s dependents. The dependant record might then be linked to the contact via a lookup field, allowing you to keep track of details like the relationship (Son, Daughter, etc.) and any potential tax deductions related to the Dependent. Without adding an endless number of extra fields to the contact record, the custom object will let you organize and keep track of data.

Stage Tracking

Every organization monitors a sale differently, from when a lead is first generated until the point at which an opportunity is closed. It’s critical to understand the steps that must be taken to qualify, reject, and turn a lead into a real possibility. Tracking the steps between the qualification and the actual winning or losing of that sale is crucial once the lead has been converted. It is essential to think about this early on because, according to our research, this is one aspect of Salesforce implementations that is almost usually customized.

Opportunity Products

Opportunities are pre-packaged with products, or you can enter an opportunity amount on the opportunity itself. We advise only monitoring the opportunity by the amount of line item reporting is optional. However, you should use the products and pricing book features and fill out your Salesforce product catalog if you require reports based on product category or family. Salesforce does support quoting, although it’s a rudimentary feature. The minimal capability can be adequate for you if you all need a list of items and prices for your quote. If not, you should investigate quotation software like Salesforce CPQ.

Dashboards and Reports

Salesforce is a fantastic reporting tool. Once you have chosen the KPIs and data you wish to track within your Salesforce system, you can create simple and complex reports. According to our experience, an organization typically needs reports for sales pipeline management, sales forecasting, and activity tracking, but the options are essentially limitless.

Dashboards can be developed to quickly display users’ pertinent information in list views, charts, and diagrams after the reports have been prepared. These dashboards can be added to a user’s landing page so they can get crucial information immediately after logging in. Additionally, they can be positioned throughout the system to guarantee that a user always sees the data they require at the time that is most advantageous to them. Users can work more productively and efficiently with dashboards because they won’t have to search through records to find and summarise pertinent information.

Tracking Activity

Most likely, your Salesforce users speak with a variety of contacts every day. Activity tracking is the most effective way to track who they’ve spoken to, what they discussed, and what their next moves are. The functionality found in the Activity area, which comes pre-installed on most common items, allows users to log their calls, create tasks, and do much more. Your Salesforce admin can enable Einstein Activity Capture to keep users’ Gmail or Outlook accounts updated and automatically bring in events, emails, and contacts if you wish to automate some tracking.

Campaigns/Marketing

Utilizing the data to support marketing efforts is one of the most popular uses of Salesforce. Your company must decide whether to use the default Salesforce campaigns to track which marketing initiatives generated successful prospects. Some businesses prefer to utilize Salesforce exclusively for all marketing activities, others favor using a different platform, and others want to use a combination of the two. You must choose if you wish to sync data to and from Salesforce if you already use a different marketing platform.

Automation and integration with an ERP from a Third Party

Salesforce offers a wide range of automation features to streamline business operations and eliminate duplication. Are there any steps in your sales process that you should automate? If so, native Salesforce features can frequently be used to automate the process.

The process of ERP integration may be extremely complex if your installation calls for it. Reaching out to a Salesforce partner like us at DB Services may be the best course of action if in-house developer resources are limited.

But because Salesforce Consulting Agency is such a widely used platform, it frequently has a connector to other well-known platforms. It’s crucial to remember that while these will mostly satisfy the needs of most businesses, they frequently need to meet all of those needs, necessitating further customization.

Data Transfer

You can either start data entry from scratch or import data from another platform once Salesforce has fulfilled your expectations and all testing has been finished. When importing data into Salesforce, formatting, and cleaning are typically required. It’s crucial to plan this step out early in the implementation process, so there is enough time for the data to be cleaned before deployment.

If you have fewer than 50,000 records to transfer, you can import this data into many of the common Salesforce objects using the Data Import Wizard. The Import Wizard can also use Salesforce’s duplication rules to stop duplicate accounts, contacts, or lead entries. You must use the Data Loader if duplicate records are not an immediate concern or if you wish to import more than 50,000 records at once.

Security

You can use Salesforce Consulting Services in the USA broad collection of security features to construct any security structure you require. For instance, you can establish the role hierarchy for your business and limit record access depending on that hierarchy. Users may be permitted to edit, delete, and alter records or be restricted to viewing only certain data. Additionally, user profiles and permission sets can be used to build an almost limitless number of access privilege combinations for users across the system. Your information will be safer, and people will be held accountable within the system if it is decided who should be permitted to do what.

Salesforce Executive

Starting A Salesforce Consulting Firm would help if you decided who will be the Salesforce Administrator while configuring your Salesforce system. Make sure someone will manage the addition and deletion of users, modifications, the deployment of updates, and much more, whether you are outsourcing this function or handling it within your organization. Salesforce’s Trailhead program has excellent training materials for businesses looking to appoint an internal administrator. Additionally, DB Services provides training to anyone interested in becoming an administrator. Alternatively, you can use our Managed Services to have us act as your outsourced administrators.

Human Element

Finally, when designing your Salesforce system, keep in mind your users. User adoption and organizational support are crucial for your success with Salesforce. You will be considerably more likely to receive a return on your investment in Salesforce if your solution addresses a pain point for your users’ regular routines because adoption will be simpler.

Conclusion

When creating and implementing a Salesforce solution, there are undoubtedly numerous factors to consider. Salesforce can advance your company to the next level when used properly. For a successful installation, numerous factors must be considered, including tailoring your system to match your particular needs, selecting your Salesforce administrator, and reporting and forecasting using actual data. These factors will put you on the right track to Salesforce success. If you have any inquiries or need assistance implementing Salesforce in your company, get in touch with AwsQuality’s Top Salesforce Consulting Companies.