Salesforce.com For Dummies, 5th Edition (2014)

Part VIII. The Part of Tens

Chapter 24. Ten Keys to a Successful Implementation

Several companies have rolled out customer relationship management (CRM) applications with the mistaken notion that you can buy the licenses, turn on the switch, and use the application as soon as you take it out of the box. Then, these same companies look back months later and wonder why they’re not experiencing the results they envisioned.

Nine times out of ten, the root cause is poor planning. No matter what size your implementation, building a strong plan and then executing the plan will substantially improve your chance of success.

Salesforce provides you with the tools and a platform to enhance your business effectiveness and productivity. If you’re involved in the rollout of Salesforce, this chapter gives you ten tips to help you do it successfully. Check out the free webinars, answers, and more on the Salesforce Community site (http://success.salesforce.com) for more tips on leading a successful rollout.

Identifying Your Executive Sponsor

Rolling out or replacing a CRM solution is a big deal. For some managers and reps, this initiative can cause concerns for a variety of reasons: People get set in their ways, they think it’s Big Brother, they assume that it’s going to take a lot of their time, and so on. Sometimes other top priorities at work begin creeping in, and the importance of the CRM implementation falls along the wayside.

Every project needs a champion to help drive the CRM initiative in your company. That person is there to rally support, break logjams, and ensure that your team has the resources to get things done. We recommend that you identify an executive sponsor on Day 1 and work with her so that she can communicate what’s in it for the implementation team and set expectations for what’s needed from all participants. This will go a long way in calming fears, gaining support and commitment, and nudging the team toward a decision when the team members are at an impasse.

Building Your Project Team

As you might have already figured out, CRM is less about technology and more about people, human processes, and your business. For your company to get the most out of Salesforce, you need to develop a team made up of critical stakeholders, Salesforce experts, and a cross section of end users. If you’re implementing Salesforce for sales and marketing, that might mean that the team includes managers from marketing, sales operations, and IT, some respected sales reps, and hopefully a member of your executive team. This doesn’t have to be a huge team, nor should members expect to be involved in this project full time. But you must have people who can speak for the business, and you must have sufficient resources to get the job done. Get every stakeholder to understand the team’s objectives and to buy in from the first meeting.

Evaluating Your Processes

Conduct business process reviews as key elements to your planning process. Those meetings should include a key stakeholder (or stakeholders) who can speak for his business and to the CRM project team (for example, a channel sales session with the head of channel sales). By doing this, you gain further agreement to your plan and ensure that you’re building a solution that meets existing or desired processes of managers and their teams.

Gathering Requirements

Think about why you are implementing Salesforce. Is it to increase sales, improve productivity, encourage collaboration, or all three? Because it’s nearly impossible to implement anything correctly unless you know your goal, make your objectives measurable by applying specific success metrics to an objective. (A success metric is a numerical goal that you want to achieve, ideally within a specified time frame.) For example, it’s one thing to say that you want to reduce customer service response time, and it’s quite another to define that you want to reduce response time by 20 percent by the end of the year. It’s important to choose the right metric to measure your company’s progress.

Defining Your Scope and Prioritizing Initiatives

You can do a lot with Salesforce, but the more complex, the longer the implementation will likely take and the greater the chance you’ll hit a snag. As you collect the requirements of key stakeholders, prioritize initiatives and determine what’s in scope and out of scope for the initial implementation. Consider keeping the implementation limited by focusing on the major priorities. Then, you can extend your initiatives by building on prior success.

Modeling Salesforce to Your Business

After you evaluate your company’s business processes and gather scope requirements from your steering committee, you next want to model Salesforce to your business. However, we realize that you’re probably new to Salesforce and might have some questions as to what information should go where. For your company, what are leads, accounts, contacts, and opportunities? Make sure that you check out the various process maps on the Salesforce Success Community website (http://success.salesforce.com) before you start customizing Salesforce. If you still have some questions, make sure to ask your peers on the community forums or contact your Customer Success Manager for guidance.

Customizing for User Relevance

When designing records and layouts, keeping it simple isn’t always appropriate. Some businesses do have complex needs. Just be aware that long, complicated records can affect end-user adoption, so don’t build a field unless you think end users will use it. Focus your customization on relevancy to your users. Standardize information as often as possible, using picklists rather than free text fields, which will help with more accurate reporting. For fields that have to be text fields (such as the Opportunity Name), work out a simple standard naming convention.

As you accomplish major milestones (such as customization of different records or layouts), validate your work with a representative of your end users. By doing this, you can make sure at key points that you’re building a solution that works for your internal customer.

Importing Clean Data

Identify your data sources that you want to bring over to Salesforce. Note where the information is coming from, what format it will be in, and how clean it’ll be.

Armed with this information, you can discuss with your team the scope of your migration. Moving into Salesforce means that it’s time for some spring cleaning. Work with your team to identify which data sources are the most valuable and whether your end users will benefit from all that information coming over. Remember that data that doesn’t make it to Salesforce doesn’t necessarily disappear. You can always archive it or keep it in the legacy system.

After you decide what data is going into Salesforce, you have to clean it. Scrubbing data isn’t glamorous, but it has to be done. Reducing duplicates and ensuring consistency not only make Salesforce more valuable but also improve your user’s adoption. If you don’t have the resources to do this, check out the AppExchange (www.salesforce.com/appexchange) for partners that help with data cleansing.

Building a Comprehensive Training Plan

As early as you can in the implementation process, start building a training plan. Don’t assume that users will know what to do. And don’t just rely on the generic sales training offered by Salesforce; it might not be relevant enough to your customization. Blend prerequisite classes, custom sales training, and reinforcement training in your plan. The key is to make sure that enough relevant training is provided so that people effectively and correctly use the Salesforce application. Also, be sure that your end users have personal copies of Salesforce.com For Dummies. Just in case.

Connecting with Peers

After your teams are up and running with Salesforce, you should constantly gather feedback and track how adoption is faring. Also, get out there and meet your peers — others who have rolled out Salesforce and have advice and stories to share. Through online community discussion boards, local user group meetings, and Dreamforce (the salesforce.com annual user conference), you have several channels where you can ask questions, seek guidance, and share information that can help you take your Salesforce implementation to the next level.