January 2022

Use social, mobile, and cloud to become a connected eco-system. Today, learners, faculty, staff and families require more support from their institutions than ever before. With Education Cloud, educational institutions of all sizes can drive success from anywhere. Institutions can benefit from the latest innovations across the Salesforce platform, as well as purpose-built education products and solutions that you can customize and scale to meet evolving needs. Features and Benefits for K12 A CRM Platform for Schools Access a Single Source of Factual Data and Information Access student and family data in a unified view and personalize every interaction at each stage of the education lifecycle. Modernize with a Scalable Platform Education Cloud is designed for schools to innovate and cater ti its dynamic needs. Be a part of a Progressive and Thriving Community Connect with a collaborative education eco-system and take advantage of a dedicated K-12 Advisory Council and partners. Image Source – salesforce.org Admissions and Enrolment Simplify prospecting and admissions Engage Students and Families Create a Unified Experience Personalize Communications Streamline Operation Get Access to Deeper Insights Student Success Help students unlock their full potential Provide wholistic support to the child Collaborate with 360° Views Prepare Students for the road ahead – Higher Education & Career Monitor Effectiveness of Programs and Services Track Alumni Success Manage Fundraising and Grants Foster donor relationships and easily track grants Build Lasting Relationships Improve Campaign and Team Productivity Personalize Engagement Optimize Processes Align Donations & Accounting Communications and Family Engagement Reach out to Families and Encourage collaboration Streamline Communications and Deepen Engagement Attract and Engage Students and Families Streamline School Support Operations Boost Fundraising Efforts Make Informed Data-Driven Decisions Features and Benefits for Higher Education Unified view of all constituents. Get a unified view of every conversation with prospects, students, alumni, donors, and affiliates. Salesforce uses social, mobile, and cloud technologies to connect all information, from everybody and presents it in a simple, user friendly interface. Connect every touch point. Students, alumni, and parents expect clear, effortless communication with institutions. Salesforce connects every aspect of the student life cycle and drives performance. Modernize Recruitment and Admissions Strengthen Top-of-Funnel Engagement Collaborate on a Connected Journey Use Admissions Connect to get a unified view Get AI Driven Actionable Insights Become part of an innovative ecosystem Transform the Student Experience Maximize Student Engagement Streamline Student Services Deliver Unified Advising Experiences Unlock Access To Careers Optimize advancement Build lifelong Alumni Relationships Personalize communications and optimize lifetime alumni value Track and Manage Gifts and Donations Get AI Based Deeper donor analytics Nurture Campus Collaboration Get Answers (Not Emails) Foster ideation Share Files Contextually Encourage Self-Service Collaborate on Projects Conclusion Salesforce CRM helps educational institutions connect with key constituents collaboratively, efficiently, and productively. Education Cloud gives you the tools and resources to build meaningful relationships with all constituents of the education life cycle -students, alumni, faculty, staff, parents, and donors. With Education Cloud, educators can get top level views and forecasts, and deeper insight into each key process area and performance indicator. Whether you are trying to recruit, retain, or develop support, you can customise the information views you need, when and where you need it. For students, the plethora of custom apps become platforms for learning, community-building, collaboration, growth, and advancement. Girikon is a Gold Certified Premium Salesforce Consultant, with more than 10,000 man hours on Salesforce Implementation experience across multiple domains and geographies. Looking for Pricing? Schools, Colleges and Institutions can access Salesforce products at a deep discount. Contact our team of experts to discuss your needs today. READ MORE

The retail sector is figuring out new ways to stay at the top. Given the rise in online sales and digital buyers, retailers require introducing robust digital solutions that can help eCommerce businesses gain an edge over their competitors. One such solution that is tailored to meet the specific needs of online retailers is the Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Companies should consider leveraging Salesforce Integration services. What is Salesforce Commerce Cloud?  Salesforce Commerce Cloud, earlier known as Demandware, is an eCommerce solution that was designed to help retailers provide a unique shopping experience to users irrespective of the channel they are using. The robust solution offers rich features to help retailers better engage with shoppers and ultimately convert them.  What are the Key Solutions Offered by Salesforce Commerce Cloud? Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers numerous solutions that are customizable as businesses can pick functionalities and services to suit their specific business needs:  B2C Commerce: This solution is designed to transform the digital shopping experience for customers across different channels. Its primary purpose is to engage the brand and the shoppers irrespective of which channel they purchase from. This functionality covers everything from handling order lifecycle, creating marketing campaigns and customer-oriented promotions. These solutions help organizations improve their customer support teams, augment the rate of customer satisfaction, personalize customer experience while providing them with relevant information before and after they have made the purchase. B2C commerce cloud utilizes AI technology to predict customer behavior and provide recommendations to help clients find the products they are looking for.   B2B Commerce: Capturing the attention of business buyers might be difficult. B2B commerce is a solution to meet the complex needs of customers while entering the market spread across various industries. B2B commerce helps businesses respond to the growing competition and constantly evolving requirements while introducing innovation in their business operations. The robust solution provides buyers with a self-serving buying experience while simplifying online shopping by automating invoicing, billing, and reordering operations. Order Management: The key to online sales success is proper order management. Organizations can leverage Salesforce Order Management solutions to automate multiple operations related to the management of inventory, fulfilment of orders, payments, etc. Besides this, the solution also covers challenges related to return and refund policies allowing customers to feel more comfortable while shopping online. Benefits Offered by Salesforce Commerce Cloud:  Predict Customer Behaviour: Salesforce CRM with AI integrated within it and known as Salesforce Einstein eliminates the need to analyze data gathered manually. It does away with the need for third-party integration. The AI-powered CRM also predicts customer behavior, recommends personalized product offers, and automates repetitive tasks to save time and money. Providing customers with special offers, loyalty programs, and discounts makes it possible to enhance their overall experience. Improved Marketing Management: When combined with the marketing cloud, the Salesforce commerce cloud solution allows marketers to create promotion and marketing campaigns to create more clients. The cloud solution can manage everything from social media campaigns, paid promotions, email marketing, and reporting. Apart from this, another benefit of using this tool is the ability to run A/B tests to optimize conversions. Mobile Experience: To sustain this competitive business landscape, retailers require a mobile-friendly website with an intuitive design. With Commerce Cloud, marketers can deliver the best possible shopping experience for mobile customers irrespective of the device they use. Commerce Cloud follows a mobile-first approach to allow its users to access features anywhere and anytime.  Scalability and Customization: For businesses looking to venture into new markets or have attained a certain level of growth when they need to scale up their resources, Commerce Cloud offers customizable and scalable solutions. Businesses can start with essential features and allow more functionality on the go. It means that companies will have to pay only for answers that they need without including any useless features. Final Words:  Solutions offered by Salesforce empower businesses of all sizes to expand and meet the constantly growing customer demand. So, if you wish to remain competitive in the retail industry, driving digital transformation across the entire organization is a must. Suppose you are looking to implement Salesforce commerce within your business ecosystem. In that case, you must seek professional support from one of the most experienced and reliable Salesforce consultants who can help your business grow and thrive.

BI has been around for many years and uses techniques such as data warehousing, data mining, and predictive analytics to provide users with the insights to make informed business decisions. Business Intelligence software bridges the gap between an extensive collection of unstructured data and meaningful insights. One such popular business intelligence software is the Salesforce Analytics Cloud that can be leveraged by medium and large-scale companies to explore, analyze and manage customer data gathered from different sources quickly and efficiently. It is essential to get in touch with one of the best Salesforce consultants to implement and make the most of this software. This robust cloud-based program is powered by Einstein Analytics and Tableau. Using the Salesforce Analytics Cloud, it is possible to explore data rapidly, the outcomes of which will be displayed through several layers of dynamic visualization over underlying data sets. With Salesforce Analytics Cloud, data representations can be viewed from all devices, including smartphones, PC and tablets. Besides revealing the current trends and decline in productivity, this comprehensive tool also shows why and why they took place. Designed and developed to bring the CRM data together, the platform allows managers to alleviate issues while augmenting overall business performance.  Features of Salesforce Analytics Cloud: Some of the prominent features of Salesforce analytics cloud include the following: Mobile-Friendly: Salesforce Analytics Cloud is highly mobile-friendly as it allows users to view, screen, arrange, measure, and share data from their mobile devices. It is easy to connect, modify, and deploy data anytime and from anywhere. This feature is helpful for the field workers, such as the customer service representatives who are commonly on the field. Dynamic Visualization Engine: Designed especially for business users and data builders, Salesforce analytics cloud provides a rapid visualization engine that showcases how charts affect each other. Besides providing users with interactive visuals and quick searches, the App provides users with critical business knowledge, which helps them make informed decisions.  Multiple Dashboards: A business will have various data sources depending on its business type. Data of all forms, i.e., structured or unstructured, and sources, i.e., ERP, website, CRM, social media, RFID sensors, etc., can be gathered and explored by Salesforce Analytics Cloud. Apart from this, for different datasets, different dashboards can be created.  Native Salesforce Integration: Since the App is built natively on Salesforce, there will be no synchronization issues as the complete data is placed on Salesforce. By using pre-existing tools, workflow rules, data fields etc., the data can be customized and tailored. Data gets stored securely in the Salesforce servers, and it’s simple to roll out updates. Benefits of Salesforce Analytics Cloud: Explore data Anywhere & Anytime: Salesforce Analytics cloud provides users to view and easily access data from multiple sources by utilizing the visualization capabilities of Tableau. Users can use the pre-built apps and in-built dashboards to explore the data.  AI-powered recommendations: Users can get AI-powered suggestions and explanations with the Einstein Analytics module of the Salesforce Analytics Cloud. The App will analyze millions of data combinations to provide data-driven insights, trends, and events, which will allow users to make informed decisions.  Access Integrated Solutions: Data exploration will be simplified for users if they leverage the Salesforce Analytics cloud-integrated natively with Salesforce sales and service cloud. Besides recognizing trends, they will be able to check KPIs. The availability of Tableau and Einstein Analytics at various levels for matching different industry verticals ensures that users find the right App to make the most CRM data.   Quick Wrap-up: Salesforce analytics cloud is an excellent tool for drawing insights from business data to help organizations make informed decisions. To meet the unique needs of their business, organizations should get in touch with a reliable Salesforce consultant who can empower them to make the most of their data by leveraging Salesforce analytics solutions.

As a robust cloud-based platform, Salesforce enjoys a wide adoption rate by businesses across different industry verticals. This is primarily because of this platform’s wide array of features, functionalities, and components. Irrespective of whether you wish to implement a new system or upgrade an already existing solution, you would require the assistance of a certified Salesforce consulting partner who would help you in every step of your Salesforce journey.  The network of Salesforce consulting partners has been growing over the years and ranges from individual partners to global agencies. They offer expertise across Salesforce products, industries, clouds, and system integration capabilities. However, before shortlisting a reliable partner, make sure you avoid committing the following mistakes: Disregarding the pain points and Goals: Before going ahead with any product implementation, organizations should have a clear vision regarding the usage of this solution, the problems it would address, and the goals it would achieve. Without assessing all these aspects, organizations may waste time and money on an underutilized system that cannot be utilized to its full potential.   Lack of Salesforce Knowledge: To interact with their consulting partner, organizations should be familiar with standard Salesforce terms and technical aspects. To acclimate themselves with basic knowledge of Salesforce, users should watch explanation videos, product demo, etc., on Salesforce.org and Salesforce.com. Disregarding this aspect can prove to be is a mistake that should be avoided. Placing Price over Quality: It is easy to get tempted to engage with partners ready to offer services at a low price. However, if you prefer saving some bucks at the cost of quality, you may spend higher costs than planned initially. You may also decide to invest in Salesforce developers as it might seem to be a financially wise choice at the onset. However, you will get a well-developed solution but not evaluated holistically, which results in low adoption rates. Undervaluing the Power of Reviews: The portfolios of all the companies look great on their websites. However, this is one side of the coin. It is essential to visit independent review platforms to seek unbiased opinions. For instance, customer reviews on AppExchange enable you to measure customer satisfaction rate much better than survey responses published there. Making Hasty Choice: When selecting a Salesforce partner, making a hasty decision can make you repent later. So, make sure you take time to make an informed decision. Seek references from business networks or Salesforce platforms like AppExchange and Trailblazer community to choose from a larger pool of Salesforce consulting companies. Only after you have carefully studied their case studies and portfolios should you select a partner for your project. Overlooking their Experience: While it is vital to look for relevant technical knowledge and proper certification in your partner, you should not ignore their industry expertise. Since Salesforce doesn’t provide out-of-the-box solutions, you should look for partners to create customized solutions to meet your unique business needs. You should also look for companies with enough resources and use a similar business model to yours to handle a business of your size. Final Words:  Investing in Salesforce is a big decision requiring proper planning and implementation to leverage all the benefits. By avoiding the mistakes mentioned above, it is possible to choose the right Salesforce partner. By having the right partner by your side, you will be able to make the most of this platform and take your business to new heights by following the ideas and best practices.