Customer relationships are the cornerstone of an organisation's growth, and you need to nurture and manage them efficiently and smartly. Salesforce is the world’s No1 CRM platform for businesses of all sizes. Salesforce provides out-of-the-box solutions that let growing businesses implement cutting-edge technology with minimum effort and connect all of the systems that are important to them. And has been recognised by leading user review organisations and industry analysts and as the market leader in CRM technology, Before we go deeper into what CRM technology can do for you, let us answer the basic question – Does my business need a CRM solution? If any of these is true for you, then the right CRM solution could make your job a whole lot easier. 1.You don’t have a single source of customer information. Does your company have customer and order information in multiple locations? If yes, then that's one glaring reason why you need a CRM. A CRM brings together all of your customer data from sales, marketing, service and support into one place allowing you to access, track, analyse, and act on it straightaway, from anywhere. If you store customer data in spreadsheets, then not just your sales reps but anyone who interacts with your customers is at a disadvantage. When information is modified in one system, other systems do not update automatically. There is no holistic, unified view of all of your customer data such as contact information, purchase info, and communication logs. 2. You have very limited visibility of customer interactions. Do you have a complete, single view of all customer information? If not, then you don’t have insight into what your salespeople and customer support teams are doing. It’s hard to help your sales and service teams be successful and accountable if you’re not sure what they are doing. 3. Reports are tedious and painful. Does your team go through the arduous process of creating reports manually? If that is true, your performance-tracking capabilities are extremely limited. You should be generating reports automatically and view real time analytics of your sales team’s progress versus their targets. 4. You’re losing valuable customer data. IF you are not sure what you’re following up on, it is going to be very hard for you to schedule follow-up interactions with customers and prospects. If your interactions across touchpoints aren’t being tracked, important details get lost through the cracks, especially if a key staff member leaves your organization. 5. It’s challenging to stay in touch on the go. Can you sales reps quickly and easily find the information they need to close a deal when they are in the field? When they are meet prospects and come across valuable information, does the rest of your organization have access to it? Information captured in handwritten notes and on PCs is a potential gold mine.  6. Every customer is treated the same. Are your customers and prospects getting similar types of messages and offers from you? If that is true, you’re missing out on potential opportunities. You want the to be able to target prospects based on their industry, geography, and the value they can bring to your business to make the most of every interaction. 7. Can you scale fast? If you company grows rapidly, can your business processes scale just as quickly as the demand? You cannot afford to let your own processes be the impediment to your success.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Email Studio is the leading enterprise email marketing platform allowing marketers to deliver an intelligent personalised message at scale. Connecting commerce, sales, service and customer communities for a consistent customer journey. Now each message can be tailored using an intuitive UI with drag and drop tools, easily customising content for your target audience. While personalising unique content for each subscriber. Email marketers can leverage Einstein AI to predict the needs of their customers, empowering them to suggest the right product at the right time. With automation, brands can connect with customers with one-to-one messages even at the scale of millions. Email studio lets you easily switch between templates or code when creating the right look and feel for your message. Once your message is ready, email studio allows you to review each email before sending to each subscriber is delivered the right content. Once emails are sent, marketing teams can use first-party data to target and attract new customers through advertising across the web or connect with them on their mobile devices. Real-time analytics empowers you to monitor campaign performance across the entire customer journey. View campaign metrics to optimise campaigns and ensure users stay engaged. You can approve content, deliver campaigns and monitor performance, and manage users from anywhere. Before we talk about Design Strategy, let's look at what you can do with Marketing Cloud e-mail Studio. TARGET YOUR AUDIENCE Create profile data based segments to drive engagement. Deliver great content to your target audience Use drag-and-drop functionality to segment and fine-tune your subscribers, to deliver relevant messaging. Filter millions of profiles at the click of a mouse and get real-time counts for sending. Become more efficient by automating most tasks. Effortlessly import, segment, and filter data from any source to allow you to deliver focused campaigns. Discover the right audience with inbuilt intelligence Keep your most active subscribers engaged more often, and improve overall message deliverability by reducing messaging frequency to inactive subscribers. BUILD YOUR BEST EMAIL Create sophisticated, engaging messages. Deliver responsive design based messages to customers on any device Effortlessly optimize messages for mobile so that your emails appear exactly as you intended whenever and wherever they’re opened. Always. Use a library of customizable templates to build your emails Get creative with best-in-class templates and populate emails content in to time. Deliver dynamic messages that inspire call to action. Take advantage of user-friendly dynamic features like a personalized scripting language, drag-and-drop functionality and carousels to delight your subscribers in real-time. Engage customers throughout their journey with personalised messaging Foster strong customer relationships with conversations that engage at every stage of the customer lifecycle. PERSONALIZE YOUR CONTENT Deliver relevant and engaging email experiences in no time. Deliver data-centric content. Get the most out of your data using dynamic content and scale personalization across your campaigns. Enhance and enrich the subscriber experience. Deliver multi-dimensional, engaging, and delightful experiences to your subscribers’ inbox. Leverage Einstein to power personalization. Use AI to tailor content for each message based on individual user behaviour. Automate intelligent messages. Create your message once, and leave it to AI to deliver the best and freshest content every single time. Review metrics to refine your content over time. SCALE YOUR CAMPAIGNS Reach customers with 1-to-1 messages, even at the scale of millions. Send with confidence. Preview and test every message before sending to ensure quality and establish criteria to disallow accidental delivery of test messages. Automate the email journey. Boost your marketing team’s efficiency and simplify your job. Set up delivery schedules for messages so that customers experience your brand exactly the way you want with the minimal manual workload. Build 1-to-1 relationships with customers. Leverage flexibility and scalability of email studio and empower yourself to maintain engaging 1-to-1 relationships even with an audience of millions. Fine-tune on the go. Make iterations to your journey as you go, and run tests quickly. Understand what’s working, and what isn’t, and driving perfection in your campaigns. From building your email strategy to delivering seamless journeys, here are the 5 best email campaign design practices to help you drive customer engagement at scale. STRATEGIZE Develop your email plan of action. Know your audience, establish clear goals, and build a content strategy to maximise the impact of your email messaging. Build in-depth personas. Develop persona profiles having information about day-to-day work habits, challenges to conversion, and key questions. Leverage CRM data. Use your CRM to understand demographic and behavioural data, which allows you to segment your audience effectively. Identify consumer needs. Clearly identify the journey of your target audience. Whether it be onboarding or a re-engagement email journey. Set a clear vision for email marketing. Set specific goals. Outline the objective you wish to achieve through your email campaigns such as brand awareness, deeper engagement, or driving sales. Create useful content. Understand how and why your audience should connect with your message and how you can deliver content that meets their needs. Chart your path. Define how you intend to measure the success of your email strategy both for your business as well as your audience. Develop an effective, customised content strategy. Map clear journeys. Plan for different email journeys, such as transactional and onboarding journeys, that show you a connected flow from one email in a journey to the next. Make a schedule. Create an outbound email calendar that details the frequency of your outgoing communication. Collect useful metrics. Determine the data collection mechanism to measure the success of your outreach program. Parameters such as open rates, click-through rates, landing page impressions, sales originating from your emails, can help you get clarity on the effectiveness of your campaign. DESIGN Content is vital to great email design. Engage your audience with effective content. Sender ame: Cleary reveal your identity to the viewer Subject line: Create an effective subject lines that reflects the content in the email to encourage engagement. Header: This is at the top of your email area  that includes your brand’s logo. Navigation bar: The navigation bar mirrors your website navigation and drives traffic to key entry points of your site. Primary message: The primary message includes your main reason for reaching out to your audience. Social media bar: Include links to your brand’s pages on social media networks. Footer: This includes an unsubscribe link, compliance information or link, and disclaimers.   Device friendly Content.   Automatically tailor messaging, that’s fits any device.     Design to inspire engagement.   Create and truly responsive designs powered by live content     Start with coding.   Use CSS3 to adjust font size, frame width, and image size for a richer experience.   DELIVER Send every email with confidence. Ensure inbox delivery and avoid the spam and junk folders. Get permission twice. Ensure that you are sending emails only to an engaged audience by using double opt-ins like email or SMS to confirm with new subscribers. Set clear expectations. Ensure subscribers know what they’re getting and when is the communication expected. Determine the best time for engagement. Boost your reputation. Establish a good sending reputation by using a sender authentication package, a collection of products that optimizes email delivery. Clean your list. Clean your subscriber lists regularly by reviewing data such as open rates. Segment subscribers who haven’t engaged with your emails over a certain period, and launch re-engagement emails. Avoid ambiguous “from” addresses. Avoid using no-reply@business.com or other such impersonal sender addresses. Steer clear of being marked as spam by subscribers and email service providers. Keep it legal. Abide by the CAN-SPAM act. Include a clearly visible unsubscribe option, honor unsubscribe requests, and choose a legitimate “from” address. ANALYZE Test emails to optimize performance. Go deeper into demographic, behavioral, and contextual data and personalize every email. Demographic data: Aggregate demographic data that may include subscriber’s name, gender, date of birth, mailing address, and other information collected on a signup form. Behavioral data: Track actions across multiple channels. This may include includes browsing activity, downloads, purchase history, email opens, and more. Contextual data: Marketing teams can use contextual data to deliver just in time experiences, the moment an email is opened. Measure metrics to understand email performance after sending. Track positive results data. Track the delivery rate, open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate, to have a deeper view into the engagement levels. Learn from negative results data. Adjust your strategy based on what’s not working. Assess unsubscribe rates bounce rates to re-align your campaign. Know your testing audience. Test campaigns with new subscribers because they haven’t been influenced by previous marketing or communication campaigns. Avoid targeting segments that are dormant that can potentially dilute results. ELEVATE Evolve your email strategy as you grow. Know the consumer experience. Take stock of all other consumer touchpoints across your company’s channels, including social media, SMS, website, app, and even sales and service interactions. Assess the role of email. Understand how email fits into each individual consumer’s journey. Identify opportunities to boost experiences in awareness, acquisition, onboarding, engagement and retention. Inform your adjustments. Test the consumer’s journey before going live. Modify and optimize the journey before your subscribers actually experience it to give your marketing teams the best chance at success. Contact Girikon today, a certified Salesforce Consulting Partner to help you create engaging, objective-oriented email campaigns that deliver results. Questions? Our reps have answers. CONTACT AN EXPERT

Whether you are already running a Salesforce instance in your organization and would like to upgrade it, or you want to set up a Salesforce implementation from scratch, you will probably need the expertise of a Salesforce consulting partner. With the global adoption of the world’s No.1 CRM platform, the Salesforce consulting partners network has been growing over the years, ranging from individual consultants to global partner firms, offering extensive expertise across Salesforce products and industries and third-party apps. But, how do you find a consultant that is best suited for you?  Here are the top 9 mistakes companies usually make when Salesforce consulting partner and how to tackle them. Mistake #1: Not having a clear definition of business goals As a business leader you are expected to show the way. It’s not the job of a consultant. Before you decide what type of implementation you want, it is critical to understand why you need the proposed solution in the first place. How does it address your business goals? What problems is it going to resolve for you? What direction do you want your business to take post implementation? Without a clear understanding of these aspects, you may end up squandering time, money and effort on an underutilised Salesforce implementation and never really realise its full potential. To set the right direction for your business with the help of your Salesforce implementation, you need to clearly define: Determine Business Objectives – Enlist what you wish to achieve with the Salesforce platform, just in the immediate term, but over a 3-4 year period. Define Optimal Project Schedule – Set realistic expectations you’re your project execution timeline. Typically, implementation times take months for for mid-size businesses. Define your budget – Do thorough research and establish the budget range you are willing to invest into Salesforce implementation and administration going into the future over a 3-4 year period. Establish your Partnership Model – Determine the implementation scenarios of your project based on budget, time and resource constraints: will your Salesforce Implementation Partner perform complete implementations, will you split responsibilities with your partner, or you will do everything with internal resources while being guided by your partner. Define Project Stakeholders – Identify key people from your team who you want to involve in your project implementation. Amongst them, identify a champion who will drive the project. Define Salesforce Partners Roles – Identify the project roles and responsibilities that can be outsourced to your partner. Draft an RFP based on these roles which will help you to simplify discovery sessions with your prospective partner. Mistake #2: Lack of Basic Salesforce Knowledge This step is often overlooked.  To be on the same page with your implementation partner or consultant, you need to be familiar with the most common terms and capabilities of the Salesforce platform. Educate yourself with product demos, Case Studies and Whitepapers on the Salesforce websites to know about the features relevant to your business domain. Knowing how Salesforce has helped companies around the world in your domain, will help you speak the same language as your partner. Mistake #3: Prioritizing Price over Quality Yes, you would like best Salesforce Consulting Partner your money can buy. And there is always a tendency to attracted to cheaper offers. But sometimes, when you hire a low cost alternative with tight budgets, there are costs overruns and hiring that consultant may actually result in even higher running costs than originally planned, schedule overruns or worst case, project failure. Eventually, you may decide to invest only in Salesforce developers. Initially it may seem financially viable. However, if your developers do not have holistic expertise on the domain as well as the product, you may end up with an implementation that may either be underdeveloped or well developed but under-adopted by your end-users. Which is why Salesforce recommends working with Salesforce Certified partners so that there are no surprises in the long run. It is an expensive option compared to others, but the chances of success are much higher. Mistake #4: Underestimating the power of reviews All companies design their websites to look great. And why wouldn’t they? They want you to think that are the best at what they do. However, that’s not the entire story. But what are their clients saying about them? Customer reviews on AppExchange are a great indicator of customer satisfaction levels. Read reviews to know what’s good and what not about a product or app. There are also third part websites which publish reviews of companies for their services. Mistake #5: Rushing into a decision Investment into a Salesforce implementation is a huge decision. There is absolutely no reason to rush into it just because your competitors are doing it. Take your time, understand how a partner can help you and make an informed decision. Ping your network for references, surf through Salesforce platforms like AppExchange and the Trailblazer Community to access a larger pool of consulting companies. Go through their portfolios in detail. Browse through their client case studies for similar projects, determine how their work experience matches with what you need and compare. Mistake #6: Ignoring the marketing background of a Salesforce partner At the core of its business, Salesforce is a digital marketing company that empowers businesses to manage customer relationships and enables marketers to launch campaigns, track conversions, and measure ROI. However, not all Salesforce consultants have adequate digital marketing experience, and while it’s not mandatory, in order to maximize utilization of the power of Salesforce, you should find one that does. Solution implementation customization and administration are not the onoy things you need help with. You need to know how your business goals align your marketing goals., Mistake #7: Hiring a Salesforce Consultant with inadequate relevant experience You will find that there is no dearth of skilled technical experts on the AppExchange platform. But are technical skills and certifications enough to ensure the success of your project? No doubt, relevant technical knowledge is critical for successful Salesforce implementation, and you should always pay importance to the proper certifications of the consultants on your partner’s team.  However, domain expertise is equally important. What if Salesforce doesn’t offer out-of-the-box solutions for you line of business. You will then need to identify experts that can customize Salesforce for your unique business needs. Lack of relevant and adequate industry experience may lead to an implementation with cracks and consequently impact adoption by your team and your ROI. Besides domain knowledge, you should also look for partners who have enough resources to work with a company of your size and have worked on similar projects. Your due diligence on your prospective partner’s technical and marketing background will augur well in the long run. Take your time and do a thorough investigation into identifying the best fit partner for your project. Mistake #8: Not Choosing an Expert Why do you need to hire an implementation partner? Because you don’t have that level and kind of competence and experience available within your organization, right? And the last thing you want is a partner that readily agrees to every suggestion you make. What you need is a real expert who has the technical as well as the industry expertise to examine and inquire your business in-depth, and will confidently take the lead and suggest the path forward. Certified Salesforce Consultants avoid common mistakes, because they’ve learned the hard way, and will suggest the best path forward even though it may not appear right to you.  In other words, they will not hesitate to disagree with you. Mistake #9: Not looking long-term One of the most common misconceptions amongst businesses is that their engagement with their implementation partner finishes with the deployment of Salesforce. The truth however is quite to the contrary. Post implementation, your project will enter a phase where you will need expert support of a different kind: to drive user adoption of the platform, ensure that your platform is configured correctly after each Salesforce release, and troubleshoot all solution-related issues. Your organization is going to grow over the years, and so should your CRM. When new enhancements or customizations are needed, it’s much more efficient and easier to work with a tried and tested Salesforce partner who know your project ground up. Smart businesses today are focussed on fostering meaningful long-term relationships, that complement their core offerings with innovation. Investment in Salesforce is a huge step, and should be undertaken with proper planning. And Salesforce partnership is a handshake, where both client and partner work on common goals with shared responsibilities. Girikon, a Gold Certified Salesforce Implementation Partner, provides expert guidance and support throughout the client’s growth journey. We will assist you with your Salesforce initiative and deliver your unique CRM implementation solution working hand in hand with you Questions? Our reps have answers. CONTACT AN EXPERT

When you sign up for a Salesforce license, you are given two module options to choose from – Sales Cloud or Service Cloud. With Service Cloud, the emphasis is on service and cases. Service Cloud is typically used by companies that offer services and/or products. Sales Cloud, on the other hand, lays more emphasis on leads, opportunities, and sales. And even though there is plenty of overlap between both modules, they are still quite different from each other in several aspects. Let’s look at their features individually to understand each module better. Sales Cloud Sales Cloud from Salesforce is designed to help your sales reps sell smarter and faster by centralizing customer information, logging all their interactions with your business, and automating many of the tasks sales reps perform every day. This translates to them spending less time on administrative tasks and more time closing deals. Sales Cloud gives sales managers and business leaders real-time visibility into their team’s activities, with AI-based forecasting tools that empower sales teams with confidence. Features Contact Management Manage all contact-related information on the cloud, uncover valuable insights into your customers’ issues, and collaborate with teams companywide. Salesforce’s social collaboration tools allow you to share insights, documents, and more on every business record and contact.  Access all of the account and contact data you need to keep deals moving, from anywhere, anytime. Opportunity Management View all details of your customer's activity. Know what stage your deal is in, and what you need to do to move ahead. Track all associated activities in real-time and get notifications when action is needed. Send emails simply with best-in-class templates with just a click. Streamline the sales process and quickly create up-to-the-minute quotes with built-in smart quoting capabilities. Lead Management Salesforce lets you track all the information about your leads. Access up-to-date information on leads, see where it came from, access relevant insights and act on them,  and write and track emails from within Salesforce. I have everything you need to convert leads faster. You can also set up automatic lead scoring and routing to ensure leads never fall through the cracks, and that the right sales reps follow up on leads while they’re hot. Reports and Dashboards Salesforce analytics software keeps you updated with customized sales forecasting reports that you can build effortlessly with drag and drop functionality. Track team performance with dashboards and other reporting tools.  The customer analytics software within Salesforce mobile app monitors key business metrics from anywhere. Mobile CRM View meetings, and events, and get account updates on your device. Join calls with a tap, and take notes while on the go.  Track accounts and approve deals while in motion. With dashboards and reports get real-time visibility of sales performance.  Salesforce’s in-built collaboration tools allow you to instantly connect with your team members.  Create and manage conversations from anywhere. Quickly access your files on the cloud, edit, and share with just a few taps. Activity Management Salesforce comes with connectors for Gmail and Outlook so now you can get a complete view of all your customer interactions. Integrate any business process into your preferred email app. Seamlessly sync your email, contacts, and calendars with your Salesforce data across both desktop and mobile. Pipeline and Forecast Management Get a complete view of your pipeline and business. Get real-time visibility into forecasts and make refinements on the fly. Use data insights and predictive AI to drive business decisions based on best practices. Files Sync and Share Collaborate on files across your organization, or externally with customers. Keep a track of files and be notified when a new version is uploaded. And maintain complete control over sharing settings, and segregate users with viewing, editing, and collaboration rights. Unify all your files and content in one place. Process Automation Process Builder provides a user-friendly point-and-click interface to automate business processes. You can create automated email alerts, auto-assign tasks to users as a deal moves through various stages, and more. You can also create custom workflows to guide sales agents through the sales process. Automate approval processes such as deal discounts, travel, and expenses. Salesforce Engage Send targeted messages that drive action. Engage Campaigns gives your sales reps access to a library of approved email templates and guides that they can use to interact with their prospects. You can view the detailed history of your prospects’ engagement with your brand, and track their activity to understand your unique interests. Interactive dashboards allow sales reps to monitor and control the performance of their campaigns. Sales Collaboration Stay on top of critical projects, topics, and teams in an easily accessible social feed. Collaborate on sales opportunities and drive progress from anywhere. Share on a group, view a file, and update any opportunity from your mobile. Territory Management Manage territories effortlessly with hierarchies, assignment rules, or territory assignments. Salesforce allows you to assign a single rule to multiple territories. Use territory roles to help users identify colleagues, collaborators, and other key resources to help close deals. Partner & Channel Management Manage your indirect sales channels with out-of-the-box features that drive partner engagement. Recruit, onboard, train, and support them. Empower partners with the power to be their own marketers. Co-develop effective campaigns and manage marketing budgets. Allow partners to build, track, and analyze marketing campaigns. Share reports and dashboards to help them track key metrics. Service Cloud Service Cloud is built on the Customer 360 platform, putting customers at the center of your business and empowering you to deliver smarter, faster, and personalized service. With Service Cloud, you can automate routine service processes, digitally organize workflows, and transform the agent experience. Service Cloud allows your agents to connect one-to-one with every customer, across multiple channels, and on any device. Features Lightning Service Console Turbo charge agent productivity with the best-in-class agent experience. Empower your agents Provide your agents with a 360- degree view of customers and empower them with all the information they need to serve customers better.   Case Management Resolve cases faster with easy contextual visibility of all cases and a record of every customer interaction on a single, visually rich dashboard. Workflow and Approvals Now you can customize and automate any customer service or approval process with simple drag-and-drop functionality using Workflow. Omni-channel Routing Deliver smarter service by automatically mapping cases to the best-fit agent. Telephony Integration Integrate Salesforce with the most popular CTI systems. Log notes in real time when customers call. And, manage calls from within the Service Cloud console without even needing the phone. Social Customer Service Monitor and respond with agility to customer posts on social media channels and deliver customer delight. Automation with Macros Automate common, repetitive tasks for more efficient resolution of customer issues thereby freeing up your support agents for more critical support tasks which require personal attention. Account and Contact Management Empower your agents with data about past communications with customers right at their fingertips to fast track service requests. Custom Reports and Dashboards Make informed decisions with real-time reports and stunning intuitive dashboards that deliver a 360-degree view of the customer. Asset and Order Management Get a unified view of the customers’ assets, orders, support history, and more, to get a holistic view of their activity. It can be confusing at times, if it comes to choosing between Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, to determine which is best for your organization, especially if you’re new to Salesforce. This is where Girikon, a Gold Certified Salesforce Implementation Partner can help you. Questions? We’ll guide you to the right path Know more about Salesforce products, implementation, pricing, custom apps or anything else. CONTACT AN EXPERT

Salesforce can be transformational. Provided you implement it right.  It has the power to change the way your organization functions, helping you transition to a smarter, efficient, data-driven, and impactful business.Salesforce can be transformational. Provided you implement it right.  It has the power to change the way your organization functions, helping you transition to a smarter, efficient, data-driven, and impactful business. But it‘s common that the same set of hurdles keep popping up repetitively.  Technology based perfection is relatively easier to achieve. An expert team of Salesforce Consultants may execute challenging implementations on time and within budget. But it can become transformational only if it meets the business objectives of the organization.  Assessing the success of a Salesforce powered organization necessitates a holistic approach. The implementation team needs to have a clear understanding of the various forces at play, and prepare themselves for long-term, sustainable success. Here are 6 key Salesforce implementation challenges with tips on how to resolve them for post-implementation success.  Implementation and Adoption Roadmap Lack of clarity of purpose and want of understanding of its impact can lead to a failed implementation of Salesforce. Without expectations being set, organizations tend to implement and adopt Salesforce with inadequate resources and expertise, and often without the buy-in of the right people.  The result is a half-baked system that does not compliment organizational goals and staff needs.   When stakeholders do not agree on the requirements or scope, for lack of time or prioritization, the implementation team eds up confused with a blurred vision of the organization’s goals. Frequent scope changes lead to a faulty implementation with declined productivity. Detailed and meticulous planning will drive 80% of your success. Spend time to freeze requirements before commencing implementation. Get buy in from stakeholders and management. Make a clear implementation roadmap upfront. Align it with the company’s strategic goals. Establish a clear roll-out strategy. Data Migration and Validation Data powers Salesforce. Without the right data, Salesforce cannot deliver what it is designed to. As it is, It’s a challenge for staff to learn a new system and adopt it as part of their regular work routine.  And when data is incomplete or inaccurate couple of things happen.  First, the trust is broken in the system.  Second, when you feed your systems with faulty data, it’s even more challenging to get any valuable data out of it.  And if users aren’t getting valuable information from the system, chances are slim they will be keen to enter it in the first place. A definitive approach is required to work out the data migration strategy with the Salesforce implementation team. User mapping, data security and cleaning up data is a time intensive activity and requires an experienced team. To overcome this data challenge, double-check the integrity of data that you wish to migrate. Clean it up before importing into Salesforce. Use relevant tools wherever possible. Look at data mapping closely to map relevant fields, Engage the team members who know your data well to assist with data migration validation. One of the keys to maintain healthy data is to have smart detection systems, regular clean ups and training. Customization With Salesforce’s endless capabilities, there is a tendency to overdo customization to get maximum features on board. In a manner of speaking, tendency to bite more than you can chew. This only complicates the implementation. Customization without a thorough understanding of your business needs leads to a faulty implementation. To overcome this, adopt an incremental approach. Split the features into basic, essential, and so on, in order of necessity. A phased approach saves costs and ensures the system retains its integrity after each stage of customization and mitigates implementation challenges to a large extent. Use the Lightning App Builder from Salesforce and Apps from the AppExchange to build custom applications, fast. The Salesforce1 platform and Salesforce SDKs facilitate development of mobile apps quickly. Salesforce Canvas allows easy integration of other systems with Salesforce screens. Use Lightning Process Builder to create complex business processes without any need for coding. User Acceptance Testing No implementation is perfect. And despite the best of efforts of implementation teams, errors do creep in. Gaps in communication, bugs, unsuitable tools, and other issues often result in the system not being up to expectations. Testing is the best way to ensure any IT implementation meets its pre-defined goals. Catching bugs early makes it that much easier to fix them. Empower subject matter experts with expertise in your line of business. Encourage them to take up leadership roles in the implementation, and become champions for its smooth roll-out and organization-wide adoption. Document test cases and test plans and execute. Fix the bugs, and retest as and when needed. Simulate use cases and do thorough testing to ensure the code meets the objectives. Conduct sandbox testing to work out the kinks before go-live, mitigating the deployment risks.  Adoption Most often, much of the focus and effort in a Salesforce implementation goes to the technical side of things.  While this is necessary, it might come as a surprise that even after a really good implementation, it can still be a challenge to get your staff to actually use the system!  More often than not, adoption is one of the biggest challenges across all types of businesses. Adopting a new system with the power and flexibility of Salesforce requires a significant level of organizational change.  And it requires some well thought out “change management” planning. It is crucial to have an organizational adoption plan as much as it is to have a technical one.  This includes getting staff and leadership buy-in, communicating clearly about the vision and value of the project, and having a thorough plan for training staff and supporting them as they get trained.   Training Training of staff to use Salesforce is one of the biggest challenges post implementation. What’s the point of investing time, resources and money in implementing a powerful software like Salesforce, if your staff can’t use it to its fullest potential? To master features in salesforce, users should undergo thorough training with your Salesforce Implementation Partner. Focus your training on custom built features or functionalities in your implementation. Without proper training and support even the most trivial issue can become a stumbling block in organization-wide adoption. To overcome this difficulty, the implementation team should distribute documentation about the new features developed and provide hands on classroom training, department wise. The true power of Salesforce is not just about entering or populating data into it.  Equally important is how you pull data out of it.   A Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner will approach your Salesforce implementation with 3 key elements — accurate assessment of expectations, detailed attention to data, and a thorough adoption/training plan, putting you 3 big steps ahead. Questions? Our reps have answers. CONTACT AN EXPERT

Customer-centric experiences are the cornerstone of business, and to be truly customer-centric, you have to know your customers’ preferences and the context in which they engage with your organization. Today’s CRM tools are stacked with features that foster collaboration and accessible data to drive smart decision-making. The right tool should enable companies to target diverse audiences, design intelligent automation based on a prospect’s activity, and proactively manage relationships. The advantages of CRM software are evident: It keeps all historical data in one place, making it easier to manage customer relationships. A CRM software should offer limitless possibilities to organizations to proactively engage teams, collaborate on goals and deliver powerful customer-centric experiences. Salesforce does all that for you, and much more. The Salesforce platform is a framework with amazing capabilities and virtually endless possibilities. It truly has the power and flexibility to do exactly what you want it to do. And on most occasions, effortlessly. It is only normal to be intimidated by the technology and its possibilities offered by the World’s No 1 CRM platform. Hence, it is imperative that you find the right Salesforce Consulting Partner to walk guide you on your stairway to success. Here are a few areas where the best Salesforce Consulting Partner can help you: Improve Business Performance Salesforce CRM is designed with the customer in mind, empowering organizations to break new ground with customers, address concerns, resolve problems, and provide value. Your Salesforce Consulting Partner will help you to put customer success first, and in the process, focus on your own business performance improvement. Improved customer visibility Salesforce provides a user-friendly platform for managing all of your customer-related information, thereby enabling you to prioritize every customer as though it were the only one. By understanding your customers better, you'll be empowered to better forecast their future actions. Superior time management Salesforce combines all of your agents' activities, calendars, schedules and helps make those engagements better serve customers. This means less downtime and significantly lesser deadline-related stress. More efficient sales pipeline Salesforce allows you to track individual prospects effortlessly, including their pain points, their expectations, and any other information that might be useful in working with a potential customer. You will always be able to see exactly where a lead is in your pipeline, as well as know what their next step should be. The end result is improvement in your overall sales.  Enhanced collaboration Having a cloud-based, cross-department platform means that any and every authorized user can work together to ensure customer success. With multi-device access capability, Salesforce allows your teams to access relevant data across departments, communicate efficiently, and collaborate together to provide a seamless customer-centric experience. Better support Salesforce provides excellent support, and with the entire platform based on the cloud, maintenance can be done remotely, avoiding the expensive costs associated with in-person maintenance visits. Increased efficiency and productivity Between automating time-consuming tasks, enabling collaboration, and eliminating the need for micro-management by line managers, Salesforce trims away at unnecessary processes and wasteful effort, setting up a supremely efficient system that will deliver real value to your organization and your customers, consequently driving up organizational productivity. Faster Decision Making  With Salesforce’s powerful data modeling and visualization tools like Einstein Analytics and Lightning, teams can have access to sales and service KPIs. Your Salesforce Implementation Partner can empower you with a deeper insight into market trends and opportunities. Customer analytics can help you blend science with data to make decisions that enable you to stay ahead of the curve. There are way too many features in Salesforce and it's just not possible to list them all. However, with a top Salesforce Consultant, you can maximize the use of its power and flexibility and send your organizational productivity into overdrive. Get a distinct advantage over your competition with the World’s most complete CRM platform. Take advantage of the best security, the most-effective customization options, the highest-quality apps, and the most innovative business solution, all at a cost that will delight you. Looking for more details? Contact our reps to discuss your needs today. CONTACT AN EXPERT

What started out as a Software as a Service (SaaS) has today evolved into a full service stack of software with limitless possibilities. Today, Salesforce offers tailor made platforms for specific verticals, such as Government Cloud, Health Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Financial Services Cloud and Education Cloud. A Salesforce Partner Company is a business that specialises in Salesforce implementations for customers. They provide consulting services to customers using best-practice guidelines, enabling them to adopt and tailor the Salesforce platform to align with their specific business goals. Within the Salesforce Partner eco-system, partners can be classified at Silver, Gold, Platinum and Global Strategic by Salesforce. While this classification is based on a complex scoring system based on several criteria, one of those criteria has to do with the number of certified consultants on its staff. Customers are demanding. They expect more from you. They want to rest assured that you have assigned your best resources for transforming their business. They want to know that they made the right choice when they selected you as their Salesforce Implementation Partner. They want to know that you understand not only the intricacies and capabilities of the Salesforce platform, but also understand how they do business.  This is where the roles of certified consultants becomes very important. Here are some benefits Salesforce Partner Companies derive out of Certified Consultants. Stand Out A certification is a statement to the world that your consultants have some serious Salesforce skills. Certifications inspire confidence in customers and prospects that you are good at what you do. And you know your subject very well. If a customer must choose between 2 companies, and only one of them has certified consultants, well, picking the one with certifications is a no brainer. Stay on the edge of knowledge Having certified consultants shows that you are not happy sitting in a comfort zone. Three times a year, Salesforce releases a new batch of cutting-edge features. If your consultants are certified, you are making a statement of commitment to a constant cycle of learning and growth. It shows that you as an organization want to offer the best possible resources to your customers. Certified Consultants automatically become a part of an intellectual community and leverage A Dynamically Updated, Current Knowledge Base Smarter Efficiency Salesforce certified consultants can be assigned on projects faster, solve problems on the fly, and quickly deploy smart, effective business solutions. As a Salesforce partner, you can inspire confidence in your customers that you can overcome challenges and solve their problems. Lead an effective and productive workforce that deliver results for your customers. Create Opportunities Certified Consultants empower Salesforce Partners to knock on new doors for opportunities with confidence.  Create new growth opportunities beyond boundaries with a team of certified consultants. Commercial benefits Needless to say, Salesforce Certified Consultants get paid more. Customers are willing to shell out that extra dollar, if they know that your best, most experienced and certified consultants are working on their project Conclusion Companies across the world are adopting Salesforce to transform the way to do business. The demand for the world’s No1 CRM platform is growing exponentially. Consequently, so is the need for experts to drive that transformation. Partner companies want to hire consultants who can prove to be an asset for them, and certification certainly helps. Businesses know that with cloud certified experts, they deliver transformational Customer360 experiences. With Girikon, you can get access to a pool of Certified Salesforce Consultants with multi-vertical experience across various Cloud offerings within the Salesforce Cloud bucket. Contact us today to know more about how we can help you.