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Choosing the right expert can be the thin line between successful and painful Salesforce implementation. Still, one may be confused when phrases such as "Salesforce Consultant" and "Salesforce Implementation Partner" come up, as they do not really know the basic difference between the two. With this ignorance comes a tacit inability to choose the better option for the business.
Hence, we have prepared this guide for you. After going through this guide, you will know whether you need an optimization consultant for Salesforce or a partner to assist you throughout the complete implementation. Therefore, let us discuss the two main roles performed by Salesforce experts.
Salesforce Implementation Partner and Salesforce Consultant-Where do they differ?
Every business’s success is just the mirror of choices they make before starting a project. This is crucial even for successful Salesforce implementation too. Learn below the distinction between Salesforce implementation partner and Salesforce consultant. Thus, choosing the best for your business growth and efficiency.
A Bit into Salesforce Implementation Partner
A Salesforce implementation partner can be a company whose work primarily involves the end-to-end implementation of Salesforce solutions. As these partners are certified by Salesforce, they provide deep expertise and industry experience during Salesforce integration, customization, and deployment. Besides, these partners work within a team of certified experts, who have diverse skill sets, required to handle complex and large projects.
Major Responsibilities of Salesforce Implementation Partners
Now, let’s understand the duties performed by these partners to ensure success Salesforce implementation and efficient service delivery.
- End-to-end Solution Delivery
Salesforce implementation journey starts with a series of discovery sessions required for understanding your business goals, specific requirements, and challenges. It follows with architecture & design documentation, laying out the blueprint for the entire implementation process. This sets the stage for key stages such as system configuration, integration, and deployment with other business systems.
That’s not it, an experienced Salesforce implementation partner oversees the full scope of the project, including data migration, post-deployment support, training, testing, etc. This is why they manage every phase with utmost care and ensure that the system is optimized to meet specific business needs. Overall, this results in maximized ROI and seamless user experience.
- Customization & Development
To ensure that the platform is fully customized to meet the unique needs of your business, Salesforce implementation company works closely with stakeholders. Therein, they understand specific workflows, objectives, and processes. Upon understanding the goal, they leverage certain suite of tools, i.e., Apex, Lightning component, and Visualforce.
Besides, Salesforce implementation partners customize Salesforce features too like automation, user interfaces, reports, custom objects, etc. Thus, ensuring that the platform works seamlessly with your existing processes and enhances functionality as required. By prioritizing these tailored approaches, partners ensure maximized user adoption and enhanced business performance.
- System Integration
Salesforce implementation partners connect Salesforce with your existing software databases, applications, and third-party systems. They do so by assessing the full scope of the technology stack. This enables them with such key systems that need to communicate with Salesforce, i.e., financial platforms, marketing automation tool, and ERP systems.
Leveraging the integration tools like REST/SOAP APIs and MuleSoft, the Salesforce implementation partner designs and builds custom integration. This integration ensures workflow automation, real-time data synchronization, improved visibility, etc. Also, it lets them control everything from initial data mapping to necessary connectors and middleware development. Upon conducting rigorous testing, the partners validate that Salesforce works in harmony with other systems.
- Project Management
A structured approach helps Salesforce implementation partners to simply plan, conduct, and monitor every phase of the project management. They consider having experienced project managers to manage timelines, resources, budgets, and stakeholder communications. Besides, they implement certain methodologies and approaches that ensure flexibility throughout the project.
With regular progress meetings, risk management strategies, and detailed reporting, the partners ensure that the project is on track without any issues and concerns. On top of that, the Salesforce implementation partner provides regular feedback and updates, thus ensuring stakeholder involvement throughout the process. As partners guarantee that minimal disruption appears to daily operations, the project gets completed successfully.
- Training & Support
Training & support are provided to employees who are new to Salesforce. The motive behind this training is to ensure that every team member can effectively use the platform to maximize their efficiency. However, delivering customized training sessions and ensuring that everyone knows how to navigate the system is not that easy.
For that, they design effective and customized training programs tailored to different user groups. These programs include online tutorials, hands-on workshops, etc., that teach employees on specific workflows. Beyond the training, the Salesforce implementation partner provides post-implementation support through system updates and optimizations. Overall, this leads to smooth user adoption, reduced learning curve, and improved workflow.
What is a Salesforce Consultant?
Having just learned about the Salesforce implementation partners and their duties, let's broaden your thoughts on the role of a Salesforce consultant. A Salesforce consultant provides strategic advice concerning Salesforce products. However, they are not involved in the overall implementation process, as their core responsibility focus is on configuration, advisory services, and optimization of the Salesforce application.
Major Responsibilities of a Salesforce Consultant
Discover the potential of having Salesforce consultants while assessing their key responsibilities, duties, and functions.
- Salesforce Strategy & Best Practices
Salesforce consultants define the strategic goals of using Salesforce. How? They develop a comprehensive roadmap by understanding your company’s objectives, pain points, processes, etc. This lets them access the essential information required for designing a tailored Salesforce solution.
Besides, the consultants apply deep knowledge and best practices to make the most of Salesforce’s capabilities. If you want to drive user adoption, get real-time actionable insights, and optimize business processes, then working with these Salesforce consultants can prove to be more beneficial. They ensure that the Salesforce is set up efficiently to deliver a higher ROI.
- Needs Assessment & Requirement Gathering
Salesforce consultants play a significant part in ensuring needs assessment & requirement gathering. The stage typically involves activities like conducting interviews, reviewing existing documentation, and running workshops surveys to capture the relevant information required for designing and configuring the Salesforce.
Here are three factors in which the Salesforce requirement gathering phase depends on like project type, project size, and industry. Upon assessing these three factors, Salesforce consultants ensure such resources that align Salesforce with business goals. Thus, letting businesses lay the foundation for enhanced user adoption.
- Configuration
Configuration allows Salesforce consultants to build a solution that offers a great level of personalization. However, it happened within the boundaries of Salesforce’s native functionality. As configuration is deployed in real-time, it turns out to be an ideal choice for businesses looking for faster solutions.
Well, that’s what Salesforce consulting partners deliver to its clients. After configuration, they test the system thoroughly and frequently to address any issue that might negatively impact its performance. With these steps, Salesforce consultants ensure that the system will help achieve the business’s goals, improve efficiency, and elevate productivity level. All in all, this effective configuration leads to successful Salesforce configuration.
- Salesforce Optimization
Making the most out of your Salesforce is what Salesforce optimization really means. Salesforce consultants consider various strategies to ensure this. For instance, they review the data model, remove any extra field that is not necessary, avoid adding too many custom fields, and move outdated data to external storage.
Besides, they set up custom indexes for fields that are often used in queries. Moreover, they ensure that Apex code can handle large amounts of data for bulk data loading. To let you monitor and analyze Salesforce performance, the consultants also ensure to leverage Salesforce optimizer. This helps spot unused features, performance issues, and areas where improvements are required.
- Ad-hoc Projects
Salesforce consultants are also known for providing ad-hoc project support to businesses that need quick and targeted assistance before or after the Salesforce implementation. Ad-hoc support typically involves addressing such requests and issues that arise unexpectedly. As Salesforce consultants are well-equipped to handle such situations, they ensure that the problem does not recur, and the system is optimized.
Besides, the Salesforce consulting partner empowers their clients with training sessions and programs. This enables the team to handle similar issues independently in the future. Along with this, the consultants prefer to provide remote support via video calls, phone, email, etc. This helps to set up emergency support channels to resolve any unforeseen problems.
When to Choose a Salesforce Implementation Partner and Salesforce Consultant?
At this moment, you may be wondering about when and which one to choose between Salesforce consultants and Salesforce implementation partners. Well, this section will provide you with all the answers, enabling you to make the right decision.
Connect with a Top Salesforce Implementation Partner When You Want to
- Build your CRM from scratch while keeping the unique needs of your business.
- Leverage technical aspects and Salesforce implementation services effectively.
- Migrate data from legacy system to ensure a seamless transition.
- Speed up the Salesforce development process and complete it within a specific time.
- Execute technical configuration, customization, and integration.
Engage with a Top Salesforce Consulting Partner When You Want to
- Define your CRM strategy and roadmap.
- Cope up with issues like underperformance and misalignment by redesigning the current CRM strategy.
- Ensure some change management and transition in your Salesforce.
To Conclude!
When working with Salesforce, both Salesforce implementation partner and Salesforce consultant play important, yet distinct roles. The Salesforce implementation partners focus on the bigger picture—handling CRM implementation and configuration across the organization. On the other hand, Salesforce consultants understand your unique business needs, offer strategic advice, and customize Salesforce.
While their roles are different, the success of Salesforce is often achieved with their collaborative effort. So, it depends on you whether you need technical expertise of Salesforce implementation partners or business insights from consultants or both of them. Because it’s on your requirements and objectives, the Salesforce solutions are implemented. But whichever route you choose, it’s important to emphasize communication skills and alignment on goals.
Now, if you are wondering about where to find these experts? Don’t worry, Girikon, one of the best Salesforce consulting companies, has both implementation partners and consultants to serve businesses of all industry verticals and unique challenges. Consider meeting with the experts to learn how they can help you drive positive impacts.
About Author
Shivani is a Technical Content Specialist at Girikon with deep expertise in turning intricate technologies into engaging narratives. Her renowned experience and keen interest in technologies allows her to draft compelling and digestable insights for tech-savvy leaders. She helps businesses navigate the labyrinth of innovation, leveraging her proficient skills and visionary attitude.
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