Salesforce Consulting

​ Most businesses have realized the significance of going digital. However, the digital landscape is extremely competitive and sustenance requires businesses to automate their processes while ensuring operational efficiency. This is where the need for a robust CRM arises. As a cloud-based platform, Salesforce enjoys huge popularity and widespread adoption. However, unlocking the actual potential of a Salesforce platform can be challenging for businesses without the support of a Salesforce professional. It’s crucial for organizations to partner with a reliable and experienced Salesforce consultant that can help them overcome their limitations and unlock the immense potential of this platform.  A consultant can provide necessary support and guidance regarding upgrades and customizations that can make your organization more productive across your business processes. Their ability to troubleshoot problems through Salesforce can help you deal with unique challenges while figuring out solutions that will help your business flourish. Why Should You Engage the Services of a Salesforce Professional? A Salesforce consultant has extensive experience in handling this robust customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Being professionals, they remain up-to-date on the latest product upgrades and applications while ensuring quality, productivity, and reduced costs. The services offered by a reliable Salesforce consulting partner include more than just the basic platform functions but can also help create custom tools, manage integrations, and leverage the complete capabilities of the platform. From nonprofits to building services to businesses in the financial and healthcare sector, almost every industry can take advantage of these optimizations. Listed below are some of the key benefits of Hiring Salesforce Consulting services: Data Migration from Other CRM platforms to Salesforce: If you haven’t used Salesforce before, you would not just require setting it up for the first time but also migrate your data from an outside source. A professional can help you set up the CRM seamlessly besides managing the migration in a way that every component is handled optimally. Additionally, they will help you keep your data organized and clean so that it becomes easy for you to sort through them. Setting Up Customized Dashboards: To draw maximum value out of your CRM, it’s important to get your dashboard customized. For creating customized dashboards based on your business needs, Salesforce offers multiple options. However, creating customized dashboards in Salesforce isn’t easy and requires custom fields for accommodating certain tools and calculations, which your team might require to find quality leads. A professional service provider can enable you to design a dashboard as per the unique needs of your business, which will maximize data analysis and ultimately give a boost to your business. With a dashboard, it becomes easy to filter your data, quickly find the information you require, and track your prospects. Providing Training and Support: The upgrades and updates of Salesforce make the platform valuable. However, several organizations struggle to keep up with these changes. To understand which upgrades will have the maximum benefits, you must consider getting in touch with a reputed consultant who will manage essential updates and upgrades for you that will increase productivity and benefit your unique. They also assist in training your employees so that user productivity on the platform increases. This will empower your team to bring in more customers and close more deals. Proper support for training and Salesforce implementation will allow everyone to work more efficiently. Maintaining an Organized System:  Data gathered by sales reps when organized from time to time plays an important role in upholding the usefulness and functionality of the Salesforce platform. Some organizations end up deserting their Salesforce integrations when their data becomes unsystematic and unmanageable. This problem usually arises when several sales reps log in at the same time and enter records incoherently. An experienced Salesforce partner can help by auditing the records while preventing a buildup of unusable records. They also help in sorting data and taking necessary steps to prevent the accrual of glitches in the first place. They can assist in the creation of custom wizards that will guide sales reps through data entries, creating uniformity and consistency within the data entry irrespective of who created the entries. Custom wizards can be used to streamline the Salesforce quoting process, which requires several steps and doesn’t assure uniformity. Augments Your Ability to Find New Leads: Salesforce empowers your sales reps to collaborate easily with prospects and several new customers irrespective of where they are. The robust CRM promotes communication skills along with collaboration within teams thereby boosting productivity, as well as the ability to find leads. Salesforce consultants play a significant role in motivating your internal sales team members. You can create healthy competition among your sales reps through gamification. Based on key metrics from the CRM, consultants can help create leaderboards so that all your sales reps can view each other's results, as well as bests in different categories. Final Words: Salesforce has emerged as the number one platform in the CRM space. With its wide array of features and functionalities, Salesforce has become the preferred choice of businesses. However, to make the most of this amazing platform, it’s important to partner with one of the best Salesforce consultants who can take customer communication to a new level. They can help businesses utilize the tools that can automate processes and ensure operational efficiency.

Customer Relationship Management Software, widely referred to as CRM software, is playing a vital role today across enterprises of various sizes. By aggregating and managing customer data, Salesforce CRM enables enterprises to manage a wide range of key business functions such as lead generation and conversion, sales and marketing, tracking customer engagement and automating workflows. As enterprises are able to streamline their business processes with CRM software, each of these individually separate functions and activities are now better streamlines and integrated, resulting in higher levels of customer satisfaction. Implementing a Salesforce CRM within your organization can be a bit of a challenge. Although Salesforce CRM is the world’s most advanced and innovative CRM platform, there are always implementation and migrations challenges associated with working with a new system, as your team migrates key information to the new platform and adapts to work with it. This transition however, can be simplified significantly if you have a dedicated Salesforce Consultant to help your teams adapt to this new system. What is a Salesforce consultant? A Salesforce Consultant can help you overcome limitations, unlock the Salesforce CRM platform’s full potential, and augment Salesforce’s out-of-the-box functionality. A Salesforce consultant is an experienced professional with significant expertise implementing the Salesforce CRM platform. And because this is their area of expertise, they would be more than likely to stay up-to-date with the latest product updates and tools, to enable them to deliver agile implementation and drive productivity. Salesforce Consulting goes beyond the basic implementation of the Salesforce CRM platform. Third party integrations, creating custom apps, and leveraging the platform’s full capabilities and driving adoption of your users are also some of their key responsibilities. Almost any business in any industry can take advantage of these customizations, from nonprofits to manufacturing, financial services to healthcare, and more. Why should you hire a Salesforce consultant? Hiring a Salesforce consultant can help you maximise the potential of the CRM platform. You would be able to connect with and understand your customers better, and deliver personalized experiences for your clients and prospects. As an organization, you’ll also be better prepared to provide agile support to your customers. And you will be able to track the entire customer experience and improve further. Before we go into what are the roles of a Salesforce Consultant, let us understand some of the constraints they have to work with. Salesforce CRM implementation is a resource-dependent process. Therefore, the consultant must address the resource needs associated with is before going ahead with implementing a solution. 1. Workforce Constraints The Salesforce consultant needs to be aware of the workforce constraints that exist in the organization. The organization and the consultant must arrive at a common understanding or how much of the organizational workforce can be used to implement the solution. Conversely, the solution has to be designed keeping the workforce size in mind. The consultant needs to understand the work responsibilities of each staff member so that an optimum solution can be developed. Workforce availability constraints must also be considered during the implementation, training, and go-live processes. 2. Time Constraint Every technology solution is designed for under a specified timeline and for a specific purpose that must be fulfilled at the earliest. The CRM solution has to be designed based on the established timeline with all checks and balances in place to address any schedule deviations at key milestones. One of the key challenges for the consultant is to stick to the timelines so that the implementation is relevant and useful. The implementation should not add delays to the existing schedules. In fact, it should optimize the existing schedules to augment efficiency. 3. Skill Constraints The Salesforce Consultant needs to have a good understanding of the gap between the desired skill set and the existing skill set of the workforce. Not only should the CRM solution be usable by the workforce, but it should also trim the gaps in sills for better productivity. Th user experience should be such that it is easy and effective. Roles of a Salesforce Consultant The Salesforce CRM platform is a suite of complex tools and features and tools if properly implemented can maximum profits. It comes with a high degree of flexibility to ensure alignment with almost any business requirement. It is the prerogative of a Salesforce Consultant to be aware of the scope of customization so that the implementation is smooth and effective. Having said that, the organization needs to first identify which of its business processes it wants to customise and/or optimize in Salesforce. Here are some of the key roles and responsibilities of a Salesforce Consultant for an effective CRM implementation. 1. Relationship Management The Salesforce Consultant has a key role to play in the client company equation. The Salesforce consultant brings a certain value to the organization that can potentially be extended to their clients. Salesforce Consulting can help evolve the sales process and affect the clients for the better. Clients are the key touchpoints for an organization since they generate revenues. The relationship between the organization and its clients is a make-or-break deal. It is vital to create and maintain a relationship of mutual trust and business ethics for long term growth. A Salesforce Consultant can utilise specific features of the Salesforce CRM platform to generate more sales opportunities. One of the key responsibilities of the Salesforce consultant is to develop a deep understanding of the client-company relationships and advise the company on how to augment that relationship further. With the powerful Salesforce CRM platform, the Salesforce consultant creates more efficient business process to drive productivity. It allows the client to feel that he is an equal partner in the process of change. In fact, in several cases, the Salesforce consultant is the first point of contact for customers. 2. Organize meetings and keeping the teams updated The Salesforce consulting partner is a key contact point for clients and client companies. Even though organizations prefer automation and intelligent, innovative, feature-rich systems, they want to meet and discuss with someone who has a good understanding of what all the CRM platform can do and how those features can be extended to its users. The Salesforce Consultant should organize meetings with clients and share status updates of how the implementation and adoption is going. While it is easy to provide status updates on multiple projects in a single dashboard, a consultant ensures accurate, consistent and periodic sharing of updates with the users. 3. Building and deploying Salesforce The primary role of a Salesforce consultant is to build and deploy a Salesforce CRM solution that is customized for the company and its clients.  The Salesforce Consultant has to ensure that all business processes that have been discussed and agreed upon by the company have been implemented. 4. Providing training and support Like any other enterprise platform, Salesforce updates its platform thrice a year to make it more available to its users. However, most businesses find it a daunting task to keep up with these upgrades, or they don’t know which upgrades will have deliver the greatest benefits to them. A Salesforce Consultant will help you with that. They will help you in understanding which updates will benefit your organization the most and boost productivity based on your unique needs. This assistance also needs to extend to your staff. Not only do you need a user friendly and efficient system, but you also want your staff to know how to access the information they need to fulfil their work responsibilities. They should feel fully capable to navigate and use the CRM platform. Your consultant will provide the necessary training to boost user adoption and productivity on the platform, empowering them to close deals faster and also acquire more customers. A thorough Salesforce implementation, training and adoption program across your organization is the foundation of a customer-centric business. Finally, you will discover that greater the support you get from your consultant, the lesser the number of queries you have about the platform. The consultant can provide you with the necessary help and support, which means having to submit lesser help tickets. You have your own in-house expert who can all answer your questions related to the CRM platform and provide the necessary training as and when problems arise. Hiring a qualified Salesforce consultant creates a more seamless experience for everyone in your organization. If your business could do with more customers, working with a Certified Salesforce consultant might be the key to tapping into that potential market. Turn to Girikon to implement a solution that can help you drive growth for you. With a large pool of certified professionals, and a global delivery model, Girikon makes it easy for you to focus on what you want to do – deliver customer delight.

In today’s business landscape, a successful enterprise must adopt a system that seamlessly integrates all departments and their respective business processes to enable them to interact and collaborate effortlessly. This is where Salesforce has established itself as the market leader in the CRM space.  Salesforce CRM sometimes popularly referred to as the Customer 360 platform, is a user-friendly solution with virtually limitless flexibility that connects teams across departments in an organization and drives growth. As a result, companies that use Salesforce see improvements in growth and efficiency. But to get the most out of what Salesforce CRM has to you need professional expertise. While most of the Salesforce products are centred around sales and customer service, Salesforce can be used for almost anything. And while the key Salesforce functions haven’t changed much – consultant, administrator, architect and developer, the specializations required based on the unique business needs of an organization have become quite apparent. One needs to have specialization on some of the key aspects of Salesforce to make the implementation count. Consultants don’t just bring in the necessary skills and experience for implementing the CRM platform. They also add significant value in being able to understand the customer. Not only in terms of business processes within the organization but also outside of that realm, such as the people who drive those processes. And they are an intrinsic part of the customer’s growth journey onwards of implementation. While businesses can provide the Salesforce implementation team with data and insight, certain things can only be understood by a specialist. This is where the Salesforce consultant role becomes important. They are trained with skills like attention to detail, analytical thinking and problem-solving along with hands on expertise on the platform. Why Is Salesforce so Popular? Salesforce upgrades its product offering three times a year. Which means every year they add new features and functionality to help existing and new business innovate rapidly. Salesforce is founded on a Customer-360 vision and promotes a collaborative work culture that brings people together and promotes productivity. The Salesforce online community provides help and support to the entire developer community to solve any business challenge The Salesforce platform has virtually limitless flexibility and businesses can create any number and kind of custom apps and integrations to support their business Salesforce allows you to automate routine business processes which frees up employee time to focus on core tasks. Salesforce is powered by an advanced AI engine which delivers qualified analytics on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of your business. Here's where Salesforce Consultants add value across various phases As Part of an Implementation Team CRM implementation is a time-consuming effort and requires coordinated team effort. It would be a wise decision for a business to hire a specialist with extensive experience in Salesforce implementation since the Salesforce platform is complex and offers virtually limitless customization possibilities. Consequently, Salesforce consultants are in high demand across businesses that need the Salesforce CRM implementation. Here are the phases that require the services of a Salesforce Consultant: The Pre-Implementation Phase Before preparing a draft of the Salesforce implementation plan, a Salesforce consultant needs valuable insight from within the company. Information on the type and number of employees, the working structure of the company, regular business processes and workflows, are all important to understand how the organization works and what are its vital parts. The consultant needs to work closely with the business leaders within the organization to understand goals and expectations and current challenges and workflow bottlenecks During the Implementation Consultants play a vital role during the implementation phase as well. They are the link between the technical team – architects, administrators and developers who install and configure the platform and build and deploy custom apps, and the company. Their role is to maintain good communication between the two groups and ensure everything is well captured. After the Implementation The implementation is not over until the customer starts seeing results. After all, the technical implementation is just side of it. Once the technical tasks are completed, the implementation team also needs to train the users on the platform. Typically, this is another key responsibility area of a Salesforce consultant. It requires good communication skills, teamwork and leadership skills. Businesses are evolving continuously. And the software that they use needs to keep pace with it. Businesses need to add and upgrade their apps and workflows on an ongoing basis to stay ahead of the curve. If you are already using Salesforce in your organization, the presence of a Salesforce Consultant will help you to upgrade rapidly by building and deploying apps in an agile framework. And do to that you need a strong team of specialists. Moreover, just like every other complex platform, Salesforce also requires maintenance time to time. This is another key responsibility area of a consultant. As part of the organization Salesforce consultants also work in organizations that don’t do implementation for others. They just have enough in house needs. These are regular businesses that use the Salesforce platform and a small team of consultants to oversee the implementation, upgrades and maintenance activities. In this context, a Salesforce Consultant’s function is to make sure system performs perfectly and the users are able to use it easily. On top of that, they also discover methods to further enhance the customer experience through the use of the platform and make sure teams continue to communicate with each other. Shortage of Salesforce Professionals Currently, there just aren’t enough people trained in Salesforce to meet growing demands of this ecosystem. One of the key reasons is that Salesforce isn’t your run-of-the-mill software. It’s a specialised and complex product and unless you're a service provider or you are a part of an organization that uses Salesforce, it’s unlikely that you know much about it. Many of the Fortune 100 companies use Salesforce. IDC published an article in October 2017 saying that over 3 million jobs are expected to be there in the Salesforce ecosystem by end of 2022 through its network of partners. Salesforce has been growing at a brisk pace year on year, and so are their customers, consequently driving up the demand for Salesforce professionals to support that growth. And the skills one acquires as a Salesforce professional are highly transferable in case one wants to switch over to another industry. Developing Salesforce Skills Irrespective of your available budget, there are multiple options available to help one get familiar with Salesforce and develop skills in a certain are: Developer organisations— Sign up immediately for a free developer licence and start practising Trailhead, which is a Salesforce powered only community where one can get hands-on exposure to Salesforce and learn the technical and business skills one needs to succeed from anywhere for free. Girikon is a dedicated Gold Certified Salesforce Partner. Our relentless focus on understanding the unique needs of our customers combined with our rich expertise and experience on the Salesforce platform allows us to deliver value driven solutions to our clients. Contact us today to know more.

Managing superior customer relationships is no longer a choice but has become a necessity in today’s era. This is easier said than done as businesses are engaged in multiple activities including but not limited to managing multiple business processes. Salesforce – a robust cloud-based CRM has become one of the most popular and widely adopted CRM platforms across the globe. The innovative platform is endowed with multiple features, functionalities, and components that can be leveraged by businesses to resolve their business issues.

Customers are always connected. They are always adapting to the latest technology, quickly. The Salesforce platform is a set of unified platform services that easily adapts to your ever-changing business needs. Powering and connecting all your business processes to unify the customer experience. So, sales can sell smarter and faster the way they want landing their next big customer from anywhere. Service can then tailor their process quickly creating aps specific to the customer needs like setting up custom intelligent alerts to help find smart solutions even before they know there is an issue. Which keeps the customer happy. Marketing can take them of personalised journeys recommending helpful products along the way and IT can integrate third party apps and IoT device data quickly adapting to the latest advancements to better advance the customer relationship. A trusted secure platform that lets you tailor any app or process for anyone in any department using low code solutions with lightning that are instantly mobile. Increasing productivity for employees and connectivity with customers and you are easily able to innovate, building more complex apps with intelligence working with emerging intelligent technologies like Artificial Intelligence making you more intelligent about your customers. You can even plug in thousands of pre-built apps and components from the Salesforce AppExchange and empower everyone from serious coders to the not serious ones. With help of thousands of developers and administrators through trailhead on the worlds No1 enterprise platform letting you easily innovate around each and every customer. Create, automate, deploy and secure apps with the world’s leading low code platform. Build scalable apps without any code development tools. Connect your employees, processes, and systems seamlessly to automate workflows and deliver a personalised customer experience, all with best in class security and governance practices. No need to code any more. Fast track work with clicks to build integrated flows in Slack, your digital HQ. Have them execute complex processes on the Salesforce Platform. Deliver experiences. Drive productivity. Automate processes, build smarter, robust apps, and secure data across the customer lifecycle. Improve efficiency and trim IT spends with the Salesforce Platform. Automate easily. Automate tasks with low-code tools and seamlessly connect your entire organisation. Build apps. Build and test apps easily with the latest tools in change and release management. Scale securely. Safeguard your data and conform to compliances with an enterprise grade security and privacy framework. CLICK TO BUILD Go to market fast with powerful tools to build apps and workflows. Build and deliver intelligent, engaging customer experiences that respond to changing business with clicks not code. Use the power of AI to deliver insights from apps that are connected to your Salesforce data. Drive actions such as intelligent recommendations to enhance growth and productivity with AI-powered automation. What is a Low Code approach? It's a modern approach to building apps and software that necessitates little to no coding. It’s more than a buzzword. It's coding re-imagined. It’s an alternative approach to orthodox software development that is visual. With a low-code development platform, teams can use intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUIs), and use “drag and drop” and “point and click” functionality to customize software. Since one doesn’t need specialised coding skills, business users can utilise drag and drop functionality to assist programmers to create custom apps and workflows for customers, partners and employees. By bringing app development closer to business users, low code plugs the gap between business and IT. Sales, service and marketing teams can play a more involved role in software development. Consequently, IT teams have more bandwidth at hand for more pressing technical tasks. The spread of app development from tech to business can lay the foundation for a digital transformation across the enterprise. SHIP WITH CONFIDENCE Build on a trusted platform with in-built security and performance. Deliver engaging digital experiences with intrinsic security and trust. The Salesforce Platform lets you seamlessly integrate disconnected systems and data siloes with API-driven services and event-based interactions. Deploy apps faster with simplified open technologies on a fully managed scalable platform. Here are the platform services that come with Salesforce Mobile   Make every app mobile friendly.   Blockchain   Build trusted partnerships.   Artificial Intelligence (AI)   Personalise every experience.   Vision   Visualise your business with AI.   Voice   Deliver a conversational experience.   Security   Deliver trust across every touchpoint.   Privacy & Identity   Manage customer and consent.   Community   Bring your customers closer.   Builder   Build and innovate faster than ever.   Flow   Automate every experience. EMPOWER EVERYONE Empower your entire enterprise to respond to change and upgrade skills on the go. Enable teams to create engaging digital experiences in a code-less framework using customisable components and services. Nurture collaboration across any device with a unified model and tools that work better together. And empower team members to upgrade their skills to drive the growth of your business. What exactly is Low Code? It's a modern approach to app development that necessitates little to no coding. Low code is not just buzzword. It's an alternative approach to orthodox app development that is more visual than manual. With a low-code development framework, teams can utilise easy to use graphical user interfaces (GUIs) such as drag and drop functionality to customize apps. Since you don’t need specialised technical or coding knowledge any more, business users easily assist coding teams to create custom apps and workflows for your customers, partners and employees. By bringing app development to business users, the low code approach reduces the gap between IT and business teams. Sales, service, and marketing teams can play a more involved role in app development. This allows IT teams more bandwidth to prioritise pressing technical tasks. The evolution of app development from IT to business can lay the foundation for a digital transformation across the enterprise. TURBO CHARGE SCALE AND INNOVATION WITH HYPER FORCE Grow your business on a trusted, scalable, robust platform. Hyperforce is the next-generation infrastructure architecture of Salesforce. delivers Salesforce products and services reliably and securely on all major public clouds allowing you to augment your customers’ success by rapidly scaling your drag-and-drop driven low code apps to new markets. HYPERCOMPLIANT Store data in one place while staying globally compliant. Enjoy the flexibility of the location of your data to comply with local regulations even in the public sector. HYPERSCALABLE Implement faster with an infrastructure with limitless flexibility. Scale your infrastructure easily. Hyperforce allows resources to be deployed quickly while you have the flexibility of system elasticity. HYPERSECURE Safeguard sensitive data with built-in trust. Hyperforce allows you to prioritise customer data security with the built-in trust that is the cornerstone of the world’s most trusted cloud platform. It works behind the curtain to ensure the security and privacy of your data, so you have the necessary bandwidth to focus on innovation. HYPERCOMPATIBLE Build future-ready apps with backward compatibility. All existing Salesforce apps, customisations, and integrations (whether they are on the cloud or not) will run without disruption on Hyperforce. Summary Salesforce is the world’s leading Enterprise App Development Platform that streamlines your business reach and functionality. You do not need to deal with developers any more to create apps with the Salesforce Platform. With the simplicity of drag-and-drop functionality, just about anyone can build and deploy apps that automate processes that augment the customer experience. And for coders, the Salesforce Platform is language agnostic, which means you can build customs apps using any language. The apps you build can be deployed on any device or on the web, whether simple or complex, and integrate with almost any data source. With Salesforce, you can find new ways to enrich the customer experiences and streamline business processes. Your imagination is perhaps the only thing that may limit you. Girikon is a Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner and can help you start building apps in a code less framework. Girikon is a Certified Salesforce Development Partner and can help you start building apps in a code-less framework. Contact us today learn how you can get started now.

At the peak of COVID-19, merchants were making decisions in haste to provide the products and services that customers needed. Today, when the world is far more at ease, these makeshift solutions are now intensifying as shoppers have a plethora of options driving expectations to an all new high. Additionally, their patience is very limited now. In fact, research data across over 2000 retailers suggests that 80% of shoppers are very likely to abandon them after three bad experiences. Merchants need deeper the insights into customer behaviour to scale up their business. Here are top 4 trends that have been observed across the world on how the retail landscape is changing. Trend 1: Shopping journeys get more complex During the 2 years of COVID, three types of digital channels grew their transaction share by almost 40%: brand websites, retailer websites and apps, and online marketplaces. This of course includes transactions through their apps as well. In the process, associated channels like delivery apps, social media, and messaging platforms have also become prominent players in the digital commerce eco system, with a growth of over 20%. As the range of shopping channels continues to expand, shopping journeys have got more and more complex. The purchasing journey has become fragmented and complex. It is imperative for brands and merchants to develop a one-on-one relationship with customers across platforms namely social media, messaging platforms, and video to stay relevant. Social media, influencers, and messaging apps have become hugely popular today for product discovery. For making a purchase, social media, digital wallets and email are the leading digital destinations. And when buyers need customer support, they mostly turn to chatbots and social media. Trend 2: The store goes digital Although transactions through brick-and-mortar stores decreased significantly during the pandemic, the physical store still plays an important role in the shopping journey. In fact, reports indicate that over 80% of the global merchandise sales happened at physical stores in 2020. The primary reasons shoppers prefer to visit a physical store are firstly, to touch and feel the product, secondly one gets immediate delivery of the merchandise and finally to avoid logistics costs. However, shoppers today are blurring the lines between digital and physical channels while they are in the store. Many shoppers today research about a product on the retailer’s app while still being in the sore before making a purchase. To compliment this trend, brands and retailers are connecting the in-store experience with an increasing number of digital touchpoints. The role of the store associate is growing as well. At the peak of COVID, store associates evolved from the routine scanning and bagging to becoming customer service reps, product recommenders, and brand influencers. And these roles are more than likely to stay, which makes the role of the store associate in the customer journey far more intriguing. Trend 3: The loyalty game has gone a few notches up Loyalty programs are continuously evolving based on shopper expectations. Although a points-based loyalty program is still the most preferred method today, data indicates that younger generations are seeking a more experience-based journey that establishes a deeper connection with the brand. Millennials today value exclusive access to limited products and richer experiences far more than ever when it comes to loyalty programs. Shoppers are also seeking rewards for their transactions. They are willing to take a further step such as downloading an app or writing an online review and sharing personal information like their birthday or phone number for a more personalized experience and loyalty benefits. Trend 4: Brands and Retailers and brands fast track unified shopping experiences Most customers expect brands and retailers to recognise their unique needs and expectations, but only a portion of them have the capability to turn data into personalized offerings in real time across channels and touchpoints. To address this customer expectation, and to address the challenges associated with delivering that expectation, retailers and brands are adopting a threefold approach: HIRING MORE DATA SCIENTISTS Retailers are actively working to hire more data scientists. And this trend is expected to grow further into 2023. This trend that brands and retailers have the opportunity to overhaul their loyalty programs to meet the rising customer expectations and their openness to share personal data. ADOPTING A UNIFIED ENGAGEMENT PLATFORM Many retailers and brands today are already in the planning stage for such a platform, which allows them to access and monetise customer data by engaging with them at a deeper level. UPGRADING POINT-OF-SALE TECHNOLOGY Going forward, the pint of sale (POS) will become a critical part of a unified customer engagement platform. In fact, new retailers are already adopting this approach and are moving to a cloud solution. The in-store digital experience is key for engaging with customers and driving sales. Here are some tips on now to enhance customer experience. Empower associates with the tools that drive sales As we mentioned before, store associates are adopting extended functional roles such as customer service, ecommerce, and social media experts to engage with shoppers. To be able to wear multiple hats successfully, store associates need access to customer data along with user friendly digital tools. This is where a CRM platform like Salesforce comes into play. Associates can access complete customer profile with information on purchase history, buying preferences, demographic data, customer satisfaction score, and more. To get associates up to speed quickly, Salesforce provides digital learning platforms like myTrailhead that bring associates up to speed on how to handle every aspect of digital and physical transactions. Brands and retailers can reskill associates for routine store tasks such as picking, sorting, packing, and shipping to support the fulfilment journey. Store managers can learn to use digital tools to analyze data, access insights and act on them faster than ever. Maintain real time inventory levels The greatest enemy of customer satisfaction is out-of-stock inventory.  Most shoppers are interested in pre-ordering new or out-of-stock items. This is especially true for fast moving items. Stores can manage inventory levels with a flexible and robust order management system. The order management system connects data across your warehouses and stores to give associates the most accurate status of current inventory. That translates to happy customers. Offer multiple digital payment options Customers need more payment options, period. Having just a credit card machine won’t do. In the era of digital, stores need payment types that are minimally invasive and streamline checkout for customers. Level up store fulfilment During the peak of the pandemic, there was a scramble to buy online or pick up in store. In fact, some retailers even turned some of their stores to micro-fulfilment centers. Make sure to: Clearly communicate important details to customers, such as where to pick up their items from and when. Clearly communicate to customers what identification they need to provide to pick up their orders  Establish a seamless connect with customer service channels so that shoppers can easily chat with an agent to resolve any issues Offer personalized product recommendations to customers based on their purchase Augment customer service across channels with a personal touch Customers love the physical experience, personal touch and immediacy that is intrinsic to in-store shopping. It will be wise extend that experience to your customer service channels. And one of the best ways to achieve this is to train associates by having them help out customer service agents during peak season. Another important consideration is to encourage self-service for customers. Keep your help centre up to date for customers to find their way around. Integrate workflows that guide customers through tasks like how to initiate a return to a nearby store. Use AI-powered chatbots to scale support during sales or holiday seasons. Lastly, adopt asynchronous modes of communication like messaging apps. They keep the conversation going and provide a history of past interactions. Train associates and empower them to resolve customer issues over digital channels and incorporate customer feedback to evolve the experience. Develop a loyal customer base, especially in the era of vibrant social media. Girikon is a Gold Certified Salesforce Consultant and can help you set up a strategy to connect with your customers like never before. Questions? We’ll guide you to the right path CONTACT AN EXPERT

There is a general consensus in higher education that institutions of nearly all types and sizes need to improve persistence and completion rates. While there have been slight improvements in recent years, data indicates that only half of the students complete degrees at the institution at which they start. Studies have suggested that many students complete their degrees at other institutions, taking completion to about 62%. Student departure remains a mystery for most educational leaders. They feel a compelling need to understand and fix the causes of attrition. There is no shortage of knowledge or reference on what works in student retention. Given all that, it is surprising that rates have only gradually improved. This could be for two reasons. First, institutions are flooded with data points and may not be able to identify the ones that must be tracked or which ones help would explain the persistence patterns of their students. Second, we may lack the connections between institutional supports and students who need them to see if we are truly doing something about it. Organize the Data Points with a Model Student success models can be helpful for educational leaders who wish to identify the key aspects associated with student success, persistence and completion. While there are many models to choose from, one of the most talked about is Tinto’s “Theory of Student Departure”. The model helps track the student lifecycle and identifies areas where both student and college attributes can impact the decision to stay in or leave an educational program. Tinto’s model, when analysed and condensed, suggests that there are five key areas where students may encounter challenges that disrupt their educational careers. Likewise, they may identify areas where students may have strengths that boost their success: Academic Integration Academic Integration in a college can be segmented into three parts: preparation, transition, and performance. These three can be connected sequentially, meaning lack of preparation can lead to a poor transition and weak ongoing performance, or they can occur in isolation, disconnected from one another. Experienced faculty and advisors probably know several cases where poorly prepared students were highly successful, well-prepared students failed, and those from both groups realized a trajectory in line with their levels of preparation. Social Integration Social Integration addresses the extent to which the student is able to connect with peers within the educational ecosystem. Adult learners often bond with other adults through common programs. The extent to which students have successfully bonded with their peers can be hard to read; it is not usually a one-size-fits-all model of social integration and student information systems are not typically built to collect and report the data that may be associated with this important area of student success. This aspect may also be useful when working on student faculty engagement.  This form of social integration in which students feel heard, seen and accepted by faculty is important especially for under-represented groups to feel a sense of belonging at their institution. Financial Support Financial Support is critical to enable a student to be able to afford education at that institution.. For those who complete annual aid applications, the resulting calculations serve as a proxy for the ability to pay. The data collected for this purpose does not include factors that can help a student afford costs such as support from family or those that can hamper affordability such as need of a student to work to support a elderly dependent household. We often have a different perception of need-based aid than how students view the issue: the amount of the education bill, less the aid is the amount to be paid or financed. More often than not, it is this bottomline number that impacts students’ real or perceived ability to remain in an educational program. It can also impact the value perception of the educational experience. Is this experience worth it’s price? Goal Clarity Goal Clarity indicates the degree to which a student recognises why they are enrolled in certain college, and the end goal of the program being pursued. Certain institutions might assume that a chosen program or subject translates to goal clarity but data often shows that students change subjects two to three times before getting a degree. A few of the factors that can determine whether a student may have clarity about program they have chosen are its requirements, their personal ability to meet required standards and their practical experience in that field. Faculty and advisors will spot a common situation of students feeling lost when they are unable to pursue a popular program. Support of Family and Friends One of the least investigated areas for measuring student persistence is the support of family. As the number of college students grows, the perception of the college experience amongst their friends and families may differ than those who come from families where college attendance is common. However, that does not mean all families don’t support of first-generation students across the board. In fact, many families place high value on college education. Having said that, there may not be an obvious relation between the program curriculum and career, time spent away from class, student services, and the potential of associated programs for providing key career skills. Create a Framework of Indicators for Lagging Using these five aspects of higher education as a model, it is possible to establish a data framework that measures what we know about students and their probability to continue and succeed. Lagging indicators are most commonly available data points that reflect things that have already occurred. These include grade point average (GPA), which don’t reveal student successes and struggles with certain concepts and skills. They also include the marks of courses finished in a term, unpaid fees that disallow registration for another term, abandonment of courses midway etc. While these data may support analysis of past activities, rarely do they provide understanding of current students. For insight that is “current”, institutions need data indicators that reveal outcomes in real time. Lagging indicator data is important. It allows the institution to conduct detailed, multi- parameter analysis to reveal student groups that may enter into high-risk situations. It may also aid in identifying remedies and support structures to support future students who may have the same characteristics. Too often, these analyses are univariate, such as GPA and one-year retention rate. Even while doing multivariate analyses, the data silos and not sufficient to form regression models with retention values high enough to explicitly establish the differences between students who continue and those who don’t. Human behaviour is complex and is driven by many factors. Consequently, analysis needs to be detailed and based on comprehensive data to allow analysts to investigate multiple factors to understand the patterns of their students. Leading indicators allow institutions to impact persistence in real time. Awareness of a student not connecting with faculty as expected, assignments, fellow students, lets the institution to intervene and attempt to resolve the issue before the student feels isolated to a degree that compels him/her to leave. Identifying students who have pending program fees within the term, which usually happens because loans applied on parent creditworthiness, have not been approved, allows the institution to intervene and find a solution. The institution can support in bridging the gap and mitigate the stress felt by the student before it becomes overwhelming. These are but a few examples of how leading indicators can be used to impact student persistence. Identify and Address Gaps There is typically more data available on lagging indicators than leading indicators, which implies that we have been more attuned to collecting and using data that reflect information on something that already occurred. It must be re-iterated that lagging indicators are help in analysing patterns and suggest interventions for future students. There is far less data available and used as leading indicators, however, and this implies an emerging area of practice that demands more attention. Analyses need to have robust and comprehensive data, yet those tend to exist in various systems/data silos. Institutions that have data warehouses are one step ahead; identifying the important data and extracting them from those systems may still be a challenge, even with solutions in place. Many other institutions that lack these data tools find themselves wishing for better insights and tools to help them collect, assemble and analyze their data. Certain areas suggest polls or surveys. While there are a number of solutions available today, these can also have limitations. One of these is the timing of offering a survey to new or current students, when receive the data back and place those into the hands of those who need it (especially advisors). Some of these instruments allow comparisons of student responses at your institution to others, which can be helpful, but that may be outweighed by the timing, where these data then become lagging, not leading, indicators. Short polls, such as those that ask students to rate how they are doing that day with facial emojis, may capture those who are feeling overwhelmed. Longer polls, that tease out the nuances of family and friend support, shouldn’t exceed 10 questions and five would likely increase response rates. Survey overload can be avoided by good planning and timely distribution of short polls and surveys. Connect the Dots (and the Data) Collecting, assembling, analyzing and acting upon a robust dataset is an evolutionary process. Institutions should start with what they have and gradually augment and enhance their data and its usage as part of a quality development process. Knowing what the desired state looks like is important to creating a strong road map toward it. Assembling a robust set of lagging indicators means getting data from multiple systems, modules and tables in to a unified dataset. Once aggregated, data analysis and visualization should reveal the interaction of the data categories within the framework. Human behavior is often complex and more often than not the decision to stay or leave a program is a mix of multiple factors originating from various parts of that experience. And there may be outside factors as well such as childcare, work pressure etc. External factors may be harder to capture through these data collection mechanisms and may not reveal the true picture. A proper assessment of the internal factors within the control of the institution will augment the analysis and sidestep simplistic, one dimensional solutions about why students are staying/leaving. Assembling and using a robust set of leading indicators is often a tremendous challenge at the most forward-thinking institutions. Is anyone following up to check if any student needs help on unpaid balances? Does the financial aid office, who may be equipped to discuss solutions, even know that this has occurred? Is financial stress causing the student to look for additional outside work, such that they have less time to read and complete assignments? Is the early alert system complicated to use by faculty?  Do residence hall advisors have a similar alerting mechanism for issues they might spot? Who is following up on these and what data do they have that will help them facilitate an empathetic and inform conversation with the student before they make a decision to leave? Adopting a case management methodology to understand student persistence and success has been used by institutions in first-year programs. Some of the more remarkable results have linked students to institutional resources, as well as community services and supports, in a “wrap-around” approach to student success. These approaches can only work when cases are surfaced and those empowered to act have sufficient information to meaningfully interact with the student. It requires that the information from disparate systems is brought together. Improving student outcomes also requires that the care teams and staff can see the relationship between suggesting services and resources and the student’s engagement or lack thereof. Higher education. student support has been based upon a “build it and they will come” approach, as well as an invitational approach to student referrals. Become a part of the Innovation eco-system Girikon is a certified Salesforce Consulting Partner with extensive Salesforce Consulting experience. Get access to experts who can help you adapt fast and achieve success. Contact us today. Questions? Our reps have answers. CONTACT OUR SALESFORCE CONSULTANTS