salesforce implementation partners

Companies of all sizes are transforming the way they do business digitally with innovation in technology, in an attempt to engage customers in a new way. Enterprises are adopting a go-digital first approach with best in class out of the box software. Salesforce CRM happens to be one of them. Educating yourself about Salesforce is one thing. Understanding which products, applications best suit your unique business needs is another matter. Which is why almost most Salesforce customers turn to Salesforce experts to seamlessly enter the Salesforce eco-system. These experts are called Salesforce Implementation Partners. Over the last decade, Salesforce has nurtured a vast network of it’s implementation partners across the globe that help businesses achieve their business goals. Here's a look at some of the typical questions early adopters have about working with a Salesforce implementation partner. What is an implementation partner? To put it simply, an implementation partner is an firm that has been vetted and approved by Salesforce to implement their solutions for businesses on their behalf. Every implementation partner specialises in certain areas of technology, industry, or application. Which means, there are Salesforce implementation partners to address every need, business, industry and product. Why engage an implementation partner? Salesforce CRM solutions cover the complete spectrum of business operations. These include but are not limited to sales, marketing, service etc. Each product can be further expanded by third party add-on applications and cross-platform integrations. To put it in a nutshell, the Salesforce ecosystem has endless capabilities. The challenge is of aplenty – to select the right product with the features and functionality that best suit your needs. A larger organization may already work with multiple technology-based solutions because of larger budgets and diversity in lines of business. They may need guidance in understanding how a particular Salesforce product, say, Sales Cloud, can seamlessly integrate with their existing systems without causing any conflict. A smaller company on the other hand may be scaling up rapidly and will quickly realise that continuing to work with spreadsheets will not support their growth objectives. They would soon realize that they would need to automate some of their processes, and/or develop more personalised and engaging customer experiences. Implementing a CRM solution for the first time can feel intimidating. It is almost impossible for your internal teams or staff with no prior experience with Salesforce to consider all the variables involved in an implementation and also be able to implement a new instance of a highly configurable CRM platform. Hiring full-time resources to embark on the implementation process can also prove be an expensive option. These are some of the operational reasons that most of the Salesforce customers depend on Salesforce Implementation experts. Bringing in a partner late in the game may prove to be detrimental to your growth plans. For you to derive maximum benefit of such a powerful and configurable platform requires close collaboration not just internally, but also with your implementation partner.  The best way to do the implementation is when the journey begins together. When is the right time to hire an implementation partner? As early as possible. As is true with any big investment, first you need to do your due diligence. Understand what needs should be met, gaps to close, or issues that need to be addressed. Establish a vision of what you want to achieve with the Salesforce implementation. Next, determine how would you execute your vision with Salesforce, which is where the partner comes in. As soon as you estabish your goals, it’s time to bring in a partner. The right Salesforce implementation partner won’t just expedite the how, but they will also help you to sharpen your vision. They’ll help you get a clearer understanding of success metrics, establish realistic goals, and provide guidance on appropriate products. Finally, they’ll chalk out a sound project timeline for your entire implementation journey. Meet with multiple prospective partners. Assess them on key parameters like industry experience, certified consultants, years in business, reviews, number of successful implementations, their post-implementation training and support strategy. Get a sense of who they are and how they work. This is a crucial relationship for your business, so don’t compromise. How do I know which is the right partner for me? Some Salesforce Implementation Partners have generalised Salesforce capabilities. And some would specialise in particular areas or functions of the Salesforce platform. Some might specialise in Sales Cloud and Financial Services Cloud. Others might have expertise in harnessing the combined powers of Marketing Cloud and Einstein. Here are some pointers to guide you on what to look for in a Salesforce Implementation Partner: Industry expertise Does the Salesforce partner have experience working in the same industry as yours for other customers? Can they offer customer testimonials or case studies from similar projects? Salesforce expertise Does the partner have enough experience with the specific Salesforce solution that you wish to implement? Technical expertise Does the partner have the necessary technical capabilities to implement your Salesforce solution through customization, third party app integration or integration with other business systems within your organization? Proven Methodology Does the partner have a proven process methodology for Salesforce implementation and training? Do they implement using an Agile framework evolving with every iteration using a collaborative approach? Ongoing support What level and type of support are they providing to their existing customers? Do they provide 24/7 support? Pricing and Budgets What is their pricing model? What is the average size of the projects they have executed? Do they fit into your long-term budget? What a Salesforce Implementation Partner Does? Here are some of the things your Salesforce Implementation Partner will do as a part of their overall implementation: Work with you closely to establish your long-term and short-term goals for your implementation Document your existing business practices and make a detailed note of your specific requirements Assess your existing systems and business operations and recommend any changes that may help you to achieve your goals and improve the efficiency of your workflows Work closely with key stakeholders, adopting a collaborative approach to integrate Salesforce with your existing systems Train your teams on the new platform Salesforce implementation partners have extensive experience on the Salesforce platform across industries solving unique challenges in varied business environments. They know what it takes to execute and deliver a successful Salesforce implementation. A qualified partner can help you to avoid common pitfalls and get you up and running quickly. What challenges might I encounter during implementation? Salesforce has been around for decades now and it’s a known fact that bringing in a partner early in the game mitigates may of the implementation risks and challenges that may emerge along the way. What is also important is to be clear on what you want to achieve over time and how you measure success over that journey. Most often, confusion or dissatisfaction arises from a lack of understanding on part of the customer on clear goals and measurable metrics. If both you and your partner are not on the same page, its opens doors for unnecessary assumptions, and confusion and misunderstandings on timelines and system features can arise. This only complicates the process of achieving objectives and reaching success benchmarks that your set out with. Salesforce implementation is an expensive roll out and it’s a two-way street. Both you and your partner need to be transparent and work in close collaboration to make it a success. Never hesitate to ask the same questions. The Salesforce implementation process can be highly technical and it is only natural to seek precise clarification. Just as you place your customers at the center of your business, partners place you at the center of theirs. They measure their success by your satisfaction levels. Customer success translates to partner success. As it true with any successful relationship in life, this implementation partnership too thrives on open, honest communication from day one. Girikon is a Gold Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner that provides expert guidance and support throughout the client’s growth journey. Get in touch with one of our experts today to know more about how we can help you. Questions? Our reps have answers. 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

Salesforce – a cloud-based CRM has a record of being the most widely adopted CRM platform by businesses of different sizes and domains. With its wide array of features and functionalities, Salesforce has helped businesses achieve their business goals. Salesforce has helped businesses supercharge their selling process by augmenting collaboration, creating personalized experiences, and removing data silos. Like any other sector, Salesforce has revolutionized the healthcare sector by ensuring better collaboration among health care teams, augmenting patient-provider relationships, and eventually attaining enhanced health outcomes.    The Salesforce Health Cloud released in 2016 has exhibited several advantages for the healthcare sector. To know more about Salesforce and its benefits, it makes sense to partner with one of the best Salesforce consultants. Let's explore some of them: Get a Complete View of Patients: It is possible to get a clear picture of every individual's profile, including their data (non-clinical and clinical), communications, demographics, and other essential information from claims system, EHR, and more from a central location. Empower Patients: This cloud solution empowers patients and healthcare providers to track the progress of health goals. It is possible to connect in real-time to address patients' queries or family members' queries from a single device.   Provide Quicker Personalized Care: With this cloud solution, it is possible to monitor cases and prioritize tasks based on instant needs and degree of importance. Apart from this, it is possible to section inhabitants in terms of demographics, risk, and other parameters while collaborating across the entire network of care providers while setting reminders for patient follow-up. Enhance EHR: Since it is possible to access the right data at the right time, earning patients' trust becomes easy. Health Cloud enables users to unravel EHR systems and integrate apps securely and flexibly. Why Should Healthcare providers use Salesforce? Connect Disparate Data Sources: Removing data siloes is what Salesforce is known for. An average system uses multiple systems such as EHR, Insurance claims system, billing information, lab reports, etc. This wealth of data is scattered across several systems and therefore isn't very useful. By using APIs, all types of data can be integrated securely with Salesforce. Besides this, tools like Mulesoft Accelerator reduces the burden on IT teams. By efficiently bringing together disparate patient data in a single place, healthcare providers are empowered to make better decisions and spend more time on patient care.  Make Intelligent Use of Data: Salesforce can be leveraged to improve health outcomes by using its analytical capabilities on data. Tools like Tableau, formerly known as Einstein Analytics, provides healthcare providers with actionable insights so that patient need can be proactively fulfilled by anticipating their needs. It is also possible to identify high-risk patients via risk stratification to get enrolled in the right health care management program. In other words, Salesforce empowers healthcare providers to make data-driven decisions, ultimately leading to greater patient-provider satisfaction. Collaboration of Care Team: Salesforce empowers healthcare providers to create a team that would include members of the patient care community, including physicians, household caregivers, or any one part of the healthcare journey. This becomes possible as Salesforce Health cloud develops on the capabilities of the service cloud. Individuals can assign tasks, send messages from any device, or view care management plans based on their team position. In short, it is a win-win situation for patients and providers.  Personalized Experiences: Consumers today expect personalized experiences across their journey with a brand. With Salesforce, it is possible to personalize every step of a customer's healthcare journey. Contact center agents can offer precise and tailor-made answers to patient queries as it is easy to access relevant information from visual care timelines and patient data cards. By consolidating clinical and non-clinical data in a single place, personalized care plans can be created. Besides this, healthcare providers can also address specific requirements of patients even before patients bring them up.  Moreover, based on patient preference, patient communication can be handled through calls, messages, or an online Salesforce portal. The innumerable opportunities of personalization offered by Salesforce can deepen patient-provider relationships, build trust and lead to better health outcomes. Data Security: For healthcare organizations, data security is of utmost significance. Breach in data security will not just put patient safety at stake but can cost millions. Salesforce allows organizations to stay in control of their data by staying HIPAA and HITRUST compliant. Healthcare organizations can ensure that electronically protected health information (ePHI) is encrypted and can be accessed only by authorized users using Health cloud associated with Salesforce Shield. Irrespective of the restricting nature of the regulatory guidelines, Salesforce paves the way for advancement. Healthcare companies can pick from the vast array of the available native Apps present on the App Exchange platform to add functionality to improve processes without compromising on data security.  The Bottom Line: As we step into the New Year while enduring the pandemic, healthcare providers require operating as efficiently while offering first-rated care. Besides ensuring the aforesaid, Salesforce Health Cloud can provide a 360-degree view of a patient, which paves the way for intelligent data usage at every stage of the patient care journey. This empowers healthcare providers to offer services that best meet patient expectations. Healthcare providers should consider contacting certified and experienced Salesforce Implementation partners to implement Salesforce Health Cloud. By creating innovative healthcare solutions, implementation partners will empower organizations to meet the evolving needs of today’s healthcare industry. All the healthcare players such as hospitals, nursing homes, pharmaceuticals etc. can benefit from custom solutions offered by these service providers.

Every customer is unique. And they are demanding too! In general, customers like to know if the experience they are going to have is personalized for them or not. In fact, in a survey conducted by Salesforce across customers, it was found that 86% of them admitted that personalization played a role in their purchasing decisions. But customers aren’t the only ones who prefer customization. Businesses around the world are equally uninterested in consuming products and services that are designed for mass consumption.  They want something that fits seamlessly with their unique processes and is flexible, intuitive, and effective. Salesforce does all this and more. The World’s No1 CRM Platform was designed specifically for configuration and customization. It comes with a plethora of unique features, tools, and resources enabling businesses to create custom apps that are aligned with their business goals and objectives. However, unlocking its true power requires a deep understanding of its customizable nature across different industries. And this is exactly where a competent Salesforce Implementation Partner comes in. With the right Salesforce Consultant and a methodically executed implementation plan, you can send the productivity of your teams into overdrive and unlock the real value of your business. If you can’t trust a CRM platform to meet your unique business needs, then it’s likely you won’t get much use out of it. Salesforce features a totally open eco-system, which means you can extend Salesforce to accomplish any task, with apps for every business need. CRM + UX: The ultimate customer experience Customers aren’t just demanding vanilla products and services anymore; they are seeking an enriching experience. They are demanding convenience and deeper engagement throughout the business lifecycle. With exponential growth in technology-related products, tools, and services, coupled with today’s dynamic and unpredictable context, it is imperative for businesses to live up to these demands and offer their customers the ultimate experience. How your business delivers products and services to your customers is as important as what you deliver.  Salesforce provides you with that elusive combination of power, flexibility, and tools at your fingertips to effortlessly execute code-less customization to suit your needs. So how does one go about customizing Salesforce to align with your business goals? Identify opportunities and bridge gaps An important step before the Salesforce implementation begins is to conduct a thorough assessment of current business processes and identify inadequacies and redundancies. Focus on processes that are a drain on your resources. Identifying gaps and shortcomings early is critical to a successful implementation. This is where the role of a Salesforce Consultant becomes so important. Discuss with your Salesforce Implementation Partner and answer some key questions like -How do you customize Salesforce to enhance adoption? How do you maximize your ROI? How do you reduce the learning curve? Discuss with your Salesforce Implementation Partner to understand which features are most helpful to address these gaps. Add additional functionality into your implementation by using custom codes or extended features, that is more end-user-focused and aligned with your overall goals and objectives. Look beyond standard Salesforce functionality. Customize! It’s a certain way to drive adoption. Businesses must understand that a successful Salesforce implementation is a result of team effort as well as collaboration across departments and stakeholders. The implementation plan needs to be communicated to all concerned teams and all stakeholders need to buy into this new process of doing business. Focus on usability Salesforce has countless features and options, and this can be a deterrent to early adopters. Work with your Salesforce Consultant to configure the software in a way so as to present relevant data and components to optimize your business workflows. Salesforce Lightning (discussed later) can be used for enhancing productivity and drive adoption rates. Automate Automate repetitive tasks. By customizing templates, standardizing workflows, and automating repetitive tasks, you can significantly improve adoption rates. Businesses can now automate faster using something called Flows. You can download configurable prebuilt processes with flow templates and use the flow builder to integrate stand-alone building blocks. Leverage AppExchange Salesforce AppExchange is a great place to find relevant tools and plugins to get you off the blocks quickly. AppExchange is a unified ecosystem that is used for creating and running all of the personalized applications that an organization might need. Whether you are a new user or an existing one, you can discover free, customizable, customer-recommended solutions built by Salesforce developers to help you address common business issues.  Whether it is tracking employee progress, oversight of projects, streamlining repetitive tasks, fast-tracking automation, or kick-starting app building, chances are that you will find a solution to your problem on AppExchange. You can effortlessly customize these tools with an intuitive drag and drop interface and get going. Although it is possible for businesses to build and run their own apps without the Salesforce platform, AppExchange has certain inherent advantages over other potential options: Intuitive interface. You may have a clear understanding of what you want apps to deliver for you. However, on most occasions, knowledge transfer of your goals and vision can create gaps in understanding between your developers and you. Leading to ineffective creation of apps. AppExchange features an intuitive and easy-to-master interface, so that your teams can build and deploy precise apps. This means more effective systems, and as a result, more productivity Short development times. AppExchange provides users with effortless, drag-and-drop elements empowering users to quickly create custom, business-centric apps, potentially in a matter of hours. Multiple development tools. Organizations are no more restricted to a limited choice of development tools. Salesforce brings together three powerful development tools — Force.com, Heroku Enterprise, and Lightning — empowering app developers with the flexibility to choose what they want in order to get the job done. Prebuilt apps. Why re-invent the wheel? It’s likely that what you are seeking to deploy is already there on the AppExchange. You can discover thousands of existing third-party apps in the world’s largest enterprise app marketplace. Customize as you want and deploy in an agile framework. Limitless possibilities. AppExchange is the solution across departmental needs – Marketing, HR, IT, finance, operations, and more. Businesses can build and deploy apps that can scale across a limitless number of devices and users. Scalable Meta Data Driven Platform As your business grows, your CRM needs to adapt right along with it. By using a single code base, Salesforce makes it possible for customers to customize and scale their CRM solutions with tools that work on the meta data layer. Whatever the need, Salesforce provides customizable, configurable solutions, and does so effectively, quickly, and with minimum effort. Conclusion Salesforce is committed to providing businesses of all sizes with the tools they need to empower themselves. Of the many advantages offered by the World’s No 1 CRM platform, perhaps the most valuable are comprehensive solutions, high security standards, customizability, innovation-centric design, and specifically designed apps that allow usability with limitless possibilities. With an ROI on par with the best in the industry, there’s no reason not to give it a try. Looking for Pricing? Contact our reps to discuss your needs today. CONTACT AN EXPERT

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

Compared to yesteryears, customers today are more aware and informed and thus expect a personalized experience besides quality services and products. Since customers are the lifeblood of every business, retaining them, especially the existing ones, is crucial as they spend 31 percent more than the new ones. This calls for a robust customer retention strategy that will not just ensure an increase in revenue but also a decrease in overall cost. It is possible to acquire a higher level of customer retention by implementing a robust CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform like Salesforce.  According to a survey conducted by Salesforce, it has been revealed that acquiring new customers or clients is more expensive than retaining the existing one.     How to Boost Customer Retention Using Salesforce? Tracking Customer Interaction: It is possible to keep track of your customers with Salesforce integration. From where your customers are, when they made the last purchase to what they are looking for on your website, Salesforce helps you know everything about your customers and prospects. This will help you understand customer behavior and preferences while helping you respond to their needs appropriately. Moreover, you will be able to engage with your customers by sending them personalized messages/emails while introducing them to your products and services. Unify the Database of Your Customers: Since Salesforce helps gather, organize, and analyze all your customer data in a single location, which helps in customer retention. Your sales team will access all the data easily while staying informed. With this, data accuracy is increased, and data duplicity is reduced. Moreover, client satisfaction is ensured as transparent communication is ensured between business and customers. By partnering with a Salesforce consulting company, you will be able to make the most of this fantastic platform.  Power of Personalization: For every business, customer data is a mine of gold. By centralizing this wealth of data to be personalized later, it is easy to resonate with your customers. By leveraging Salesforce integration services, you will be empowered to take control of your customer relationship by using tools such as Pardot dynamic content that allows you to personalize emails, subject lines, and more. By personalizing communication, you show your customers that you care for them.   Engaging Inactive Customers: Salesforce enables you to interact with inactive customers by keeping track of their customers by consolidating emails, calls, etc., by checking their purchase history and buying preferences, keeping them engaged via personalized messages, and more. This way, you will save money and acquire new customers. Integration of Customer Service Tool: Several customer service applications such as service cloud, desk.com, etc., offered by Salesforce can be leveraged to eliminate silos ensure collaboration between teams, especially the account management and customer service departments. By leveraging these tools, overall customer experience can be improved. Quick Wrap-up: Businesses should consider harnessing the power of Salesforce to grow their revenue and profit. So, make sure you get in touch with a certified and reputed Salesforce implementation partner to ensure the successful implementation of this platform, which will ultimately help you retain your customers and build a strong relationship with them.

For a business to sustain in this competitive landscape, the sales and marketing teams must align with each other for ensuring better organizational growth in terms of efficiency, productivity and revenue. However, this is difficult said than done as the goals of sales and marketing teams are misaligned, which encourages them to prioritize their own goals over organizational profits. So, how to deal with this situation? The key lies in having a steady flow of qualified leads that the Sales team can close readily, and this can be made possible by having in place a robust lead scoring system for prioritization of leads. What is the Need for Lead Scoring?  Though, the main priority for marketers is to generate constant flow of sales-ready leads, only a small percentage of the leads generated by the marketing team are considered closable. According to statistics gathered from recent industry research, around 40%-50% of all inbound sales leads aren’t followed up by the salespeople. And even if they do so, a lot of time had already passed by for leads to be converted to customers.  Lead scoring, which is a key aspect of lead management helps marketers make the most of all the leads generated. By providing an objective way of sorting through all visitor interactions and ranking them basis their likelihood to buy the company’s products, lead scoring divulges details about the most sales-ready leads besides providing insight about how and which leads should be nurtured. By helping organizations rank their leads basis several behavioral and demographic factors, marketers can determine and focus on the most potential leads.   Evolution of Lead Scoring Tools and Capabilities:  Having information about which leads to follow up and which to ignore can be more of a speculation than science. Lead scoring provides sales and marketing experts a head start on the lead qualification process, which otherwise is time-consuming. Before the recent developments in technology, lead scoring was conducted manually and included making a detailed research on potential customers, recording their details on a database, and finally scoring them.   Today, Marketers have access to tools and capabilities that can help them rank, manage and nurture leads, so that more leads carry a higher probability for positive sales results. Automated capabilities and processes provide powerful ways to handle lead scoring and nurturing to help get the most from every visit to the website.   CRM assisted Lead Scoring:  Since, the task of manual lead scoring was strenuous and time-consuming, CRM (customer relationship management) systems emerged as the savior by automating and simplifying processes. With a robust CRM in place, businesses were able to gather data regarding every single lead and scoring them basis the selected criteria. While integrating a robust CRM system like Salesforce improved the manual way of scoring leads, it still lacked the efficiency required to quickly score leads basis their quality with sales and marketing teams still spending a lot of time gathering details about leads.   This paved way for another innovation i.e. marketing automation. While marketing automation is doing its bit by analyzing and processing a wide variety of data in an automated way, it doesn’t provide the efficacy to differentiate between visitors who are actually interested in making a purchase and those who are simply visiting the site without any intention of making a purchase. This has left space for a new player that offers a solution to all the lead scoring woes i.e. predictive lead scoring using artificial intelligence.   Predictive Lead Scoring:  A Game Changer  Powered by Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, predictive lead scoring allows businesses to determine the criteria for defining a strong lead, creating models for lead scoring based on the specific needs of your company while adapting themselves in a changing market. The Einstein AI capability of Salesforce provides lead scoring an altogether new approach by streamlining a variety of tasks associated with it. Right from automatically collecting and analyzing CRM data for determining strong leads, creating finely tuned lead scoring models to gathering account insights, using Salesforce Einstein AI for lead scoring will augment the efficiency of sales and marketing teams by saving their time significantly. However, you must get in touch with a reliable Salesforce consulting company for any assistance regarding lead scoring including the creation of appropriate lead scoring formulae.   The Bottom line:  The value of figuring out sales-ready leads is inestimable. However, it isn’t easy to manually analyze humongous data to determine closable leads. A robust lead scoring system will help organizations to align their marketing and sales team while ensure better utilization of resources, improve rate of conversion, and condense sales cycle, which will ultimately translates to increased revenue. This will allow sales and marketing teams to close deals quickly while forge a strong relationship with their customers. As a cloud-powered CRM, Salesforce has become preferred choice of businesses due to the wide array of features, functionalities and components offered by the platform. To make the most of this platform, it’s important to partner with a reliable and experienced Salesforce implementation partner.