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  A summary of Unified Higher Education Marketing Higher Education marketing and communications takes place in a landscape where approximately 75% of campus staff associated with marketing and communications do not report centrally, but typically through a reporting head such as a college dean or department leader. Consequently, this can lead to cascading operational inefficiencies, brand misperception, and an incoherent experience for students, faculty, staff, and supporters. While colleges and universities can adopt several different marketing and communications strategies for various campus functions, one of the critical ones is to unify and centralize specific aspects of marketing and communications. Unfortunately, this approach comes with its inherent challenges and necessitates a high degree of collaboration. Some of those challenges include: Resistance to change: The common perception that the current state is adequate as is, can stall a more unified way of working. Siloed nature of departments: A legacy culture of decentralization makes collaboration and unification more difficult. Shadow technology: Marketing technology tools and solutions implemented without guidance from marketing or IT. Discounting central marketing and communications: When the central department isn’t viewed as a key partner in marketing and communications, departments depend on outside agencies. Moving too quickly: Trying to get too many departments aligned at once can complicate things rather than simplifying. The Benefits of Unified Marketing and Communications There are several benefits associated with a unified approach to higher education marketing and communications that go beyond just a connected experience for students, faculty and staff. These include some key operational efficiencies that save time, augment knowledge and absorption, and distributed costs among departments. As budgets change, marketing teams should be able to show the evident benefits of alignment. Shared Cost: Most colleges and universities have marketing and communications teams working with different technologies. This leads to cost redundancies that aren’t always apparent. Shared Knowledge: When using many different technologies, there are limitations in combining and understanding knowledge to drive innovation. Shared Data: Data is critical to understanding how institutions are engaging with stakeholders in a manner that makes sense for them. Shared Messaging: This constitutes messaging with an appropriate level of personalization. 5 Strategies for Higher Education Marketing and Communications The following five strategies should be embraced to achieve operational efficiencies across campus. 1. Consistent Messaging, Voice, and Tone A central messaging platform is vital. While centralised messaging, voice, and tone is important, it needs to be relevant for various departments across campus, for it to be widely adopted. For messages to resonate amongst the audience, it is essential to understand the overlap of audiences. Media: Media rules of engagement should be established clearly, to ensure consistent messaging across print, social media, web, and email. Brand: Most colleges and universities don’t have the bandwidth to support multiple brands.  It is important to adopt a “branded house” strategy and foster sharing of resources. 2. Segment Constituents Since the pandemic hit us, audience segmentation has been a key topic of discussion for higher education marketers and communicators. However, limited access to all data, especially constituent metadata such as descriptive information, makes audience segmentation and targeted personalization of messaging a challenge. Consequently, engagement is at times carried out using batch wise email blasts. The key points to consider are where the data is, its accessibility, can the preferred marketing and communications platform use it, and can it be segmented prior to launching outbound campaigns. Metadata for Constituents: Full name Address Major Last event attended When they last donated Expected graduation  date Research they engage with Forms submitted across the college/university 3. Support Services It is essential for marketers and communicators to be viewed as a strategic partner and not an someone who are meant to take orders for the rest of campus. Unfortunately, establishing this alignment doesn’t happen organically. It needs complete and mature support services that bring staff together from discrete departments. To begin with, best practises should be documented and made accessible online easily. Also, it must include ongoing training so that departments and staff can fully absorb the brand message, voice, tone. And understand how technology can help them to deliver it to the right audience. Higher Education Institutions that have successfully achieved alignment conduct monthly or quarterly meetings amongst all their campus partners where they share experiences and deliberate on ways to further engagement. Suggested Support Services Include: Brand Assets Library: Includes fonts and typesetting, color palette, graphic elements, email guidelines and templates, social media guidelines, and web standards. Training: Includes onboarding and regular training. Training methodology should balance courses for beginners and advanced ones, to keep all partners engaged. Campus Community: Regular meeting for the central department to share strategy with partners and encourage partners to share their perspectives. Governance Model: Establish the rules of engagement that partners need to follow. In an ideal scenario, the central department for marketing and communications is the owner. Center of Excellence (COE): This is a must when you are managing a central technology platform. It allows campus partners to ask questions and receive guidance and support. Innovation Workshops: Campus partners can learn about new features and functionality about the technology being used and understand how they will be used going forward. Best Practices Sharing: Regular feedback sessions to establish what’s working and what’s not. This opens up opportunities for partners to learn from each other’s mistakes and/or successes. 4. Have a Full Stack MarTech A unified, aligned higher education marketing and communications team is one that drives engagement with the right audience with a robust central MarTech strategy. Higher Educational institutions deploy a huge amount of marketing and communications messaging across multiple digital channels, such as email, SMS, web, ads and social media. While it is important to have a rich set of features and functionality for creating and launching campaigns across channels, the ability to have actionable data and deliver personalization is what is most important. This is where a best-in-class CRM platform for higher education becomes critical to aggregate constituent information, and use that information to segment audiences and deliver a personalized and relevant engagement. 5. Plan Big, Start Small Once you’ve identified your brand messaging platform, and established campus-wide technology, along with complete support systems, the next step is to get campus buy-in to set your plans in motion. Most colleges and universities however, operate on a decentralized model. Unless there’s a clear directive from the top leadership, bringing other departments along would require a consensus. If working with your central team is challenging, other departments may not see the value in aligning with them. Big changes don’t happen overnight, so start with small steps, one at a time. Identify and start with partners that are open to innovation. Do a test pilot, and fine-tune a unified approach. The learnings acquired from early partnerships are key since they form the blueprint that other constituents can follow. Steps To Get Started Identify a large, strategic partner who you think is key to success. Get them on board in the planning phase itself. Onboard one or two smaller departments with whom you have a good rapport. These departments should be aware of the value of alignment and are willing to innovate and learn with you. Keep the rest of the campus apprised of these partnerships. Some may be skeptical, but once they see value in what you have undertaken, they will get on board. Unified higher education marketing and communications can be quite a challenge. It requires a significant amount of effort to ensure alignment across many different departments, but it’s totally worth the effort. Higher Education institutions that follow these marketing and communications strategies can attain higher operational efficiency, a better understanding of the campus-wide marketing technology landscape, and higher engagement from their constituents. Behind every great strategy is a partner that you can trust. You need a certified expert. Learn more about how you can partner with Girikon, a Certified Salesforce Partner, to support your institution’s marketing and communications teams.

At Dreamforce 2022, Salesforce and WhatsApp announced a game changing strategic partnership that would allow Salesforce customers to connect with their customers seamlessly and empower them to deliver new messaging experiences on WhatsApp. With 2 billion users, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app on the planet. And Salesforce is the world’s No 1 CRM platform. And when these two come together, the benefits of both will be amplified. WhatsApp integration with Salesforce boosts customer satisfaction and increases your brand loyalty. The Salesforce-WhatsApp integration is a solution from Salesforce that lays emphasis on delivering an integrated, connected omnichannel experience to its users. WhatsApp business messaging from Salesforce will bring Salesforce’s best-in-class CRM capabilities to deliver convenient, fresh, and personalized experiences to customers worldwide. This seamless integration will transform how brands engage with their customers across marketing, sales, and service interactions. The new integration will empower businesses to customize their experience effortlessly and connect with their customers in a fast, engaging and personal way to promote and sell products and provide support. This would in turn improve brand engagement and loyalty, improve convenience, boost interaction, and augment customer service.   How WhatsApp with Salesforce boosts customer engagement, loyalty and revenue Salesforce’s key Cloud offerings namely Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud and Service Cloud apps will integrate with WhatsApp to drive promotional and customer service messaging, and sometime soon into the future, integrate conversation based transactional commerce capabilities. This will allow businesses to transform their relationships with their customers across millions of conversations by personalizing the messaging experience for every customer, at scale. This will allow Salesforce customers to engage audiences on WhatsApp, fast track sales, and drive a far more effective and efficient customer service experience. Features of this integration include: Create an end-to-end customer journey: Using Journey Builder and WhatsApp, Salesforce customers can create, exchange, and manage interactions with customers throughout their journey to deliver a seamless customer experience. For instance, customers may receive a reminder message on WhatsApp about an upcoming order delivery in the coming week. As an upsell promo, the message could include a discount coupon of 25% for a related product. The user could then confirm in a single click if they wish to add this new product to their next order. Personalize every interaction with the Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform (CDP): With Marketing Cloud Customer Data Platform, Salesforce customers will be able to personalize real time marketing interactions on WhatsApp with first-party customer data. Salesforce based Whatsapp messaging will leverage AI driven insights from across Salesforce and other sources to personalize customer engagement with smart promotions, and recommendations, across every interaction, at scale. Brands can also easily activate audiences directly through the Marketing Cloud CDP, to target high-value segments or new audiences with Click-to-WhatsApp ads on social media to drive customers to a one-to-one messaging experience. Enhance selling and service conversations with automation and AI: With the partnership between Salesforce and WhatsApp, businesses can significantly reduce support wait times and improve overall efficiency with automated personal interactions through messaging on WhatsApp. Salesforce customers using tools like automation and AI-powered chatbots have seen a significant increase in customer satisfaction, agent productivity, customer retention, and case resolution. Enrich customer conversations: Salesforce customers will be able to use customizable templates for messages that include brand media such as product videos and images, or display products and services with interactive textual content that allow consumers to view and buy products through WhatsApp. Customizable buttons allow users to take action with a single tap. Default Privacy and security: Privacy and security is at the heart of WhatsApp. Every WhatsApp message sent between businesses and their customers is protected by the best in class Signal encryption protocol that secures messages before they leave your device How to connect WhatsApp to Salesforce Before your customers can send you messages from WhatsApp, and you can reply from the Salesforce console, you need to have a Salesforce account and a verified Facebook Business Manager account. Along with that, there are some other requirements that you need to fulfill: Have Salesforce Classic or Lightning Experience. Have a Digital Engagement license Have a Service Cloud license Have a Chat user license. Have an approved WhatsApp Business account. To set up your WhatsApp account on Facebook Business Manager, send an email to WhatsAppEnablement@salesforce.com with the subject “WhatsApp Number Setup.” Include the information listed below in the body of your email: Salesforce Org ID. Facebook Business Manager ID. The name associated with your Facebook Business Manager ID. The WhatsApp number The Name and email address associated with the number The company name you want to display on WhatsApp Company description, logo, and website URL (optional) Going to your WhatsApp channel in Lightning Experience Go to Lightning Experience settings. Write “Messaging” in the search bar and select “Messaging Settings.” Go to “Channels,”  and you should automatically see WhatsApp. Automating Customer support with Einstein Bots With this new partnership between Salesforce and WhatsApp, WhatsApp will have access to Einstein Bots. Business teams can program or automate messages on WhatsApp just like on Facebook Messenger or with standard SMS messages.  Einstein Bots is an AI tool from Salesforce designed to create bots to assist customer service teams to manage customer queries and issues. Einstein bots allow you to answer questions on routine cases, while freeing up agents o that they can work on more complex customer issues. In Salesforce, you will need to install your company’s WhatsApp within Einstein Bots. Once you complete that setup, go to the main Bot Builder page and complete the following steps: In the Channel Menu click on “Add” Select WhatsApp in the channel options In the Deployment field select the channel name This functionality will make automating specific answers very straightforward to try to help customers before they even speak to an agent. Customers can make queries over WhatsApp while receiving automated responses in real-time, all leading to significant time saved for the customer support staff. Today customers spend more time than ever on their devices, and they want to interact with brands on the world’s most popular messaging app. Most self-employed professionals are already doing that. And it’s a matter of time before medium-sized and large corporations follow suit. Now brands and enterprises can communicate with their customers over WhatsApp with the following benefits: Implement in real-time. Implement in an organized way. Get access to official support from WhatsApp. Get real time AI driven performance analytics. Get the entire history of customer interactions. Easily map contact center agent traceability. Drive case resolution efficiency and boost productivity. Significantly improve SLAs Automate responses, alerts, and notifications with Einstein Bots. This partnership between Salesforce and WhatsApp is transforming how businesses and brands communicate with their customers to enhance the customer experience through personalization delivering a seamless experience privately and securely. Girikon is a Gold Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner and can help you transform your sales, marketing and customer service activities by integrating the World’s No1 CRM platform with the world’s most powerful messaging platform. Contact us to day to know more.

What is a subscription-based business model? Subscription business models are those where customers pay recurringly for continuous access to a product or service. Subscription business models can accelerate growth by virtue of creating recurring revenue. This means as a business owner you get revenue again and again over predictable intervals such as monthly or annually as and when your customers renew their subscriptions. What are the benefits of subscription-based business models? Subscription business models protect you during circumstances created by economic uncertainties. They create a stream of predictable revenue from a stable base of returning customers allowing you to plan for longer into the future. Here is some further detailing of the benefits. Fast Tracked revenue. As your business attracts more customers, recurring revenue from subscriptions grow exponentially. It’s always more convenient to manage existing customer than to attract and retain new ones. Subscription results in better retention drives revenue growth more efficiently and easily. Predictable revenue. You don’t need to plan quarter to quarter. Businesses who offer subscriptions, more often than not, start each quarter with a predictable expected revenue closer to the preceding quarter and then build on top of that. Business agility. Once you establish long-term relationships with your customers, you get access to valuable continuous data that will help you to get a better understanding of your customers, and consequently empower you to server them better as you go. Armed with aggregated customer data of their past interactions with you, you can learn about them faster and respond with new appropriate offerings. And the more this happens, the more efficient and unique your offerings will become. What are the different kinds of subscription business models? There are several kinds of subscription business models, but essentially, they all mean the same thing which is, you charge for access to products instead of charging for the products themselves. Here’s a look at three of the most popular ones: Subscription model: Revenue is set for each subscription cycle which could be weekly, monthly or annual. The charges payable are predetermined and based on a fixed date cycle. For example: a fixed monthly subscription fee for a music or video service. Consumption model: In this case, revenue is variable. The amount that is chargeable and when it is due is based on usage. For example, a cab service. Hybrid model: In this model, customers are offered a mix of subscription and usage. In this case revenue has both fixed as well as variable components. For example: over usage data fees on your internet usage on top of a fixed monthly service fee for a fixed data usage cap. How can I implement a subscription-based model for my business? To implement a subscription model, you need to adopt tools and processes that allow you to create a consistent buying journey, while knowing that customers move through different channels and make modifications to their subscriptions with each of them over time. Once you create a consistent journey, track new metrics to ensure you are on the right path. Here’s how you can get there: 1. Empower customers to subscribe and pay over any channel With a subscription-based revenue model, you are constantly interacting with your customers, and they are not always available for a conversation. And in today’s pandemic reality, they increasingly want to engage on their own term. In fact, recent research suggests that they now prefer digital self-service and remote customer service rather than face-to-face interactions. Businesses need to make it possible for customers to renew and/or upgrade their subscriptions and pay instantly on the channels of their choice. This could translate to having a website or a mobile app, to enable that service. It’s a known fact in today’s digital business context, customers don’t just want to choose digital channels for interaction. They want to be able to cross them.   As a business, you want to know how you can deliver a seamless and consistent journey across channels. For instance, a customer might initiate a purchase on your online store, but then being routed to a sales rep when they stall or hesitate at checkout. A good subscription management mechanism can help. It combines customer relationship management tools, and along with the power of self-service, provides access to the same data to all teams. Once they have that, they can pick up customer conversations from where they left off. As a business, you want every touchpoint with the customer to be amazing. And in order to deliver an exceptional journey, you need to integrate all customer data for a compete view of your customer. Subscription management provides a mechanism way to connect customer data that delivers a seamless journey and provides a great customer experience at every touchpoint. 2. Deliver value to customers Subscriptions don’t mean much if they are delivering value to your customers at every step. You’re consistently asking them to renew and pay for their subscriptions. IF there is no value in the offering, customer won’t renew their subscriptions. Consequently, they’ll fall through the cracks and your growth will hit a roadblock. There needs to be a paradigm shift in your thinking from delivering products to delivering value. How can you consistently deliver value-as-a-service to your customers? For instance, Spotify doesn’t sell music. They offer entertainment-as-a-service. Likewise, an e-retailer doesn’t just deliver great products. They deliver an exceptional buying and customer service experience-as-a-service. Value is unlocked as customer’s access and use the product. This brings customer service teams into focus, who will need to ensure sure adoption and customer satisfaction is high to the point of being delightful. A customer relationship management system that provides complete visibility of data and a certain level of automation is vital. Visibility helps you keep an eye on and act on adoption and usage patterns. And you can jump is to support and assist a customer to fix an issue early before it becomes a nuisance. For instance, with automation you can make it easy and fast for customers to start using new products or services they’ve purchased. 3. Understand recurring revenue with new metrics Customer acquisition is a thing of the past. It doesn’t hold the key anymore. Customer value, which leads to customer retention, which eventually drives recurring revenue, are the key metrics now. How will you improve customer retention without measuring it? Let us first look at customer value metrics. You can measure customer value by tracking exactly how much your customers are using your subscription offering. One of the key metrics is to track is average revenue per user, which is as simple as it sounds. Gross revenue divided by number of users. As your business evolves, with more processes and automation in place, you will become more and more effective at targeting customers with the appropriate offerings, all while retaining them and getting them to renew their subscriptions. And once that happens you will see an improvement in the average revenue per customer. To measure growth in top-line revenue, you need to monitor monthly and annual recurring revenue. These are significant since increasing them translates to your revenue streams becoming more and more predictable and that allows you to plan ahead. Ready to open new paths to revenue growth? A subscription-based business model is today’s new reality of a digital-first approach for business. However, it can only succeed if its authentic. Customers are smart. And you can’t fake value to them.  They will renew only when they get real, consistent value for their money. It’s both a challenge and an opportunity to get close to your customers, not just know them better but understand them better, and offer what they want in the way they want it. Girikon is a Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner and can help you to re-imagine your offerings and envision a whole new customer journey. Contact us today to learn how a subscription-based revenue model can deliver value to your customers and drive revenue and agility for your business.

Salesforce Energy and Utilities Cloud gives energy and Utilities providers a digital interaction platform to personalize customer engagements. Utilities can meet new customer expectations by delivering great experiences like easily guiding customers through enrolment, transfer and activation of services through a self-service website. And using out of the box drag and drop tools, to configure complex processes. With data integration with existing back-end CIS and MDM systems, to ensure a streamlines service experience. A utility has a comprehensive profile view of each customer to deliver a highly personalized and predictive experience. Like sharing special offers for programs or new rates for products. Digital tools are available to tailor customer experiences and help customers make informed decisions. With chatbots for the first level of customer support, accessible at anytime from anywhere. So service agents can pick up the case for the right level of assistance when needed. Agents have a thorough view of each customer account and can navigate between multiple residential or commercial accounts. With all the information they need like full chronological history, account and billing information, usage and more. And all data can be consolidated from back end systems so agents always have access to a single source of truth. Agents can also see into process and actions initiated on other channels and can use that information to better serve customers from finalizing a purchase to liaise scheduling field service appointments. Utilities now have insight through interactive dash board to real time data to keep customers at the core of their business. And can provide developers a library with hundreds of pre built business processes and integrations to accelerate time to value and digital transformation. Chart a new course for the future of energy by streamlining your business! Meet the needs of all energy eco-system stakeholders -customers, suppliers, partners and employees with a platform that fosters agile innovation across your entire business lifecycle. Adapt and cater to rising customer expectations. Adopt a digital first approach and scale fast with easy integration with your existing systems. Deliver customer first service to your customer community. Streamline your Oil and Gas business and prepare for the future of energy. Connect stakeholders and assets across the service journey and collaborate in real-time. Drive on field decision-making with on-th-go access to vital data and information. ENERGY AND UTILITIES CLOUD Drive customer service and engagement on a single, connected flexible and scalable platform. Be the trendsetter, transition to energy & utilities cloud in Salesforce with centralized customer data, and on-time, personalized, pro-active service from anywhere, from any device. Energy and Utilities Cloud delivers a scalable, digital and secure energy solution that adapts and scales for future energy needs. Get access to a process repository of more than 100 preconfigured and extendable best practices Easily connect to back office utility Billing and Customer Information Systems (CIS) with easy, drag and drop integrations Utilise a data model with access to more than 350 extended objects specifically designed for the utility industry With Energy and Utilities Cloud, you can take advantage of purpose-built innovations designed for an dynamic and evolving energy landscape. Transform agents into advisors and deliver a whole new way of customer engagement. Empower service agents with the resources they need – tools, analytics, and AI based insights, to deliver personalized customer service anytime, anywhere, from any device. Deliver personalized customer service on a digital-first platform. Support the entire spectrum of customers, ranging from residential customers to large commercial customers. Get a single, scalable and secure solution that delivers connected journeys and promotes self-service. Turn customer freedom into a competitive advantage. Offer quotes and tariffs faster than ever, by quickly processing current market pricing and customer information with a 360-view of the customer and data-driven tools. Improve acquisition and trim churn. Easily generate complex, multi-locational and multi-product quotes to acquire customers faster. Retain customers longer with personalized offerings. POWER AND UTILITIES Adapt and thrive in a dynamically evolving Power & Utilities industry. Easily navigate the intricate utility landscape with seamless and powerful digital transformation. Revolutionise the Utility customer experience. Embrace digitalization and drive into future of energy transformation with a customer first approach. Make advisors out of agents by giving them the tools that deliver a customer-360 view. Encourage self-service and engage customers across the journey with AI, and offer multi-channel personalized service Deliver next generation service operations and customer experience by going beyond the contact center. Service customer needs faster in the Retail sector. Deliver a more connected experience for customers by bringing existing systems on a single platform. Deliver quotes and tariffs faster than competitors with data-driven tools and easily navigate multi-locational, multi-account structures. Evolve offerings, accelerate customer acquisition, and improve customer retention by designing competitive products and services with just a few clicks. Boost customer experience with personalised engagements and streamlined field service operations. Become the trendsetter in sustainability. Get ahead of your competition with innovative digital transformation that drives your business during the energy transition. Drive energy efficiency program adoption and help customers reach their energy goals. Educate customers and partner with them to adopt sustainable offerings and services that foster new revenue streams Go beyond commoditization and stay current with new offerings OIL AND GAS Connect stakeholders and assets across every touchpoint throughout the Oil & Gas value chain. Optimize your organization for the new era of energy transformation. Drive digital optimization across the upstream ecosystem. Optimise communication and engagement with stakeholders across the value chain. Seamlessly connect landowners, suppliers, customers, shareholders, and the relevant compliance organizations. Augment staff safety with tools that empower you to attract, retain, upgrade, and engage the dynamic workforce. Reduce costs with analytics and AI to drive smarter connections across the energy lifecycle. Boost on-site efficiency and safety. Optimise commercial processes and deliver better service Empower teams with digital tools that drive safety Streamline operations and optimise asset digitization Transform downstream enterprises. Increase customer retention with a platform that drives personalization and growth Optimise stakeholder relationships across all distribution channels Lower maintenance costs, boost plant efficiency and reduce less downtimes Remodel and enhance oilfield equipment and services. Personalize contracts, quotes and bids and win high-margin deals Operationalize existing investments in IoT with analytics and AI to drive business intelligence and reduce costs Deliver value to customers with simplicity and transparency by investing in digital transformation strategies. Develop and execute an actionable sustainability strategy. Scale Social, Environmental, and Governance excellence to boost stakeholder engagement Fast track progress towards achieving your sustainability goals with optimized greenhouse gas emission tracking and accounting across all your assets and locations. Get ready for a sustainable future with a unified agile platform that allows you to pivot quickly, fast track business models, and adapts to new processes, workflows and integrations. Common questions that we get asked often. Here are the answers. Who can use Energy & Utilities Cloud? Energy & Utilities Cloud is for any energy and utilities provider who wish to revolutionise the customer experience and connect the customer journey across every touchpoint. Irrespective of what type of business model you have, whether a regulated energy company or a retail energy provider, Energy & Utilities Cloud can help you deliver connected engaging, personalized digital-first experiences across the customer lifecycle. How do I use Energy & Utilities Cloud with my current Customer Information and billing systems? Energy & Utilities Cloud is not a replacement for billing or CIS systems.  However, you can easily integrate your existing utility enterprise systems with Energy & Utilities Cloud using out-of-the-box integration solutions driven by utility-specific data models and a repository of pre-built processes to fast track your digital transformation. How is Energy & Utilities Cloud different from competing products? Energy & Utilities Cloud is founded on the design methodology that built the world’s #1 CRM platform. It has been developed specifically for the energy industry.  Now you get faster time to value with data models, custom industry specific apps, and out-of-the-box integrations. Build on the experience of our industry leaders for click based implementation and guidance throughout your digital transformation journey. How so other Salesforce products work with Energy & Utilities Cloud? Energy & Utilities Cloud plugs in easily with Marketing Cloud Experience Cloud, Service Cloud, and more. Now you can innovate faster than ever, with the full power of the Native Salesforce Customer 360 platform. Girikon is a Gold Certified Salesforce Implementation Partner that can help you deliver an engaging digital transformation journey to your customers. Contact us today! Questions? Our reps have answers. CONTACT AN EXPERT

Pharmaceutical innovation from Health Cloud allows pharmaceutical companies to deliver personalised engagement and support experiences to patients and reduce operational costs while assisting patients navigate through their health journey. Health Cloud connects all patient centric data on a single platform and provides intelligent recommendations to enhance support programs to help you achieve targeted results for patients. Patients can be enrolled directly by a call center agent or by using forms on the patient portal. With Health Cloud, patient liaisons can see details about the program, such as products, services and overall goals. Once patients are enrolled, they can log in to view and authorise any necessary consent forms right from their mobile app. Patient liaisons can also interact directly with patients from a single console and offer services like adherence reminders, copay programs, benefits investigation or in home support. With Health Cloud, patients are kept informed and are supported throughout their entire journey with automated text messages and emails on progress updates. Patients and liaisons can access important resources through secure portals and mobile apps. Access to Therapy A new diagnosis often leaves patients overwhelmed. Patients want to have answers to questions like -How do I get started on treatment? Is the treatment affordable? How does the pandemic affect my access to therapy? Who do I approach for guidance? Onboard quickly, engage, and scale. Getting patients on therapy fast is critical to establishing engagement. That’s where a smooth and convenient onboarding process comes in. Guided enrollment allows service teams to provide critical resources, including insurance verification and copay coordination effortlessly. It is equally critical to create an easy-to-use patient portal for maintaining a 24/7 contact with patients. This allows engagement on any device so patients can get what they need — from relevant educational material to adherence reminders. With the Connect the Patient Experience solution from Health Cloud, you can scale patient service programs and reduce costs. Financial Support Many patients are anxious about the affordability of their therapy. The affordability concern ma also arise midway through the treatment. Withour proper guidance and help, they are at risk of abandoning treatment prematurely. Educate, support, and coordinate. With Health Cloud, pharmaceutical patient support teams can access funding sources for those in need quickly. The Connect the Patient Experience solution enables that by providing a 360-degree view of patients along with financial assistance options for specific therapies. It also suggests key information that can be shared with patients to help reinforce the benefits of staying on course of treatment, even in tough times. This allows patients to maintain the care they deserve for as long as is necessary. Therapy Adherence In today’s pandemic reality, it has become more difficult than ever for patients to adhere to their treatment plans, often a challenge task in normal times. The time is now right for organizations to partner with patients so that they can get the best possible outcomes. Analyze, identify, and check in. Analytics are key to revealing insights that can empower pharmaceutical companies to identify patients who are struggling to stay on the therapeutic course. Predictive insights can help reveal patients who are at risk of deviating from the prescribed path or simply stop treatment. With Connect the Patient Experience solution from health Cloud, pharmaceutical companies can receive proactive AI-driven recommendations for next best actions, like reminders or creating learning journeys. This will enable organizations to help patients course correct by providing highly personalized and compliant experiences. How can Pharma Companies Drive Engagement from Diagnosis through Adherence with Health Cloud? In today’s pandemic context, pharmaceutical innovators are moving faster than ever to engage patients with personalized insights and recommendations. Their goal is to get to the best possible outcome by making it easier to start and stay on course of  treatments, no matter what the situation is. Here’s how pharmaceutical companies can create a patient-centric experience that reduces operational costs, is compliant, and scales by therapeutic scope. Accelerate R&D Innovation Transform therapy development with a 360-degree view of trials. Reduce time to market by integrating teams and systems on a unified, secure platform and access real-time data on any device. Boost patient recruitment and retention with personalized communication. The Salesforce accelerate R&D Innovation solution from Health Cloud lets life science companies connect with trials teams to finding new ways to innovate faster. Lightning allows easy configuration of the apps you need, enabling teams to collaborate during every phase of clinical development such as study design, study start up, site selection and execution. Teams have easy access to study documents and can share with staff and investigators and then store their findings on the Salesforce platform using partner apps from the AppExchange or third-party apps pulled from API libraries in integration cloud. Clinical research associates and other field personnel can stay connected 24/7 across any device. Analytics show each team member a complete view of all their activities and they can view real time status updates on study start up and subject enrolment to get data insights and determine next best actions. Clinical data is pulled into Health Cloud and shown in a streamlined patient management console letting you manage patient trials while collaborating across the trial teams. This allows subjects to have the necessary support to successfully participate. Salesforce community cloud lets you connect stakeholders to important documents and resources, quickly recruit patients and collaborate with patients and investigators within a secure authenticated portal. Marketing Cloud lets you send personalised email and text messages to keep everyone informed and up to date. Connect Patient Experience Deliver tailored support programs at scale, deliver personalized patient experiences, and track and monitor performance with built-in analytics and AI. The Salesforce Connect the patient experience solution from Health Cloud lets pharmaceutical companies deliver personalised engagement and support programs across a single platform. To reduce operational costs and help patients manage their disease while navigating their healthcare needs.  You can connect all your data on a single platform to drove predictive recommendations and improve support programs to achieve targeted patient outcomes. Deliver programs at scale to drive awareness with patients and physicians using Salesforce Health Cloud and enrol patients directly through a call centre agent or using forms on the patient portal. And Patients can stay informed and supported through their entire journey using automated email and text messages through a secured and authenticated portal directly on their mobile. All while letting pharmaceutical companies have a complete view of their patients on a connected intelligent platform

Deliver rapid business outcomes with purpose-driven commercialization solutions. Transform Virtual Sales Provide a connected selling experience, from planning to support, on a unified platform to fast-track value and drive quicker business results. Take engagement to the next level and close more business with AI-driven actionable insights. The MedTech industry has always been on the cusp of innovative technology for healthcare, with the usage of robotics, nanotech, and AI to build life-saving devices. Today, more than ever, MedTech organizations are under tremendous pressure to discover innovative ways to connect and advise everyone they serve faster and more efficiently – and through multiple channels during the age of COVID-19.The pandemic fortified existing trends, such as the necessity for boost efficiency, bolster device effectiveness, and deliver a higher ROI. MedTech companies are now facing new demands to work with healthcare organizations in a hybrid environment. Medtech companies are also embracing innovative patient engagement models to support healthcare providers, both during, and post treatment. They need to be flexible to meet the dynamic and rapidly changing needs and expectations. And most of all, they also require a holistic view of data, facilitate collaboration across teams, and the requisite digital tools. That’s where an all integrated CRM platform like Salesforce comes into play. More than forecasting and managing customer contacts, Salesforce securely connects data from disconnected systems and delivers a unified experience to providers, patients, and partners on their channel of preference. This enables MedTech businesses to connect teams, integrate different data sources across existing systems, and deliver intelligent insights. Let’s explore how Salesforce helps Medtech companies drive business excellence, streamline innovation, deliver tailored experiences, deliver value, and boost efficiency. Drive business excellence with digital, connected experiences Seles models were adapting to change even prior to the pandemic. The only change now is that pace has accelerated. Consolidation amongst hospitals with adoption of enterprise-wide subscription-based models started to happen. Today, purchase decisions are moving faster now. And safety protocols are resulting is sales teams virtually interacting with decision makers. On top of that, tighter budgets means healthcare providers are now more demanding. They expect the devices they buy to deliver improved patient outcomes at a lower cost. To move forward, it is imperative that medtech businesses have a holistic view of their customers to better understand their needs and consequently provide personalised engagement and service. The Salesforce platform acts as a knowledge-sharing center, enabling sales teams to drive business excellence by taking advantage of a 360-degree customer view while working off the same platform. Streamline your technology Many MedTech organizations depend on multiple technology systems that don’t always work well with each other or deliver an engaging customer experience. Standardization of data from legacy systems on a unified platform helps make information easier to manage. Salesforce solves this problem of dealing with multiple systems and consolidates data by seamlessly integrating data from existing solutions. Salesforce Customer 360 connects all touchpoints of the customer journey.  These include manufacturing, supply chain, marketing, sales, clinical and service. With a unified view of all data, businesses get better visibility and are able to maintain relationships better across the business. Not only that, it also delivers consistent, personalized experiences. A flexible and scalable platform like Salesforce accelerates business excellence, fosters collaboration, and empowers teams. Not only that, you can also build on top of the Salesforce platform with new functionality with new apps, for internal staff, partners or customers. This allows you to: Take advantage out-of-the-box services. Easy to use drag-and-drop functionality enables anyone on your team to develop apps without even writing a single line of code. Drive innovation. Stay focused on high-value projects with available and tools and apps. Drive governance and compliance. Out-of-the-box functionalities like integration and identity services ensure app development follows requisite guidelines. Advise customers with actionable insights Those tiny moments matter the most. That’s when access to accurate information is critical – whether you’re a physician in the middle of a procedure, a staff member who needs to transfer stock, or a patient beginning their treatment journey with a wearable device. With Salesforce, reps can access valuable, actionable data and insights from a single platform to best serve customers in a connected and intelligent manner. That lets MedTech companies act at speed and scale. The starting step to accomplish this is to aggregate data. Salesforce pulls in information from across the ecosystem so that everyone has visibility into: Real-time sales information that delivers production, marketing, and service team needs Research and development processes that impact production, quality assurance, and licensing Patient and clinical staff feedback that boosts evolution of devices and services Integrates Artificial intelligence that delivers critical data analytics and insights. These insights include predicted outcomes, recommended course of action, and automated workflows. From a single console, teams can deliver simpler, smarter and faster interactions. Start selling smarter and drive ROI In the fast-changing Medtech industry, businesses must meet increasing customer expectations for better patient outcomes and improved ROI quickly and efficiently. Digital tools accelerate the sales cycle and deliver critical insights in an agile framework, even while working in virtual or hybrid selling models. Salesforce delivers a 360-degree view of customers and provides teams with deeper insights into customer activity and subsequently drives value. AI-based intelligence predicts sales activity, forecasts growth, and reveals areas of opportunity. When sales teams can personalize interaction and sell proactively, businesses can foster deeper relationships and build customer trust. With Salesforce Customer 360 you can: Get next best actions. Teams can access each customer’s detailed account history for accurate forecasting along with recommended next best actions. AI can prioritize sales activities and spot new opportunities to help close deals faster. Stay close to current and prospective customers. Reps can increase the reach and frequency of selling activities, thereby improving account and territory performance and later assessing effectiveness based on insights from flexible dashboards. Gain real-time insights into market conditions. Reps can compare territory performance with forecast and industry data in a real-time view. Quickly onboard new team members. New reps can train in a centralized location for sales and enablement. Salesforce speeds up the procurement cycle and helps reps stay close to current customers while prospecting new ones. Improve engagement with personalization Medtech businesses were already becoming more involved in the patient journey by providing services that helped patients use devices properly. But in 2020, the ability to engage virtually became even more valuable as HCPs adapted to remote patient monitoring during the pandemic. In addition to telemedicine and hybrid treatment models, digital tools that engage patients before, during, and after care are poised to become the norm. Salesforce enables medtech organizations securely log patient information and facilitate virtual, hybrid, and in-person treatment. For example, patients can request data to stay better informed about their health and actively involved in care decisions. Patients can also access product details on mobile apps and community websites and connect with other patients with similar health conditions. This creates peer to peer personalized experiences at every interaction point. In one example, a remote monitoring sticker helped medical professionals track the symptoms of sick patients recovering at home. With Salesforce, their agents could answer questions about the device from patients who were reaching out to the company directly. The 360-degree view enabled agents to create a case and provide streamlined services. Salesforce Customer 360 captures contact information and communication preferences to keep everyone up to date on new products and solutions. This also allows Medtech businesses to nurture prospective patients by guiding prospects to the right products. What’s next? The pandemic may have changed how Medtech organizations engage with providers and patients, but customer-focus is still at the heart of everything they do. Salesforce Customer 360 is far from your traditional CRM: You can connect teams and integrate data on one flexible, secure platform and deliver a unified experience for providers and patients alike. Salesforce can help you go digital fast, accelerate value, and transform your business. With greater across the value chain, you can manage commercial processes, build provider relationships, and engage with patients in the most intelligent, efficient, and personalized way. This all leads to better outcomes for your business, your customers, and their patients. Get in touch with a Salesforce Implementation Partner today.

Customer relationships are the cornerstone of an organisation's growth, and you need to nurture and manage them efficiently and smartly. Salesforce is the world’s No1 CRM platform for businesses of all sizes. Salesforce provides out-of-the-box solutions that let growing businesses implement cutting-edge technology with minimum effort and connect all of the systems that are important to them. And has been recognised by leading user review organisations and industry analysts and as the market leader in CRM technology, Before we go deeper into what CRM technology can do for you, let us answer the basic question – Does my business need a CRM solution? If any of these is true for you, then the right CRM solution could make your job a whole lot easier. 1.You don’t have a single source of customer information. Does your company have customer and order information in multiple locations? If yes, then that's one glaring reason why you need a CRM. A CRM brings together all of your customer data from sales, marketing, service and support into one place allowing you to access, track, analyse, and act on it straightaway, from anywhere. If you store customer data in spreadsheets, then not just your sales reps but anyone who interacts with your customers is at a disadvantage. When information is modified in one system, other systems do not update automatically. There is no holistic, unified view of all of your customer data such as contact information, purchase info, and communication logs. 2. You have very limited visibility of customer interactions. Do you have a complete, single view of all customer information? If not, then you don’t have insight into what your salespeople and customer support teams are doing. It’s hard to help your sales and service teams be successful and accountable if you’re not sure what they are doing. 3. Reports are tedious and painful. Does your team go through the arduous process of creating reports manually? If that is true, your performance-tracking capabilities are extremely limited. You should be generating reports automatically and view real time analytics of your sales team’s progress versus their targets. 4. You’re losing valuable customer data. IF you are not sure what you’re following up on, it is going to be very hard for you to schedule follow-up interactions with customers and prospects. If your interactions across touchpoints aren’t being tracked, important details get lost through the cracks, especially if a key staff member leaves your organization. 5. It’s challenging to stay in touch on the go. Can you sales reps quickly and easily find the information they need to close a deal when they are in the field? When they are meet prospects and come across valuable information, does the rest of your organization have access to it? Information captured in handwritten notes and on PCs is a potential gold mine.  6. Every customer is treated the same. Are your customers and prospects getting similar types of messages and offers from you? If that is true, you’re missing out on potential opportunities. You want the to be able to target prospects based on their industry, geography, and the value they can bring to your business to make the most of every interaction. 7. Can you scale fast? If you company grows rapidly, can your business processes scale just as quickly as the demand? You cannot afford to let your own processes be the impediment to your success. What can you do with Salesforce? Focus on customer success. Salesforce was founded on one simple principle: to help customers be more successful. This one philosophy has been the driving force behind a culture of constant innovation on the platform. Salesforce has built and fostered an entire ecosystem around customer success and packed it with a vast network of partners and independent software vendors, and a vibrant digital community. Augment your sales, service, and marketing initiatives with solutions tailored specifically for small businesses. Salesforce provides cutting edge tools that help small businesses find and attract new customers, earn their business, and keep them happy for life. Salesforce allows you to easily connect your existing systems so you can build more engaging relationships with your customers and grow your business faster than ever. By virtue of being cloud-based, Salesforce has no upfront costs as compared to on-premise software. It completely eliminates the need for expensive hardware or IT support, so you can get up and running on fast. Maintenance and upgrades happen automatically on the Salesforce platform, and issues are resolved in a matter of minutes, not days or weeks. This translates to far less downtime, and lower maintenance costs, and you can spend more time on what matters most which is growing the business. According to Salesforce, their CRM customers have seen 38% faster decision-making, a 25% jump in revenue, and a 35% increase in customer satisfaction. Adopt the platform that grows with you Small and medium-sized businesses need to be sure that the technology that drives their business will scale with the organisation’s growth. With Salesforce, the possibilities are endless, and you can add functionality with just a few clicks. Why would you not grow your business using a secure, and scalable platform that is surprisingly easy to customize and upgrade without any downtimes? Salesforce is the world’s only true Customer Success Platform. With Salesforce, you can connect every part of your business and get a single, unified, 360 customer view you need to deliver success to your customers, at every stage of your growth journey. Get access to cutting-edge technology and innovation Not only is Salesforce focused on delivering true customer success, but also to re-define the way business is conducted across industries. Salesforce’s superior and secure cloud technology allows it to automatically roll out new features, product upgrades, and path-breaking technology to all users simultaneously, three times every year without any additional costs. With Salesforce your business can grow faster than ever. Here's how CRM technology from Salesforce can empower you to be more connected with your customers, augment business performance, and fast track your company’s growth: 1. Find the right customers. You have spent resources and time on attracting and generating new leads, but now what? Are they getting passed on to your sales team, and if so, are your sales reps aware which are the hottest opportunities? Time is critical for small businesses who want to grow fast. You can make the most of your marketing tools such as email, social media and marketing automation software by connecting them to Salesforce with minimum effort. Give your sales and marketing teams a unified 360 view of leads and prospects, allowing them to create and target effective and engaging campaigns to convert prospects into real customers and facilitate faster decision making. 2. Foster sustainable relationships. Develop a deeper understanding of your customer’s business starting with a holistic view of their engagement history with your organization build a strong and lasting relationship based on trust and mutual success. Salesforce CRM can help you in the following ways: Explore customer challenges: Find out what matters to customers such as business goals, preferences and challenges with every interaction and ensure regular follow-up action. Record notes in Salesforce so that in your next interaction you can start from exactly where you left off after a quick review. Engage with relevancy: Once you understand a business challenges and goals of a customer, you can recommend appropriate products that are relevant to their business interests, at the right time. With Salesforce, you can keep a track of what products or services they have purchased and how they're using them, so you can push the most relevant content and information. Scale your 1-to-1 relationships: As a small business, your customers love you for the personalised experiences you deliver; but as you grow, it becomes more and more challenging to know the details of every activity of every customer. This makes following up with them all the more daunting, especially when to follow up with them when growth kicks in. Salesforce allows you to host a vast template library of email, set up reminders, and enable phone calls from within Salesforce to help you connect with customers easily and quickly. 3. Reduce the cost of sales New customers are a key constituent of continued growth, and they don’t come easily or cheaply. The good news is that with Salesforce CRM, you can offset customer acquisition costs through sales to your existing customer base. Salesforce comes loaded with tools and resources that provide greater visibility into the upsell, cross-sell, and renewal opportunities in your customer portfolio. With Salesforce CRM you will see an increase in repeatable sales because of the trust you’ve already established. Salesforce CRM can help you augment business performance by: Improving sales efficiency: Give precedence to leads and opportunities that are most likely to close based on customer interactions. Improving sales effectiveness: Get visibility on which customers are engaged with you and determine what is the right time to reach out with an optimal response. Increasing upsell and cross-sell opportunities: Get a 360 view of opportunities that are a good fit for deals already in progress. Uncovering referral business: Discover untapped opportunities in existing relationships Reducing time to close: With a 360-degree view of your customer, align your teams on the next steps to close a deal. 4. Increase employee productivity Adopting the right technology frees up your teams from process-heavy tasks and gives them more time to do what matters most – connecting with customers. Manual tasks like searching for contact information or entering data can be automated or even eliminated from customer-centric processes. Automation across sales, service, and marketing will enable your sales reps to spend more time interacting with prospective customers and strengthen relationships with existing ones. Give your teams the tools they need to maintain focus on selling. Salesforce CRM allows you to automate mundane repetitive tasks, so your sales team can sell smarter and faster. 5. Offer better customer service A product is only as good as the service that comes along with it. Don't flood your prospects inbox with multiple marketing promotions that will annoy or scare them away. If you flounder after a sale, you would have wasted the time and effort that went into acquiring a valuable customer. When your teams can get access to a customer’s complete history instantly, everyone can quickly deliver personalised messages and solutions, using the right resources. Smoother interactions help build trust and facilitate repeat business. 6. Improve customer retention 360-degree visibility of all your relationships allows teams to proactively address at-risk accounts and offer new opportunities at just the right time to a satisfied customer. When you have a clear view of customer history, case history, and campaigns, you can deliver more satisfying purchases and service experiences that compel them to keep coming back for more. If you invest your time wisely today, the resulting strong customer relationships will pay rich dividends for years to come. We at Girikon understand that great technology alone is not enough to ensure success. Our Salesforce Consultants will support you throughout your journey of digital transformation to ensure that you become a company that clients love to work with. Questions? Our reps have answers. CONTACT AN EXPERT