Salesforce Certified Sales Cloud Consultant – Implementation Strategies

1. Best Salesforce Implementation Practices

Goals of your salesforce CRM is very important as it will help you get the most from your investment, and it’s very important to roll out functionality early and start with small goals that track against your overall vision. Now, some organisations might use Salesforce simply for tracking opportunities, while others might have a more complex sales methodology implemented in their organisation that uses leads extensively and then opportunities and cases as well. So once you know what exactly is required without wasting much time on other features, you can then concentrate on your realistic goals and achieve them very easily. Then, understanding the Salesforce data or the data that needs to be migrated is something that is not given much importance in many organizations.

And if your data is not cleaned and contains many clusters of garbage data, then it will become a very hectic activity for all the teams involved to first of all clean the data and then make sure that the data is formatted in a way that is acceptable in Salesforce, making it in a format that is used while uploading the data in Salesforce. So, by taking time to understand your data during the planning stage, you can help define critical questions such as, “Are we tracking the crucial data?” And what else should we be tracking? So make sure that data cleaning and understanding are given a very high priority. Now you should decide what implementation approach, as a consultant, you should follow to deliver a project. Now, there are mostly two types of implementation approaches that are used: waterfall and scrum. Now, Scrum is mostly used by all organisations as it helps to constantly build and deliver small units of functionality and then revisit and refine them with each cycle. So, whenever possible, I’ll recommend that you use the Scrum methodology, as it will help you get the results quickly and efficiently.

Then after that, you need to build a project timeline. You need to set aside a timeline and a deadline for each of the activities and for your overall project as well. So to meet all your timelines, the best approach is to consider what tasks can be done in parallel, such as cleaning, mapping, and loading data. Having a realistic project timeline is very important, as most projects are drawn out and delayed due to unrealistic timeline goals. Then you have started the implementation of Salesforce. You define the security settings for your users to ensure that all users, regardless of role, have access to the data and objects. Then you customise your Salesforce application to create custom fields, page layouts, objects, and tabs, all of which are places where users can create and manage data. And then finally, you can create reports for your users to help them analyses and see the data.

2. Planning Phase

So, let’s go over the various stages of a salesforce project implementation in greater detail. So the first step is the planning phase, which is perhaps the most crucial of all, and having a solid and good plan before the start of the project will help you deliver the project in a very smooth and efficient manner. So let’s talk about some of the activities that usually take place in the planning phase. So first of all, the kickoff meeting with the consulting teams So the kickoff meeting is basically done between the implementation team and the customer team so that they can meet, set correct expectations, and discuss the way forward for this project.

Then one of the most important activities is to check for the resources that you have for the project and determine their roles. And clearly identifying and defining their roles is very important so that each resource can be given a specific task that needs to be completed within the timeline of the project. So other common activities also include the client team kick off. So it’s an introduction to the consulting team, and it’s primarily used to align on the project’s purpose and scope to ensure the customer’s alignment with the consulting team. And also, there are some components of the project plan as well that you need to define in the planning phase, such as what is the purpose of this project, what you are trying to achieve with this project, and what business value it is about to deliver to your client. Now let’s see what some of the components of the project plan are. The first is the purpose. Now this is where, in the documentation you provide, you explain what the purpose of this project is and what you are trying to achieve on this project.

So the scope of the project should be clearly defined, and basically, it’s the major deliverables of the project. Then the product breakdown structure is also important, and the quality specifications should also be included in this section, which basically describes the product performance criteria from a customer’s perspective. Also, any assumptions about the project that should be included are also included in this scope as well. Then we have the budget or cost estimate. Now that a clear cost estimation has been provided by the consultant, it tells the organisation how much it’s going to cost to implement the salesforce project. Then we have the CR plan. Cr is the change request plan that is implemented after the project has gone live. How do you plan to manage the CRS that’s going to come from the client for minor to major changes? So you need to have a clear-cut plan to be given to the client to manage all of these CRS in the future. Then the training plan Now a training plan is something that is very crucial, as giving training to the users before the project goes live is very important because if your users don’t know how to use Salesforce, then they won’t be able to use it.

So make sure that a proper training plan has been prepared to determine how many users will be included in the plan, who will be conducting the meetings, and what will be the duration of this training? Then we have the risks. Are there any risks that come with this project in terms of implementation, timing, or cost? Then we have the milestones and deliverables. Milestones are basically the timeline that you provide to the client for various major activities in your implementation. Phases and deliverables are all the components that you will provide for the services that you will provide to your client and should be written in such a way that the client understands exactly what product you are giving to the client after all this time. Then, once all of this is done, a proper approval has been given by the consultant on the planning phase, which basically makes sure that the client is on board with this planning of the project.

3. Requirement Gathering Phase

Now, gathering the client’s requirements and their expectations is obviously the most important part of your salesforce implementation, as without knowing what the client wants, you won’t be able to even start the project.

So there are various activities that you can do to gather the client’s requirements, such as understanding their current business processes, for example, which current tool they are using as their CRM, what their current business processes are like, and how Salesforce can help them achieve these processes in a much faster way. So gathering an understanding of their ASI process is very crucial, followed by gathering requirements by hosting workshops with stakeholders. Now, planning meetings with your clients’ stakeholders to gather their requirements and expectations will always help you gather much-needed insight into their business processes and their expectations from the salesforce, as well as requirements on the processes within their organization. Hierarchy reports are highly used. What are the validations that need to be put into Salesforce, and what are the business rules and automations that will be very useful for your client?

This is very important information for any consultant to have. Some of the things that you can do to establish all of this are to establish your project’s small goals. Divide your project into small goals and try to achieve each of them within a particular timeline. Then document every requirement, elicitation, activity, and whatever meeting you have with the client, always making sure that you have a written record of what was discussed and what the action plan is for these requirements. And being transparent will help you and your client to have proper communication and clear expectations from both sides in terms of the project deliverables. Do not make any assumptions on any level, as making assumptions might hurt you in the later part of the project. Whenever you are in doubt, simply ask your client about it. Focus on the main business requirements of the client and what it is that they most want to improve with their sales force, and then priorities your tasks accordingly.

4. Design Phase

Now comes the design phase. Now this is where you need to design your sales force in a way that meets the expectations of the client. This is the phase where you define what objects will be in use for the client, what will be the relationship between the objects, what fields will be added, what validations, what workflows, and basically design your whole salesforce system while reviewing the high-level design of the object. Tomes and the application that you implement are also completed during this phase. In the design phase, a proper work plan is then redefined as per your designing efforts.

This design document is also developed by the project manager, keeping in mind the resources that he or she has in hand and the time they have to complete this project on time. Then we have the system design section here. The system characteristics are defined, and the data storage and accesses are also defined, which is basically the security part of salesforce. Then the user interface is designed, and the business rules and the application logic are also designed, which basically are your workflow, your automations, and your validations. Then the technical design will include any customization that requires Apex code development, and the project manager is responsible and accountable for the successful execution of the design phase, just as he is responsible for the successful completion of the whole project and is responsible for leading the team to accomplish all the activities that are included in the project.

5. Build Phase

And now comes the building phase. Now this is the phase where you actually create and modify your sales force. So the activities in the build phase include system construction. That means creating new objects, new applications, and, if required, new fields in your salesforce.org. Then testing and integrating the units into larger components is necessary, as this includes creating a relationship between objects and making sure that all the objects and all the functionalities work harmoniously in sync with each other. Then creating a technical environment for the system is where you start with the development phase of your salesforce.

If any Apex code is needed, then you can simply create a sandbox and write your Apex code, and then deploy it to production. Then we have approval to progress to the validation phase. Now this is where you will see the approval from the client to validate the system that you have constructed so far and to check if all of this is in accordance with the project. Then we have application, configuration, and customization, and this is done in the sandbox, as you can then redefine and define more customizations, objects, and automations if needed in the sandbox and then migrate them to production. Then we have the data migration, which is very obvious: from a legacy system, you take out the data, clean it, convert it to Salesforce formats, and then upload it to Salesforce.org. Then we have unit testing, where you basically test each individual component, object, and piece of code to make sure that they work without any errors.

6. Testing Phase

Now, the next step is the testing phase, where the salesforce team first tests the systems that they have created and then asks the client to test the system as well. Just to get assurance and set the right expectations for the client, and to ensure that everything is in order and according to the client’s specifications. So some of the activities are the UAT and Sid testing. So user acceptance testing is where the client users get to test the system that has been created so far by the salesforce team, and system integration testing is the system integration testing.

Testing has been done by taking into account the whole system and checking that all the components are working with each other in sync and checking the performance of the salesforce and whether end-to-end requirements are being met or not. The salesforce team placed a small amount of data in the system and allowed users to test it, as well as create their own data in the salesforce sandbox to better test the system. The users then validate the configurations and various automations placed in Salesforce, which basically checks if your code is working correctly or not. Then, after all the testing is done, the Salesforce team will ask for the sign-off of the project from the client and go live with the project.

7. Deployment Phase

Then the final stage of the project lifecycle is the deploying phase, which involves moving all the configurations and custom code that you have created in your sandbox or testing environment of Salesforce to the production environment, including all the data, all the code, and all the business processes. Then, once the project has been deployed, the project manager requires a project sign-off from the customer, which is a formal way of saying that the project has been completed.

And gathering project feedback via a customer satisfaction survey, or CSAT, will help your organisations determine if the project met the client’s expectations or not. Then conducting and scheduling training sessions for the end customers can be done if more training is required by the users, and knowledge can be transferred to the support team. Now, once the project has been implemented by the project manager, if the client chooses to get support, the project manager simply transfers all the knowledge to the support team for implementation of any CRS or basic knowledge. and business processes of the organisations in Salesforce, which will then help the support team in the future to understand the business processes in Salesforce so that they can work accordingly on future CRSs or change requests.