Salesforce has the lion’s share of the CRM market at 19.8%, assisting thousands of businesses drive sales and improve marketing strategies. A business can further maximize productivity and performance by properly integrating external apps into their Salesforce org. Bringing all the disparate tools, apps, and software that the business uses under one platform makes data access easy, communication collaborative, and workflow automated.
However, integration poses serious challenges, including data loss and major downtime. It’s why the number of businesses struggling with it is massive. This is where Salesforce integrators come in.
Who are Salesforce System Integrators?
Salesforce partners with other companies to help their customers become successful. One type of these consulting partners is called System Integrators or SIs. SIs help you build, configure, or optimize the Salesforce environment, by offering consultative work such as modernizing legacy apps, customizing the CRM, migrating data, etc.
To guarantee that Salesforce is correctly integrated into a business and introduced in the right way to the workforce, integration providers rely on certain hacks. These simple, effective strategies maximize Salesforce ROI and avoid common Salesforce integration mistakes.
Hacks Salesforce Integrators Count on to Accelerate Performance
Investing in Salesforce but failing to integrate it accurately is a zero-sum game. The gain you make on one front is equivalent to the loss on another. To realize the real benefits of the platform, follow these hacks:
1. Go Slow and Communicate the Benefits
Humans are naturally inclined to reject change. With employees that translates into being married to the “old way” of doing things. Even with inefficient processes, they learn to eke out as much productivity as possible. So, when you implement Salesforce, for them, it can spell “unneeded change.”
It requires employees to leave their comfort zone and learn new processes, making them extremely resistant. Their logic is simple – why migrate to the cloud when Excel and email work fine?
The hack here is to make gradual modifications in phases and communicate the essential need for the Salesforce service. Slowly modifying the process makes it easier for employees to accept the integration. Moreover, it provides solid proof of the benefits of adopting Salesforce services.
2. Offer Training, Where Necessary
Salesforce walks the extra mile to be user-friendly, even for beginners. That said, the best Salesforce integrators understand that it’s still a tech tool, and not every employee will be able to use it intuitively.
So, the tactic here is to train the team, where necessary. For instance, the sales team will benefit from knowing how the Sales Cloud works or how to utilize the VoIP system, calendar, and email to optimize the process.
The rule of thumb is to train everyone in Salesforce basics. Then offer tailored training to different employees or teams based on their roles and responsibilities. To quicken the pace of adoption and lessen change-hesitancy, pair employees who are more adept at CRM with those who are not. Peer learning is reciprocal and stickier than employer-employee training because it allows for sharing experiences, tips, and tricks.
3. Tailor the Solution to the Business And Users
Salesforce integrators often customize the platform to fit business requirements, goals, and approaches. The reason is similar to not training the entire workforce in every aspect of Salesforce.
The whole platform comes with a plethora of advanced features, many of which may not suit a business. Implementing all of them has a detrimental effect: it overwhelms people.
Tailoring the platform to the business model not only better fits it, but also motivates team members to adopt it. Another hack to make Salesforce integration more user-friendly is to create separate user profiles that offer each person only those features they require to get the job done. Obviously, integrating any third-party apps the user or team relies on, like Slack, Marketo, WordPress, etc., is a no-brainer.
4. Clear Insights on Data Flow Extent and Frequency
Part of integrating Salesforce means migrating data from an external system into it. This enables workflow automation and allows Salesforce to utilize the data for analytics. Typically, it involves a complex ecosystem of manifold applications and users. Because of this complexity, roadblocks tend to crop up.
The hack Salesforce integrators use here is to factor in how much (extent) data will flow from source to the platform, how often (frequency), and who has access to it. By documenting this information flow prior to migration, data and access to it are always secure.
5. Create a Plan B for Error-Handling
As we emphasized, data transfer is a thorny challenge for Salesforce integrators. There are myriads of risks, not limited to complete data loss, data inconsistency, data redundancy, and insecure connections. Most businesses invariably have a slip-up.
They fail to proactively plan for contingencies that can be executed quickly during integration if an error occurs. The hack SIs rely on to protect both data and privacy during migration and make implementation seamless is developing detailed error or exception handling backup plans.
Do You Need to Partner with Salesforce Integrators?
For those who’ve implemented Salesforce but are not able to realize its fullest value, a consulting partner will prove helpful to a great degree. For a business that is initiating the integration process, there are two choices.
One, it is a standard integration that uses only out-of-the-box Salesforce features and doesn’t necessitate coding to connect all apps and tools. These rarely require Salesforce SI expertise, but can help save time and cost.
Two, you’re an SME that has a modest IT team and can’t afford to divert time or resources to carry out a Salesforce integration internally. Here, just like in large enterprises, an expert integration partner is the appropriate choice to make the transition orderly.
Still, wondering if you should outsource your Salesforce integrations? We speak more about it here.
Final Thoughts
Spending a portion of the capital to implement Salesforce doesn’t automatically translate to better sales and thicker profit margins. Reaping all the benefits of the platform means integrating it with existing systems and streamlining relevant functions, be it marketing, sales, or another.
Salesforce integrators, like us, ensure that both objectives are accomplished. At Cloudiate, a registered Salesforce Implementation Partner, we guarantee that integration is streamlined, enhances the experience, and scales performance. Get started today!