SEE HOW CLOUD FOR GOOD CAN HELP YOU CREATE MORE VALUE WITH SALESFORCE.
If you were drawn to this article, you likely have a little bundle of cloud-based joy on the way. Congratulations! After a few months of preparation, you’re going to have a new system in your life that will bring you years of joy (or, at the very least, productivity) for years to come.
But before the big day comes, there are a few things we should talk about.
First, let’s break down that scary little acronym: ERD = Entity Relationship Diagram. Still sound too techy? How about this: An Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)
When you hire a consultant to help you with your Salesforce implementation, you’re hiring them because you have a problem you need help with whether it being moving from another system to Salesforce or working to enhance your existing Salesforce instance. It is important to find a trusted advisor, not an order taker.
Start with a budget! With Salesforce, a lot of functionality is available right “out of the box” for the base price. There are some things, like automation and integration, that potentially add line items (and thus, dollars) to the budget – you’ll need to decide whether you can afford those items up front, or whether you can continue some processes manually while you allocate budget to add those on later. Or, you might prioritize some apps, and decide you don’t really need the others at all.
Identifying learning styles among your users doesn’t need to involve having each user take a quiz or survey. You can likely identify some personality traits or tendencies that indicate one or several learning styles by simply getting to know a person. Making an effort to appeal to different learning styles in your training sessions and training materials could be a game changer for you and your end users.
Tips to help you convince your organization’s management that implementing Salesforce is the right move for your nonprofit. Be prepared by doing your research, citing use cases and presenting findings from other organizations using Salesforce.
You’ve heard of the Salesforce Marketing Cloud, but what is it, and how can it help you? Learn what makes the Marketing Cloud different from other tools, and find out if it might be right for your organization.
When configuring your Salesforce org, it is important to present your data in a manner that makes it easy for your users to access and interpret. If you hide a required field at the bottom of a page layout many of your users are going to become frustrated. I have seen many organizations spend countless hours and much effort configuring page layouts so information is presented in a logical, legible format. But you have to push forward! There are a number of other places where you should spend time configuring Salesforce to improve your users’ experience. Showing key information to your users when and where they need to see it will not only make things easier, but will improve data integrity as you provide the information they need to select the appropriate records.
The NPSP 3.0 is a set of managed packages installed on Salesforce to customize the platform for some common nonprofit use cases. It is the most current version of the Nonprofit Starter Pack, and it has some key improvements and new features compared to the previous version, the NPSP 2.0. A key feature of the NPSP 3.0 is that it automatically receives updates from the Salesforce Foundation, meaning that new functionality is added to your instance without needing to install new packages. Furthermore, the older NPSP packages are no longer supported by the Salesforce Foundation and no longer receive updates. Upgrading to the NPSP 3.0 means your package will remain current and as new features are released to improve the user experience, you will receive them!
There are some key items that need to be discussed during that first phone call to a consulting firm. It is encouraged you to prepare for these prior to that initial call, These key elements will allow a firm to make that first call incredibly productive and will help provide an overview of how efficiently Salesforce can be brought into your organization!
