The current economic conditions have forced companies to rethink their business practices. Large organizations are running towards adopting cloud technologies to keep their business afloat. Salesforce thereby, has been a prominent choice for organizations, especially for CRM implementations. But as a company, you may not be aware that 19-60% of CRM implementations fail.
Like any project, each business presents unique challenges and variables, but there are certain common shortcomings that get highlighted post-implementation of a CRM. It is advisable to know these pitfalls before you start-off with shifting to a cloud architecture.
1. People are skeptical to enter data
Initially, Salesforce was designed for better goal tracking by management. For you team of sales rep however, this may translate into additional or unnecessary data entries. The key question to ask yourself would be, how do I get every member of the team to use this platform? The current situation provides an opportunity to implement change. But organizations are complicated, therefore, make sure you have a comprehensive onboarding plan that looks into employee willingness, fields validation, customization for each team or department and other factors.
2. Communication gap and short-sighted approach
Without fail, this pandemic has reminded us that everyone is susceptible by change. Whether its downsizing, remote collaboration, re-aligning sales territories, or just taking a new approach to find leads.
This is the main reason to have quality communication from start to end of your implementation plan. And one of the best ways to attain that is to create a cross-department team. For example, if a particular team processes leads using a simple process like A - B – Converted, and another team uses A – C – Converted instead, this can be easily avoided. Additionally, you may want to change the entire process in the future, for which agile communication processes should be implemented. This provides you the flexibility you need to adopt change.
3. Future ready
Business processes don’t often require change, but there is always a slight chance. With Salesforce, you can configure changes easily by using clicks as often as possible while relying on code only when needed. The advantage of this are two-fold, first you can easily reconfigure when required and second, it’s a lot cheaper. This allows your sales process as well as other processes to undergo constant innovation.
4. Know what you’re getting into
Unlike ERP systems, Salesforce currently does not have the capabilities to handle documentations like SAP or any other. Anything that needs to be built on Salesforce needs to be bought, configured and automated to perfection. And that’s why companies like Winobell are available to help with building and integrating with your current systems. For this, Salesforce’s flexibility, its greatest strength goes a long way in helping factor in the cots of implementation, maintenance and optimization.
5. All at once approach
The waterfall method in software development refers to implementing everything you think you will need, built from scratch and deployed at once. A simpler and economic approach would be to look at your core features needed to keep your business running, and build for these features first.
By adding a new feature when required, you allow your team to get the basics and you can prioritize the next implementation strategy. Studies show close to 50% of the CRM features are actually utilized to its potential. By taking this approach, you save on time and resources in the long run.
As you can see, these pitfalls are easily avoidable, especially if you have the right consultants working with you who have expertise in Salesforce implementation. If you are looking to create a smart post implementation strategy, Winobell will be happy to answer your questions over a free consultation call.
Please reach out to us at support@winobell.com