Why You Need Ongoing Salesforce Support

In a large organization, a Salesforce Administrator is a must-have role and often there is more than one person performing this role, depending on the complexity and the number of users to be supported. In smaller organizations it can be challenging to justify a full-time Salesforce Administrator position. Some organizations opt for a part-time role filled internally by someone with an interest in Salesforce or with the time to learn the role. This can be an expensive experiment when the other duties they perform take priority and now they don’t have time for ongoing Salesforce support. They also may not have the qualifications and experience required to fully utilize the Salesforce platform. A managed service provider offers a professional, qualified Salesforce Administrator services on-demand. This Salesforce support can be contracted for a minimum number of hours per week/month and allows the flexibility to extend the support contract during busy periods or for specific projects.

The role of a Salesforce admin has expanded significantly over the past couple of years as more features can be automated and many complex Apps can be built without writing a single line of code. Comparing the Salesforce Administrator to more traditional IT roles, the Administrator can cover a broad mix of roles including help desk, business analysis, software development, training, and trouble shooting. Having a Salesforce-certified, experienced, and available on-demand admin can provide a great value for your organization.

Getting the best from Salesforce

No two businesses operate the same way, each has their own specialties and business processes that differentiate them from their competition. While they may follow a similar sales approval process, the number of steps in the sales process may vary, sales territories will be different and reporting requirements will need customization for each business. Being able to leverage a managed service provider, provides your organization with access to this level of experience as and when you need it.

Out of the box, Salesforce offers many tools and configuration options to customize the product to meet the unique features of your business. The default configuration settings will probably not suit your business and need some customization. Knowing how and which of the many options to configure takes time to learn and experience to implement.

Finding that killer App from the Salesforce AppExchange that meets a business requirement without spending a fortune on customized software development, can not only save your business money but can reduce the time to realize that value from months to hours. Salesforce consultants from KeyNode Solutions have many favorite AppExchange apps and continually review and test new apps.

Meeting changing business requirements

Change in business is inevitable, whether the driver comes from a competitor, partner, legislation, new technology, changes in strategic direction or simply a better way to do things. How your business responds and adapts to this change and how long the change takes to implement can be the difference between an opportunity and a threat to your business.

An experienced Salesforce consultant tackles these changes daily and draws on their training and experience to select the right tools, apps and techniques to solve these challenges.

Keeping up with new Salesforce releases

Three times per year, Salesforce releases new versions of their products. These releases introduce new features, change the way the products work and occasionally retire old features. Keeping up with these changes, analyzing the impact on your business, and taking advantage of new features takes time and experience. Salesforce administrators know how to find these gems in the 450+ pages of release notes and have the experience and knowledge to configure and test these new features well before the release date. This prevents any surprises on the release weekend and positions your business to take advantage of new features immediately.

The danger of not keeping up with new releases and new features is that if your company is not innovating and evolving with these changes, you can be sure some of your competitors will be!

Taking advantage of the Salesforce ecosystem

Salesforce is no longer just a CRM product, it is an entire platform upon which you can manage your business. There are many “clouds” available that integrate to cover all aspects of your business. The Sales Cloud and Service Cloud are the most well-known products but the Salesforce platform also includes the Marketing Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Community Cloud, Financial Services Cloud, Health Cloud, and the IoT Cloud (Internet of Things). Having the experience of working with many customers across a diverse range of industries is vital for a Salesforce consultant to be able to identify the most suitable products.

Connecting with the Community

The Salesforce community is a friendly, well supported and well-connected community of users, partners and software developers that work together to support each other. If you are looking for a New York Salesforce Partner or Boston Salesforce Consultant, there are numerous organizations available to help you. There are numerous online forums and a world-wide network of user groups that meet regularly to share their wealth of knowledge and experience. Salesforce uses the Hawaiian term “Ohana” (meaning family) to describe the helpful, caring and inclusive nature of this community. Salesforce consultants from KeyNode Solutions are an active part of this community and share the insights gained with their customers.

Continuous improvement

Implementing Salesforce is not a one-off exercise that you simply set up and forget. Without continually improving your system, the data starts to get outdated and unreliable, users start to take short cuts, your return on investment starts to decline and the confidence in the data contained in the system starts to be questioned by decision makers.

Involving your managed service provider in business planning processes and meeting regularly with key stakeholders helps to identify these pain points and provides the business with a vehicle to drive continuous improvement. Salesforce support professionals can draw from their experience with other organizations and bring a fresh perspective to problem solving. Our extensive experience shows that there are not many new business problems, just variations on many of the same themes.

Managing the day to day challenges

Helping a senior executive to write a complex sales report, importing new leads from a promotional activity, troubleshooting an approval process or automation, performing backups and analyzing error, login and change logs are all regular tasks that a typical Admin deals with on a daily basis.

Need a help with Salesforce administrator tasks and projects? Talk to Us!

Drop us a line at hello@keynodesolutions.com or call us at (858) 215-5371. We’ll be delighted to help you re-envisage your success with Salesforce Lightning.