How To Budget And Plan For The Best Salesforce Implementation Partners Hiring?
One of the primary benefits of Salesforce cloud CRM is the unmatched functionalities, flexibility and scalability. Operational costs of using Salesforce mostly vary with team size, except a fraction as fixed components. However, unnecessary system complexities, too many third-party integrations and add-ons can escalate costs quickly. Attribute goes to half-baked CRM implementation. Are you experiencing costs overrun and hurdles in user adoption? The problem could be the lack of meticulous budgeting and planning during the implementation stage. This article discusses CRM implementation as a process and how the best Salesforce implementation partners ensure meticulous budgeting and planning.
What is Salesforce implementation?
Salesforce implementation is the process of configuration, customization and setting up the cloud CRM, and integration the same with different enterprise processes related to customer experience delivery. Training and change management are also an integral part of implementation. So, our actions in the implementation stage decides the success of a company’s CRM.
Example:
Let us understand Salesforce implementation through an example of a multispecialty hospital (name withheld). Different departments collected patient data in their individual spreadsheets and shared them with each other over the local area network.
The challenges it faced before having a centralized CRM system were:
- Fragmented data
- Manual appointment processing
- Conflicting schedules
- Long wait time for appointment booking
- Lack of standardized patient engagement
- Poor compliance with healthcare industry regulations
- Delay in insurance processing
The hospital consulted with a certified agency that has the best Salesforce implementation partners. After several rounds of focused discussions and interviews with CRM stakeholders in the hospital, the agency came up with a solution that addressed all the challenges within the hospital’s CRM budget. The agency customized Health Cloud with Service and Marketing Cloud platforms within Salesforce. Tested the entire solution in an actual environment before going live. Along with it, the Salesforce implementation partners also took care of training and user support through the process. The customized Salesforce solution for the hospital included:
- Health Cloud – For 360-degree patient views, care coordination, and patient engagement.
- Service Cloud – For automated appointment booking, scheduling, patient case management and giving call center agents real-time access to patient information.
- Marketing Cloud – For personalization of promotional and patient education campaigns.
The customized CRM solution and implementation would have differed for healthcare networks with different challenges and scope of work.
What are the pieces of information critical for effective and efficient implementation?
Irrespective of industry and scale, effective and efficient Salesforce implementation depends on a critical understanding of the following factors in any company.
Defining the business objectives and measurable outcomes
This involves setting goals for CRM implementation. These goals must be relevant to the company’s business, measurable, achievable, and time-bound. For example, in the previously mentioned hospital, a CRM goal can be reducing the OPD patient wait time by a specific percentage instead of reducing the patient churn by a specific percentage point.
Assessing integration requirements with existing IT infrastructure
A clear understanding of the types of system integration needed plays a crucial role in containing the implementation and operational costs within the CRM budget. The higher the complexities in integration, the greater the costs. Integrating Salesforce CRM with multiple third-party systems requires complex customizations and developer involvement. Besides, complexities in integration also necessitate data migration. This plays a major role in escalating Salesforce CRM operational costs.
Defining the user requirements
A company with too many cross-functional teams, hierarchies, access control and user-specific customizations may end up incurring more costs on CRM implementation and operations than one with more simplified user structure. So, as part of planning for CRM implementation, it becomes essential to understand the user requirements and organizational hierarchy.
Determining the needs of data migration
Complexities in data migration are often the root causes of corruption and losses of data in any CRM. It requires robust and customized database structuring, increasing the costs of implementation. Besides, higher rate of data migration also increases costs of cloud storage.
Salesforce, being a tremendously flexible, scalable and feature-rich cloud CRM, is capable of handling every complex customer relationship challenges. However, the key to effective customer engagement, improved lead conversion and increased bottom line is adopting a CRM strategy that fits the business needs and budget. Devising an appropriate CRM strategy requires years of technical and non-technical expertise and experience, which only the best certified Salesforce implementation partners can offer.
Why is it important to hire the best Salesforce implementation partners?
Instead of adopting costly and risk-prone trial-and-error approaches, companies can hire Salesforce implementation partners for a flawless and cost-effective implementation experience. Certified partners can help companies in multiple ways, such as,
Expert guidance in the planning phase
Any company without previous experience in setting up and using a centralized CRM system may find it challenging to plan the implementation. They may have ideas about the desired business outcomes, but converting the same to CRM implementation goals is a specialized job. Salesforce partners can provide the key guidance in this process.
Past experience in strategizing
Any of the best Salesforce partners also bring on the table years of experience in CRM implementation. Their experience helps companies foresee potential disruptors in the implementation process and avoid them with the right strategies. It reduces the risks of failure. For example, partners with experience in implementing healthcare CRM may provide key insights into how other healthcare providers are handling an industry-specific issue.
Customization skills
Every CRM implementation requires a degree of customization. Hiring developers individually, managing their workflows and ensuring delivery within budget and timeline can be an expensive proposition for companies without dedicated technical teams. Agencies with the best Salesforce implementation partners can deliver plan and delivery customizations in a fraction of costs.
Effective change management skills
Post-implementation user adoption requires extensive training, user support and ongoing maintenance support. It can be expensive for small and medium-sized companies to design and develop in-house CRM adoption training content. Hiring experienced independent CRM trainers can be also expensive. Salesforce implementation partners bring these capabilities as part of the package.
The latest industry updates
Salesforce is a dynamic platform that is continuously innovating new functionalities and features to simplify customer engagement across industries. For smaller and medium sized companies without a dedicated team of CRM professionals may find it difficult to keep track of and timely leverage these updates. For certified Salesforce implementation partners this is a part of their full-time job responsibilities.
So, experienced and expert Salesforce partners are indispensable for maximizing return on your CRM investments.
How to choose the right implementation partners?
Hiring Salesforce implementation partners is a necessity for the best ROI on your CRM. However, you also need to be careful about hiring partners who are capable and appropriate for your business. After all, your money deserves only the best.
Key to steps to follow while hiring Salesforce implementation partners are,
Research for identifying potential partners
The most effective ways to identify implementation partners for your business are to check industry directories, request references from personal contacts and leverage the recommendations from Salesforce.
Evaluate credentials, customer reviews and testimonials
Salesforce maintains multiple tiers, like Registered, Silver, Gold and Platinum, based on their partners’ expertise, experience and credentials. The best Salesforce implementation partners, obviously, belong to the Platinum tier. However, they can be expensive too. Many lower tier partners can deliver results at better RoI.
Deconstruct the implementation costs
Get cost estimation for implementation from your potential partners. As a rule of thumb, costs of implementation can be 2 to 3 times your operational costs of Salesforce. However, it can vary significantly based on business cases. Also, try to identify whether the estimation includes any hidden costs. Partners quoting cost
Evaluate cultural fit and the potential of long-term partnership – Any partnership to implement enterprise systems requires long term engagement. Frequently changing partners may increase costs and affect quality of user support. So, cultural fit and the capability of an agency to provide long term support is crucial. For example, a highly dynamic, result-oriented company may find it useful to hire agencies with similar work culture.
Final words
Budgeting and planning for hiring the best Salesforce implementation partners is a strategic decision. It influences future success and costs. Salesforce comes with immense benefits. However, to make the most of these benefits, you need to have support and assistance from experienced and expert CRM implementation professionals. Initial judiciousness will save lots of future costs and obstacles to user adoption. Check Manras. They come with extensive industry experience in diverse domains, including manufacturing, technical services, retail, healthcare, telecom, and banking.
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