How Can Salesforce CRM Consultants Help Your Business?

Are you doubting the integrity of data in your CRM? Do you feel reports are messy and analytics are sloppy? The problem could be in the implementation. Unlike standalone business apps, enterprise-level integrated solutions, like Customer Relationship Management, require lots of pre-implementation planning, customizations, and change management interventions.

Companies need support in terms of system maintenance. As an affordable cloud-based CRM, Salesforce can transform customer experience for companies of all sizes. Choosing the right Salesforce CRM Consultants makes that transformation sustainable. This article discusses how Salesforce consultants can help streamline existing practices of customer relations and boost your business to the next level.

What is the Salesforce CRM consultation service?

Salesforce CRM is a cloud-based customer relationship management platform suitable for businesses of all sizes and industries. As a cloud-based CRM, Salesforce allows immense scalability, flexibility, and real-time collaboration between mobile workforce teams. From big companies, like Air India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Razorpay, and Wipro, to small businesses with even less than 50 employees use Salesforce. Using the Salesforce CRM, they streamline their customer-oriented business processes, automate the capturing, storage, retrieval, and analysis of customer-related data, and stay ahead of the curve in meeting customer expectations.

However, it requires goal setting, process analysis, planning, customization, testing, training, and post-implementation support for effective utilization of any CRM platform, like Salesforce. So, companies require expert guidance and assistance throughout the CRM planning and implementation journey. Salesforce CRM Consultants with the right experience and skill sets help companies in that journey.

What roles do Salesforce consultants play?

It is a multifaceted professional service that bridges the gap between a company’s CRM requirements and the tremendous capabilities of a platform like Salesforce. Depending client-company’s business goals, process complexities and size of operations, CRM consultants need to play critical roles in the following processes of implementation:

Business analysis

Salesforce implementation begins with planning and analysis of existing CRM in the business. As part of this process, Salesforce CRM consultants engage in analyzing existing workflows, understanding legacy systems, discovering pain points, identifying process disruptors and goal-setting for CRM implementation.

Solution design

This involves charting the route map, finalization of action points, and documentation for taking the client-company’s CRM from its current situation to the desired state.

CRM implementation

Implementing Salesforce CRM requires both technical and non-technical expertise. Technical roles of Salesforce consultation may include cloud configuration, customization, process-specific application development, data migration, integration with legacy systems, UI design, security and access control, and many more.

Change management support

This involves developing training modules, supporting training delivery, empowering CRM users with troubleshooting support, and prompt responses to their queries.

Project management

Every Salesforce CRM consultant also acts as a project manager, accountable for the complete implementation and activation of CRM within the scope, time, and resources. Project management roles may include defining timelines, delivery milestones, deliverables, communication with stakeholders, managing expectations, and addressing project concerns

Continuous optimization

The basic condition of implementing Salesforce CRM is to adopt data-driven customer relationship management. In a dynamic business landscape, it means staying adaptive to changes and optimization of CRM processes. A significant part of Salesforce CRM consultancy services is the post-implementation support in continuous process optimization.

Responsibilities of Salesforce CRM consultants

Some of the crucial responsibilities of a Salesforce consultant are:

Documentation of business process map – This helps identify areas for improvement and requirements of process automation.
Finalization of functional requirements – This acts as a guide for configuration and customization of Salesforce CRM.
Creating a project implementation plan – It helps meet the project scope within limited time and resources.
Managing technical team – A Salesforce consultant may have coding skills, but it is the responsibility of a consultant to manage technical interventions.
Conducting user testing – In mid-sized and large companies, Salesforce implementation may involve focused group user testing and customization based on user experience. Managing such a process is also a responsibility of the consultancy team.
Supporting change management – Salesforce consultants are also responsible for designing and delivering troubleshooting documents, user manuals, and other training interventions.
Stakeholder relationship management – Finally, it is usual to have multiple stakeholders in the CRM implementation process. Successful implementation will be impossible without active collaboration and cooperation between these stakeholders. It is the responsibility of Salesforce consultants to maintain relationships with them and manage their expectations.

However, the responsibilities of Salesforce consultants may vary depending on the types of implementation support a company requires. It’s time to learn about the different types of services certified Salesforce consultants can provide.

Types of Salesforce CRM consultancy

Based on industry standards and a client-company’s CRM implementation and management requirements, certified top Salesforce CRM consultancy professionals can provide the following types of services.

Salesforce consultancy – helps companies plan digital transformation of their CRM.
Salesforce assistance – supports functional maintenance and upgrades with qualified Salesforce professionals.
Salesforce managed services – a flexible alternative to full-time recruitments for managing CRM implementation, maintenance and monitoring.
Salesforce improvement consulting – evaluation and business need analysis with the help of certified and experienced CRM professionals.
Salesforce migration – assists in zero-disruption transition from legacy systems and other CRM platforms.
Salesforce integration – helps enterprise-wide systems integration of Salesforce CRM for 360-degree tracking and decision-making capability.
Salesforce security and compliance – implements best practices to ensure data security and compliance for risk mitigation.
Salesforce customization – develops custom objects and fields within Salesforce CRM for seamless data flow and workflow management.

How to choose the right Salesforce consultation services?

The ultimate success of Salesforce CRM implementation in your company and subsequent management of the system depends significantly on the quality of the consultancy services you choose. So, it’s important to learn about how to choose the right consultancy services. We have a checklist you can use while evaluating and shortlisting these services.

Technical expertise

Some of the essential technical expertise includes proficiencies in Salesforce clouds, data management, data models, data security, system architecture, CRM development, and customization interventions.

Business intelligence

Non-technical expertise essential for Salesforce CRM implementation are business process understanding, industry experience, data analysis and problem-solving skills, result orientation and solutions design capabilities.

Certifications and demonstrations

Certifications are proof of knowledge, and demonstrations include practical, verifiable experience in implementations. Both are essential to shortlisting the right candidates for consultancy services. Some of the essential certifications are Administrator, Consultant, Developer, and AI certification.

Project management capabilities

This includes expertise in planning, budgeting, stakeholder expectation management, and the ability to deliver within a timeline. These are natural to any team of certified Salesforce professionals with years of practical experience.

Range of services offered

It is advisable to choose Salesforce professionals offering a wider range of consultancy services. Otherwise, you may require working with multiple service providers. This may complicate the implementation process and increase costs.

Size of the team

A smaller team of Salesforce professionals may find it difficult to support the growing needs of your CRM, inflating project timelines and costs. So, service providers with a large and dedicated team of expert professionals are a better choice.

Change management support

Companies moving from legacy practices to digital-first CRM always face challenges in change management. Even migration from one platform to another also requires training interventions and support resources. Any reliable Salesforce CRM consultancy service provider must have the strength to support change management.

Final words

Irrespective of industries, digital transformation is the only solution to stay efficient and effective in today’s dynamic business landscape. Turnaround times are getting leaner, and business processes need to be nimbler. In such a time, a team of expert Salesforce CRM consultants can be assets for any company planning to digitally transform their customer management capabilities. Identify your business needs today and get the best quotation for Salesforce consultancy services.

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