What Does a Salesforce Implementation Partner Do?
Salesforce offers numerous benefits for your organization, but implementing it can be a lot of work. Employing the services of a Salesforce implementation partner relieves a lot of the stress involved and helps your organization get up and running with Salesforce that much faster.
Have questions? Then read on to learn more.
What a Salesforce Implementation Partner Does
More than 150,000 businesses use Salesforce to enhance their customer management. When you want to tap the power of Salesforce, you need a certified Salesforce partner to help implement Salesforce in your organization.
A Salesforce implementation partner helps your staff implement Salesforce in your organization. Salesforce implementation partners, such as Rainmaker, are independent consultants dedicated to helping companies like yours successfully implement Salesforce solutions for their own particular needs.
You use a Salesforce implementation partner to set up a Salesforce CRM in your organization. Your partner will do some or all of the following, depending on your specific needs:
- Determine your long-term and short-term goals for the implementation
- Detail your current business practices and note your specific requirements
- Examine your current systems and operations and recommend any changes to help achieve goals and improve your workflow
- Work with key stakeholders to integrate Salesforce with your existing systems
- Train your staff on how to use the new system
Salesforce implementation partners have extensive experience working with Salesforce in various business environments. They have helped hundreds of businesses implement Salesforce and know the ins and outs of the process. A qualified partner can help your organization avoid common pitfalls and quickly and efficiently get Salesforce up and running.
How to Implement Salesforce in Your Organization
What exactly does Salesforce implementation involve? There are three general steps: Evaluation, Planning, and Executing.
Step 1: Evaluate Current Processes
Every Salesforce implementation is unique. It’s important for your Salesforce consultant to understand how your business works to integrate with your existing systems and processes. The Salesforce consultant will also analyze your current operations and suggest ways to improve your workflow and work better with Salesforce during this stage.
Step 2: Plan How Best to Stage the Salesforce Implementation
After documenting your current processes and establishing how your sales teams can best use Salesforce, the implementation expert will determine which of your current operations can be quickly transferred to Salesforce and which will require additional development. This results in a plan for staging the Salesforce implementation throughout your organization.
Step 3: Execute the Implementation
When the planning is done, your Salesforce implementation partner will begin the implementation process. This involves several distinct steps, including:
- Clean and transfer existing data to Salesforce Cloud
- Customize Salesforce for your organization’s specific needs
- Deploy a testing environment and test Salesforce functionality
- Train key staff
- Go live
While it’s always different for each business, Salesforce implementation under the guidance of a certified consultant can be completed in as little as two or three weeks. Doing it yourself can take considerably longer.
The following video from Salesforce shows how to set your implementation up for success.
Why You Need a Salesforce Implementation Partner
Some companies try to implement Salesforce independently without bringing in professional help. While it’s possible to install and integrate Salesforce on your own, it’s a considerable challenge. Even Salesforce recommends you enlist a certified partner to assist with your implementation because it’s essential that you get everything just right.
Working with a certified Salesforce implementation partner provides numerous benefits. Here are the most significant.
Knowledge and Experience
Perhaps the most important benefits a Salesforce implementation partner brings to the table are knowledge and experience. Certified consultants have years of experience in how Salesforce works that new and casual users cannot possess. They know what works and what doesn’t and the best implementations for specific situations.
Your team would have to undertake years of training to reach the same level of knowledge and still wouldn’t have the real-world experience gained from executing hundreds of Salesforce implementations.
Ability to Create Customized Solutions
Many Salesforce consultants also have expertise in developing custom solutions and applications. Since few Salesforce implementations are plug-and-play out of the box, this ability to customize the implementation is essential. Look for a Salesforce consultant, such as Rainmaker, that possesses the technology background to develop their own Salesforce apps – and can develop custom apps for your business.
Reduced Employee Downtime
You avoid overtaxing your existing staff by outsourcing much of the implementation to a Salesforce partner. Instead of spending countless hours learning how to install and customize the new platform, your staff can continue working on their normal activities. At the same time, the implementation takes place in parallel, guided by the certified Salesforce consultant.
Leave the Salesforce implementation to the experts and let your employees focus on what they do best.
Scalability
A Salesforce installation is never finished. Your business needs change over time, as does how your team uses Salesforce. You need the ability to scale Salesforce to your evolving business and add new functionality as needed.
A certified Salesforce consultant doesn’t disappear when the initial installation is complete. You want a partner who can help you manage Salesforce on a day-to-day basis and suggest and implement new features and functionality over time. Your Salesforce consulting partner will help you scale Salesforce to meet your evolving needs.
The Right Implementation – Done Right the First Time
Gartner, Forrester, and other sources report that up to half of all Salesforce implementations ultimately fail. That risk of failure is much less when you rely on a Salesforce implementation partner’s vast knowledge and experience.
A certified Salesforce consultant knows how to choose the right installation and how to get it done the right way. With the right partner, you don’t have to redo pieces and parts of the implementation when you discover you made the wrong choices – and you don’t have to fix problems created by incorrect implementation. The right Salesforce implementation partner makes sure you get right the first time.
Let Rainmaker Be Your Salesforce Implementation Partner
When it’s time for your organization to implement Salesforce, let Rainmaker help you make the move. The Salesforce experts at Rainmaker have years of experience in all types of Salesforce implementations – we know how to get it done right and make it suitable for your business. We also offer a wide variety of Salesforce Managed Services that can help you get the most value from the Salesforce platform day after day. We want to be your partner and help your business grow over time.
Contact Rainmaker today to learn more about implementing Salesforce within your organization!
