Achieve Your Goals with The 5 Elements Framework
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Explain how The 5 Elements can set your business up for long-term success.
- List The 5 Elements and apply these elements to your digital transformation.
The 5 Elements
Informed by over 150,000 customer engagements, Salesforce Professional Services has identified the common ways to be successful on the Salesforce Platform powered by AI + Data + CRM. This framework we call The 5 Elements brings together tools, skills, and leading practices from across the Salesforce customer and partner ecosystem, including AI-powered solutions, to help customers achieve effective and fast business transformation in today’s digital-first world.
This framework is designed to set businesses up for long-term success on the Salesforce Platform. It goes beyond technology to focus on five essential elements that address key obstacles and drive successful transformations. It guides how to think and work differently to enable faster time to value and long-term success on Salesforce.
Here are The 5 Elements.
Trusted Relationships
Trust is the foundation of all successful relationships. How intentional is your company about building trustworthiness? Trust is the #1 value at Salesforce. Increasingly, companies across industries are also investing in becoming trusted enterprises. Deloitte has written extensively on the value of trust, including strategies from top consumer brands and The Four Factors of Trust. And, partnering with Deloitte, we presented The Art and Science of Building Trusted Relationships at Dreamforce. By adopting a few practical steps, you can use trust as a key part of your growth strategy.
Our experts understand the importance of aligning with your stakeholders and building strong relationships. By fostering collaboration and open communication, we ensure that everyone involved in the transformation journey is on the same page. This element values listening to your stakeholders, understanding their needs, and involving them in decision-making processes.
Alignment
Alignment drives faster, more-effective decisions. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Holistic alignment doesn’t happen overnight. It requires a thoughtful, intentional approach. This element outlines key alignment practices that you can easily adopt to work better with your stakeholders, both internal and external, across multiple disciplines. The result? Quick and impactful decisions.
It’s crucial to make fast, effective decisions during your transformation. Salesforce Professional Services provides guidance on establishing transparent governance structures and enabling efficient decision-making processes. This element helps you streamline your operations, align your teams, and ensure that everyone is working toward the same goals.
Human Centricity
Human centricity engages all users. Who are you designing for? Traditional approaches to new product design start from a business-first or technology-first perspective. But what about your customers? Or your employees? Leveraging human-centered insights to inform your solution design better illustrates the technical feasibility of your transformation, and more importantly, the desirability of your users to adopt it.
Salesforce Professional Services believes in putting the customer at the center of transformation. Embrace a user-first mindset to drive engagement and adoption of Salesforce solutions. Our experts help you design solutions that enhance the customer experience, leading to higher user satisfaction and better business outcomes.
Platform Mindset
Maximize value with a platform mindset. Understand and connect everyone in your ecosystem. One of the most important aspects of a platform is its ability to attract and support a large and diverse set of users. Everyone in the platform ecosystem can benefit from knowing what makes the platform different and how they can maximize value from it—and each other.
This element emphasizes the importance of building for scale, leveraging Salesforce technology, and minimizing customizations. Salesforce Professional Services guides you on how to maximize the capabilities of the Salesforce Platform, ensuring that you have a scalable and agile foundation for your business. By following this element, you can avoid complex and costly customizations and take advantage of the platform’s flexibility.
Continuous Innovation
Continuous innovation accelerates time to value: Start producing more with less. The key to continuous innovation is producing more frequent work in smaller quantities. In the world of Agile and DevOps, remaining light and adaptive reduces inventory and waste, evens out the availability of products over time, and enhances adaptability and responsiveness. Extending these principles across your enterprise will help you stay ahead of the curve.
Salesforce Professional Services understands that the business landscape is constantly evolving. By embracing AI-driven iterative and adaptive ways of working, you can respond to market and customer needs faster and stay ahead of the curve. This element focuses on embracing iterative and adaptive ways of working, allowing you to respond to market and customer needs faster. Our experts provide insights into the latest Salesforce releases and best practices for driving innovation within your organization.
By applying these five elements to your digital transformation, you can navigate challenges, accelerate your time to value, and achieve long-term success on the Salesforce Platform. These elements serve as a guide to help you think and work differently, enabling you to unlock the full potential of Salesforce and drive meaningful business outcomes.
