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Identify the Top Five Things Salesforce Admins Can Do

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

  • Identify specific actions that support three essential activities of customer- and market-driven organizations.
  • Identify specific actions that support three levers that increase desired behaviors and actions.
  • Envision how your system can enable a more customer- and market-driven approach—leading to operational awesome and business results!

Generating Intelligence—Make It Useful and Easy.

Once you figure out the information you need to capture, and the sources of this information, then you need to get it into the system, which, as you know, can be quite a challenge. Based on years of research, getting people to collect and enter data typically comes down to two things: (a) perceived usefulness (value), and (b) perceived ease of use.

As an admin, you likely need to educate people on the value of the information, and periodically remind them with concrete examples.

Making it easy to help gather and enter information into the system is equally important. Your role in creating an easy and intuitive user interface can be vital in enabling the collection of data. As you set it up, be mindful of your data architecture—especially how data is captured to enable downstream reports, analytics, and so on.

Of course, be sure to get feedback from your users as you go!

Analyzing & Disseminating Intelligence—Make Sure That People Get It

Ensure that decision makers and action takers have the information they need, and can easily access the system to get what they need, when they need it, in the format they need it.

It’s a good idea to review access and permissions periodically. Do people have the right level of permissions to access what they need? Do they know where to find (look for) the information they need? A person with permission and access might not use the system if they do not know where or how to navigate, or can’t search for the information they need. Be sure to check with users periodically, and ask if you can observe how they use the system.

Consider using chatter to create a state of shared situational awareness, or even old-school push reports to get information to users and groups.

Decision Making and Action—Make Sure It Gets Used

Make sure that the information people need to make decisions is in the system. If the information is valuable, and they know it’s in the system, then they use it. Start by clearly identifying your decision makers and action takers. Work with them to understand what they need, and how you can get it to them.

If people are not using it, then you might want to check if you are capturing the right intelligence (for example, is it complete, timely, accurate, relevant?). A big mistake is to assume that you have the right information in the system or on your dashboards—don’t assume, ask.

People’s needs change over time, so while it might have been perfect at one time, it might not be anymore. It’s a good idea to regularly sit down with people to get feedback on the system and their needs, including what enhancements they’d like to see. Consider doing this at least 2–4 times per year.

It’s also a good idea to find out if there are any other (non-Salesforce) systems or reports that people rely on to make decisions—perhaps there are systems integration or formatting opportunities that can make lives easier.

Drive Deeper Adoption

Find ways to support executive team efforts to make your company more customer- and market-driven. For example, are there other ways to use the system to improve cross-department alignment and information sharing, or to recognize and reward the desired behaviors? Are the dashboard reports aligned across departments?

Salesforce chatter and WDC can do wonders for providing visibility into customer- and market-driven activities, and provide the built-in features needed to recognize and reward the desired behaviors, assign badges, and tie in incentives.

Imagine the Possibilities for Organizational Awesomeness

Take the time to understand how your business currently works, then imagine how it could work even better using the full capabilities of your system—even if you do not currently use or have these capabilities.

For example, the business might run much better if processes were automated, if mobile solutions increased the time salespeople worked with customers (vs. calling in to get information), if dashboard reports got everyone on the same page. It’s surprisingly easy to imagine ways to use your system better, or even to expand it to make your company operationally awesome.

Good ways to accomplish this task include attending Salesforce events and participating in Salesforce Success Communities. It’s also beneficial to review one or two Salesforce success stories each week to get an idea for how other companies are using Salesforce to solve problems and improve business performance. If you like something you see, and think it can be implemented at your organization, the success story can easily be forwarded to your boss or manager for their consideration.

Summary

As an admin, you have the ability to influence the culture and performance of your organization by making sure that your solutions are used in the most effective way possible—such as enabling the three essential activities of customer- and market- driven organizations, and the levers to influence the execution of these activities.

By following the principles in this module, we have no doubt that you will make a significant contribution to the success of your organization—and reap the benefits! As always, Salesforce will be there to help!

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