7 SALESFORCE
FACTORS BEYOND THE SOFTWARE By Don Dalrymple
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7 SALESFORCE
FACTORS BEYOND THE SOFTWARE
The journey towards success has all the ingredients with these 7 success factors.
“Success Not Software.” The Salesforce Mantra By Don Dalrymple
Salesforce.com had a mantra for the longest period of time, “Success Not Software.” This slogan was focused on their market challenge of helping organizations see the benefits of cloud computing versus the constraints of clientserver architecture. While there are many organizations waking up to the reality that cloud computing affords them
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the ability to keep up with the change our new economy continues to produce, success is something that is elusive. Our team at AscendWorks has spent thousands of hours helping organizations become successful with Salesforce.com. We want to take the opportunity to share the success factors which affect teams that may
have bought the software or are thinking of signing up. Your attention to these factors will help you keep on track towards your goals of having a fully functioning business system. Factor 1: Build A Roadmap To know where you are going in the physical world, you need a map. It tells you which routes
7 SALESFORCE FACTORS BEYOND THE SOFTWARE
make sense and what direction to take. Likewise, building your system needs a roadmap to help you understand how you are moving towards a predefined goal or set of goals. Salesforce.com takes care of many of the issues that custom software programming presented - slow implementation, expensive, lack of control and cryptic. You can build what you like to enable your business. However, you can also build a mess. Clarity on the steps your people should take to execute need to be clearly defined and captured.
“The best practice is to say, “No,” and find ways to reuse or simplify your system.” Don Dalrymple
Factor 3: Say “No” As A Default
There are always things you can put into your Salesforce.com system. The more you create, the more work your users will have to be engaged with on a daily basis. More fields, features or Factor 2: Identify The Champion software integration inversely affects your teamʼs adoption, motivation and It is difficult, if not altogether impossible, to decouple Salesforce.com execution. implementation from change The best practice is to say, “No,” and management. Effective change find ways to reuse or simplify your management requires leadership. A system. This is where the art and the person on your team that has been discipline come in. Saying, “No,” keeps identified as a strong, charismatic personality is ideal. They must be able your system clean. to influence and set expectations with We have seen organizations that lack the team. clarity or discipline and overengineer their Salesforce.com system to their
Identify the Champion Effective change management requires leadership.
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Furthermore, they have to facilitate requirements definition clearly and decipher between what is necessary and what is needed.
7 SALESFORCE FACTORS BEYOND THE SOFTWARE
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detriment. It is common, and unfortunate. A strong champion will help you keep this discipline and allow you to have a system that stays agile.
FAIL FORWARD FAST
Factor 4: Customize, Integrate, Then Code There is an order of priorities by which implementations of requirements should be done. The first is to customize. This is the quickest and easiest to change if your requirements later change. Adding fields and data objects and their relationships are inherent in the system.
Salesforce.com, the beauty is that we can iterate quickly. To Integrate third-party get to success then, the best applications when customization will not meet the strategy is to commit to failure requirement. This is done with quickly. Your team will not use the system perfectly at first. the thousands of Apps on the Allow them to have the AppExchange. The integrations all work differently. freedom to fail and drive Another software company has feedback. pre-packaged methods for solving your specific problems. Furthermore, observe the failures and design your The last recourse is to code on system around the behaviors if mandating a behavior is too top of Salesforce.com. A developer can program scripts high of an obstacle. Empirical data is valuable for validating or applications to meet the specialized requirements. This what really will work rather is the last option, for it has cost than what you guess will work. and is hard to change. Factor 6: Process, Process, However, it is valuable if the Process requirement is that important for driving your business. Salesfore.com is an enabler for business process. Business Factor 5: Fail Forward Fast process is how you serve your customers or ship products out In the past, we had to build the door. It is the systems that were precise. It understanding between is an old mindset. With everyone in your organization
for how things get done efficiently. Continually think about how any changes or requirements will affect an overall process. Keep your system on rails rather than an open road. Ensure every task, communications and form have context within an overall process. Factor 7: Manage In RealTime We don始t have to wait for someone to build reports. Reporting is real-time in Salesforce.com. Ensure you have the key metrics identified. Early in your implementation, you will want to measure tactical things like overdue tasks and outstanding tasks. Review this with your team and help them see it visibly so they
7 SALESFORCE FACTORS BEYOND THE SOFTWARE
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can understand that their actions are impacting your team.
culture. Culture can be felt when a new person joins a team. They fall in line with how the team works and uses its Over time, you may change the metrics tools as well as communicates. as you want your team to focus. Pipeline Revenue, Operations Delivery Add Salesforce.com and you have a Dates and Marketing ROI may be powerful enabling technology to drive options among many to keep your team your people and processes. focused on what matters. The journey towards success has all People, Process And Salesforce.com the ingredients with these 7 success factors. Be sure to learn more at our An organization is only as good as its blog, www.salesforcesuccess.com. We people and process. This develops wish you much success.