Fortunately, all Salesforce projects do share the same challenges, with no bias to project size or type. Because of this, it’s important to adhere to very strict internal project management and communication practices, ensuring you never lose sight of the primary project objective – implement a Salesforce Cloud or improve the current platform so it helps clients reach their business goals.

At Ad Victoriam Solutions (AdVic), we manage Salesforce® projects of all shapes and sizes – projects including complex integrations, use of third-party applications, technical or process refactoring, Salesforce implementations, and much more.

Based on our experience, here are just a few tips and tricks – suggested directly by AdVic consultants – that will help you maximize the success of your Salesforce project.

Define Your Salesforce Project Expectations

You would be surprised at how frequently we encounter projects that require further clarification surrounding client expectations. Every project, large or small, should have a few focused bullet-points aimed to define project success. This proves to be useful in an early conversation, helping all parties apply a laser focus to the project’s scope.

Document Your Current Business Processes

Arguably the most important phase of a project’s life cycle is the Discovery Phase. It’s a crucial time for your consulting partner to ask questions, learn about your business, and build a solution to eliminate your current pain-points – all within budget and scope. We find it very valuable when clients have their processes documented and pre-defined, as it reduces the time spent on Discovery and results in faster solutioning.

Download AdVic’s Free “Justifying the Need for a CRM” Worksheet

Assign a Dedicated Point-of-Contact

On occasion, project challenges introduce themselves due to delays in client communication, our inability to gather requirements from subject matter experts, and less-than-expected stakeholder involvement. Introducing a dedicated client-side liaison is essential to eliminating these challenges, as well as playing an important part in confirming the project team’s technical solutions against business expectations.

Provide Samples Reports

Often an under-utilized resource, providing samples of business-critical reports helps a Technical Team validate the proposed solution’s design against your expected output. Be sure to take advantage of this by offering your Technical Team current-state reports or mocking up future-state sample reports so you get the reports you need.

Whether it’s a Salesforce implementation, enhancement, or integration project you are mulling over, let AdVic do the heavy lifting by addressing your complex challenges through our cloud, integration, and data expertise, leaving you to what you do best – servicing your customers. Let’s talk about your Salesforce project today!

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If your business has yet to tap into the power of the cloud, these eight benefits of cloud computing should change your mind.

Reduce Expenditures, Increase Efficiencies

Migrating to the cloud reduces – and in many cases – eliminates the need for your business to purchase equipment and operate out of a data center. Now, you are seeing significant savings on hardware, facilities, utilities, and other expenses required from traditional computing. You will also reduce the need for on-site servers and expensive software, trimming your IT budget further.

Flexibility

The cloud gives you and your employees the flexibility to work from any location. Employees can complete their tasks at home or from the field. This is particularly valuable in an era when employees desire flexibility in their schedules and work environment. You can also reduce the number of workstations in your office and allow some employees to work from home, further saving costs.

Increase Collaboration

Cloud-based workflow and file-sharing applications give your teams the ability to work together more easily and efficiently. Employees can make real-time updates, see what other team members are doing and communicate effectively. This level of collaboration speeds up projects and improves customer service.

Disaster Recovery

Hosting systems and storing documents on the cloud provides a safeguard in case of a disaster. Man-made and natural disasters can damage equipment, shut off power and paralyze critical IT functions. Supporting disaster recovery efforts is one of the important advantages companies attain when they move to the cloud.

Data Security

It’s just a fact that storing data on the cloud is safer than storing it on physical servers and in data centers. Think of it this way, a breach of security on your premises can lead to compromised data security if laptops or computers are lost or stolen. However, if you have data on the cloud, you can immediately delete any confidential information remotely or move it elsewhere. It’s also a fact that breaching security protocols on cloud platforms is difficult.

Document Control

The more your employees and partners collaborate on documents, the greater the need for tight document control. Prior to the cloud, you and your employees sent files back and forth as email attachments to be worked on by one user at a time. More often than not, that ended as a mess of conflicting file content, formats and titles. However, when you move your business tasks to the cloud, all files are stored centrally and everyone sees the one up-to-date, true version of the file or document.

Automatic Software Updates

With your servers off-site and in the cloud, your hosts take care of them for you by taking charge of regular software updates – including security updates – so you don’t have to worry about wasting time maintaining the system yourself. That leaves you free to focus on the things that matter, like growing your business.

Compliance Needs

If your industry, for instance, is healthcare or financial services, ensuring data compliance is essential for your business. Moving operations to the cloud ensures that your business is using cloud-based tools and services that are already compliant, helping to remove some of the burdens of compliance from your IT team.

No doubt there are many more benefits of moving to the cloud that are not listed here, but these are some of the big ones.

Ad Victoriam has helped bring big changes to businesses all across the country. Contact us today to learn how we can help your business migrate to the cloud with little-to-no impact on daily operations, but a serious boost to your bottom line.

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Control’s Salesforce Challenge

Control Southern was utilizing Salesforce Sales Cloud in Classic, Excel spreadsheets, and Phoenix Software alongside their ERP, IFS.

When Control used Phoenix to build their quotes, the quotes would sync with their ERP, independent of their Sales Cloud. As a result, their siloed systems required users to touch, reference, and manipulate multiple applications during their quotation process.

Realizing their dilemma, Control decided an automated quotation process that also integrated with their Sales Cloud and ERP would better serve their needs, processes, and customers. Thus the reason why Control turned to Ad Victoriam Solutions (AdVic) and a Salesforce CPQ solution.

In addition, Control wanted to convert from Salesforce Classic to the Salesforce Lightning Experience.

After a careful deep-dive into Controls’ current systems – and a complete understanding of their business and future needs – the AdVic team implemented a nine-point solution.

Salesforce Implementation & Integration Results

Since AdVic’s implementation and integration of Salesforce CPQ, Control’s connected databases and processes have drastically increased productivity through automation. The upgrade eliminated the users’ need to switch to multiple systems during the quote creation.

In addition, effectively integrating Control’s accounts, systems and their products with their ERP has unified their data increasing efficiencies. As a result, custom flows, automation, and minimal clicks have positively impacted their system usability.

Other positive results include:

The new quoting templates and quick action buttons have provided Control with clear, accurate quotes. The templates have also reduced quote related inquiries – increasing customer satisfaction – and has sped up the sales cycle process.

The ability for Control to visually adjust in the quote details, which has increased user-friendliness and, therefore, positively impacted user adoption and system utilization.

Custom filtering and data validation applied prior to data cross-platform sync, combined with approval processes, have increased Control’s data accuracy and integrity.

Want to experience the same kind of results Control Southern did with your Salesforce implementation or integration project?

Contact Ad Victoriam today to learn how our team of problem solvers can help your company seamlessly implement and integrate a custom solution to solve your unique set of challenges. Ad Victoriam treats our clients as partners, not a one-off project. We will dive deep into your business and your challenges to provide an innovative, scalable solution. Reach out to our solution team today.

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It’s essential to think about integration, especially when it comes to a CRM. That forms the backbone of your business and is the place from which a lot of seamless, efficient processes take place. What does that look like? This graphic explains it.

Click CRM Image Below To Enlarge

Via Salesforce

Did you know that Ad Victoriam Solutions, a Platinum Salesforce Partner, was just named a Top CRM Consultant?

Contact Ad Victoriam to learn how our team can help your company with a custom CRM integration solution.

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The Sales Cloud Enhancements Challenge

ESI wanted enhanced KPI’s, as well as executive-level dashboards created in their Sales Cloud platform. They also needed to gain insight into gross margins, and have the ability to review estimated and actual project hours.

Resolution Road Map

Following a thorough discovery of the enhancements ESI required, AdVic’s Salesforce consultants created a technical road map and implemented customizations that delivered actionable data.

Business Management

First, a custom Quarterly Revenue object was built. It contained roll-up summary fields, formulas, and custom fields for calculating project hours and margins. Then, connecting the Quarterly Revenue object with Opportunities provided executives with a 360-degree view to determining project viability and ROI. This connection enables them to efficiently manage the business, effectively allocate teams, and increase profits.

Data Integrity

Secondly, validation rules were developed to execute at project initiation. This ensured that data entered falls within ranges maintaining KPI integrity so business decisions are based on sound data. Custom Opportunity rollup fields were created along with Submission Stage validation rules to ensure needed data was populated prior to stage advancement.

Analytics

And lastly, executive-level custom Reports and Dashboards were developed. These provided key data insights, including project hours, opportunity viability, projected, and actual revenue and more for effective budget management.

The skilled Ad Victoriam team of Sales Cloud developers and consultants are experienced in cloud computing, CRM and Salesforce solutions, delivering proven results to small and large businesses in any industry. We offer consultation, implementation, integration, and customization all of the Salesforce clouds to help grow your business. To get started today, click here.

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