Data is more than a trending topic. Today, data drives business solutions and tells a story about what is happening in your business. Whether manufacturers are using data to pinpoint defects or downtime in their machines, retailers are analyzing their new loyalty programs, or a healthcare provider is monitoring patient engagement, data tells a story. When data is presented in a digestible format filled with fact-based information, stakeholders can “see” what is happening so they can make concrete decisions to benefit the business. 

Not only does incorporating data into presentations and stories build credibility, but visual data also is intriguing and gives you an opportunity to connect with your audience. Presenting statistics to a group of people can be overwhelming. Large decks packed with numbers without context can quickly disinterest your audience. Your data should be engaging. Here’s how to get there:

• Data Collection (Campaign, testing, survey, etc.) 
• Data Preparation (Collect insights from collection source, clean the data)
• Data Analysis (Now it is time to analyze the data, what is it saying?)
• Data Presentation (Present data to decision-makers and stakeholders)
• Data Deployment (Apply newly learned metrics)

Build Your Data Story

Build your data analysis as a story. After you dig into the insights, determine the important factors. What do you want stakeholders to take away from the presentation? What should be done as a result? Are you pitching an idea or proving that another solution is better? Either way, actionable, visually intriguing data is on your side. 

Yes, data can be cut and dry, but that does not mean it cannot be personable. You may be presenting to your CMO or other important stakeholders, but the story should have an emotional appeal incorporated with authenticity and facts.

Pictures, graphs, charts, and more graphs! Platforms like Tableau CRM allow you to pull data from multiple sources into one centralized place. From there, it works to spot opportunities, trends, and outcomes to overcome major challenges. Using colorful visuals, Tableau makes it easy to share visualizations with the team. Plus, Tableau seamlessly integrates with Salesforce®, so data can be woven into every action and decision taken. 

Just as we have for many businesses, the AdVic Consulting Team can help your business, regardless of industry, incorporate Tableau into your technology stack to empower you with the critical insights you need. Book a meeting with us today. Pick your day and time below, or click here to contact us!

Related Resources:

Examples of How Dashboards and Data Solve Business Problems

The Difference Between Tableau and Tableau CRM

The Analytics Powers Inside Salesforce Tableau CRM and Tableau

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As the world changes around us, it is important to utilize the best technology to connect with customers in a way that fits their expectations. To that end, AdVic recently assisted a nationally-known home builder and seller of energy-efficient homes in having access to the necessary tools to satisfy customer needs.

For the initial project with this client, AdVic enabled functionality in Salesforce Lightning to improve efficiencies, increase ease of use, and create data visibility to accelerate the sales process. As a result, the relationship advanced into a strategic partnership, whereby the client continues to rely on AdVic as an extension of their business today.

Platform Thrives with Managed Services 

In an effort to have an easy transition during the post-go live phase, this client signed their first-annual managed services agreement with AdVic, which is now on it’s third renewal. 

In the beginning, the client managed their platform in-house with their own Salesforce admin. Once their admin went on maternity leave, AdVic was hired for managed services. While covering for their Salesforce Admin, solutions to effectively enhance the use of their  Salesforce platform were identified. With direct access to this information, leadership was able to make smart decisions based on findings to maximize their platform usage. 

Understanding the client’s business allowed AdVic to identify additional features, security set-ups, and to overcome roadblocks. Along with maintenance, Tableau CRM (formerly known as Einstein) was implemented to customize dashboards to meet business objectives enabling projections, advanced forecasting, marketing, page components and more.

After reviewing possible solutions for providing the best service in the course of a pandemic, AdVic and the client generated a plan and executed it. The client now has safe measures to satisfy customers. Providing virtual tours and a virtual space to collaborate with customers, the client is still able to personalize homes to their customers’ liking. 

Throughout our partnership with the client, AdVic has filled in as their admin ensuring ideal performance from their system, providing upgrades and enhancements. Now equipped with marketing, sales, and service insights on one platform, the client can ensure a personalized, seamless experience for their customers. 

Thriving businesses are agile, scalable, and continually innovate to serve their customers. Based on industry best practices and the latest Salesforce® and MuleSoft® advancements, AdVic’s Salesforce and MuleSoft Managed Services Program keeps your cloud-based software in alignment with your processes and goals – often at a lower cost than one employee – so your business can thrive. Let’s talk about ways your business can start thriving today!

Related Resources:

Salesforce Managed Services Advantages That Control Costs

AdVic’s Thrive Managed Services for Salesforce Program – Podcast

Moving Your Business Forward with Salesforce Managed Services

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Nothing moves without data analytics. Salesforce’s Tableau and Tableau CRM offer data solutions that are easy to analyze, and implement well with existing databases and/or Salesforce® CRM. Depending on a business’s needs or wants, one may work better than the other. However, having clean, usable data in a single system propels business forward.

On a recent episode of AdVic’s “Salesforce Simplified” podcast, our Analytics Practice Director, Abby Schreiber, gave valuable insight into the differences between Salesforce Tableau and Tableau CRM, including use cases of the two. 

About Tableau and Tableau CRM

Tableau is a software that works for all industries with business of all sizes. It allows anyone to visualize and analyze their data from virtually anywhere! Tableau connects with a number of databases making it accessible, and a necessity, and presents its users with ease of use as it pulls data and information from various sources and compares them alongside one another. 

“Tableau CRM does offer a handful of data connectors of its own,” Abby remarks, “but really it’s primarily used to analyze the data that’s in Salesforce. So, it’s used to maximize sales, service, and any Salesforce specific functions. So, the insights and visualizations from Tableau CRM can be plugged in alongside any live opportunities, cases, accounts, and any live data in Salesforce to help those Salesforce users make real-time decisions.”

Distinguishable Differences

While both Tableau and Tableau CRM are powerful reporting tools, they have noteworthy differences. One of the primary differences is that Tableau CRM is unique to Salesforce’s ecosystem. Tableau is a stand-alone product that can exist on its own. Again, both tools are impactful, but depending on use-case, Abby says, “One may be better than the other.”

The Advantages of Tableau

If a company has data in multiple systems and uses it across multiple functions within its business, Tableau is a great fit for them. Being that Tableau functions with practically any database, companies are empowered to incorporate data across a variety of sources. 

Abby adds, “Additionally, if it’s important for these insights to be shared with both Salesforce and non-Salesforce users, Tableau is definitely a better choice because it isn’t unique to the Salesforce ecosystem. It isn’t going to require you to have a Salesforce license to view. If you need to report on data across the entire organization, outside of just Salesforce data, you’re definitely better off with Tableau.”

The Advantages of Tableau CRM

A company that has implemented Salesforce, in need of reporting tools specifically for their users, will benefit most from Tableau CRM. Tableau CRM not only benefits Salesforce users, but changes the way they perform.

As Abby explains, “A company has to be comfortable reporting predominantly using Salesforce data, and they also should have an interest in really embedding these analytics within the Salesforce ecosystem, making these insights actionable in real time for their Salesforce users. This reporting tool makes it super easy to help the everyday Salesforce user make informed and efficient decisions.”

Tableau and Tableau CRM in Contrast

While both Tableau and Tableau CRM have the same look and feel, they differ. The biggest contrast is the use cases. Abby reiterates the difference noted as, “A Tableau dashboard might be a more holistic view, big picture, enterprise focus, function across function within a company, while a Tableau CRM dashboard would probably just be specific to data that’s in Salesforce.”

Frequent Customer Data Pain Points

The most common pain point that AdVic’s customers face is having data exist in multiple systems. Both Tableau and Tableau CRM can remediate this problem. However, Tableau is a better fit when there are multiple data sources that need to be reported in one system. This also alleviates the burden of managing dashboards manually on a day-to-day basis.

Another major pain point Abby says, “is the use of Google Sheets or Excel to produce and maintain these visualizations, which long-term is such a burden on the person who is maintaining them. So, if we see this happening, Tableau CRM or Tableau, can help with that because the data is always going to update instantaneously on a set schedule.”

Victories With Tableau and Tableau CRM

AdVic has empowered numerous customers with efficiency by way of Tableau products. Sales and support reps who once spent countless hours maintaining and managing data can now access data through dashboards that update frequently. 

In particular, Abby relates, “We recently created a dashboard [for a customer] to track their average lead conversion rates, times, and factors to help sales reps make a decision about when to continue to pursue a lead or when to just stop pursuing a lead.”

She adds, “This customer now uses that dashboard to track the key characteristics of a lead that delivers a successful conversion or a dead lead. They use this dashboard throughout the day, helping their sales team to target credible leads, be more efficient, and have more time throughout their day.”

Adaption Post-Implementation

Introducing new software to the workforce can be intimidating, however that is a challenge that AdVic chooses to fix out-of-the-gate. 

“In the beginning of the project,” Abby says, “we get to know the customer, their needs, users and owner of maintaining, managing and creating new dashboards. From there, they are engaged from the beginning to the end of the project. We use this process to ensure their comfort ability and competency when maintaining dashboards, reports on additional metrics moving forward. 

“On the other end,” Abby continues, “adoption amongst the audience is also a priority. This means understanding their current dashboard; the pros and cons of it.  From there, we translate those evaluations into a new Tableau or Tableau dashboard. In the end, user adoption is a success because of the precautions and understanding of their needs.” 

The Future of Tableau & Tableau CRM

Abby predicts that one day, Tableau and Tableau CRM will become one in the same. A recent rebrand from Einstein to Tableau CRM supports her theory. 

“On top of that,” Abby adds, “there have been some recent announcements around being able to integrate some Tableau CRM functionality, specifically around another tool – called Einstein Discovery – being able to integrate the metrics from that tool into Tableau.”

Lastly, Abby says, “There is currently an active effort to integrate both tools, as they look alike. But there have also been very recent changes to Recipe Builder in Tableau CRM, so that it matches the data prep tool, which is really just the data cleansing and relationship tool found in Tableau.” 

As always, stay tuned… AdVic will keep you posted on any and all Salesforce updates.

When you implement Tableau or Tableau CRM, you transform your data into powerful, interactive dashboards. Plus, you can securely share your data and dashboards so everyone in your organization can ask and answer their own questions right from a browser, tablet or phone. Let the AdVic multi-cloud consulting team show you how.

Related Resources:

What‘s the Difference Between Tableau and Tableau CRM? – Podcast

The Analytics Power Inside Salesforce Tableau and Tableau CRM – Podcast

Meet Tableau and Tableau CRM

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Any successful business knows that in order to find and solve problems, you have to start by looking at your data. With all of the technology out there – including Salesforce® – the hard part isn’t getting access to the data you need – it’s analyzing and interpreting your data, and then understanding how your analysis will translate into solutions to your business problems. 

So, what do you need to analyze and interpret your data? A really good dashboard.

There are a couple of different ways to approach using data analysis to uncover business problems. Some of you may already have a problem you know about or have a hunch about –  which, in a sense, isn’t the worst scenario to be in. If you’re aware of an existing issue, you have a great starting point for a dashboard. 

Example 1: Starting with a Known Problem

The last couple months, Roger (a Sales Manager) has noticed a slight drop in the number of leads converted by his sales team. Roger’s team hasn’t changed in size at all and he hasn’t noticed a drastic change in work ethic or engagement from any of his sales reps. He has confronted each of his sales reps about the change of pace – his team had no possible explanation for the shift in conversion rates and suggested the pandemic and other external factors may be playing a role. While this may be true, Roger knows that analyzing patterns and trends for the data he has access to in Salesforce will tell him more about what could be causing this.

The dashboard doesn’t create itself, so Roger needs to start with creating relevant and meaningful visualizations to learn more about a variety of lead conversion patterns. Although he may find a pattern in one of the first graphs he creates, it is important that the dashboard is created with all possible visualizations that may help him down the road, such as if this problem ever resurfaces or if he ever needs guidance on how to maximize lead conversion. This dashboard will provide him with a number of different trends and patterns he can drill into. The final result of the dashboard includes the following:

• Lead Conversion Rates and Converted Leads by Sales Rep: This graph will be useful if there’s ever someone on the team who isn’t pulling their weight.

• Lead Conversion Rates and Converted Leads by Lead Source: Leads can come into Salesforce a number of different ways, which almost always plays a role in how quickly Leads are converted and how many Leads are converted.

• Activities Logged for Converted Leads: If your company relies heavily on outreach to prospects, it’s likely that you have taken advantage of Salesforce Activities. How often a Lead is “worked” typically correlates to the likelihood of that lead converting.

• Lead Conversion Rates and Converted Leads by Region: If the problem is isolated to a specific region, it’s likely that you will need some market data to really confirm that this is, in fact, an external problem and not a business problem.

• Lead Age by Sales Rep, Lead Source: Analysis on Lead Age may tell you that the real problem is caused by leads taking longer to convert, which, in turn, is affecting your lead conversion rates.

Roger learns a lot about his day-to-day business from this dashboard – lead conversion rates have dropped pretty consistently across his sales reps and lead sources. He does notice, however, that the number of activities logged has actually increased over the last couple months. In reviewing the activity data and the notes for activities logged, Roger sees that a lot of calls to leads have not been returned compared to how many used to be returned. His company recently implemented a new automated phone system – shortly before his conversion rates started to drop. He comes up with an action plan:

• Determine the amount of time it takes to reach an Account Manager using the new automated phone system vs. how long it took before the automated phone system was implemented.
• Request feedback on the company’s new automated phone system in the next survey that is sent out to existing customers.
• Encourage his team members to focus more heavily on email campaigns or to provide leads with their own personal office line number for communication.
• Monitor lead conversion activity over the next couple of weeks to see if there’s any difference.

The dashboard will never tell you exactly what to do – it will surface patterns and lead you to take away actionable insights that will address your everyday business problems.

Example 2: Starting with No Known Problems

The more challenging scenario for businesses is when you have no known problem to solve for. Even the sales rep at the top of the leaderboard has something he or she can do better. There are always ways to improve. For this scenario, a more sophisticated data model may be a better fit than a standard Salesforce or Tableau CRM dashboard.

Einstein Discovery is AI-powered analytics that enables Salesforce users to uncover relevant patterns based on their historical data. Yes, this type of technology and depth of analysis is intimidating. Salesforce, however, has designed this tool so that little-to-no statistics background is required. The Einstein Discovery wizard prompts you to select an outcome that you would want to maximize or minimize and automatically tells you how other variables contributed to this outcome. An outcome can be something like maximizing Opportunity Amount or minimizing Opportunity Age. The results of the analysis are presented in the form of a Story.

The results of the Einstein Discovery Story start with telling you what happened. These are descriptive analytics that highlight patterns and specific factors that most influenced your outcome. Often, patterns are surfaced here that you may not even know about.

The Story also tells you why it happened – these are predictive analytics that reveal why it happened (diagnostic insights), what could happen (predicted future outcomes based on statistical probabilities), and what is the difference between variables (comparative insights). 

And lastly, the Story will tell you what could have happened: prescriptive analytics that suggest ways in which to improve your predicted outcomes. This section allows the user to change variables within their data to determine the future impact on the outcome. 

Once analyzed and refined, the Einstein Discovery Story can be applied to your present-day data. Based on the model, Einstein Discovery can provide a prediction for Amount for all your open Opportunities. It will assess characteristics about each Opportunity and compare it to what patterns and factors correlate most with a higher Opportunity Amount. Einstein Discovery can provide a prediction on what the finalized Amount will be and can provide recommendations for increasing that Amount.

Example: Setting your Outcome in Einstein Discovery

Example: Review Your Einstein Discovery Story

Whether it is through data analysis in a dashboard or by machine learning, one should never underestimate how much your data can tell you about your business. It tells you what you’re doing right and should keep, it tells you what might not be working as well as you think, and it tells you what is hurting your business. 

Bottom line, build compact dashboards and data models to give you the confidence you need moving forward to make actionable insights. 

If you’re striving for a way to securely transform and share your data in powerful, interactive dashboards, so everyone in your organization can ask and answer their own questions right from a browser, tablet or phone, and get it done without hours of coding or waiting on your IT team, you need to speak with Ad Victoriam today!

Related Resource:

The Analytics Power Inside Salesforce Tableau CRM and Tableau (Podcast)

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