Here is the situation: your organization is tired of multiple systems that don’t talk to each other, or you want to stop depending upon spreadsheets and manual manipulation of data. Let’s be real. There are MANY reasons why your organization may have decided to upgrade your technology.
And congratulations! You’ve chosen Salesforce to take your data and technology to the next level.
You may be asking yourself, what’s next?
That’s the question I asked my colleagues at Provisio who have implemented Salesforce solutions for several clients or worked for health and human services organizations that transitioned to Salesforce, so they have seen both sides of the implementation process.
In this two-part series, we will share their insights.
Plan and Imagine
As early as possible, think about what your ideal processes would be if only you had the right tools. This might be challenging when your team has been following the same processes and using the same tools for a long time, but your front line workers know the pain points intimately: for themselves and their clients.
For example, maybe your team has to do double data entry because of those pesky disparate systems. We adore a catchy phrase at Provisio and are particularly pleased with this nugget. Christina Ingersoll, Director of Solutions Architecture, says, “even if Salesforce is not 100% reading your mind, it’s better than that waste of time.”
Blaine Cowart, Provisio Manager of Customer Success, shares her experience and recommends asking teammates to think through what would make their jobs easier and make their programs more efficient or effective.
“This allowed us to go into our discovery session and throw our complete wish list up on the wall, knowing that it may not all be within budget/scope but also not knowing that some things were a much easier lift than we could have imagined. When our partner was able to come back with proposed solutions that solved our biggest pain points, we were more than willing to leave some wish list items in the parking lot for future phases.”
Be sure to address your organization’s overarching objectives and determine how Salesforce can align with and support those goals. This will assist you with the next step, which is prioritization.
Prioritize Your Wish List
After coming up with your wish list, determine which items would make the most impact. Are there time-consuming tasks that can be automated? Will pop-up reminders help your team stay organized and proactive? Streamlining processes and simplifying daily tasks will demonstrate value and increase user adoption.
Once you have consulted with all of your stakeholders and collected all your requirements, put them into buckets (your requirements, not your stakeholders): must-haves, nice-to-haves, and future enhancements.
A consulting firm, like Provisio, can be indispensible in the planning stages because we have implemented hundreds of Salesforce solutions. We are experts in the Health and Human Services space and understand what is possible with Salesforce technology.
Stay tuned next week for more insights into prepping your team for your Salesforce implementation!
“It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.” C.S. Lewis
Marjorie lives in Saint Louis, Missouri. She received her Master’s degree in English from Truman State University. Her responsibilities at Provisio Partners include content creation and technical writing.