Administration Ownership

Management and administration of a CRM application is an often overlooked and highly underfunded responsibility.  In many cases, the sales and service leadership in an organization believe that administrating a product like Salesforce.com is easy and straightforward.  

In truth, the application is on the whole fairly easy to use, designed well and by being a SaaS solution, removes much of the IT administration burden.

But the role of Salesforce.com administrator is much more than a few minutes every day.  It doesn't matter what business you are in, if you are in a competitive business then things are changing every day.  The sales and service organization is never static -- territories change, processes change, organizational structures change, products and services change, etc.  The CRM system you or a consultant configured will rarely stay in place for long.  This is one of the great advantages of cloud solutions, is that you can continue to tweak and reconfigure every day to be responsive to your market demands.

Keeping up with the current CRM infrastructure can be time consuming (e.g. adding territories, adding new fields to capture and report on new information, creation of reports that provide new insight) by itself.   The appropriate time should be allocated for that.  Looking for new opportunities to take further advantage of the platform you already purchased is another skill that will help you continue to scale and defeat the competition.

We've seen a variety of models that have worked well.  They each have their advantages and disadvantages.

• Insourcing
• Complete outsourcing model
• Strategic outsourcing

The insourcing model basically means that you hire in-house for all administration tasks.  As in any case where you have employees, you have optimum control of your resources, when you need it.  You also build expertise in both the CRM tool and in how it is applied to your specific business which is an optimum situation.  There are several disadvantages to this model though.   Your organization may not be large enough to require a dedicated administrator.  If you have one administrator you also need to consider risk mitigation - what if that person you hired ends up being suboptimal, or more commonly, how would you handle the situation if that administrator leaves.  For organizations that have multiple administrators this problem is alleviated.  If you work with a consulting organization you can cross-train another consultant or two to be up to speed.   For a part-time, insource model, you must understand that Salesforce.com activities will compete with other responsibilities and so you must make sure that enough time has been allocated so that everything you feel is important can get done.

The opposite extreme is a complete outsourcing model.  Many firms recognize that their core competence is in their business and not on Salesforce.com administration and are happy to outsource all of the non key aspects of their business.  The advantage is particularly acute if only part-time assistance is required - while you pay more per hour than an employee you don't have to deal with overhead.  In addition, consultants are experts in their field, so you know you are getting someone who should know how best to apply Salesforce.com to your business.  The disadvantage is that you may not have as much control over the administrator as you do over your own employee. In working with a partner you need to understand when the consultant is available and what you expect with regards to response time.  Expertise in your industry is another consideration.  On the one hand, some consultants know more about your industry than you do, having worked at your competitor's or in similar industries. On the other hand, they may never get the opportunity to live in your organization day-to-day to help them be ultra-responsive to your business needs.

The strategic outsourcing is intended to get the best of both worlds:  insourcing for cost and responsiveness benefits and outsourcing for things that are expensive.  It is very common to have consultants come in to do an assessment and configure the system optimally for the administrative owner to operate.  In addition, consultants can come in to do "peak" activities like a big data import, big data cleansing operation, a customer portal set up or to write some code to trigger a certain workflow activity. This is a strategic use of expertise.   Risk mitigation must be taken into consideration.  For some activities, particularly code development, you need to consider how the system will be maintained and improved.  The project rarely ends when the code is completed.  New bugs that are found must be fixed, new features need to be added because the opportunity cost of doing so is high.  Again, one option is to train someone internally to handle this or to plan to arrange for ongoing support to further improve the system.

The most common model though we see is the strategic outsourcing model.  However, one size never fits all, even for companies within the same industry or of similar size. 

Wall to Wall With Salesforce.com

MondayCall Solutions and Salesforce.com hosted a customer event at the Tied House in Mountain View, CA.  The main topic covered included how companies can go wall-to-wall using Salesforce.com.

Using an integrated solution helps companies solve their sales and support operational issues more efficiently and more effectively.  Erick Sturm of CAPS (Computer Air/Power Systems) was the guest speaker extraordinaire.  CAPS was moving from a paper-based sales process to one that was highly automated.  MondayCall and Erick worked together to create a solution that reduced creation of quotes from hours to 20 minutes.  In addition, CAPS can now get up to the minute forecasting data rather than wait for month end spreadsheets to be consolidated.  As part of this solution, CAPS used/created Salesforce.com integrations with with FinancialForce.com and Conga for quoting.  The details are documented in this case study available on the MondayCall Solutions site.

It was a great event and a great chance for customers to interact with MondayCall, Salesforce.com and most importantly each other.

Salesforce for B to C: Person Accounts

Salesforce was born from innovators in the enterprise software space - most notably from Oracle.  The salesforce.com application was heavily geared to helping business-to-business organizations, particularly very large multinational corporations, succeed. While the high end b-to-b market is huge, there are several trends that have blurred the lines between b-to-b and b-to-c to create more market opportunities for CRM vendors:

• The Internet has helped accelerate the disintermediation between providers and purchasers
• A relentless focus on customer relationships and service has become the standard way to do business

In particular with Salesforce, a cloud solution became a very convenient way for smaller organizations of all types to get even the most sophisticated software for a small monthly fee.  Included in this very vibrant industry are many b-to-c companies, the so-called 'mom and pop' stores.  They too have a sales process and customer management process (albeit with consumers) and as well deal with partners that provide supplies and provide channels for distribution and scale.

Person accounts are a great way to help organizations better support managing consumer relationships.  Whether you are an Internet b-to-c or a local store selling to consumers or a broker working with high net worth individuals, person accounts help you manage relationships with individuals who may not be a part of an organization (or account). 

Combined with Salesforce.com's API for integration, Salesforce.com can serve as a valuable platform to support B-to-C internet based businesses.  Start ups in particular can leverage much of the Salesforce.com platform to handle incoming registrations, manage people, handle workflow rules (including email alerts), handle support cases and more.  These features can save valuable development time in markets where time to market is key.

Person accounts do have some limitations.  First of all, person accounts are not available in all editions. As of this writing, person accounts are available in Enterprise, Unlimited and Developer editions.  Other differences include: person accounts can only be merged with other person accounts and person accounts have a different layout than Accounts/Contacts because of the different data that it tracks.  Once person accounts is turned on, you cannot turn it off.   There are a number of other minor differences that you can find out more by looking at the Salesforce.com help or by looking at their published Person Account Cheatsheet.  

Dreamforce 2011

MondayCall Solutions exhibited at Dreamforce 2011 at Moscone Center in San Francisco.  It was a big event, one of the largest if not largest technology conferences in the industry.  Marc Benioff was in top form as he evangelized the benefits of cloud computing and how it has helped leading companies cut costs and capture opportunities.  Better yet, Marc deferred to his customers - letting them deliver the message.

The focus of the conference clearly was on social.  Great social tools like Facebook and Twitter have been revolutionizing the consumer market - why not create similar technologies to revolutionize the enterprise.  With improvements to Chatter, the acquisition of Radian6 and the announcement of Data.com, salesforce.com is looking for innovative ways for companies to interact with its customers/partners and for the companies' employees to collaborate better with each other.

Many innovative companies in just about every industry have already taken advantage of these capabilities - looking for ways to continue to engage and impress its target market.

Case Study: Helping Those Who Help Others

MondayCall Solutions recently published a new case study for the Alameda Alliance for Health. The Alliance provides health care coverage to over 125,000 children and adults in Alameda, CA. The Alliance has a team that conducts community outreach and enrolls Medicare/Medi-Cal “dual eligibles” into their Medicare Advantage Special Needs Plan for seniors and people with disabilities. One of their challenges is to systematically and scalably find individuals in the community who are qualified dual eligibles.

MondayCall Solutions helped the Alameda Alliance:

• Redesign Salesforce to better map to their processes
• Restructured data to simplify collection and focus on only needed information
• Jumpstart their business development team on correct Salesforce usage
• Provide visibility into metrics that drive their operations

The result:

• Significantly improved tracking of every individual in their process
• Cleaner data that can be used to drive more accurate reporting
• Improved adoption of Salesforce. Improved responsiveness to the community

For more details, please see the new case study. 

We'll be at Dreamforce 2011

Whether you are a customer, potential customer, partner, job seeker or just want to stop by to say 'hello', we look forward to seeing you at Dreamforce 2011.

We're in booth #23 in the exhibitor section.  Make a hard right when you enter the exhibition hall.

If you'd like a discount/coupon code/voucher to Dreamforce 2011, please contact us at sales@mondaycall.com.

Getting Sales People to Adopt Salesforce.com

Sorry, there is no easy answer here. One of the bigger challenges to a successful CRM implementation is getting adoption from the sales team. One of the key advantages of Salesforce is the ability to track sales activities so that you can institute and track scalable sales processes, get better visibility into your pipeline and grow your sales in an organized and predictable way. For many sales people, good use of salesforce.com is a productivity enhancer rather than a time sink.

Is Resistance Futile?
However, many sales people would also disagree -- or more accurately, they understand fully the benefit of instituting CRM but they resist participation, sometimes vehemently. They often cite the following reasons:

• This is just a tool for management to micro-manage
• I'm busy closing deals, not filling out forms
• I get paid the big bucks and data entry is beneath me
• I can't get convenient access as I'm constantly on the road
• Documenting slows me down and doesn't help me get to my number

No matter what management says, no matter how much a sales person knows that it's good for them in the long run -- changing the behavior of people is hard.  And in an aggressive sales organization where making the number means everything, taking time out to do something you aren't directly compensated for is tough.  And why work on something with a  long term benefit if quota isn't reached in the short term?

Salespeople have a reputation for being resistant to this type of change -- particularly change they doesn't impact their bottom line -- immediately.  Nothing really gets around this point.  There has to be an incentive or a consequence to create any change. In other words, there needs to be a carrot and a stick approach.


Motley Crew
The reports from Salesforce are only going to be as good as the data going in, so 100% participation is required. Each sales person has different motivations and styles and so a multi-faceted approach is required to change everyone's behavior. Some sales people are super-organized team players. They get that they will have better visibility into their accounts and increase their ability to juggle a multitude of opportunities. They get that their more organized and methodical approach will result in better relationships with the customer and a higher win rate. They get that this is a tool that helps them "be on top of things" and helps them hit their number.  They also know that with a stronger, better managed sales organization behind it, that everyone, including him or herself will benefit.

Others take a more seat-of-the-pants style to closing deals. They don't see the value and frankly speaking, must be forced into using Salesforce. They need management to run the sales and forecasting meeting directly from Salesforce reports (if it's not in Salesforce it doesn't exist). They need to be embarrassed in front of their peers that they haven't followed up with a lead in several weeks. They need to be low on the leaderboard report because their forecast isn't accurate. They need to be nagged and baby sat and given artificial "incentive" metrics like having a quota for calls/emails each day.  Others need to be tested and certified as part of their MBO.  It's never perfect though.  If you are exceeding your quota, it often becomes your "get out of jail free" card.

Whether a sales person is on either end of the spectrum, an important facet to improving adoption is to lower the cost of "entry".   If it's easy, then resistance will be less. That can mean several things:

• Increase automation as much as possible. This can mean having quick and convenient pull-down and lookup fields, simplified workflows and more. This can mean an integration with several other applications in the workflow to make it as seamless as possible and to remove double entry of the same data.
• More points of accessibility, such as smart-phone and Outlook integration so that the steps required to enter and access data are minimized.  Some organizations give their sales team Ipads - a small investment compared to the data they receive from it.
• Use lots of alerts.  People find it easier to react to an alert than to proactively search for information.
• Accurate reports for each sales person so they know at every point where they stand during their quarter.
• Prototype your solution with a friendly audience.  Work out the kinks on a small subset of influential sales people before rolling it out to the larger team.  Use your prototype team as your evangelists 
• Training and easy-to-follow documentation so that they can get past most issues without needing someone to handhold them.  Making your training customized -- the more generic it is the more the sales people have to interpolate to their specific situation
• Set clear guidelines on what is expected.  Maybe you don't need to track every "called, no answer" detail nor put in every attendee of every meeting.  Consider the value of the information and the cost to put it in.

and much more. Optimizations are a quick way to lower the cost of using salesforce.com prior to rollout. These types of improvements, coupled with the "stick" approach, help most organizations achieve adoption. The road to value is never an easy path.  You need a plan to get there and to maintain it as the organization grows.  The payoff can be great once the process becomes institutionalized.