Recognized as a world-leading technology platform for driving sales growth, Salesforce.com evolved from an enterprise CRM application to an interconnected network of cloud modules able to concentrate and manage customer data, operations, and several business processes in a powerful, unified environment.People adopt new digital technologies to their ever-changing needs and habits, reshaping markets along with them. To stay agile and effective, companies must digitally transform to utilize the technologies as well.
However, you may face limitations and challenges if you focus your deployment on a large and complex Salesforce.com deployment without upfront planning. While you start out with easy quick 'wins', your 'wins' become neither easy nor quick as your implementation and adaptation grows, resulting in a more rigid and inflexible environment.
Still, digitally transforming your operations to Salesforce can help you reduce your risks and face these challenges, provided you properly optimize it.
A digital transformation realised through Salesforce.com helps achieve better performance on both your internal and external customer related processes. Primarily, it is for your sales and marketing efforts followed by your operations. It helps continuous improvements around business models and internal processes by providing the necessary technology resources.
Digital transformation does not change how your company uses technology. It just changes how you effectively do business through the use of technology. According to studies of manufacturing companies, the lack of technology expertise or technology tools are very rarely the primary obstacles in a digital transformation.
More than any other component of success, senior management commitment to digital transformation is a key factor as the use of Salesforce.com requires more agility and effectiveness than traditional methods:
Salesforce digital transformation is not a one-time project. It is a continuous “journey”. While it may start with small, quick accomplishments, it quickly requires adjusting your entire company according to the technology evolution. Because of this, you should perform it in a consistent manner, governed by an overall strategic plan.
Salesforce.com provides strong collaboration tools that create transparency throughout your business processes. Furthermore, your employees may work from anywhere, with any device, at any time. The digital transformation journey continuously adjusts your business in an easy way using effective workflow modelling tools.
Improving cross-functional collaboration of your staff with the use of technology, such as drag-and-drop editors, point-and-click report and dashboard builders, and simple but effective automation can be easily achieved using Salesforce as the core of your digital transformation project.
Since Salesforce provides core digital transformation tools, having the available technology is not the primary challenge. Instead, the major challenges are selecting and using the right technology architecture.
Integration is the key to a successful digital transformation. Legacy applications may run on different platforms with different technologies and data formats. Integration can turn them into a composite application that can reference the superset of data.
For example, in an integrated environment, Salesforce serves as the 'master' application, containing and governing the superset of data and services. Because of this, it should be aware of all customer related information, regardless of the source, providing all the tools required to virtualize and manage the data. This may require an initial data migration with subsequent update flows.
Integration should be a significant part in your overall architecture design. Consider a new legacy on premise application that should be incorporated. How will this be achieved? By custom development? By searching Salesforce.com AppExchange for a substitute module and then migrating? Or by integration?
While the first two options are all-in-one place approaches, integration may have more benefits overall.
Not all companies require the same elements in a digital transformation project. Additionally, not all companies start from the same point and have the same financial resources. Prioritizing while taking into account your financial constraints and technology maturity is a challenge. Fortunately, Salesforce offers several easily-incorporated modules .
Managing and deploying solutions from Appexchange and/or coding a custom solution on Salesforce is a major challenge. As new digital demands arise, both Appexchange and custom development provide quick and effective solutions, but an over-customized solution with several modules may create management issues and cause increased support costs.
In general, when a new demand arises:
Today, most companies acknowledge that they must digitally transform to survive, and that they should initiate a relevant project in the short term. Companies also need application and data integration, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence, along with strongly committed management, to achieve the optimum ROI and to ensure the success of their digital transformation project. Cetrix cloud services is a proven, effective, and reliable solution service provider for enhancing customer experience and boosting sales & marketing performance using Salesforce. Strong partnerships with digital transformation industry leaders, along with cloud orientation and effective project management, provides the necessary guarantees for successful project completion. Connect with us to discuss your needs and how we can help.
