Blog
February 12, 2015
Having done your due diligence in selecting Salesforce for Higher Ed as your institution’s CRM platform, it is time to prepare for implementation. Your institution’s readiness will be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful deployment. Implementation is not a simple pull of the switch, but rather a process that may start prior to CRM selection and continue after launch. ACF Solutions has completed hundreds of Salesforce implementations and has gathered these best practices that will ensure a productive and successful implementation for you and your school.
1. Plan, plan, and plan some more.
Planning is key to a successful implementation. In this early stage, involve staff members from any affected departments and most importantly key prospective Salesforce users; understand their pain points, business objectives, needs and wants. This analysis will allow you and your team to re-think and improve existing business processes. Know and expect that, while your requirements gathering and planning may be comprehensive, it will never be 100%. So do the analysis, but don’t let it lead to paralysis.
2. Think big, start small.
Given Salesforce’s innovative technology, you may be tempted to implement Salesforce across your institution ALL at once, but do not. Use an iterative or phased approach to implement an enterprise Salesforce solution. To borrow from CTO John Carpenter of Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, “You don’t know what you don’t know.” Start with one or two departments; select a department with staff members identified as early adopters or a revenue-generating department such as student recruitment or executive education. Then build upon your initial success and leverage key learnings such as user adoption strategies as you move forward. Let each phase build upon the successes and lessons learned from the prior phases.
3. Identify an internal project manager early.
This is a no-brainer; identify someone early in the process to keep the proverbial wheels moving. An implementation of this nature necessarily involves a detailed project scope, multiple deadlines, and a defined budget and needs to be effectively managed internally. That person may be someone with project management experience from the IT management office or perhaps a business analyst from a functional team. The project manager keeps their own team on track, helps to coordinate internal resources, and supports project collaboration. This greatly increases the chances of your project being on time and on budget!
4. Engage your stakeholders from the start.
Salesforce is a transformative technology, but only if your users adopt the technology. You cannot assume it will happen organically. Change is hard. Employees may have invested years in the current systems with which they work or have suffered burnout from past technology failures. You need to develop user adoption strategies from the start of your CRM project to gain their trust and buy-in. For example, involve stakeholders in the initial requirements gathering and later in user testing; identify and empower early adopters as technology champions; communicate to all levels; and celebrate the wins. Change management doesn’t end upon launch. Continue to grow adoption with post-implementation check-ins and surveys, new and refresher training, and readily available technical support. In his 2015 Dreamforce session, CTO Carpenter recalled several instances in which “Salesforce could have failed on a micro-level” if the school had not employed an “aggressive helpdesk model.” Show this kind of love to your users, and you’ll get the kind of adoption that leads to success.
5. Good data is everything.
The goal of Salesforce is to bring your various data sources (e.g., Banner, ApplyYourself, Excel sheets, PeopleSoft, etc.) into one central location to make the right data available to the right people at the right time in a way that they can use. However, getting the right data into Salesforce is critical and can be a key challenge. Effective data integration requires an up-front and thoughtful analysis of your current data sources, specific data needs, frequency of data exchanges, unique record keys and more. Salesforce is a system of engagement. Effective engagement requires data that tells you who to engage with, when and how. Once your data sources are identified, make a plan as to how that data gets into your system. (Do not expect users to type in the data!) Having the clean and complete data in the system when you go live will increase user adoption, create efficiencies and improve future data collection. The cleanliness of your data will be an ongoing challenge. Your data must continue to be visible and open to your users. If not, user adoption is threatened. Most higher education institutions already have data governance plans in place, including data cleansing and data security. If yours does not, you will need to establish data entry and stewardship rules and processes.
6. Knowledge is power.
The more your users and technical team know about Salesforce, the better your results. Develop opportunities internally and externally to grow your team’s knowledge base.
- Take advantage of the trainings and certifications offered by Salesforce.
- Build internal expertise by offering supplemental training sessions.
- Share knowledge through Chatter, Salesforce’s built-in community.
- Introduce your users to Higher Ed communities on Salesforce’s ‘Power of Us’ Hub.
- Encourage attendance at Salesforce and Salesforce Foundation conferences and webinars for the opportunity to ask questions, network, and learn how other higher education institutions have solved problems using Salesforce.
- Take advantage of your implementation partner’s expertise to transfer knowledge to you and your users.
7. Don’t go it alone.
Salesforce offers an amazing CRM platform to the higher ed sector. But it does not offer implementation services. Finding the right partner to help implement Salesforce is up to you. Give careful consideration to the partner you choose. The road to enterprise CRM success is long, and it will invariably be bumpy. Even with the most careful planning and preparation, unforeseen challenges can arise. You will want a trusted advisor beside you who has traveled this road before and has a proven track record of success in higher ed.
Attain Partners – Salesforce Experts
No matter if your organization is beginning its Salesforce journey or 10+ years into development, Attain Partners is here to help you achieve your digital transformation goals.
To learn more, check out our Salesforce Innovation services, read case studies about our work, and explore blog posts from Attain Partners’ Salesforce team.
