7 Things To Consider While Choosing A Salesforce Consulting Partner
Implementation of Salesforce demands through involvement, as well as technical skills. This is why modern-day companies emphasize so much about hiring professional salesforce consultants. There are certain obvious aspects that a company needs to consider while getting started with a Salesforce CRM project, like the budget.
But in addition, there remain several underlying factors, like data migration charges, that must be paid equal emphasis upon. Keeping all these things in mind, finding the right Salesforce consulting partner becomes extremely important. In this context, below are some of the important points that one must consider while hiring a Salesforce consulting partner.
Before Start, Do A Bit of Research
Those who feel Salesforce implementation matters for them should conduct a little bit of research. The best recommendation would be to take the help of peers who have implemented Salesforce only recently. And, the best way to find the best peers would be to become a part of the trailblazer community of Salesforce or upon becoming a part of in-person groups. They can certainly help in finding the best salesforce consulting companies. Joining these groups can also be helpful in terms of reviewing the methodologies of implementation.
5 Key Considerations to Find the Best Partner
1. Go with Official Salesforce Way
Your designated AE or the Account Executive can provide a certified partner list that can be the best option for your project. Dedicated Salesforce experts support these Account Executives. Other than the official ways, one may take the help of vocal admins of Salesforce at the places like social media; those can solve doubts regarding implementation and features of different products.
2. Ask for POCs or Associated Studies
Often, the beginners in the CRM arena commit the mistakes of judging the expertise of a consultant based on paper data. Instead, they should ask for the demos for greater accomplishment. It would be even better to seek applicable studies or POCs. Professional Salesforce consulting services are very much expected to have a thorough action plan or POCs. They thoroughly analyze your requirements and also define SLAs before getting started with the project.
3. Go with Those Already Experienced in The Same Segment
It is obvious to find a consulting partner having experience working in the same vertical you are associated with. This helps as the partners manage to easily figure out the challenges of the concerned industry. Ensure that they ask sufficient questions before getting started, specifically upon going through your business model well.
4. Must Check Certifications
Salesforce has earned quite a massive reputation for its certification program. These programs provide credentials to the administrators, developers, marketers, as well as consultants. The total certified experts there on the board are assigned with the tiers like a silver partner, Platinum partner, gold partner, and Global Strategic. One can inquire about the certification tiers by the complexity of the task to ensure finding the best partner.
Also read: Top 5 Reasons To Hire Salesforce Consulting Service Provider for Your Business
5. Don’t Be Stubborn About the Cost
One should not expect cheap things with Salesforce projects. Rather, the companies are advised to focus upon the most effective and time-saving implementation ways. Simply emphasizing a budget often leads to wrong expectations. According to Gartner, most of the projects related to data migration ultimately turn out to be failures or simply cross the budget. Rather, the smarter way of implementing the cost estimation is to consider the aspects like product license, associated labor costs, and maintenance costs in the long term.
6. Have Clarity About Project Management and The Role of Each Member
After both the parties agree regarding the nature of work, make sure that you discuss things well and do an in-detail discussion regarding the execution aspects. To be specific, one needs to discuss stakeholder responsibilities, the emergency plan regarding risk mitigation, and SLAs, which are the key factors that must be discussed immediately.
To obtain greater clarity and accountability, it is the key to ensure that both parties understand the role to be played by the in-house team members and consultant team members associated with the process. Specifically, the architects, managers, and administrators should have clarity about their works and must be assigned by their competency level.
7. Find An Enduring Partner
On those occasions when implementation looks business-sensitive and the available resources don’t possess expertise in Salesforce, it’s a good idea to find a partner with the ability to support starting from initial implementation to subsequent demands.
Conclusion
Ultimately, one must go with a systematic approach to find the best Salesforce partner to meet well with business demands. Like any other technology upgrade, it involves a learning phase and demands thorough effort on all levels. It demands all those meeting the customer journey to remain associated with the execution to witness a solid salesforce ecosystem to deliver better performance.
