Salesforce- the CRM and cloud solution provider known for accelerating business productivity and growth with a unified, customer-centric platform for distinct business departments such as sales, marketing, HR, analytics, accounting, and others. Thereby salesforce solutions break silos and encourage collaboration that enables the team to work effectively.
However, there’s an unlucky percentage of businesses that fails in reaping the maximum advantages or entirely despite implementing a salesforce solution. It’s because business understanding is equally important as technical expertise for rolling out salesforce solutions and unleashing their power. This is where the role of the salesforce consulting company steps in.
Several options for Salesforce consulting partners make it difficult to narrow down the choice to one. The right selection is very important as it has detrimental impacts on the business process efficiency. Realizing this problem, here are the 10 tips that help you maximize the investment with the right Salesforce consulting company selection having a team of certified salesforce developers. Let’s dive in!
10 tips to choose the right Salesforce consulting partner for your business
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Communicate project vision
Before selecting the salesforce consulting partner, it’s essential to elucidate the business goals, vision, and mission to make the company understand how the business wants to disrupt the existing processes and operations to bring the desired change to the table. Defining the short-term and long-term goals helps in hiring salesforce developers that perfectly understand business requirements for salesforce solution adoption.
A clear understanding not only makes the Salesforce consulting partner selection effective, but the team of certified salesforce developers adds value to the solution with data-based intelligent recommendations.
Check certification
When you are looking for Salesforce consulting company, checking their certification level is the best approach to figure out their expertise because the salesforce partnership level is allocated based on the company’s certified salesforce developers’ expertise, innovation, customization degree, and success rates, and engagement level.
Salesforce certification is provided at both- the individual level and company level. Salesforce consultant tier is evaluated based on one of the five categories they fall into- registered, silver, gold, platinum, and global strategic.
The partner value score is a good metric that’s assigned to salesforce consulting partners according to their expertise level so that businesses can easily select the right one. The partnership levels such as ISV, Reseller, and AppExchange are considerable to identify the quality of projects.
Verify Expertise and experience
The niche expertise and experience in a specific domain are necessary to assess, where you can ask for the strategies they use, the vision they have, and how they are implemented using which project management methodology. It showcases how the team works and drives success.
You can also demand case studies, documentation, and testimonials for a similar problem that your business experiencing and trying to solve with salesforce solutions. Such Salesforce partners can better understand and address the pain points with well-researched solutions.
Ask about team strength
Salesforce consulting service providers have a team of professionals who must know how salesforce solutions and their features work in the entire salesforce ecosystem. You should check if the company has a sizeable team with certified salesforce developers playing different roles.
The company when having the right mix of talent with diverse expertise ensures quality, and on-time deliverables. You can ask for team strength upfront.
Implementation approach
Knowing the execution approach of the salesforce consulting company beforehand is all-important to ensure the project gets completed without scope creep, missed timeline, and budget overrun. Before signing an SLA, ask them about turnaround time, risk assessment plan, customization, project management methodology, service delivery time, third-party integrations, and resolutions.
These specifics about tools, collaborative efforts, and iterative methodology help you know the customer-centricity level in the salesforce solution implementation.
Ongoing support
In the dynamic landscape, successful salesforce solution implementation is not everything to businesses. Instead, in the dynamic landscape, updating the salesforce solution with necessary customization is vital to retain the engagement and deliver a wow experience. Salesforce consultants must facilitate ongoing support during and after the salesforce implementation to keep the business growing.
Ask the company for the salesforce consulting services they provide and the built-in tools they have to provide relevant solutions proactively for the business challenges.
Evaluate portfolio and testimonials
Sharing a portfolio is a common practice to allow businesses to know the custom solutions provided by the salesforce partner for unique problems. Also, the testimonials from the existing clients are a testament to success. You can browse salesforce AppExchange to find out genuine feedback from the clients. The portfolio and testimonials help you decide whether it’s good to go ahead with the company or not.
If the company fails to provide them, it means something is cooking fishy. It helps in understanding the professional move.
How much do they charge?
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Before you team up with Salesforce partners and make their certified salesforce developers work on your project, it’s vital to discuss the budget. Don’t settle for the cheapest option.
Assess the total cost of ownership, licensing fees, development hours, hourly rates, support fees, different consultant fees, data migration costs, change management costs, and new software adoption costs to get an estimate for the budget.
Geographical location is considerable
The location of the Salesforce consulting service provider is a little bit less important in the digital universe where technology has blurred the line between online and offline working. Despite enormous tools available for smooth collaboration across the globe, time zone and cultural differences issues exist.
For long-term projects, making teams participate actively and collaboratively in the project is a little pushy. However, discussing with salesforce partner and certified salesforce developers help in identifying the middle way and envisioning potential.
Working approach
When you are hiring salesforce developers, don’t forget to identify the approach and the way they work. They are more like order takers who follow the guidelines and start working on the solution as defined. the order takers are not a good alternative in the salesforce ecosystem where you need a salesforce consultant who can help you with the best suggestions.
Look for the salesforce consultants that work using the partners approach and can help you navigate through the right solution along with valuable additions.
Wrapping it up
Salesforce company has provided a range of salesforce solutions that helps businesses grow northwards. Implementing salesforce solutions is an arduous task. That’s where, turning to a salesforce consulting company for the plenty of Salesforce consulting services they provide enables businesses to overcome unexpected challenges and avoid pitfalls.
At the same time, with thousands of alternatives available for salesforce consulting company selection, the decision for hiring certified salesforce consultants is difficult. These 10 tips help you find the go-to partner that fits the bill for technical implementation, custom development, and integrations that business project requires.
