Choosing the right Salesforce Consultant

Working with a Salesforce consultant Understanding the process Staying on the right path is the key to success. Similarly choosing the right Salesforce Consulting partners to execute your Salesforce process ensures mapping facile. Being a Salesforce user it’s valuable to follow certain practices for frictionless process execution.

Be an informed buyer If you are diving deeper into technological advancements with CRM automation it’s good to know which is the best tool that matches your process requirement.

Go through Salesforce knowledge base to make sure that it will solve all the complications. If you are generally intimidated by technology then be sure to find someone on your staff who can support you.

Find the Salesforce Consultant Appexchange - Search for certified partners, find partners review, their products, location, and their expertise.

Salesforce Account Executive - If you are purchasing the license directly from Salesforce.org then contact your Account Executive, explain to you process and they will guide you for the suitable partners having prior experience in establishing similar kind of process.

Networking - Use your network to find a suitable Salesforce partner. Look for some organization with similar structure and ask them for their guidance and support. You will be able to gather all the information about the potential consultant, their product and projects at your fingertips.

RFP - Post an RFP expressing all your requirements as clear as possible, dig deeper to gain clarity on what to achieve using CRM, how to automate your Sales and Marketing tasks.

Hunt for Expert - Experts are expensive but they possess perfection in their work. Try and keep all the functionalities crystal clear with them, ask questions, and take the lead in your project. These experts have seen hundreds of projects like yours and know how to follow best practices in order to achieve the result.

Have a Budget – Before diving makes sure you that you have set a budget plan so that it may not create impact in future in order to achieve the functionalities that are correlated. Post your requirements with ballpark estimates so that only consultants willing to work with that particular limit may contact you for future endeavor.

Beware of Data Migration Costs – It is difficult to predict the cost when it comes to data migration, Salesforce have featured to take data from multiple sources but it’s difficult to predict how the data will be mapped from an external

system like outlook contacts, multiple excel spreadsheets, Evite, Microsoft Access, your email newsletter database, etc. The budget may vary from 5% to 40% and its challenging to predict the time and effort.

Project Management Methodologies – Make a good research on your project management methodologies that your consultant practices.

Consider Important Roles for your Project – Once you are started with the project make sure that your consultant has a resource assigned at following positions, ● Strategic Consultant ● Data or Requirements Architect ● Change Management Consultant ● Technical Project Management ● Organizational Project Management ● Project Sponsor/Administrator ● Consultant Management Phase your Engagements – It’s fruitful to divide the project into phases, consider paying for discovery separate from development so that you can feel confident in the recommendations before you sign the bigger check.

Support and Long Term Relationship – Talk about what happens once your project is completed and think clearly about what will happen next. If you are planning a wide implementation you need to find a partner that has a clear support and account management program so that you can consider them for future improvements.

All in the nutshell my advice is to find a Salesforce partner that you can trust. If possible meet all the members that will be there with you on your project. Find the best your money can buy.