The Advocate of Change: The Central Role of the Salesforce Administrator

THE CENTRAL ROLE OF THE SALESFORCE

ADMINISTRATOR

The Advocate of Change:

THE ADVOCATE OF CHANGE: THE CENTRAL ROLE OF THE SALESFORCE ADMINISTRATOR 2

Customer engagement will soon overtake

productivity as the primary driver of corporate

growth. Salesforce™, the world’s most popular

CRM application, is enabling this organizational

shift and helping companies get closer to their

customers.

This focus on positive customer engagement

starts first with engaged employees. An

organization’s ability to harness employee ideas

and knowledge is the key to driving effective and

meaningful business change. Salesforce should

be at the center of your innovation strategy. It’s

your anchor for customer information that drives

employee collaboration.

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT DRIVES INNOVATIONSalesforce brings the potential for endless

innovation, but technology is only an enabler.

Empowered and educated employees maximize

Salesforce ROI and business value.

Salesforce is a mature and complex enterprise

application with many new releases and

company acquisitions annually; there are always

new functionalities to consider. Keeping the

technology’s functionality aligned to your

company’s changing business goals requires

dedicated, skilled resources. Your Salesforce

administrator is responsible for optimizing

Salesforce to suit your business and plays a

critical role in driving user adoption.

WITH SALESFORCE.COMACTIVATE BUSINESS INNOVATION

Gartner named Salesforce the leading global CRM software solution, recently surpassing SAP.

YEAR-OVER-YEAR GROWTH FOR SALESFORCE


HOW ENGAGED ARE YOUR EMPLOYEES?ONLY

SALESFORCE INNOVATIONSTAFFING FOR

Salesforce penetration continues to grow at

a rapid rate, resulting in a highly competitive

market for skilled talent. Setting aside budget

and resources for the ongoing management

of your Salesforce instance is as crucial as

the go-live itself.

Investing in the right strategic resources

to manage your live Salesforce instance is

essential for companies that wish to maximize

ROI. These experts will activate the innovation

of your Salesforce instance by prioritizing

projects, eliminating backlog, and enforcing a

governance strategy. This team, including project

managers, business analysts, business architects,

developers and administrators, are the front

runners that will grasp, prioritize, and execute

on the changes of your org. While each of these

positions play a crucial role within your instance,

your administrator is the backbone. Their

knowledge is key to delivering agility, flexibility,

and innovation to your Salesforce instance.

THE DRIVER AND ADVOCATE OF CHANGECentral to any Salesforce staffing strategy is

your Salesforce administrator. Regardless of

whether it is a smaller deployment or a full

corporate rollout, administrators play a key role

in advocating and managing change across both

your instance and users.

Enable your Salesforce administrator to be your

best asset. He or she is the force that drives

value to your instance. With a knowledgeable

and engaged administrator, your organization

will see rapid returns, including fast adoption,

speed of deployment for new functionality and

productivity gains that affect your bottom-line.

Consider a 2:1 investment ratio of people vs. technology—for every dollar you spend purchasing a new technology, spend two on the people who’ll use it.

–Eric Berridge • CEO • Bluewolf

OF AMERICAN WORKERS ARE ENGAGED IN THEIR JOBS

-WASHINGTON POST


Responsibilities• Creating user profiles, reporting, activating

workflows, policing data quality, and

educating new users

• Managing customization projects,

creating new workflows and fixing errors,

managing backlog

Key Drivers + Motivators• Salesforce is seen as an innovative tool

but must be activated by an educated

administrator

• Solves complicated problems that impact

the whole business

• Ensures project timelines and workflows

progress smoothly to completion of project

on-time and on-budget

Pain Points• Lack of industry best practices

• Limited resources and budget to obtain

skills and stay current

• Managing long-term development projects

against short-term fixes and customizations

• Not seen as a strategic part of the business

• Frustrated end users, lack of user adoption,

broken reporting

• Massive backlog and lack of prioritization

SALESFORCE ADMINISTRATOR?

WHO IS THE


Each Salesforce instance is unique. How

customized or mature is your Salesforce org?

A smaller or more standard Salesforce org may

only require a single administrator with access to

skilled resources like training and development.

Alternatively, custom and/or global deployments

may require multiple administrators, developers,

and cloud governance experts.

Depending on your specific instance, the

strategy of sourcing key administrative talent

will differ. Take into account your budget when

considering the different options of outsourcing

resources versus investing in in-house talent.

PROS CONS

Existing Employee

• Familiar with your business processes,

culture, goals

• Requires training and education

• May have limited or no hands-on Salesforce

experience

New Full-time Employee

• An administrator with past Salesforce

experience gives your business a jumpstart

• Drives new innovation and insights from

past experience

• Lacks knowledge of your specific Salesforce

instance

• May take time to understand your priorities

Part-time Contractor

• Expertise from other client engagements,

brings best practices

• Flexible, cost-effective resource,

depending on number of users/employees

• Not solely focused on company needs and

may have limited availability

• Lack of resources can cause a bottleneck

On-demand Call Center

Support

• One-on-one support to address issues

• Charged only for the hours used, enabling

you to do more for less

• Restricted amount of hours can limit focus on

resources and ability to address all issues

• No proactive guidance or business process

solutions

• Lack of understanding of culture/processes

Contracted Project Team

• Team of experts for less than the price

of full-time employees

• Brings in outside knowledge and best

practices

• Predictable budget with no employee

overhead to manage

• Requires time investment to delegate team’s

priorities and proactively set their timelines

• Must be a cultural fit to ensure trust,

transparency, and efficiency

WHO IS YOUR

ADVOCATE OF CHANGE?

YOUR SALESFORCE STAFFING OPTIONS


MOTIVATE TO INNOVATERETAINING TALENT

Once you’ve chosen a staffing strategy, focus on

retaining the core talent in which you’ve invested.

Driving innovation takes the right knowledge

and vision to grow your business toward its full

potential. Finding and retaining top talent is

crucial. Talent retention and team morale should

be a key focus of an IT leader. Recognize and

treat your Salesforce administrator as an

unsung hero of the organization.

Enable them with the ability to evaluate and

qualify requests based on the value they will

drive to your business.

Provide tools and strategies that support a

cloud governance model and invest in their

professional development.

Once trained, they will be motivated and

focused on solving problems that reinforce

and drive business growth.

EMPLOYEE EDUCATION INCREASES ROIResearch conducted by salesforce.com shows

that when administrators and users receive

training on Salesforce, user adoption rates

increase 52% and sales pipeline increases 132%.

These results don’t come overnight. This is

dependent on the investment you put into both

your employees and the instance itself.

Training and education prior to go-live will

substantially reduce the ongoing maintenance

fees of your Salesforce instance. An expert

administrator will drive quality, self sufficiency,

and speed within your organization, while

carving a path for innovation and efficiency

in your business.

The US bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the employment rate for Salesforce administrators will grow by 15% between 2008 – 2018.

higher user adoption rates

increase in sales pipeline

The Value of TrainingWhen employees receive training on

Salesforce, companies see:


GENERATION YTHE EFFECT OF

While focusing on employee retention, keep in

mind the culture of younger generations as they

become increasingly influential in the workforce.

The shifting focus on technology is leading a

cultural change for all tech experts, but it is

specifically led by the demand for top notch

Salesforce resources. This younger generation is

not intimidated by application change, but rather

embraces and understands the reason for it.

Known as digital natives, Generation Y is

innately more comfortable and competent with

social, mobile, and cloud technology tools.

They realize technology’s inherent ability to drive

efficiency, increase productivity, and deliver a

competitive edge. This generational shift lends

itself well to the skills needed to be a successful

Salesforce administrator; challenge their

knowledge and engage their ideas, make them

part of a user-driven innovation process. They

are your advocates of change.

Salesforce administrators in this younger

generation are driven by the ability to rapidly

deliver enhancements across the system, at

a pace that is only limited by users’ ability to

adopt it. A willingness to dig in and embrace a

new level of organizational chaos will ultimately

make your organization willing to work in an

agile manner, adopting new functionality quickly,

and delivering innovation that matters to your

users and ultimately your customers.

The first challenge for the companies that want to hire the best young workers is getting them in the door. They are in high demand...entrepreneurship now functions as a safety net for this generation.

“What Gen Y Really Want” • Time.com

How much value are you getting from Salesforce?Is your Salesforce instance

reactive, steady, or agile? Key

elements to consider:

Vision

Has the leadership

team defined the

role of Salesforce

within the

organization?

ProcessWhat is the level of

business process

maturity?

AbilityIs there a resourcing

strategy for

executing ongoing

innovation?


As Salesforce becomes the world’s most

used CRM solution, it is essential that you

have the right resourcing strategy to gain

maximum business value from the platform.

Stay educated on the breadth and depth of

Salesforce’s functionalities. A skilled Salesforce

administrator is critical to the success of your

CRM implementation.

Their knowledge and education is a catalyst for

your business’s ongoing efficiency, productivity

and, most importantly, ROI. Understand the

drivers that motivate your administrative team

and invest in their development and education

to differentiate your business and drive

profitable growth.

GET TRAINED!CONCLUSION

We engaged Bluewolf because we needed a partner that could customize Salesforce to satisfy our unique needs, yet could also help us with the training effort and global adoption.

–Bill Nelson • EVP Worldwide Sales • Nuance

EDUCATE YOUR TEAM. DRIVE SALESFORCE

EFFICIENCY & ADOPTION.

Salesforce Administrator Training

Salesforce Developer Training

End User Training

Private Training

eLearning

BLUEWOLF’S LEARNING SERVICES

Bluewolf is a global business consulting firm.

Companies across the world choose Bluewolf

to help them engage their customers and

drive more sales. As the first global business

consulting firm born in the cloud, Bluewolf’s

strategic consulting, implementation, training,

and innovation services drive business outcomes

in weeks, not years.

Our proven Agile Business Transformation

methodology helps clients rapidly innovate their

business processes and technologies to translate

strategic goals into sales. And our people are

recognized for having the competencies and

entrepreneurial energy to shape agile, customer-

obsessed enterprises that sustain profitable

growth in competitive markets.

CONTACT BLUEWOLFNorth America +1.866.455.WOLF

United Kingdom +44 (0) 207 643 2749

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The Advocate of Change: The Central Role of the Salesforce Administrator

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