No matter how advanced, sophisticated, or expensive a CRM / IT system is, it will not serve its purpose if “standing” idle. It may sound obvious, but people are driving an implementation’s success. The system’s true ambassadors are its users, who use it on a regular basis, rather than the project team members in charge of implementation. Or, more precisely, a system that they would like to make real use of. How can you motivate folks to do so while simultaneously enhancing the implementation’s ROI?
Why is system adoption so important?
Your company purchased Salesforce, successfully implemented it, and is ready to alter how your teams operate. In addition, Salesforce has received significant financial and time investment, which you believe will pay off – and besides, you’ve heard the sensational numbers about Salesforce driving business transformation.
Salesforce user adoption is the simple act of allowing a user to access all of Salesforce and CRM capabilities by developing strategies for onboarding, training, and ongoing development – all with the goal of driving a total digital adoption.
Increasing user adoption to the appropriate level helps boost your Salesforce ROI. There are several components to this:
- User productivity: Salesforce will automate the most time-consuming tasks and enable users to access information faster.
- Revenue: Reduced congestion, particularly in the Lead and Opportunity lifecycles, implies “Closed Won” is accomplished more quickly.
- Accurate reporting: Having more data in one location improves reporting accuracy in its current condition, and prescriptive analytics can help push the organisation on the correct path.
- Customer experience: If individuals have a pleasant, delightful interaction with your company, they are more inclined to purchase/renew. All of this begins with a CRM that is set up for interactions so that “fewer wires are crossed” inside.
Proving Salesforce ROI will give executive teams faith in Salesforce, therefore justifying further investment for exciting system enhancements and your role and personal development.
The significant advantage of encouraging digital adoption among your staff and consumers is maximising the return on investment for new technology.
Salesforce adoption methods are efforts taken to encourage user acceptance. This would involve processes when creating solutions, user onboarding strategies, tracking in place, and finally, optimisation.
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Salesforce adoption necessitates constant work. Furthermore, not every training will be an instant hit. As a result, prior to modifying your game plan, you may need to backtrack and evaluate what performs and what can be improved.
Make a plan to enhance Salesforce adoption. Think about outlining various training methodologies. These brainstorming tools may help to smooth the transition process and establish important milestones so that you can monitor the overall status of the move.
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Terms like “the sole proper option” may be overused, but when it comes to implementing a new system or developing an existing one within the organisation, there is indeed just one accurate solution. It is based on the fact that future users are informed about the project from the very beginning. Communication on this subject should be transparent and regular and should be carried out at every stage of the process. Maybe it is worth doing it via a company intranet or an internal newsletter?
Stakeholder Involvement
Include the right people in the conversations from the beginning, best if they are from all levels within your organisation, managers and individual contributors. Often, the lower-level users require the most work to win over.Gaining support from prominent senior-level team members is one of the most effective Salesforce adoption tactics.
When your executives are enthused about Salesforce, they may set a good example. They will inspire their team members to do the same as they display a genuine interest in using all of Salesforce’s features.
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Declutter the interface to make it easier to use Salesforce. This is an excellent task to do before making any more modifications to a current org or Salesforce immediately.
- Hide unused apps, tabs and fields
- Ensure field labels are understandable and simple
- Add help texts
- Remove access to unnecessary objects and fields
- Dynamic Forms can help with creating convenient and straightforward layouts
- Use the full potential of Console Lightning apps.
- Customise layouts and record pages for specific groups of users
- List Views and Search Layouts should consist only of necessary and vital fields
- Filters and List Views are great tools for end-users to create their own experience
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The regular communication mentioned above is critical, but informing users about the implementation is insufficient. If they are meant to be the project’s beneficiaries, they should be involved in the project from the very beginning. This means that they have a tangible impact on designing and creating individual functionalities. A sense of agency will allow each user to quickly accept the tool as “my” tool. Building a sense of agency is not just a marketing ploy. From a high-level point of view, the business goal of implementing an IT system is to generate profit for the organisation. However, looking at it at a low level – the system is to facilitate everyday work in the department for which it is being implemented. Therefore, it is to respond to the specific needs of users, and if so – they should be precisely defined.
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This will undoubtedly be aided by transparency, i.e. previously mentioned regular communication and user commitment to the project. It is also important not to present it as challenging to use, for example, about the advanced capabilities of the tool, as it will not be an incentive for users. However, acceptance of the novelty is not easy: the fear of change should be included in each implementation as one of the risks. In the case of IT system implementations, it is not only a fear of “I can’t use it”. There is also a fear of losing a job because if the company implements the system, it means automation, which may mean they will “lay off”. One of the biggest mistakes that can be made is not controlling such rumours at the beginning of the project.
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The fears mentioned above of “total” automation and replacing people with the system are not the only ones. You also have to consider that dissatisfaction may arise due to insufficient automation. But “why am I still working as much as before given that the corporation has implemented this technology?” That is why the stage of defining the users’ needs and defining the processes to be automated is so essential.
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No matter how many users use the implemented system, they must be trained. In the case of many users, you can use the train the trainer method. It is also worth treating such activity not as a one-time implementation action but as a more regular initiative. An IT system does not (or should not) standstill; it is usually developed and grows following a company’s development. The development of the tool means, among others, enriching it with new functionalities. In that case, you need to educate users about these novelties. It is worth adding the development of Salesforce as a platform – pervasive – constantly developed by its creators. This is an additional argument for introducing a permanent workshop design in the organisation, introducing its functionality.
User Training
Proper understanding and knowledge of the used system improve the end users’ work comfort. Users should go through the fair onboarding process and scheduled training sessions. This will reduce resistance to change and raise awareness of the duties performed.Power users use the Salesforce platform to increase their productivity levels. They develop new, more effective ways to do tasks, understand where and how to access reports for analysis, and are Salesforce advocates within their teams.
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Collect feedback from end-users and ask them which parts of the current system they don’t like or would like to change. Then, conduct interviews with users to gain qualitative data, such as sentiment. Receiving this important data upfront aids in the development of more personalized Salesforce adoption tactics. You will be able to highlight Salesforce features that appeal to specific individuals and/or departments once you have this knowledge.
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Measure the level of adoption. Salesforce dashboards show and give the possibility to measure Salesforce adoption. You can choose to use the pre-built dashboards from the AppExchange package (and customise them to your needs) or create your own.
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In-app Guidance. As Salesforce improved its platform, it realised that in-app instruction was critical for getting new capabilities into the hands of users. In-app Guidance guides users through a succession of instructive tidbits on features and when to utilise them, delivered in various formats like popups.
In-App Learning with Trailhead (Beta)
Salesforce Learning Paths allow businesses to connect Trailhead and myTrailhead educational technologies directly into Salesforce for on-the-job learning tailored to an individual’s role within the organisation. To put it another way, Learning Paths are Trailhead/myTrailhead with In-app Guidance.
