Here’s What You Can Do To Foster That Appreciation and Satisfaction Once again

Though sometimes you hate to admit it, your users have a love/hate with Salesforce. Your vocal users have told you why they feel Salesforce is challenging. Your articulate users have also told you why they feel Salesforce is a challenge. Now you’ve addressed their issues and won them over, let’s do more of that!

In this three-part blog series, we’ll discuss a few simple tricks to help you increase the adoption and satisfaction of your users. Depending on the size and structure of your organization, implementing these ideas may seem complicated, but we’ll address that as well. Stay tuned for Part II in this series to learn about Lightning Pages.

Begin With the End In Mind

We wish we could take credit for that, but you know we can’t. Stephen Covey’s Second Habit in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a hidden gem for Salesforce adoption. The principle speaks to having purpose and direction–knowing where you’re going before you step out the door. (As an aside, also check out his Third Habit, “Put First Things First” to help manage the flood of requests.)

For the sake of this conversation, our purpose is to increase Salesforce user adoption by understanding needs. This purpose will allow more thoughtful, less-frantic building that will achieve the desired outcome.

When you meet with your end users, truly seek to understand their needs. Use active listening and communicate their needs back to them to ensure complete understanding. Gaps in understanding mean gaps in the build. 
Disclaimer: It’s not uncommon to have stringent approval and deployment processes, especially in large or complex organizations. Before you begin, talk to your manager about these processes to understand what’s coming. Follow that process exactly.

Let’s get hypothetical

Brian is on the sales team. He follows up on leads that come in through the company’s website, and manages a pipeline of deals. Brian finds it challenging to use Salesforce, and everyone in the company is aware.

“It slows me down. I get paid to sell.”

“I don’t need to put anything in Salesforce. I keep it all in my head. Go ahead. Test me.”

You meet with Brian to understand his concerns and complaints. He explains his workflows.

“Don’t even get me started on opportunities. I keep all my deals in a spreadsheet. It’s straightforward, understandable, easy. Then I just send it to my manager every Friday.”

“Anytime I try to create a lead in Salesforce, it’s too slow. I have to click on ‘leads’, then ‘New Lead’. Then I have to enter in WAY too much information.”

You start to realize this is probably more perception than an actual issue with Salesforce, but Brian’s busy and you don’t want to get in his way. Here’s how you can help Brian:

Idea 1: Simplify your Lightning Apps; If your users can’t find it, they can’t use it

Organize Tabs based on Workflow, Left to Right

Now that you understand Brian’s workflows, this will be easy. Out of the box, Salesforce provides the following:

In meeting with Brian, you find he doesn’t even need half of this information. His primary workflow only entails Leads, Accounts, Contacts, and Opportunities.

After a few simple clicks, you transform the Sales Lightning App, making it more usable:

Hide Unneeded Tabs

Following the Tabs Brian will need, you notice Salesforce has wonderfully provided MANY MORE. Let’s simplify.

Much better. If we can get Brian to use Salesforce rather than his spreadsheet to track his deals, we can build exactly the report he needs to present to his manager every Friday. Then, we’ll schedule it so Brian doesn’t have to do anything with it. (But that’s a different conversation for a different day.) More time for selling!

Multiple, Complex Workflows = Multiple Apps

Brian came back with a new requirement. Because of his interactions with customers, he is part of a committee that handles Product Management. The committee meets every other Friday to talk through customer requests and prioritize them for the development teams. He’d like you to build out that workflow as well.

Rather than cramming these additional Tabs into his existing Sales app, we can easily build out a second app for Product Management and assign it to Brian through a Permission Set (since the whole Sales team won’t need it). Here’s what we end up with:

Now Brian can easily toggle back-and-forth between his apps to stay focused on his work.

It’s that easy?

Yes. These are just a few simple changes that can be made to your Lightning Apps to streamline your org for end users. With so many configuration options, it’s easy to over-engineer Salesforce. Keep it simple!

This is only scratching the surface of simplifying your Lightning Apps. There are several features I didn’t cover. Go exploring!

Don’t forget to check back when we discuss parts II and III of this three-part blog series; we’ll take a deep dive into Lightning Record Pages, so stay tuned!

We can make it super easy! Give us a jingle!

At Bitwise Technology Consulting, we use a consultative approach to help you determine the best strategy to identify your challenges, implement appropriate solutions and enhance your systems. Come clicks or code, we have your Salesforce back. Worried about your Lightning transition? Check out this 5-minute read. For a free consultation, email [email protected] or call 559 550 3300 today.

If you’re interested in uncovering the tech possibilities available to your organization or want to find more ways to increase your ROI with technology, click this link to schedule some time with one of our experts.