by Jack Bailey-Grundy 
UK companies are really embracing the benefits that Salesforce can bring to their company – whether it’s Marketing, Sales, or Service Cloud and that’s a great thing to see.
But it’s the challenges raised towards the end of this article that really interests me – accessing the right data, substandard data quality and reconciling data – are considered the biggest issues in companies using Salesforce.
It’s a scenario we experience so often in organisations, and it’s a problem that can be so big to resolve before you even realise there’s a issue in the first place.
Right from the start, rushed implementations without taking a step back to analyse a team’s processes and system requirements can put you on the back foot. Assuming you know how a team works and what’s best for them can fail to engage a team in adoption and can lead to an entire system being built that actually causes a user more issues than old ways of working.
Failing to to take a long term, strategic approach to system growth, scalability and maintenance going forward can exacerbate the issue. Small tweaks to the system, without thought to the structure as a whole, can fail to address the underlying issue, and suddenly you have a system that is no longer fit for purpose, and a team that doesn’t have faith in the data and the system to enhance their job roles.
Allowing your users to access Salesforce any time, anywhere is a fantastic achievement, and a real way to enhance efficiency. But it’s so important to have the underlying infrastructure to support the platform. Ensure there’s long-term project ownership, a dedicated Salesforce Administrator and a Super-User per team as a starting point to manage system updates and improvements, as well as proper time to carry out due diligence, training, planning and implementation of new tools, techniques and functionality. You’ll find that all of sudden, ensuring the right team has the right data at the right time, gets a whole lot easier.
77% of UK companies polled can access Salesforce ‘anywhere, any time’ compared to 67% globally, while half say they have integrated one or more Salesforce clouds, against a 36% overall average.