Data smog of digital world complicated business running, and extended access to the information sources have created a new type of customer. So the modern client is already aware of all nuances, can compare various options and demands personalized, immediate service. CRM system with its practical functionality allows to work out the endless flow records, segment customers and improve the speed and quality of services.
Why Salesforce Is A Practical Option?
More and more frequently businesses find themselves limited by the option sets offered by their legacy systems. Not surprisingly that lots of vendors start considering Salesforce data migration. Thus, the decision of CRM transfer is crucial and fateful for the company’s future.
The top shared reasons are
- Your system is more than 5 years old. It may still work properly, thus it takes more time and efforts to accomplish even simple tasks.
The solution offers minor configurations due to inflexible architecture. So, you have to tailor your business strategy to CRM system capabilities instead of customization to your specific objectives and business processes flow. - You have an only on-premise version that requires paid upgrades. This type of hosting requires powerful hardware, and devoted and qualified IT team to run it. Besides, it limits marketing and sales abilities in delivering timely and relevant customer service as long as it excludes round-the-clock access to the company database.
- Reporting options fail at delivering relevant and accurate data analysis. Data-driven processes are the new trend for a successful business running. So, the transparency of information within the organization, as well as consistent database play a vital role in analyzing effective and ineffective actions, forecasting and further budget planning and distribution.
- Your solution lacks a segmentation option. Personalization is a key to relevant and timely offers so you need to divide your customers and leads as well.
- UI is comprehensive at the first glance but cumbersome in processes management. The more difficult your CRM in usage, the less it is used by your team. Employees give a wide berth to the tools that are complicated and consume their time. So they avoid entering or updating the records with new information that has an impact on the company’s database and, therefore, overall performance quality.
Feels like you are acquainted with such a situation? So, you should get this issue seriously in order to avoid extra expenses, and prevent customers leaking to your competitors.
So why Salesforce? The well-earned reputation goes before the name of this cloud CRM. This SaaS provides different plans with appropriate feature sets for businesses of any size and industry, as well as leaves scope for system scalability for keeping up with company growing demands.
Salesforce offers marketing and sales automation, lead and contact manager, numerous options for improving sales performance (territory and opportunity management, sales forecasting and collaboration, workflows and multiple report dashboards) and integration abilities.
It all boils down to the conclusion – Salesforce data migration is a beneficial choice for employing a high-edge solution to reveal the business potential in full scale.
Arrangements for the Effective Switch
Before initiating your CRM migration, you should prepare your database and employees for the upcoming changes, as well as improve your business strategy.
The relevant and quality data is the key to successful performance, activities analysis, and accurate forecasting. So, you need to start with detecting duplicates. It is highly advisable to merge the record copies. Quite often there are missing fields or semantic mistakes in data – review your database for common patterns and compile a set of rules for improving records quality during entry/edition. Don’t neglect the data backup option. It will prevent critical files damage or loss.
Your team should be informed about the CRM switch and keep the pulse on the updates. Besides, the users training is obligatory to run even if your team has already worked with CRM system. Additional attention should be paid to the system administrator coaching. You can also hire a CRM consultant for teaching your employees and helping in overall system adoption.
Means And Modes of Salesforce Data Migration
Another rising challenge is the way of Salesforce data transfer. The process of records switch is lasting and may have some obstacles.
The most challenging is the type of data migration. Business owners want to get their data to Salesforce in a direct and automated way within a few hours. This demand may be accomplished by means of automated web-based services on condition there is open API access. Thus, Salesforce has different editions with different API abilities.
To be specific, Enterprise, Unlimited and Performance editions of Salesforce have an open API while in Group or Professional versions this option is disabled. However, the solution enables data import option so you can get your data in Salesforce via CSV file import but it takes more time. This migration mode requires technical background for mapping out records fields correctly. In case, you have no IT team, you can hire a freelancer or use the data migration service for getting this job done effectively.
As you can see, Salesforce data migration may be performed in two ways. Everything depends on the edition you have chosen.
Initial Salesforce Setting Up
With the finishing of records, transfer begins the next stage of your CRM initiative – a new system adoption. First of all, you have to check out the correctness of migrated data. Then you should enter the company details, add users and distribute the access permissions. The next step is to integrate mailboxes, add signatures to email templates.
In the process of business processes set up, many companies get obsessed with configurations. Try to avoid heavy system customizations during the first month, otherwise, the end-user adoption will be complicated and take more time.
Besides, you should monitor the data entry and editing processes at least for 3-4 months just to ensure that rules of data quality are obtained by all employees.
Salesforce data migration is an efficient option for uncovering new areas for your business performance. However, the process requires data preparation, strategy advancement, and extra team coaching. That’s why you should plan your CRM rolling out and set up a clear, achievable final goal.
