Salesforce is a well-known cloud-based CRM software that has supported nonprofit organizations to achieve their mission goals. To get the most out of the Salesforce platform as a nonprofit the first thing you need to know about is how to have a successful Salesforce implementation.
What do we mean when we say “Salesforce Implementation?”
Salesforce is an online solution for customer relationship management, or CRM. It gives all your departments — including marketing, sales, commerce, and service — a shared view of your customers with one integrated CRM platform. In the case of nonprofits this also means managing all the records of the organization and its donors.
Implementation means getting your software up and running, and also making your new tools a seamless part of your day-to-day business operations. With a CRM — and the Salesforce Platform, in particular — it’s an investment in the future of your nonprofit, and implementation is a lot more than signing a license agreement and creating user accounts.
Salesforce implementation services require strategy and techniques. If appropriately implemented, it will enhance the efficiency and productivity of an organization.
Things to Consider for your Salesforce Implementation
- Consider hiring a Salesforce partner
It’s always beneficial to hire a Salesforce implementation partner; unless you have the internal expertise and resources to handle a large-scale Salesforce implementation it will take much longer and cost more in man hours to implement. They will guide you throughout the process, which will improve work efficiency.
2. Consider making a timeline
When beginning your Salesforce project make sure you have a clear understanding of your initiatives and any other major projects going on. Take stock of your key project members and their availability. Once that is done it is easier to set a timeline for your implementation, mark key milestones in a calendar for process mapping, testing and kickoff.
3. Define the goal you want to achieve
After setting a timeline, it’s time for you to define your goal such as:
- What are your definable goals? Ex. increasing donations by 20%? Decreasing manual work for your admin by 4 hours weekly to free them for other projects>
- What is the macro goals vs micro goals?
- What do you want to achieve?
Defining your goal to your team members will give them an insight into the project, which will help them do their work more efficiently.
4. Define your Team and their Individual Roles
After making the team and defining your goal, you need to collect requirements such as: what are the requirements of completing the project? And how should it reach people? Who on the team will be responsible for what?
Remember your requirements should be precise, concise, and to the point.
5. Designing Your Unique Salesforce Platform
We know each nonprofit is unique — and a Salesforce implementation partner will ensure you are supported in creating robust automation, user-friendly page layouts and scalability for the future. In order to design an appropriate data model — also known as a system architecture — you need to find the right mix of standard and custom objects in which to store the fata from your company’s business processes.
The Importance of Data Migration
The Salesforce platform provides you the flexibility of consolidating your data into a single platform. Data migration is done while moving from your legacy system, be it Raisers Edge or ETapestry, to the Salesforce platform.
Let cloudStack Service team support your data migration and make it as painless as possible. Our team has decades of experience and the sophisticated tools necessary to do the job.
Steps for a successful data migration include:
Data Extraction: Work with our team to identify the data you would like to migrate and from what sources. We will also work with you to decide which specific information you need from all sources
Data Cleaning and Translation: We work with you to clean, de-duplicate and prepare your data for loading into the Salesforce platform
Data Mapping:We will ensure that all records of each source system have a unique identifier and plan the move of your data in to Salesforce. If natively Salesforce does not have a object or field to map your values in to we will customize Salesforce NPSP to support the movement of your data.
Data Migration: The cloudStack team will transfer the data from your source system/s to your Salesforce org. The amount and expected complexity of the data transformation will largely determine the cost of your nonprofits data migration
Why choose us as your Salesforce implementation partner?
As experienced Salesforce Partners the cloudStack team knows that this is a big investment for your nonprofit. 95% of our clients are small to medium nonprofits who are budget conscious and looking to see a significant ROI on their investment as quickly as possible.
Here are a few of the reasons we believe you should choose us as your Salesforce implementation service partner:
Experience: Based in Toronto, Ontario cloudStack Services has over 30 years of combined experience on the Salesforce platform.
Fundraising is at the core of what we enable for many of our customers, but our solutions go well beyond fundraising. From client services and support solutions for immigrant aid organizations, or scheduling and booking systems for performing arts Nonprofits, to case and program management solutions for human services agencies, cloudStack has the experience and technical knowhow to achieve what our customers need.
Our team are experts in implementing this philosophy, as well as providing services required to identify and document specific requirements, develop solutions and implementation plans as well supporting data migration and staff training needs to complete a digital transformation to the Nonprofit Cloud.
We are trustworthy: In the 5 years since our co-founders joined to form cloudStack Services we have worked continuously to support small to medium nonprofits and have many repeat clients.
We would invited you to read through our testimonials and hear what our longterm clients have to say,
Customer support: During the implementation we work with you closely to make sure we meet your timelines and are organizing your Salesforce platform according to your nonprofit needs. And post-implementation we are happy to still support you with admin services if needed through our Salesforce Virtual Administrator Services.
