How Salesforce Implementation Consultants Drive Digital Transformation?

July 23, 2024
Jaya Ghosh

The business environment has grown extremely competitive. For organizations to retain their competitiveness, they must embark on digital transformation. However, digital transformation is not merely about deploying robust software. It requires adopting powerful platforms like Salesforce that have substantially changed how businesses engage with customers. In fact, Salesforce has played a critical role in enabling businesses seeking to efficiently navigate the digital realm. Indeed, the path toward a digitally-empowered future can be intimidating and demands teaming with a trusted Salesforce consulting partner. Such a partner will not just help you in navigating the Salesforce ecosystem but will guide you through every phase of transformation. Right from automating sales processes to employing advanced analytics, they ensure that your Salesforce system is functional and impactful in your business’ growth. What is the role of Salesforce in Digital Transformation? Digital transformation requires organizations to leverage and deeply integrate technology into the fabric of an organization for automating and augmenting business processes. Salesforce – a leading name in the CRM space, plays a significant role by providing businesses with the tools required to streamline their operations, augment their customer service while driving business growth. Through this blog, let’s understand how Salesforce can help organizations drive digital transformation: Customer-centric Approach: A Salesforce implementation consultant makes a thorough research of your business goals and challenges. A consultant with their knowledge of the platform can create a tailor-made solution that places customers at the heart of everything they do. This leads to personalized experiences, enhanced engagement and actionable insights for data-driven decision making. Efficiency and Agility: Inefficient Manual processes cause delays and disruptions. Salesforce Consultants streamline workflows by identifying these bottlenecks and implement automation and integrations. This reduces your team's workload, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives. Customer Engagement: Digital transformation focuses on improving customer interactions across multiple channels. Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud give companies the ability to develop personalized marketing initiatives, offer omnichannel assistance, and provide outstanding customer experiences. This encourages loyalty and advocacy for the brand. Integration challenges: Connecting different systems can be taxing. Salesforce consultants seamlessly connect your Salesforce platform and other essential tools. This ensures consistent information across all departments while fostering collaboration. Additionally, with a holistic view of your operations, decision-making is improved. Security and Compliance: As organizations rely on digital systems, security and compliance are of utmost importance. Salesforce makes substantial investments in cutting-edge security protections and certification adherence, making certain that sensitive information remains safeguarded and that companies fulfill regulatory obligations. Mobile-first Approach: In today's mobile-centric business environment, Salesforce's mobile offerings enable organizations to function seamlessly across any mobile device. Through mobile access to customer information, sales instruments, and analytics, Salesforce allows employees to work productively regardless of location. Continuous Improvement: Digital transformation is not the end destination of a journey. The role of a consultant is much more than implementing Salesforce, they empower businesses to evolve constantly. This includes facilitating smooth adoption and providing user training for maximum impact besides reviewing your Salesforce solution to adapt as per changing needs and future-proofing your strategy. Final Words: A successful Salesforce digital transformation hinges on implementing effective workflows, technologies, and methods. Salesforce acts as a robust foundation for achieving success, offering essential tools to initiate the transformation. It motivates employees to adapt their workflows, support change, foster collaboration, dismantle silos, and focus on continuous improvement. With its API-first approach and modular structure, Salesforce easily integrates with other solutions and customizes to meet specific transformation needs. This results in streamlined processes, increased efficiency, and enhanced customer satisfaction. To know how Salesforce is driving digital transformation, make sure to get in touch with a Salesforce Consulting Partner .

Your Ultimate Guide to Working with Salesforce Commerce Cloud

June 25, 2024
Indranil Chakraborty

Salesforce Commerce Cloud is one the leading enterprise-grade SaaS platforms for B2C and B2B commerce. Founded on the underlying technology that powers the world's most powerful CRM platform, the Commerce Cloud ecosystem is composed of many different products – Order Management, Payment Processing, Omnichannel Inventory, Campaign management, Customer service, and much more. The 2016 acquisition of Demandware By Salesforce, and its subsequent rechristening as Salesforce Commerce Cloud paved the way for a solution that enables businesses to deliver a consistent and connected brand experience across every touchpoint throughout the customer journey. Now brands have access to essential tools and features to cover all aspects of eCommerce. And that's not all. Commerce Cloud leverages powerful analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to hyper-personalize customer engagement at scales never seen before. Features of Salesforce Commerce Cloud 1. Storefront Reference Architecture Commerce Cloud's Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA) is a robust framework for B2C businesses purpose-built for creating high-quality and interactive eCommerce stores. With its extensive library of customizable components, Commerce Cloud helps developers quickly build engaging, device-friendly, digital shopping experiences. By leveraging SFRA, brands can easily grow their eCommerce operations by delivering seamless omnichannel experiences to their customers. 2. Endless Aisle Endless Aisle is a powerful tool that brings to life your team’s eCommerce strategies. It seamlessly connects multiple shopping channels such as in-store, web store, and app to deliver connected shopping experiences. Endless Aisle unifies all your sales channels, enabling your store reps to view customer data and up-to-date inventory information, translating to personalized shopping experiences for your customers. With Endless Aisle, customers can create product wishlists, and you can leverage this data to drive in-store sales by displaying online offers. 3. Order Management Efficient order management plays a crucial role in any retail business and Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers a reliable, robust, and scalable solution with its Order Management feature. This feature brings together a suite of tools and processes purpose-built to ensure the on-time delivery of purchases. This includes order creation, order processing, order tracking, order fulfillment, refund/return management, and much more. Commerce Cloud also provides user-friendly tools and connectors for third-party integrations such as payment gateways, inventory management, and logistics. Furthermore, you can also automate the creation of return labels to streamline the order management process. 4. Content Management System With the integration of the core Salesforce CRM platform and Content Management System (CMS), businesses get a user-friendly way to build custom commerce solutions that allow for quick delivery of relevant content to customers throughout their buying journey. It includes features such as content management, catalog management, content collaboration, approval management, and personalization features to deliver tailored content to customers. The Commerce Cloud CMS also enables content writers to quickly create and deploy commerce-related content such as videos, blogs, how-to's, and promotional banners. 5. Commerce Portals Commerce portals empower brands to easily manage various aspects of their e-commerce operations. This includes product catalog management, promotions and deals management, pricing, order management, payment processing, and customer support. In short, commerce portals offer brands a wide range of tools, functionality, and services to build and manage their online stores. 6. Einstein AI Retailers and brands can leverage the power of Einstein AI to offer tailored buying experiences to their customers without having to hire a team of data scientists. With its powerful predictive capabilities, Einstein identifies patterns by analyzing customer search and shop behavior to build tailored journeys for every customer. This enables brands to offer unique, engaging purchasing experiences to their customers, thereby improving customer loyalty and boosting sales. Capabilities of Salesforce Commerce Cloud Salesforce Commerce Cloud is a powerful and versatile platform that can cater to the needs of all types of online commerce business models – B2B, B2C & D2C, offering unique capabilities to all these models to help businesses optimize their online presence. B2B (Business to Business) commerce as the acronym suggests involves a transaction between 2 businesses. This translates to a smaller, repeat customer base but requires robust capabilities to handle large and complex orders, sometimes with staggered shipping to multiple locations. B2C (Business to Consumer) Commerce is apt for businesses selling to diverse audiences on an individual basis, which means delivering a personalized shopping experience to customers every single time to compel them to come back for more. B2C businesses need frequent customizations as and when new products are introduced and user-centric journeys to cater to a wider audience. B2C businesses need a platform that can handle spikes in traffic during peak periods such as holiday seasons or flash sales. D2C (Direct to Consumer) is a model where businesses sell directly to end-users through multiple channels such as e-commerce websites, apps, or even call-ins to complement traditional retail channels. This allows businesses to extend their reach, build lasting customer relationships, and boost sales by transcending retail partners' limitations. Salesforce D2C Commerce Cloud also allows businesses to test new products and collect first-party data to improve their offerings and customer experiences further. Why do Businesses need Commerce Cloud? It's hard to picture living without a smartphone, isn't it? It is the same thing with e-commerce. E-commerce continues to take center stage as people’s ideal method of buying goods and services just like smartphones do. Nowadays, it is even more important for companies to have a successful online marketing strategy because this connects people across different parts of the world and transcends regional boundaries. In recent years, a growing number of conventional businesses have shifted to using digital platforms for product and service marketing. So much so that automobile manufacturers now offer their goods for sale online. Beyond being accessible around the clock and having a global reach, eCommerce offers various advantages. It provides customers with an unparalleled degree of convenience at a comparatively minimal initial expenditure. It should therefore come as no surprise that businesses adopting Salesforce Commerce Cloud to grow their market share are located all over the world. It offers a range of features intended to completely transform how businesses communicate with their customers during the whole buying process. Advantages of Salesforce Commerce Cloud Customer Experience Transformation: Businesses can transform the consumer experience across all digital channels with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Packed with an extensive feature set, it handles all facets of internet sales, including marketing, discounts and promotions, content creation, customer service, shipping and logistics, return handling, and analytics driven by artificial intelligence. Additionally, Salesforce Commerce Cloud has an open development environment built in, making it simple for developers to modify or add to it. Predictive Analysis: With Einstein AI, brands get real-time insights into consumer behavior and buying patterns to identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities. With the inbuilt predictive sort feature, Einstein can examine search queries, sort the results, and suggest intelligent options. It also tracks the buying cycles and predicts the likelihood of the next purchase, consumer behavior, and relevant product selection. Merchandising and Catalog management: It includes some powerful features like visual merchandising, scheduling tasks (eg. launch of new products), and campaign management (based on customer segments). Catalog management, deals and promotions management, inventory management, and pricing management are also covered under this which improve the productivity of organizations who adopt it. Mobile-Friendly Design: When it comes to consumer preference for online purchases of goods or services, smartphones are the preferred device. With this trend in mind, Salesforce Commerce Cloud was created with this concept at the center of its design philosophy, making it easier for mobile shoppers to have a device-optimized purchasing experience. Omni-channel Support: Salesforce Commerce Cloud seamlessly connects all aspects of e-commerce and offline stores in one unified system. Commerce Cloud enables businesses to sell across multiple digital channels such as e-store, social, mobile, etc. from a single platform and is widely used by retailers to streamline operations. With Salesforce Commerce Cloud retailers and brands can enable their customers to buy from anywhere via a single order management system. This offers flexible buying experiences to the shoppers, including in-store pickup, product trial in-store, etc. Commerce Insight – It includes advanced features like machine learning, real-time insights, and journey personalization by leveraging Einstein AI. Salesforce Commerce Cloud gathers real-time data, draws insight from customer behavior via Einstein, and leverages that information to offer tailored product recommendations. Customer support: Salesforce Commerce Cloud comes bundled with a comprehensive 24/7 customer support solution for businesses. It can handle automated customer support at scale which makes it a compelling case for retailers. One might wonder – Is it necessary to hire professionals for Salesforce Commerce Cloud Development? Well, there are several reasons why you should involve a Salesforce Development Partner or hire a Salesforce consulting company for a flawless implementation of Salesforce Commerce Cloud for your retail business. 1. Expertise in Commerce Cloud Hiring a trusted professional leads to developing a high-quality, robust, and scalable solution that is in sync with the latest platform upgrades and industry trends ensuring a seamless user experience. 2. Faster Time-to-Market A Salesforce development partner can accelerate your time-to-market by combining the expertise and experience of a team of designers, developers, and project managers who work together to build robust and scalable solutions quickly. 3. Integration with Other Systems Integrating Salesforce Commerce Cloud with other systems and apps eg. CRM, marketing automation tools, etc is much easier when you work with a professional. This translates to streamlined operations and real-time sync data across all systems without any redundancies. 4. Security Partnering with a professional Salesforce developer ensures data security. Commerce Cloud has top-level safety measures and guardrails to keep your information safe and ensure it complies with regulations, thus creating trust and loyalty of customers through smooth and interconnected shopping experiences. 5. Innovation To remain ahead of the competition, you must keep track of technological trends and innovations in order to be a leader of the pack. In this challenging journey, a trusted partner will assist you in producing new features and characteristics that enhance the customer's experience. 6. Training and Support To ensure widespread adoption of the platform and its effective use, a partner can offer tailored training and support to your staff. Their ongoing assistance ensures quick resolution of issues and smooth operations. Want to learn more about Salesforce Commerce Cloud? Register for a free consultation today.

Personalizing Operations With Salesforce for Travel & Hospitality Businesses

June 19, 2024
Indranil Chakraborty

Exceptional customer service is essential for a great travel experience because customers want to be recognized for their identity and preferences, and they want VIP treatment. This expectation emphasizes the necessity of improved personalization in communications and experiences, as well as a seamless integration of marketing, sales, and customer service. That is why there is always a demand for agile systems that can handle customized travel planning, bookings, and customer service. Salesforce offers cutting-edge technology to the travel and hospitality sectors, delivering a dynamic CRM platform adapted to the industry's specific needs. Salesforce can improve operational efficiency, and customer engagement, and drive innovation by providing capabilities such as sales and marketing automation, data analytics, and limitless customization, translating to memorable experiences that give travel agencies a competitive advantage. In this article, we'll look at the primary benefits of Salesforce for the travel and hospitality industries, as well as solutions that can be built on top of the Salesforce platform to improve connections with travel agencies, tour operators, customers, partners, and suppliers. Salesforce To Empower Travel Agents Salesforce CRM can help travel agents overcome challenges such as distributed customer data, gaps in real-time information, and fragmented communication channels. It is a comprehensive platform that combines holistic customer management, marketing automation, and data analysis in a single place. Many leading travel and hospitality companies have already boosted several aspects of their operations with Salesforce products. Why Travel & Hospitality Businesses Need Salesforce Salesforce's flagship product – Sales Cloud– helps centralize data storage, customer requirement & preference tracking, and management and organization of bookings, enhancing real-time information access. All this drives personalized marketing campaigns and enables deeper data analysis to further improve business performance. Furthermore, Salesforce provides multi-user access controls to enable secure collaboration and information access, as well as quick retrieval of information, thereby increasing productivity. How Salesforce Can Help Travel & Hospitality Businesses Key Challenges of Travel and Hospitality Businesses Guest Experience Personalization Salesforce for travel agents can retain detailed customer profiles, including preferences and historical interactions, allowing agents to personalize services and communication with each guest, hence increasing personalization. Customer Data Management Salesforce Sales Cloud's extensive data management capabilities enable it to aggregate client information from multiple sources into a centralized database, assuring accuracy and accessibility. Operational Automation Automation capabilities in Salesforce for the travel sector can help expedite booking procedures, guest communications, and other operations tasks, decreasing manual burden and increasing productivity. Enhanced Guest Communication Salesforce Sales Cloud provides integrated communication capabilities (such as email, SMS, and social media) that enable timely and personalized guest interactions before, during, and after their stay. Revenue Optimization Salesforce's analytics and reporting tools can provide insights into booking trends, guest behavior, and market dynamics, allowing for dynamic pricing strategies and revenue optimization. Multiple Systems Integration Salesforce's integration capabilities enable data synchronization across several booking channels, reducing overbookings and maintaining consistent price and availability information, as well as integration with financial, accounting, event management, and other systems. Adapting to Market Changes Salesforce solutions for travel and hospitality professionals are flexible and scalable enabling them to quickly react to changing market conditions, consumer demands, and technological improvements, ensuring their competitiveness. Service Cloud To Streamline Customer Support Salesforce Service Cloud allows for a greater knowledge of customer interactions, resulting in experiences that exceed traveler expectations. Automated request management enables the travel and hospitality industry to provide more effective, timely, and personalized customer service, resulting in higher customer retention and satisfaction rates. Salesforce To Facilitate Partnership Management The Partner Relationship Management system from Salesforce, together with Experience Cloud-powered partner portals, enables travel businesses to strengthen collaboration with partners and affiliates, improving communication and promoting collaborative success. Salesforce Experience Cloud To Enhance Booking Management Salesforce Experience Cloud enables travel and hospitality professionals to develop customized web portals where customers can easily manage and track bookings, check availability, and manage cancellations and modifications in their itinerary effortlessly. Salesforce Marketing Cloud To Supercharge Marketing Operations Travel businesses can offer customized guest engagement and targeted campaigns across multiple channels with Salesforce's advanced marketing automation tools, such as Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, which foster repeat business and customer loyalty. Salesforce CRM Analytics To Get Strategic Insights Travel businesses can get data-driven insights for making well-informed decisions, spotting trends, projecting demand, and creating smart investment and marketing strategies with the help of the Salesforce CRM Analytics tool. This helps to improve investment returns and forecast future trends by helping in understanding customer behavior patterns, pricing strategy optimization, and the creation of tailored loyalty programs. For travel businesses, the entire Salesforce product family offers additional benefits as compared to traditional CRMs: Customization: Because of its flexibility, the Salesforce platform can be customized to meet any demand that a travel or hospitality business may have. Integration: With API integrations, you can expand Salesforce for travel and hospitality to include third-party platforms like local databases, booking systems, and over 4,500 apps on the AppExchange that provide travel agents and customers with more services and real-time information. Security: Salesforce ensures compliance and upholds confidence by adhering to over 40 international digital regulations to safeguard confidential client and partner data. Platform Updates: The Salesforce platform offers scalable solutions that adapt to market changes, technical advancements, and ongoing development. It upgrades its functionality three times a year to support the growth and innovation of the travel sector. Platform Training and Support: The abundance of videos, tutorials, and instructional resources from Salesforce and its partners, together with the gamified training platform Trailhead, reduce the learning curve and improve user adoption of recently introduced solutions. Community Engagement: The Trailblazers, a vibrant group of Salesforce users and developers, foster creativity, quick adaptation to changing market conditions, and a wealth of mutual knowledge, all of which help to maintain the platform's usefulness and relevance over time. You can also choose the best fit Salesforce implementation partner for your travel business by filtering partners by a wide range of criteria, including geography, rating, customer reviews, level, and specialty of experience on the AppExchange's certified Salesforce partner community. Customizing Salesforce to Meet Travel Industry Needs Customizing Salesforce is critical for travel and hospitality businesses. Because of the platform's great flexibility, businesses may replicate real-world scenarios and solve problems with creative, customized features. Here are some instances of Salesforce for travel and hospitality businesses where platform customization can optimize its potential: Custom Reports and Dashboards: Businesses can leverage AI-powered Sales and Customer Service to enhance the capabilities of Salesforce. These capabilities include predictive analytics, demand forecasting, identifying booking trends, and pricing strategy optimization. AI-powered Analytics: Travel businesses can leverage AI for sales and customer service for predictive analytics, demand forecasting, booking trends, and pricing optimization. Loyalty Program: Businesses can create custom modules within Salesforce to manage loyalty programs, track activities, and automate awards, thereby increasing customer satisfaction. Automate Routine Tasks: Travel and hospitality businesses can tailor Salesforce's automation features to automate processes such as booking confirmations, pre-arrival preparations, and post-stay follow-ups, allowing agents to focus on more valuable interactions. Customer Journeys: Salesforce allows organizations to create complex customer journeys that depict and evaluate every stage of their journey, from initial inquiry to post-trip feedback. This knowledge can then be leveraged to tailor services and offerings to improve the overall travel experience. Post-Trip Feedback Collection: Salesforce can be customized to automate post-trip feedback collection and integrate it with customer profiles to facilitate future service enhancements and personalized marketing initiatives. Proactive Alerts: Travel businesses can customize real-time alerts within Salesforce for travel interruptions, weather alerts, and flash promotions, allowing agents to proactively inform and assist travelers. Connect AI-Powered Chatbots: Travel businesses can connect AI-powered chatbots with Salesforce to provide 24-hour customer service, handle common queries, manage bookings, and make personalized travel recommendations. Beyond these aforementioned functionalities, a sophisticated web portal is a key component of any travel company's technology stack. Salesforce's Experience Cloud, with its vast customization options, provides the tools needed to create a custom online gateway that easily connects with Salesforce CRM Travel Industry Solutions That Can Be Built on Top of Salesforce Experience Cloud Custom Travel Portals: Travel companies can build customized portals where clients can browse travel alternatives, book services and manage their itineraries. These portals can provide personalized recommendations based on the customer's preferences and travel history. Agent and Partner Portals: Travel companies can create platforms that enable agents and partners to access sales tools, resources, customer data, and other relevant information. These portals make it easier to book and collaborate on trip packages. Self-Service Support Centers: Companies can create centralized support centers where travelers can obtain answers to their questions, read travel guides, and receive real-time updates on their reservations or travel advisories. Training Platforms: Companies can develop educational platforms to train and certify teams on new destinations, services, and booking technologies, ensuring that clients receive the most relevant and accurate information and options. Internal Collaboration Platforms: Travel businesses can create internal platforms to improve communication and collaboration among employees from various departments or geographies. Operational Dashboards: Businesses can use these portal solutions to develop bespoke dashboards that provide customers, partners, and staff with better access to reservation, revenue, or agent performance indicators, allowing them to identify critical areas for improvement or provide greater operational transparency. If you believe that your Salesforce for hospitality solution does not accurately reflect your company’s processes, you may require the expertise of Salesforce consultants. They can assist with a comprehensive evaluation of your Salesforce instance and implement the necessary optimization and customization to harness the true power of the platform. Girikon is a Gold Salesforce Partner with over 300 certified Salesforce professionals spread over 4 continents. Our decade-long experience in delivering bespoke Salesforce solutions to businesses across industries makes us uniquely positioned to offer tailored services to travel businesses. Set up a free consultation today.

Keys to AI Success in CRM – AI Trends from over 700 Global Business Leaders

June 10, 2024
Indranil Chakraborty

Nine out of ten business leaders recognize that a strong data strategy is key to AI success. So why is it that only a third of them are embracing a unified data strategy across their organization? In early 2024, Salesforce partnered with Forrester Research to find answers to this question in the midst of the rapidly evolving AI landscape. The Forrester-led research, conducted across 700+ business leaders spanning 14 countries, throws light on the mindset of these global decision-makers around AI-powered CRM. These trends reveal that despite the rapid changes in AI, there are some core principles that businesses must prioritize to ensure growth. Before we dive into these key factors, let us first be cognizant of the status of AI-powered CRM. Gaps in AI understanding means there’s room for growth The research reveals businesses across the world are embracing AI across multiple use cases. But it hasn’t been going smoothly so far. The research reveals that there are major gaps that could impact the envisioned success of AI in CRM. Here’s a reveal that stood out: Despite all respondents planning to adopt AI, when presented with definitions of predictive and generative AI side by side, only half were able to choose the correct definitions. Considering that a holistic AI strategy includes both types of AI models, either of which serves specific goals, this also indicates the need for more comprehensive education. Business leaders need to be aware of the specific use cases that each type of AI can enable, the expected outcomes, and how to develop a strategic AI plan that is grounded in those goals. Another key revelation was the evident gap in data maturity and readiness. While 92% of leaders were emphatic about the significance of a robust data strategy, only 33% said they have it implemented across their organization. Bridging this gap is key to the effective use of AI. Trust also emerged as a key concern, with business leaders alluding to security issues and uncertainty about the accuracy and relevance of the output created by generative AI. Fear of inadvertently exposing sensitive customer data and the risk of damage to reputation was a big hurdle to adopting generative AI. Three pillars for robust AI-powered CRM Ready your data Data quality and availability are the backbone of successful AI. More than half of the survey respondents agreed that high data quality is essential to ensure successful implementation of AI. Despite its importance, the group indicated that the main challenges with their CRM data are data quality issues and a lack of requisite data skills. Conversely, organizations with higher levels of data maturity have not only most likely already adopted AI but also in all probability use a CRM that unifies data across their business, translating to higher productivity and greater customer satisfaction. Our tip: Prioritize clean up of your data and eliminate silos to ensure a 360-degree view of customer data. Adopt a mature approach to data quality that is strategically aligned with your business goals. Everything cannot be improved overnight, so focus on understanding key data requirements that enable you to deliver your AI use cases in a phased manner. Last but not least, keep data quality at the core of everything you do as you go about building an AI strategy. Build trust in AI Trust is of utmost importance in AI. Respondents almost unanimously (96%) indicated that trust is critical when working with an AI partner. Real concerns about inadvertently exposing sensitive customer data, copyright infringement, or violating regulatory or compliance requirements can invite a lot of uncomfortable questions. Specifically, companies are looking for vendor partners who already have security protocols in place like data masking (anonymizing private or sensitive data) embedded into their AI tool. Another way to protect against potential threats is to work with a partner that bundles AI with their core CRM products and services, so you eliminate any additional complexities that arise when you attempt to integrate with an outside source. Our tip: Work with a trusted partner/vendor that offers thorough management of both inputs as well as outputs of AI. And when you share your data with any large language model, make sure it is masked. When selecting a model (whether vendor-owned or third-party), ensure that your inputs and prompts are not stored by them so that you have complete control over the use of your data. Apart from addressing privacy and security concerns, ensure that your prompts and AI outputs are scanned for harmful outputs like bias or toxicity. And most importantly, depending on the AI use case and the process or task it automates, make sure you have a human at the helm for critical use cases to ensure relevance, accuracy, and trust. Provision for education and upskilling As AI becomes mainstream in organizations, almost half of the respondents emphasized the need for ongoing upskilling. This, coupled with the overall lack of understanding of AI concepts reveals the need for a thoughtful and structured approach to AI education. Furthermore, respondents indicated that a lack of adequate data skills is a principal challenge with the use of their existing CRM systems. Our tip: Apart from ensuring your staff has a reasonable understanding of your AI strategy and its alignment with your business goals, start with training employees on how to write effective prompts. A prompt is a detailed text instruction in normal everyday language fed to a large language model (LLM) for it to generate an output. Effective prompts translate to more relevant and accurate outputs from the LLM. All employees can be prompt engineers, and adequate prompt writing training, led by an expert, will yield the maximum benefits of AI while helping staff work more efficiently and effectively. Additionally, internal programs that train the workforce to evaluate AI outputs for accuracy, bias, and toxicity, are indispensable. Where to start your AI implementation AI in its current form, with the countless use cases it can lend itself to, can often create confusion about where to start. When AI can be used by sales, marketing, customer service, engineering, HR, and almost every other business function, determining the best place to start can be a daunting task. So, before you build the roadmap for your AI journey with a trusted Salesforce Consulting Partner, the first step is to determine what fits your goals. Where will AI add value? Every journey needs a destination. From that perspective, develop a roadmap with the best-fit route for a purposeful and successful AI implementation. This means thinking about the end objective first (the business version of “visualizing and manifesting”). AI implementation goals generally fall into one of three following categories: Increasing revenue where AI serves up new opportunities and streamlines processes. Reducing costs where AI-powered process automation and optimization lowers operational costs and augments business efficiency. Driving customer loyalty where AI delivers tailored experiences to make customers feel understood and valued, thereby building loyalty and trust, which in turn translates to higher revenue and lower costs. Once you determine which of these goals is in alignment with your business needs, you can get going on the roadmap. Set the right expectations Knowing the destination and establishing a roadmap doesn’t necessarily translate to a predictable journey. AI is still in its early stages and can surprise us. Let’s look at a very real scenario. A retail business has a poorly performing customer service call center. They have high call abandonment rates and a low net promoter score (NPS) which reveals poor customer satisfaction. While they may be tempted to implement an AI solution for their front desk like a Salesforce AI chatbot for customer service, but on further investigation they realize that a deeper understanding of customer needs will yield greater benefit. AI can play a pivotal role here in automating customer service and analyzing feedback and customer behavior. But before this shift in perspective, you need to step back a little, look deeper into your business processes, and find inadequacies and areas for improvement. AI has the potential to be a strategic force that combines the best of computer science and data science to achieve the best outcomes. Make the AI business case While AI has the potential to be a game-changing technology, a strategic checkpoint is when you clearly establish the rationale for embracing AI. To put it simply, how exactly does AI help your organization achieve its business goals more efficiently? Before rolling out any new innovative technology, there should be a thorough investigation of the pros and cons, costs, and risks. Prioritize trust This is by far the biggest concern around AI. When you work with a trusted Salesforce Partner, you automatically address concerns around data security, privacy, and ethical use of at the onset. The most common questions that businesses have to deal with around trust are: Where’s my data going? Understanding the storage of data and its flow is essential. Once the data is gathered and stored securely, it must be managed with the highest regard for privacy. Who are you sharing it with? This forms the crux of data-sharing policies. Data sharing should be within a restricted perimeter guarded by strict protocols and transparency; information should be shared only where necessary and under the most rigid constraints. “Is it protected?” Data security is critical. Implementing strong security protocols to protect against unauthorized access is the highest priority for AI implementation teams. While these concerns are valid, enterprise-grade cloud-based platforms like Salesforce are transforming the landscape of software delivery and its usage. Working with the right Salesforce Consultant will help you address these concerns, and more, upfront. Design your business’s AI plan with a human AI Coach AI readiness transcends technology. Organizations need to conduct a 360-degree evaluation of the potential value of AI for their business, AI’s alignment with its business goals, internal data quality, the trustworthiness and security of the AI solution, the reputation and track record of the AI partner, and their adaptability to a new way of working. This is where a Salesforce Consulting Partner comes in. We bring the experts in technology and business to the table, along with our AI Coach program. Through this program, we evaluate an organization’s overall readiness for AI, internal skills and expertise, current tech infra, data quality, and governance practices, and eventually design a roadmap for sustainable success. We believe the human aspect of AI is the most important. Connect with a Salesforce AI services expert at Girikon today to learn more.

Client Testimonials

Girikon has been a crucial partner in our Salesforce deployment. Their team exhibited outstanding technical acumen and responsiveness throughout the project lifecycle. They conducted a thorough analysis of our system requirements, developed a detailed implementation plan, and executed it with precision. Girikon's deep understanding of our business processes enabled them to deliver a customised solution that not only met our core needs but also integrated advanced features and automation capabilities we hadn't previously considered. Their expertise in Salesforce architecture and their innovative approach have been instrumental in the successful roll-out of our system.

Mitesh Chandra Corporate ICT Solutions Architect

I have worked with Girikon for a year, selected as part of a complex RFP process. Everyone I work with on the team helps me to be successful. Don't worry about time zone differences - team members are available for your work time. Technical knowledge is outstanding and so is the attitude toward customer support. Add the cost effectiveness of hybrid on/off shore, and it is the perfect combination for us. We have more to implement, so I expect the "Services provided" selection will increase over time.

Anne LapinskiDirector of Marketing and Digital Transformation

The team at Girikon transformed our business (specifically the Revenue group - Sales, Marketing, Success) by migrating us out of our old CRM and into HubSpot. We had 10+ years of data, contacts, financials, etc. to move from Infor to HubSpot. Projects like this are difficult and can be overwhelming. Girikon made it easy for us. They listened, collaborated, and took action. Thanks!

Nate CoxSVP of Revenue

What an excellent and seamless execution! The Girikon team has done a fantastic job implementing the HubSpot Service Hub for us. They were able to tailor the integration to our requirements, pulling in the specific data we needed from our ERP system (IFS). The entire team is highly responsive and always ready to assist whenever needed. They also helped us with a significant amount of ticket automation, responses, and the creation of numerous forms to streamline our ticketing system. I wholeheartedly endorse the Girikon team for any HubSpot integration with an ERP system. This experience has been exceptional, and we're likely to engage their services again in the coming year.

Douglas PlattProduct Support Manager

We contracted with Girikon for creation of an external database to connect to our HubSpot account. Their timelines were accurate and their communication was timely and transparent. We were given many opportunities for feedback to ensure that the database was working exactly as we need it to. The entire team was responsive and helpful, and we appreciated their hard work. We would definitely use them again should another project arise.

Cathy TiltonMember Relations Manager

We started working with the Girikon team in April 2023 to migrate our CRM from LeadSquared to HubSpot. From the very start, we were very impressed by the responsiveness and expertise of their team. Ours was a relatively complex implementation with many custom developed solutions, and the Girikon team took on each challenge with enthusiasm and gusto. While it wasn't always smooth sailing due to the various HubSpot limitations, the Girikon team of Jitendra, Niwedita, Sweta, Ajay & Deepak never gave up and made sure to think of innovative custom developments to solve the challenges we were facing. Kudos to them!

Sanjay DhingraChief Operating Officer

Girikon has been an exceptional consulting partner since we began working with them in May 2023 to onboard HubSpot as our companywide CRM. Their team supported us with the configuration and deployment of Sales Hub, Service Hub, and various customised reports and functionalities. Girikon demonstrated a profound understanding of our business needs within the CRM framework and guided us through best practices with tailored solutions. They excelled in facilitating CRM training for our internal staff and were consistently available, responding promptly to any questions and feedback. We are grateful to have partnered with such a fun, friendly, patient, and talented team at Girikon, who exemplify true collaboration and partnership.

Madelon BarrowDirector of Client Experience and Support

We had an excellent experience working with Girikon. Reshma, Dheeraj and Jaimie were awesome to work with. They made the implementation so easy. Highly recommend Girikon to anyone looking to implement HubSpot.

John MackVP

We had the pleasure of working with Reshma, Dheeraj, Ajay and Brady. They assisted us with our onboarding efforts to HubSpot and helped in creating some automated workflows to streamline our sales processes. As a small business, implementing a new system and different sales related tools - while keeping the business running was a bit stressful, but this team had all the necessary skills (and patience) to make it a smooth process. Thank you very much Girikon team, we'll definitely recommend your services whenever we get the opportunity!

Tony CurranCo-Owner

Girikon has been an outstanding Salesforce partner for our company. They have customised our database to suit our business processes, and taken time to understand the way our business works. They are proactive and supportive and very diligent in keeping to deadlines. I would recommend them to anyone who would like a reliable Salesforce partner.

Tom Cheetham, Sales Manager

Great team of people. Very patient, understanding and accommodating to our project’s needs. And always happy to answer any of our questions we had.

Steven Tran, Salesforce Administrator

The offshore team were professional, prompt and responsive. The local team were able to grasp what we needed and understood our business and our requirements in a speedy manner. This allowed them to come up with a solution which has improved our business efficiencies and given us a platform for growth.

Natasha Porter, Operations Manager

Being our first time hearing of Salesforce, Yiannis and Mokshith really helped us get our head around what it is and what it's capable of doing. We came to them with many problems we needed solved for our Advocacy Service, and we were able to get an outcome that works great for our needs. Our day-to-day operations have been streamlined by cutting out a lot of back and forth to the students using our service with a tailor-made form that addresses all the information we require upfront, rather than later through many emails. Compared to the system we were using previously, Salesforce and Girikon together, allow us infinite opportunities to improve our service. We are continuing to work with Girikon for other projects our broader business needs and are sure the outcomes will be successful too.

Maddison Federico Student Engagement Manager

The team are engaging and knowledgeable of the product. They are capable of providing advice and recommendations for "non-technical" people?. The team are responsive and continue to support us on our Salesforce journey, no matter how big or small the question. We look forward to continuing to work with the team.

Katrina Bye Commercial Operations and International Manager

Girikon has been our trusted Salesforce advisor for 2 years. We needed a partner who really understood our unique challenges, and with their extensive experience in Salesforce consulting for the not-for-profit sector, Girikon helped us get closer to the finish line.

Jenny Davidson CEO

Girikon was excellent in suggesting and implementing what's a simple process but actually has a number of underlying processes that we now use to better forecast and report over time. If I were to say, there's probably Agile project management at its finest.

Carmelo Pellizzeri Director of Revenue Operations

As we were the first higher education institution in our region to adopt the EDA with the Student Success Hub (SSH), there was a lengthy scoping phase for this project. Girikon were excellent in assisting us with discovering our needs and how Salesforce could meet and exceed those needs.

Rob Corner National IT Manager

Girikon's attention to detail and willingness to find integrated solutions with our existing platforms was outstanding. The level of resources they provided to the engagement always made us feel prioritized as a client and kept the project on track. Overall it was the quality and level of project management that stood out across the engagement to make it so successful.

Bevan Nicholson CEO

Our experience with the Girikon team has been fantastic. They helped us develop a custom Salesforce solution to integrate our new website with Salesforce, right before the launch of one of our major annual-giving campaigns. They helped us develop a custom API to integrate our new website with Salesforce, set up our campaigns and streamlined the overall campaign and donor management process. As a small not-for-profit with limited resources, Girikon has become our go-to Salesforce partner. Thanks Girikon!

Maheen Iman Marketing Manager

Thanks so much to everyone on the team for getting Phase 2A completed on schedule.

I appreciate the cooperative spirit and the attention to detail that enabled us to streamline the entire process in order to achieve success and to meet our goals.

I couldn't be more thrilled to work with such a terrific group of people, and I'm looking forward to working with you on the next 2 phases of the project!

With many thanks,

Cesar Muradas Director of Technology

Very happy with Girikon, as they finished the project working as a team and they got really engaged with our needs and specifications. The communication was excellent and I am more than happy to recommend Girikon to anyone for salesforce projects. Keep up the good job!

George GkoumasSpecialist Technician

"Outstanding Communication"

Jack SocratousNational Product Support, Training & Marketing Manager

It was an absolute pleasure working with Girikon. In all the projects undertaken from us, they have been very helpful in building solutions for our ORG. Also, they have very competitive prices. We Will definitely hire them again for any future projects.

Ali AbbasSalesforce Administrator

Girikon has provided a great 'end-to-end' solution with a minimum of fuss and hassle. The iterative manner by which the project evolved has ensured a 'fit for purpose' outcome. Thank you!

John MitchellCEO

Short term initial engagement with real benefits from the product and solutions scoped and delivered. Good experience with an educated & passionate Salesforce implementation partner.

Chris CaddenSales Manager

The team at Girikon were knowledgeable with Salesforce, it's limitations and how best to leverage the resources available to achieve the best outcome. Engagement was flexible and the team continue to support our business.

Beau de la GardeClient and Operations Lead

?Yiannis and the team listened carefully to what I needed to achieve and delivered on time and in budget. I look to working with them again in the future.

Sinead MonaghanCommunity Development Officer

Girikon team are professional, knowledgeable with Salesforce product and meet objectives in a timely manner. They are a pleasure to work with.

Jennifer GaleaFinance Manager

The team at Girikon, they were very professional and detailed in every way! They spent a good amount of time identifying our scope and meticulously understanding our processes before we wrote a single line of code. When they presented a schedule, they stuck to it and the after development support has been top-notch. The Devs have great personalities and I have enjoyed spending time with them building the structure that supports my business. These guys are the best and we already have additional work slated to do with them. We have found a partner for life in Girikon!

Daniel GourleyPresident

From day one, I noticed several differences between Girikon and the previous firms we had worked with. The major difference was the daily communication. I was not only able to jump on a phone call once a day to answer any questions, bounce my ideas to the team and receive progress updates, but also received a daily progress report with upcoming work items.

A project handed off a project to the Girikon team will most certainly be a quality delivery on time and within budget!

Mark HomerCEO

We have been extremely impressed with all of our projects with Girikon. They have helped streamline our internal processes, and made our daily work environment a better place to be. Our work together has reduced the amount of tedious "plug-and-chug" work, helped us to innovate new processes, and allowed us to focus on helping our clients.

Joe BrodarDevelopment Strategist

We at Go! Go! World have had the pleasure of working with the team at Girikon on a very niche project involving multilingual Salesforce B2C implementation.

With brilliant analysis, planning and execution Girikon, not only delivered what we needed but also added value by recommending additional features that we did not previously think possible. Their work ethics and requirement understanding is top-notch and we are absolutely looking forward to working with Girikon for future projects.

Chris BaekCOO

I can highly recommend the Girkion Team. They have been amazing since my first contact with them via their website to our Go-Live Date.

Erin MacdonaldBroker Support Officer

Girikon were a very diligent team that helped setup our quick-start Salesforce implementation to enable us to have over 250 accounts, over 1,000 contacts and a number of opportunities transferred and then configured for our requirements.

They listened to our requirements for an effective sales engagement process to be implemented, whilst ensuring integration from Pardot was effective for a streamlined process from lead to opportunity. Our team, whilst small in numbers, are scattered around the world, so being able to implement an effective solution that could be trained quickly for users and have them aligning their use was really effective from Girikon

Daniel HibbertCommercial Director

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