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Weldaloy, a leading producer of welding components, faced operational challenges as their customer base expanded. To enhance efficiency, they adopted Salesforce, a robust CRM platform, and took a strategic leap by seamlessly integrating PLEX ERP with the help of Summit Technologies and Commercient. PLEX ERP, a cloud-based enterprise resource planning system, proved to be a game-changer for Weldaloy. This integration not only streamlined sales and customer management but also provided real-time insights into manufacturing, inventory, and financial data. The decision to choose Salesforce Government Cloud, combined with SHIELD, ensured compliance with stringent government regulations in the industries where Weldaloy operates, offering a secure and compliant environment for PLEX ERP integration. Summit Technologies played a crucial role in configuring automations that significantly improved operational efficiency, addressing specific pain points in Weldaloy's workflow. The collaboration with Commercient facilitated a seamless PLEX Integration, ensuring effective communication between the Weldaloy and Commercient teams. Ongoing support from Summit Technologies through a Managed Services Package allows Weldaloy to efficiently manage their Salesforce Government Cloud organization and maximize the benefits of the PLEX ERP integration. This success story underscores the transformative impact of Salesforce and the seamless integration of PLEX ERP, providing operational efficiency, data compliance, and a unified approach to business processes. Weldaloy can now focus on their core business with confidence and peace of mind. Read the complete Weldaloy success story here.

Not all e-commerce solutions require a full shopping cart experience. For some of our clients who only offer a handful of products or services or whose purchasing process requires a wizard-like interface to gather information from the customer, an e-commerce solution like Commerce Cloud or Shopify may be overkill or unable to meet their needs. Luckily there are a few apps out there that allow credit card payments to be taken on the Salesforce platform, including Salesforce customer, constituent or partner portals built on Experience Cloud. We are able to build customer checkout experiences using Salesforce Screen Flows or products like FormAssembly. Payments are then records in the Salesforce CRM where full CRM users have the ability to take payments manually, handle refunds and more. Since the payments are Salesforce records in the CRM, they are available for reports and dashboards. We have used a number of different Salesforce apps to build out this functionality and our current favorite is Chargent. Read more about our services setting up payment processing in Experience Cloud portals here.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Management theorist and consultant, Peter F. Drucker (of Drucker-School of Management fame) used the acronym SMART to define and structure success metrics for setting goals. Specific—You can define the goal in a clear and precise manner. Measureable—You can assign a number or checkpoint to the goal. Achievable—You can actually attain the goal. Relevant—You can apply the goal to your work or your plan or your larger initiatives. Time-bound—You can set a certain time period to achieve the goal. Want to work smarter? I would propose that you rewrite your goals one more time with SMARTER goals instead of SMART goals. What do the last E and R stand for? Evaluator and reward. It is a good idea to have a team or individual who makes the judgment call that the goal is achieved rather than still a work in progress and for best possible team and organization buy-in don’t just show a percentage or number but show how it impacts the organization in the long run. The evaluator may or may not be a member of the team who brings the goal to life. But the evaluator should be well versed enough in the goal and its implementation to identify whether it was completed successfully and met its measurable criteria. The reward is an integral part of the evaluation and the drive behind the goal. What is the reward to the business or team or organization when the goal is completed? SMARTER goals are a key to achieving success - in marketing, in digital transformation, and in life.

Financial services marketers who operate in a B2B environment are adopting a forward-looking approach to tackle their most pressing business and business development challenges. These challenges typically include complex data management and legacy systems, email platform limitations, budget constraints, technical debt, and a lack of scalability and flexibility due to high levels of regulation. In addition to overcoming these challenges, financial services businesses must also establish strong relationships with buying committees to influence decision-makers and consistently meet their needs. An effective strategy for addressing these challenges is account-based marketing (ABM), which emphasizes quality over quantity. By identifying their ideal customers and tailoring their marketing strategies accordingly, financial services marketers can create targeted and personalized campaigns instead of relying on a trial-and-error approach. Casting a wide net for lead generation builds a database but it doesn’t necessarily fill a pipeline. ABM involves personalizing the customer experience to drive conversions. This means customizing the approach towards each buyer and scenario, from agents to wealth management advisors, and brokers to relationship managers. Personalized content and experiences across various digital spaces, such as websites, customer portals, and email campaigns, help build trust and foster meaningful relationships with prospects. This, in turn, increases the likelihood of conversion. To successfully implement account based marketing, financial services businesses must align their marketing, sales, and service teams. This involves streamlining marketing efforts to key accounts and automating personalized engagement to the entire book of business. By doing so, businesses can better acquire and grow key accounts, as well as optimize performance, efficiency, and spend. One of the most significant benefits of ABM is the ability to extract deep insights from customer data. By analyzing this data, businesses can identify trends and patterns that help them make informed decisions about their next best action. For instance, knowing which products or services a customer was browsing on a website can help customer-facing reps when approaching that client with the next best offer. By leveraging insights from customer interactions, financial services businesses can create customer-centric ABM strategies. Marketing in financial services can be challenging, but ABM provides a solution for personalizing engagement, building strong relationships, and driving growth. Summit Technologies LLC looks forward to the opportunity to explain how account based marketing and Salesforce can benefit your financial services business. Contact us today.

In today's business world, many companies are implementing subscription models, or are planning to do so in the near future. A subscription model is a business model in which a company offers its products or services to customers on a recurring basis, often on a monthly or annual basis, in exchange for a regular fee. This can help companies build predictable revenue streams, increase customer loyalty, and provide flexibility for customers. Recurring revenue is key to growth and predictability for businesses. When a company offers subscriptions, it can start each quarter with a baseline revenue that is often close to or higher than the previous quarter, and then build on top of that. Customers also benefit from subscriptions because they get flexible payment options like pay-as-you-go, which makes it easier to commit to a purchase. However, simply building recurring revenue through subscriptions is not enough to guarantee success. The traditional way of billing may prevent subscription selling from reaching its full potential. Sales and finance teams need to work together to introduce new processes and technology to capture all the value they can. Building recurring revenue through subscriptions is not just for technology companies. Michelin, for example, transitioned to a recurring revenue model by charging customers by the mile instead of selling tires outright. This transition helped the company increase its profits and maintain its competitive edge in the tire industry. While ingenious and unique, Michelin proves that any company can develop a subscription based model for their existing lines of business. A subscription model is a powerful tool that can help businesses build predictable revenue streams, increase customer loyalty, and provide flexibility for customers. However, businesses need to work collaboratively to implement the necessary processes and technology to ensure that their subscription models reach their full potential. Summit Technologies LLC will work with you to develop a subscription model to enhance your revenue streams.

To successfully create, enhance or expand your ecommerce offering, it's crucial to assess all the necessary tasks and teams involved in achieving your goals. Whether you're embarking on your direct-to-consumer journey or you have an established organization with plans to launch new initiatives, the essential roles and functions of ecommerce remain the same. It all starts with establishing your goals and plan, which includes your technology roadmap, product initiatives, and marketing strategies. Once your development team implements the features and capabilities outlined in your roadmap, your UX and design teams ensure a seamless experience for buyers, while marketing and merchandising strategies attract customers and cultivate loyalty. Development operations ensure that backend processes, such as order management and fulfillment, are optimized for efficiency. To better understand how your roadmap drives key activities and roles, it's important to examine its impact on your commerce activities. You must identify the ecommerce features and functionalities that align with your business goals and prioritize them for development. Depending on your dev team's skills, abilities, and bandwidth, you may opt for a minimum viable product (MVP) approach or a more aggressive strategy that prioritizes innovation. Once you determine your development approach, focus on building teams that support ecommerce success. Key roles include marketers who can drive traffic to your site, merchandisers who can optimize your product offerings, and UX designers who can enhance the shopper experience. Before posting job ads, carefully consider each team's daily tasks and responsibilities to identify any gaps that need to be filled through hiring, upskilling, or outsourcing. By mapping out all the necessary tasks and responsibilities involved in your ecommerce operations, you can identify gaps in your current team structure and determine whether to hire, reskill, or partner with external experts to fill these gaps. Summit Technologies LLC looks forward to working with your organization as you move through your ecommerce implementation and to assisting you with the change management associated with the tasks, roles, and responsibilities. We provide services both in implementation and ongoing management of your platform.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses to connect with their prospects and customers, but it's important to remember that subscribers receive a lot of emails every day. So, what makes an email stand out from the rest and encourage subscribers to open it, read it, and click the Call to Action? Here are some tried-and-true methods to make your emails more appealing, effective, and trustworthy. Stay relevant. The first step is to consider your audience and why they are receiving this message. Is it addressing what they’re trying to do or what they want? Focus less on the sale, and think about what the customer actually needs. Set a content hierarchy. Make sure your subscribers can quickly understand the main message of your email. Order your content so the most important message is visible before any scrolling. From there, ensure every piece of content directs the reader where to go next — and why. Tell a story. Email can make for a compelling narrative. Think about how you’d like customers to understand your core values. What is your brand’s story? When drafting it, consider narratives that peek behind the scenes, address social activism, or reveal product origins. Keep it simple. Try to focus each email on one message. When you do have to include multiple viewpoints, think of ways to streamline the presentation. You may need to send an additional message. Bring teams together to collaborate if necessary. Trim it back and clean it up. After you write and design your email, reread the copy for readability. You’ll often find you can trim it down by up to half and not lose any impact. Customers move from one experience to the next at a rapid pace, so be sure they can see and understand your key message and call to action at a glance. Personally I look at things like adjectives and adverbs and ask myself if they add anything. Grab their attention. Short and medium-length subject lines have higher open rates than long ones, which ultimately affects conversion rates (the percentage of people who take action on your email). Subject lines are often truncated depending on device or service provider, so limit them to 50 characters or fewer. Include a preheader. The preheader is the text that follows the subject line in an email preview. It can be as important as the subject line itself. Make it a call to action or use it as a short summary of the email content. Just make sure it supports the subject line. Limit this preheader to about 100 characters. Save time with AI. Consider adding artificial intelligence (AI) to your marketing toolbox. AI can do the personalizing, segmentation, product recommendation, and even database cleanup for you, at scale. (And much more.) It saves teams time on tedious tasks and lower costs. Einstein Lead Scoring can even help you convert your email readers to customers by scoring the best prospects and notifying the sales team. Notice I’m not recommending having an AI tool like ChatGPT or Jasper or Hemingway Editor actually write your emails. Editing them is okay. And they are pretty good at shortening content, but always, always, ALWAYS go back over it if you do choose to use an AI tool. Drive results with a strong CTA. Make your call to action in the email specific and relevant. Maybe it’s a limited-time offer, entry to a contest, a prompt to visit your website, or an invitation to an event. Give your customers an irresistible reason to click through and take action. And to do so quickly. Test. Test. Test again. Finally, don't be afraid to experiment with different approaches to see what resonates with your audience. Test variables in the preheader, body, and specific content blocks. Try out different send days and times. Compare performance of different subject lines. A/B testing shows how subscribers respond to elements like subject lines or content personalization. Try out different journey paths: AI can help support multivariate testing. Pick the winner, but never be afraid to run another test. Referring to these ten tips will help you create more engaging and effective emails that your readers will be excited to open. By staying relevant, telling a compelling story, keeping things simple, and testing your approach, you'll be able to show off how appealing, effective, and trustworthy your brand is. So start crafting those emails and let me know how well they’re working. Summit Technologies LLC has extensive experience implementing and customizing marketing automation tools Marketing Cloud and Account Engagement (formerly Pardot). Let us help you get up and running on a great platform with content messaging that moves the needle.

Community engagement is a two-way street, and Salesforce facilitates communication with your constituents while also giving your people a chance to reciprocate the connection by sharing feedback, getting involved in community events and initiatives, and building their networks with Salesforce Experience Cloud. Salesforce Community is a portal designed for a group with a shared goal or mission, and it offers a streamlined way for community members to stay in touch with the community's engagement team or leaders - and with each other. Experience Cloud is Salesforce's digital experience platform that can quickly build websites, portals, mobile apps, and other digital touchpoints to engage with customers and digitize business processes at lightning speed. Salesforce Experience Cloud functions as your content management system. To succeed in the leap towards digital transformation, businesses need to get their experiences to market fast, create personalized and actionable customer interactions, and make consistent touchpoints across the multichannel customer journey. The Experience Cloud mission and roadmap were developed to meet these requirements, and many organizations use Experience Cloud to streamline systems, align teams, accelerate digital adoption, and crush a year's worth of data in a single quarter. To foster a strong community, Salesforce community managers can encourage ongoing conversations, ensure questions posed to the community are never left unanswered, and host virtual meet-ups like Q&As and team challenges where members can share experiences regardless of their location. Additionally, community managers can use the community to solicit feedback from members and then implement that feedback when it's sound. By encouraging this dialogue and sharing updates about changes or decisions made as a direct result of members' suggestions, community managers can build trust and show that they value their community's input. With Salesforce you can develop multiple connected experiences – from the website, to portals, to warranty registration sites. New sites, built on Experience Cloud, can include a customer support site connected to Service Cloud, a building and remodeling site for B2B distributors, and a site for consumers to enroll products and purchase warranties. All with self-service tools that significantly reduce the load on service agents and sales representatives. In strong communities, people are constantly interacting with each other and exchanging ideas. Replicate this in your Salesforce community by encouraging relevant, ongoing conversations. You can nurture these conversations by ensuring questions posed to the community are never left unanswered. Sometimes the answers will come from your team and sometimes they’ll come from other community members. Either way, it builds confidence in your community as a valuable resource when you keep the conversation going with as little lag as possible. You can also create the atmosphere and goodwill of an in-person community gathering by hosting virtual meet-ups like Q&As and team challenges where members can chime in and share an experience regardless of their geographic location. Another way to make your community a hot spot is to use it to solicit feedback from members, and then (this is the important part!) implement that feedback when it’s sound. Post survey links, use the poll feature in Chatter (yep, Chatter is available in communities), start discussions, and monitor posts for unsolicited feedback, too. By encouraging this dialogue and sharing updates about changes or decisions made as a direct result of members’ suggestions, you build trust and show your community members that their opinions matter and that they are an integral part of the institution. Establishing your community as a home base for relevant information and documents deepens your members’ connection to the space as well. And helping your community members help themselves saves your team time, too! Create groups for specific events and topics where members can find key dates and campus news, among other details. Curate file repositories to make popular forms and documents easy to access and download. You can also use Salesforce Knowledge to create a database of articles that answer FAQs or provide step-by-step directions to help your members complete complicated processes successfully. Creating topics in Salesforce Knowledge lets you group articles by topic and/or keywords so your help content is easily searchable, eliminating the dreaded unending scroll and click routine. The sky’s the limit when it comes to use cases for communities. Once you come up with an idea for how to implement a community at your organization it’s really important to be clear on what you want to accomplish by inviting members into a new community and how you will measure success. Goals are great, but your metrics are going to be the actual nitty gritty information that you are constantly monitoring to assess those goals. It can sometimes be challenging to identify the correct metrics, especially when you’re just starting out. Here are three very common, fool-proof metrics that you can start with. First is your content: this is any information that you share in your community. One very basic metric would be monitoring if your content is being used or consumed. You can measure this via file downloads, likes, shares and comments. Another common metric is community engagement. This can be measured through your overall membership growth as well as user participation tracking with things like posts, comments, and general activity. Finally, you should measure whether your community is creating value. This metric will depend largely on your goal and what you define as value. One example of increased value as a result of creating a community might be increased participation by members in volunteer opportunities. Once you’ve identified goals and associated some relevant metrics to track, it can be helpful to set a reporting schedule. As always, needs can vary from one community to another but here are some general guidelines on recommended reporting cadences for community metrics. MetricFrequencyCommunity GrowthMonthly or DailyMembership RetentionMonthlyContent Downloads/Likes/SharesQuarterlyProgrammatic ImpactQuarterlyCase ImpactQuarterly Salesforce provides all the tools your advancement team needs to build communities that are informative, easy to navigate, and fun to visit. You’ll be amazed at how quickly your constituents engage. Summit Technologies LLC can help your company develop a community tool for engagement with Salesforce Communities as a part of your Salesforce ecosystem. Inquire today.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Imagine a battlefield, where leads are the prize and your sales team is the army. The key to victory is quickly identifying and assigning the most valuable leads to the right sales reps. But what if some of those leads slip through the cracks and go unclaimed? Enter the Shark Tank approach to lead reassignment. Think of it like a feeding frenzy, where the strongest and quickest sharks (sales reps) are able to claim the juiciest leads before their competition. Summit Technologies and Salesforce can set up an automated system where leads that have not been acted upon within a certain period of time are thrown into a "shark tank" queue. The system then notifies all sales reps with access to the shark tank when a new lead is added, and the race is on to claim it. It's like a game of "Survivor" but instead of a million dollars, the prize is a hot lead. This method not only ensures that leads are promptly followed up on, but also adds a sense of competition among sales reps, encouraging them to work harder and faster. And with dynamic assignment rules in place, the system can automatically reassign leads, preventing any one rep from hoarding all the best leads. It's like a game of "Hunger Games" but instead of fighting to the death, they're fighting for leads. The Shark Tank approach to lead reassignment is just one of the many ways to improve the efficiency and conversion rates of your sales team. Contact Summit Technologies for assistance in designing the perfect lead assignment process for your organization. Let's turn your team into a pack of hungry sharks, ready to devour any lead in their path. So, Don't be a "Deadpool" in this "Avengers" sales team, come to Summit Technologies and conquer the lead assignment game.

Shopping has changed and so have customers' expectations of brands. Shoppers are no longer satisfied with generic experiences, they want personalized attention and to be acknowledged as individuals, not just numbers. This presents an opportunity for brands to revamp their loyalty programs to provide a more human touch. Casey’s, a convenience chain, is championing this, using technology and data to create customized, personal experiences for their customers. With 73% of customers seeking unique experiences, it’s important for brands to go beyond just transactional loyalty and build emotional connections. Gone are the days when points for purchases were the sole measure of engagement. Today's consumers want to be acknowledged and rewarded for more than just spending their hard earned money. Brands that offer incentives for downloading an app, writing reviews, or even promoting the brand on social media are on the right track. Shoppers are even willing to exchange personal information for access to exclusive benefits. For retailers, the key is to provide a mix of rational and emotional benefits in their loyalty programs. Customers crave personalized experiences and will go the extra mile to receive them. As 88% of consumers believe that a company’s experience is just as important as their products and services, brands must focus on building relationships at every interaction. Schuh, a leading fashion footwear retailer, recognized the importance of embedding loyalty in all customer interactions. By utilizing a flexible loyalty management program, they are able to cater to the needs of their customers and understand their purchasing behavior to offer more personalized experiences. Retailers must ask themselves if their loyalty program is providing value for both the customer and business, if it's easy for customers to engage, if it's more than just a transactional experience, and if it's personal and integrated with their operations. The future of customer loyalty is about delivering experiences that go beyond just transactions, and brands that embrace this will be the ones to thrive. Summit Technologies LLC can help you employ a loyalty program with Salesforce in your business model.

Automating your revenue process and integrating your revenue data with a powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system like Salesforce CRM can provide a wealth of information about your customers. With Salesforce Revenue Cloud, you can leverage advanced analytics and predictive capabilities to see who's buying what, predict trends, and run targeted marketing campaigns based on buying behavior. You can also focus on customer retention by understanding their preferences and offering personalized add-ons, expansions, and renewals. To maximize your revenue potential, it's crucial to eliminate friction points in your customer and sales interactions. By connecting the front and back offices around the same customer data, you can provide a seamless customer experience without routing them to different departments. This means that a customer calling to complain about an invoice should be able to get the issue resolved without having to repeat their story to multiple representatives. Automating high-volume transactions, from opportunity to invoice, is another key to unlocking revenue growth. By streamlining self-service options for renewals, add-ons, and expansions, you can make it easier for customers to do business with you, while freeing up your sales team to focus on more high-touch opportunities. Before you can take advantage of these revenue opportunities, it's important to line things up internally. Ensure that your pricing and discount tiers are well-defined and captured in a tool, that your legal teams have terms and conditions in place, and that you have your customer's assets and entitlements properly documented. At Summit Technologies LLC, we understand the importance of maximizing revenue potential and customer retention. We can help you implement Salesforce Revenue Cloud to enhance your existing ERP with powerful data insights and analytics. Contact us today to learn how we can help you go digital and unlock your revenue growth potential. References: Salesforce CRM: https://www.salesforce.com/products/sales-cloud/overview/ Salesforce Revenue Cloud: https://www.salesforce.com/products/revenue-cloud/overview/ Salesforce Analytics: https://www.salesforce.com/products/analytics-cloud/overview/

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Business success depends on customer satisfaction and more and more businesses rely on Customer Relationship Management software to deliver great customer experiences. While Salesforce’s CRM solution certainly helps companies deliver great customer experiences, it also aims to deliver great experiences for its own customers. One of the handiest evolutions - which dates back to 2015 - is the Salesforce Lightning Experience. Salesforce Lightning Experience is an improved user interface for Salesforce. Salesforce Lightning is faster and it offers enhanced functionality to your Salesforce CRM. By integrating Lightning components, the Lightning Design System (LDS), and Lightning app builder providing you with an intelligent and intuitive user interface. If you are still working on the Classic version of Salesforce you are missing out on a whole new CRM experience built on the platform you know and love. However migrating to Salesforce Lightning isn’t as simple as flipping a switch or contacting your Salesforce AE. Summit Technologies has a proven process for successfully helping companies migrate to Salesforce Lightning. If your Salesforce instance is customized, and aren’t they all, then there are a lot of issues to consider when migrating to lightning. The timing has to be right. You want to begin a lightning migration when there will be the least impact on the business. Custom objects, custom homepage components, numerous customizations can lead to major complications during a lightning migration. A thorough analysis must be completed understanding all your customizations, Apex code, automations, workflows, hard coded URLs and record ID’s, custom fields with in-line styles and labels, Visualforce tools, poorly optimized code, and undocumented changes to your org. Summit Technologies takes into consideration all the technical debt weighing down your current solution and creates a plan to have your organization up and running on Salesforce Lightning in as little as ten weeks. More importantly, we will have your organization up and running on Salesforce Lightning without obstacles or unexpected downtime. A successful Salesforce Lightning migration requires a roll-out strategy to deal with possible challenges. Summit Technologies will help you roll out in stages and document all the Salesforce elements that will be affected by the Lightning transition with strategies to prepare. You might be wondering what exactly are the steps to a Salesforce Lightning Migration. Analyze and Discover. A thorough analysis of the Salesforce functionalities and features in your existing Salesforce org AND their compatibility with Lightning gives you a readiness assessment. There will be unique requirements for your Lightning migration and it is important that you recognize them early on. Review all the buttons, custom fields, objects and workflows that may create conflicts to be addressed early on. Audit. Determine what critical items and considerations lead to a successful Lightning migration. You might uncover some outdated and malfunctioning components of your existing Salesforce instance that can be addressed during the migration. Documentation. Prepare a detailed guide of the essential elements your Salesforce org requires to plan a smooth transition to the Salesforce Lightning Experience. This is the beginning of your roadmap for a successful migration and an invaluable tool when working with and involving your stakeholders. Stakeholder Involvement. Stakeholders are your C level executives, your system administrators, your team leads, and your end users. Understanding how they use the Salesforce instance, what their expectations are from the Lightning migration, and any valuable information about automations, triggers, and workflows currently in use OR DESIRED in your Salesforce org will help you improve the productivity of your Salesforce ecosystem. This might also uncover additional Salesforce tools or items from the Appexchange that would make your Salesforce tools even more useful to your organization. Estimation. Now you have a set of tools in place to estimate the time, resources, Salesforce partner assistance, and budget required to complete your Lightning Migration. The estimate not only allows you to plan the money and manpower required but also to budget the time invested in your migration. Roadmap. Where the rubber meets the road with your Lightning Migration is the Salesforce roadmap. Your roadmap lays the foundation for an effective adoption of the new features like App Builder, Design System, and Lightning Components. Additional improvements uncovered in your audit and stakeholder involvement may present themselves as opportunities along the roadmap. The roadmap also allows you to check whether or not any additional customized products, Salesforce tools, or integrations will improve the final product. Implement. Now you are ready for the fun! Migrate from Classic Salesforce to Salesforce Lightning Experience, customize your dashboards and analytics, and enable your company to take full advantage of the new reporting capabilities with your Lightning migration. Roll out user training to your end users showing them the new functionality and features in your Salesforce instance. A Salesforce Lightning migration better prepares your company to get the most out of connectivity to other Salesforce tools and apps. The benefits of using Salesforce CRM or multiplied with the Salesforce Lightning Experience. Summit Technologies can help you evaluate the differences and value of Salesforce Classic versus Salesforce Lightning Experience for your organization. Upon completion of your migration to Salesforce Lightning Summit Technologies provides admin and end user training so you have all the tools you need to get the most out of your new Salesforce Lightning experience.

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot or Large Language Model developed by OpenAI, with backing from Microsoft. It uses NLP to interact with users, providing answers to questions by scanning its vast database of information obtained from millions of websites. ChatGPT presents the answers in a natural, conversational style, though accuracy may vary based on the specificity of the request. The Salesforce ecosystem could potentially be impacted by ChatGPT, with both winners and losers. Its best use cases include creating code such as validation rules, formulas, and Apex classes, but it should not be relied upon to generate declarative results or provide accurate answers to broader scopes. Junior developers may be at risk, as ChatGPT has learned from millions of lines of code and could outperform them in writing code. It is also fair to note that Salesforce has utilized artificial intelligence since 2017. Business analysts and consultants may find ChatGPT helpful in generating generic proposals or suggesting process steps, but should be wary of relying too heavily on its results. Architects, on the other hand, may not find much value in ChatGPT as it lacks the experience and context necessary for the role. ChatGPT may also be useful for generating first drafts of documents like training materials or business cases, but the user must specify the reasoning behind changes, which ChatGPT is incapable of knowing. ChatGPT is essentially a content development tool, not to be confused with Salesforce Service Cloud Voice and chatbots. Read more about them here. If you currently utilize chatbots be aware of Salesforce’s My Domain changes and how they can impact them. For marketers and other content writers, it's important to note that LLMs like ChatGPT can amplify social biases and produce false or misleading results. This is due to the questionable data included in some of the millions of websites that it is trained on. In conclusion, ChatGPT can be a useful tool, but its results should always be validated and verified before being relied upon.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist The importance of public sector institutions has been emphasized by the uncertainty created by a continual onslaught of global crises. These organizations are responsible for delivering crucial services that strengthen economies, safeguard communities' health, and maintain national security. At a time when we need them most, public sector institutions are struggling to earn and maintain public trust. Establishing and maintaining trusted relationships is essential for organizations across every industry, but it is particularly significant in government-consumer relations because the public's perception of a functioning, fair, and capable government directly impacts customer engagement. Although public trust in government has been declining recently, its importance is rising, especially in times of crisis and rapid transition. Trust becomes more critical when there is a change, with 87% of people believing in its importance during these times. To meet the digital expectations of today's citizens, government organizations are taking new approaches to digital transformation and considering how to build and maintain trust. To improve trust, customers demand government services that offer transparency, are easy to understand, use, and access. The public's trust in government is influenced by several factors, including the effective delivery of government services. Delivering consistently exceptional experiences builds a strong government-customer trust dynamic and helps public sector organizations better meet their customers' unique needs. 87% of respondents say that a great digital government customer experience would increase their degree of trust. Building trusted and secure digital experiences has never been more important, especially in the context of the next technological wave. With the proliferation of IoT devices and greater access to data from anywhere in the world, new threat vectors for bad actors are a constantly growing global problem. Public sector organizations are required to meet some of the most stringent national and international security and compliance requirements in the world. COVID-19 has changed the way people interact with their governments. The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and customer experience initiatives, resulting in agencies rapidly expanding the availability of critical services via digital channels. Fifty-four percent of people surveyed now say it's easier to get help from the government online than in person. In this new paradigm, the customer experience is now primarily digital-first. Customers expect government agencies to prioritize securing highly sensitive data and demonstrating their competence and commitment to doing so. Summit Technologies is your Salesforce implementation partner and our discovery process ensures we build a Salesforce solution for your government entity that incorporates everything you need, customized for your business model, and nothing that you don’t need. Summit Technologies is a Columbus, Ohio based Salesforce Consulting Partner consisting of a talented and creative team of Salesforce certified Consultants, Developers, Analysts and Project Managers. We specialize in building innovative solutions for our clients within the Salesforce family of products including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, CPQ, Experience Cloud, Nonprofit Cloud, Education Cloud, Pardot, Field Services and Salesforce Communities. Summit Technologies strategic services solutions bring custom Salesforce technology to work for your business. Summit Technologies has a strong history of delivering on time and budget solutions for state, county, and local governments. Contact us today to learn how we can help you build trust in the public sector with government accelerators on the Salesforce platform.

Salesforce Personalization: Making 1-to-1 Engagement a Reality In today's world, customers expect personalized experiences from brands across all channels. They want to feel valued and understood by the companies they do business with. And if they don't get that personalized experience, they're likely to go to a competitor who can provide it. This is where Salesforce Personalization comes in. Salesforce Personalization is a tool that helps companies create personalized experiences for their customers. Personalization makes the recipient feel important and valued. Salesforce Personalization uses AI-driven automation to deliver optimized experiences to billions of people across the world. By capturing individual insights and delivering optimized experiences, Salesforce Personalization helps companies increase conversion rates, build engagement, and foster brand loyalty. But before we dive into how Salesforce Personalization works, let's define marketing ROI. Marketing ROI (Return on Investment) is a metric used to measure the effectiveness of a company's marketing efforts. It compares the revenue generated by a marketing campaign to the cost of running that campaign. By calculating marketing ROI, companies can determine which campaigns are the most effective and allocate resources accordingly. Now, let's take a closer look at how Salesforce Personalization works. It starts by capturing individual insights through deep behavioral tracking, data aggregation, and affinity modeling. This data is then interpreted by marketer-friendly, customizable algorithms that make decisions in real-time (less than 30 milliseconds), ensuring that every interaction is relevant at the 1-to-1 level. With Salesforce Personalization, companies can coordinate engagement everywhere. Everything they learn about a customer from their interactions on one channel can be used to improve that person's experiences in the moment, on the same channel or any other. This creates a seamless, personalized experience for the customer, no matter how they choose to engage with the company. Salesforce Personalization also allows companies to test and analyze experiences. By optimizing personalization campaigns and customer engagement efforts through ongoing A/B testing, reporting, and analysis, companies can continually improve their marketing ROI and deliver even more personalized experiences to their customers. In conclusion, Salesforce Personalization is a powerful tool that can help companies increase conversion rates, build engagement, and foster loyalty. By capturing individual insights and delivering optimized experiences, it creates a seamless, personalized experience for the customer across all channels. And by continually optimizing and analyzing those experiences, companies can improve their marketing ROI and deliver even more personalized experiences to their customers. Contact Summit Technologies LLC today to see how Salesforce Personalization can improve engagement with your customers, students, constituents, patients, or anyone you are sending communications to.

Salesforce Admissions Connect is a recruiting and admissions tool that streamlines application review, drives applicant engagement and facilitates collaboration across teams. Built on the EDA framework, Admissions Connect helps teams meaningfully engage applicants and effectively manage admissions processes. Many student applicants use the Common App tool to submit their college applications to multiple schools and universities. Salesforce’s Admissions Connect is integrated with Common App so right from the beginning of the process a student’s application data is seamlessly available to recruitment and admissions reviewers. Salesforce Admissions Connect and the Common App track where a prospective student’s application is in the completion process. The student and the school can clearly see what documents or steps need to be completed in the Activities section. Task requirements show recruiters and admissions staff what fields of data still need to be acquired for an applicant. There are two ways for reviewers to access applications with Admissions Connect: within the app itself or from a portal. For many schools reviewers may include people like alumni who sit outside the institution. These reviewers access Admissions Connect from an assigned application review page in a portal. These secure review pages provide the same streamlined review experience for external reviewers while providing them access to only the information and permissions they need. Regardless of how reviewers access the application, the single scrollable view in Admissions Connect makes it easy to review the entire application. Reviewers have a complete and accessible view of each applicant, all on one page. No need to toggle between multiple tabs or click out to different programs or windows to view application sections or documents. The review experience also takes the frustration out of viewing PDFs that have been attached to the application. PDFs show up directly on the review page and are easily flipped if they need to be reoriented or searched for keywords. Because Admissions Connect is built on EDA, Admissions Connect users also get to take advantage of the power of Salesforce reporting. With reports and dashboards, your institution can: Keep tabs on your entire recruiting class. Customize your dashboard with the reports that are meaningful to your school or specific program. Track application trends, stay up to date on application status and make informed decisions based on metrics. Admissions Connect helps teams meaningfully engage applicants and streamline admissions management -- all on one trusted platform. Summit Technologies LLC creates industry specific solutions built on the Salesforce platform including higher education.

As a scheduler or manager, you and your organization can reap numerous benefits from software equipped with AI functionality. AI-driven employee scheduling software, for instance, can automatically generate impartial and equitable schedules each time. To accomplish this, AI utilizes historical data gathered through machine learning. Moreover, AI has recently demonstrated its capability to process image, video, text, and audio data using deep learning techniques. Machine learning is a computer-based concept that involves algorithms and statistical models performing tasks without explicit instructions. Instead, it relies on patterns and inferences. Machine learning algorithms construct a mathematical model using data, which they then leverage to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to execute the task. For example, in the context of scheduling, artificial intelligence can learn from a scheduler's patterns of behavior, analyze them, and draw evidence-based conclusions to formulate the schedule. Schedule for AI scheduling assistance Reclaim for protecting your habits Clockwise for syncing team calendars Motion for AI-assisted project management Clara for having a human-like AI virtual assistant Trevor for a simple, free AI solution for task management Bookafy for scheduling meetings

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Now that you know you are familiar with Salesforce’s EDA, it’s time to get a bit more personal. Salesforce has powerful marketing tools that help you streamline your outreach team’s alumni and volunteer efforts, making each communication more personal and more relevant. Let’s dig in. Salesforce offers marketing tools that can help streamline alumni and volunteer outreach, making each communication more personal and relevant. The Salesforce Campaigns feature is an engagement initiative within the Salesforce application. It can be used to track any outbound marketing project that seeks a response from contacts. Campaign in Salesforce is an engagement initiative that you can plan, manage, and track within Salesforce. The campaigns object can be used to track any outbound marketing project that asks a contact for a response. Want to send a series of emails to recruit alumni volunteers for an upcoming admissions event? Campaigns can do that. Looking to distribute direct mail to promote this year’s reunion weekend? You guessed it—campaigns can do that, too. The Campaign hierarchies feature helps to group contacts and track their level of engagement. For instance, for planning a homecoming weekend, a direct mail brochure, save-the-date email, and an email with an e-brochure and video could be linked to the Homecoming celebration campaign. Campaigns provide an organized way to analyze alumni engagement endeavors, run reports, and create dashboards to visualize the impact on achieving overall goals. Salesforce's marketing automation tools, Marketing Cloud and Account Engagement, offer automation of activities such as emails, forms, landing pages, and nurture programs, enabling the maintenance of timely and consistent outreach. Each tool has unique qualities that should be considered when choosing one. When used together, campaigns and marketing automation reveal their full potential. You might be under the impression that marketing automation only applies to those who work in your institution's marketing team. However, engagement is at the core of marketing. If you want to streamline repetitive and time-consuming tasks so that your team can focus on utilizing their collective skills, then keep reading. Salesforce's marketing automation tools enable you to automate tasks such as emails, forms, landing pages, and nurture programs. These forms of communication are crucial for maintaining timely and consistent outreach with your constituents. However, doing them manually can be a daunting and time-consuming task. Salesforce offers two options for marketing automation: Marketing Cloud and Account Engagement (previously known as Pardot). Both solutions allow you to engage with your contacts without spending the entire day sending emails or posting messages, but each has its own unique features. Let's take a closer look and compare them, shall we? When it comes to selecting a Salesforce marketing automation tool, there are a few options to consider. Marketing Cloud is highly customizable and can be tailored precisely to fit an institution's needs, but its flexibility comes with increased complexity. On the other hand, Account Engagement is generally more user-friendly, but less customizable. To determine which tool is right for your institution, there are several factors to consider. These include the scope and timeline of your project, your team's bandwidth and Salesforce expertise, and your outreach goals. Once you have a strong sense of your answers to these questions, you can have a deeper conversation with a Salesforce partner to select the Salesforce tool that best meets your needs. If neither tool seems like the perfect fit, it is possible to use both. For example, an institution may use Account Engagement for initial engagement and lead nurturing, and then switch to Marketing Cloud for managing relationships with converted constituents. Alternatively, a large institution may use Marketing Cloud for introducing themselves to audiences and then rely on Account Engagement's engagement and lead nurturing features. If you are considering a mix of both solutions, it's important to also consider questions such as what integration model to use, who your key product users are, and if you have a product champion for each tool. A Salesforce partner can help you navigate these decisions and determine the best approach for your institution.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Content-based marketing strategies have become increasingly popular as businesses try to reach their target audiences through valuable, relevant, and engaging content. However, creating and implementing an effective content marketing strategy can be challenging, especially if you're new to the field. The more technology plays a role in how we reach prospects, the more we need to go back to the basics of content-based marketing. Here are five insights that can help you develop a successful content marketing strategy: Insight #1: Develop a Documented Content Marketing Strategy Research indicates that having a documented content marketing strategy is a key factor in determining success. The study found that 80% of very successful content marketers have a clearly defined content marketing strategy, while only 50% of minimally successful ones do. Therefore, creating a documented strategy is essential to the success of your content marketing efforts. Your content marketing strategy should outline your goals, target audience, messaging, content themes, and channels of distribution. It should also include a plan for measuring the success of your efforts. By documenting your strategy, you can ensure that all members of your team are on the same page, and your efforts are focused and consistent. Salesforce’s automation capabilities can empower a good content marketing strategy on autopilot. Personalization with artificial intelligence is another great component of your content marketing strategy. Insight #2: Allocate Adequate Budget to Content Marketing Another key factor in determining success is the budget allocated to content marketing. The study found that 80% of very successful content marketers allocate more than 10% of their total marketing budgets to content, while only 52% of unsuccessful content marketers do the same. Therefore, it's crucial to prioritize your content marketing budget to achieve success. Investing in content marketing can help you establish your brand as an industry thought leader, build trust with your audience, and generate leads. By allocating a sufficient budget to content marketing, you can create high-quality content that resonates with your target audience and helps you achieve your business goals. Insight #3: Creatively Promote Your Content Creating high-quality content is only half the battle. You must also promote your content effectively to reach your target audience. Successful content marketers differentiate themselves from minimally successful or unsuccessful ones in terms of content promotion. They employ creative and varied strategies, including influencer marketing, email campaigns, paid social, PR and media outreach, and other paid channels. Promoting your content through various channels can help you reach a wider audience and generate more leads. You can also leverage social media platforms to amplify your reach and engage with your audience. By being creative in your content promotion, you can increase the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts. Salesforce Marketing Cloud has great solutions for digital marketing and is a tool well designed to evolve your content marketing both in email and landing pages as well as social media. Insight #4: Prioritize Your Content Marketing Team Having a solid content marketing team is essential to the success of your content marketing strategy. The study found that 66% of very successful content marketers have at least four specialists in their team, while only 32% of unsuccessful content marketers do the same. Shockingly, 34% of respondents who were unsuccessful in content marketing have no content specialists on their team. A strong content marketing team should include specialists in content creation, SEO, social media, and analytics. By prioritizing your content marketing team, you can ensure that you have the expertise you need to create high-quality content, distribute it effectively, and measure its success. Ford Motor Company took a digital transformation journey and found that their marketing team could be empowered by the Salesforce tools. Insight #5: Measure Your Return on Investment Finally, measuring your return on investment (ROI) is crucial to achieving content marketing success. Metrics such as website traffic, engagement rates, lead generation, and revenue can help you determine the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts. Respondents who had the most success in content marketing effectively measured their ROI. By measuring your ROI, you can identify what's working and what's not and adjust your strategy accordingly. You can also demonstrate the value of your content marketing efforts to stakeholders and secure more budget for future campaigns. Employing Salesforce’s Einstein Lead Scoring helps you convert leads faster and automatically. What better way to ramp up your ROI? Creating and implementing a successful content marketing strategy requires a documented strategy, a sufficient budget, creative content promotion, a strong content marketing team, and effective measurement of ROI. If your content marketing plan needs some help contact Summit Technologies today.

The ever-changing landscape of business and the rapid advancements in technology have brought about a "new normal" that poses significant challenges for marketers and businesses in their efforts to build brand awareness and foster relationships with customers. As consumers become more empowered, they expect fast, convenient, and personalized interactions with the brands they use. The holistic customer experience has become the new brand differentiator, and providing exceptional customer service is crucial for businesses that want to succeed. Recent studies have shown that a majority of consumers are likely to switch brands if they receive communications that are not personalized to them, and if they feel a company does not anticipate their needs. These expectations are even higher among business buyers, who are more likely to switch brands when their needs are not met. However, delivering exceptional customer experiences is easier said than done. The time alone required to thrill and delight with every interaction, not to mention the data analysis required to determine which interactions those might be, is daunting at best. Marketers face a range of challenges, including identity resolution, data volume and velocity, and uncovering actionable insights that match the speed of the consumer. Despite these challenges, marketing leaders are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to help solve these issues, assist with repetitive tasks, and improve efficiency in executing marketing campaigns. AI is being used in various ways, such as improving customer segmentation, personalizing channel experiences and customer journeys, and automating social and messenger app interactions. Investing in AI has become essential for marketers who want to meet elevated customer expectations, stave off competitive pressures, and improve their overall business margins. In fact, the majority of marketers are already using AI across the marketing lifecycle, and the use of AI is expected to increase in the future. What might be challenges and focus areas for marketers where AI can be applied, and how Einstein, Salesforce's AI platform and products, can assist marketers in their efforts to provide exceptional customer experiences? Summit Technologies looks forward to helping you explore this brave new space.