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As the front line of customer engagement, sales revenue leaders play a crucial role in shaping a company's overall strategy and improving customer experience (CX). By gathering valuable insights from customer interactions, they can shed light on areas for improvement and drive revenue growth in the long run. One effective way to gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey is by creating a customer journey map. This map tracks customers' experiences and reveals pain points and moments of truth in the sales process. This information can then be used to improve CX, better predict revenue, and make data-driven decisions. For instance, if sales revenue executives notice that only a few customers are upgrading from a free service to a paid one, they can experiment with new approaches to encourage purchases. By using digital nudges, such as reminding customers of the limited time left to use the free service, revenue leaders can iterate and refine their approach until they find what resonates with customers. Thanks to advances in technology, it's now easier than ever to track and analyze customer behavior. With the use of data analytics, AI, and machine learning, companies can gain a deeper understanding of every digital touchpoint and measure its impact on CX. This allows revenue leaders to evaluate the success of different initiatives, compare the effectiveness of different communication channels, and make data-driven decisions. One such decision is the identification of high-value customers in the sales pipeline. By using data analytics, revenue leaders can determine which customers are most likely to complete a purchase, and allocate resources accordingly. This helps companies avoid wasting time and resources on low-value prospects and accurately predict future revenue. Sales revenue leaders play a vital role in driving growth and improving CX. By leveraging technology and data-driven insights, they can make informed decisions, optimize customer journeys, and ultimately drive revenue growth. Let Summit Technologies design a program for data collection and customer journey mapping today.

Salesforce for Outlook product retirement has been rescheduled by Salesforce for June 2024. The action menu (also known as the New Record button in the Salesforce for Outlook side panel) stopped functioning in Summer '21. If you want your users to continue accessing Salesforce functionality from Microsoft Outlook (and vice versa), consider migrating to the Outlook integration (formerly called Lightning for Outlook) and Einstein Activity Capture. Summit Technologies LLC can assist with Lightning migration. These products replace Salesforce for Outlook features and deliver solutions in areas where Salesforce for Outlook falls short. We continue to introduce enhancements for these products every release. Why is Salesforce retiring this product? in Winter ’19, Salesforce for Outlook entered a maintenance-only phase that reduced availability to existing users only. However, due to some Salesforce for Outlook dependencies on Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 (IE11), Salesforce for Outlook functionality is affected as Lightning Experience ends its extended support for IE11. Salesforce for Outlook has relied on Lightning Experience to interpret APEX calls made from IE11. Because Salesforce Classic can’t interpret APEX calls, Salesforce for Outlook relies on Lightning Experience for users working from both Lightning Experience and Salesforce Classic. After Salesforce ends extended support for IE11 for Lightning Experience, APEX calls made from IE11 to Salesforce are blocked to maintain the end of the IE11 support. At that point, calls are blocked to Salesforce for Outlook as well. For the delayed retirement, Slesforce established some workarounds to the technical limitations facing Salesforce for Outlook as they neared the end of extended support for Internet Explorer 11. While Salesforce can delay the retirement of most features until 2024, there are still some dependencies that can’t be avoided. So the Salesforce for Outlook action menu, which lets your users create new Salesforce for Outlook records from the Salesforce for Outlook side panel, was retired with the Summer '21 release. How will orgs be impacted by this change? The action menu was retired in Summer '21, and the full product retirement scheduled for June 2024. Action Menu Unavailable in Summer '21 Starting in Summer '21, Salesforce for Outlook users can no longer create Salesforce records from Outlook using the side panel action menu. After the action menu is retired, the new records button will no longer be available in the side panel, and reps can no longer create Salesforce records from Outlook using Salesforce for Outlook. Salesforce for Outlook action menus are populated by actions that admins add to email application publisher layouts or global actions layouts. Admins can add actions that let users create records, such as New Contact, New Event, New Case, etc. After the side panel is removed, admins can continue to edit or create email publisher layouts from Outlook Configurations in Setup. However, doing so no longer affects the action menus in the Salesforce for Outlook side panel. Note: If you plan to move to the Outlook Integration, Salesforce recommends that you avoid deleting any existing layouts. You can repurpose them when you set up the Outlook integration. To refresh your memory about the action menu, see Create Records Directly from the Salesforce Side Panel and Email Application Publisher Layouts Salesforce Help Documentation. After the action menu is removed, users can continue creating Salesforce records using one of these two workarounds: Users can log in to Salesforce and create records there, or If you’re ready to move to Salesforce's next-generation products, the Outlook integration and Einstein Activity Capture, the Outlook integration side panel lets users create records directly from Outlook. When admins move users to that product, any email application publisher layouts originally created for Salesforce for Outlook are available to assign to Outlook integration users right away. Salesforce shares resources for moving to the next generation products below. Full Product Retirement in June 2024 After the full product retirement in 2024, admins and users no longer have access to Salesforce for Outlook features or the settings and user assignments saved in Outlook configurations. There is no impact to a customer’s existing contact, event, task, or email data as a result of the retirement. Data Impact Admins and users lose access to Outlook configurations only. All other Salesforce and Microsoft Outlook data remains unaffected. Users do not lose any Microsoft Outlook data that has synced to Salesforce before the 2024 product retirement. That is, any information from Microsoft Outlook contacts, events, tasks, or emails that were added or synced to Salesforce remains in Salesforce. After the 2024 retirement, admins and users will lose access to their Outlook configurations. Outlook configurations are the admin- or user-configured collection of Salesforce for Outlook settings that determine how users sync, which users sync, which features users have access to, and some additional product settings. For a reminder about what details are retained in Outlook configurations, see Create Salesforce for Outlook Configurations. Even if customers opt not to migrate to a replacement product before Salesforce for Outlook retirement, we recommend retaining the details saved in Outlook configurations in case customers want to enable consistent Microsoft Integration functionality later. Feature Impact After the 2024 retirement, users lose access to all Salesforce for Outlook functionality and settings: Contacts, events, or tasks no longer sync between Salesforce and Microsoft Outlook. From the Salesforce for Outlook side panel, users won’t be able to connect to Salesforce, nor can they use any of the features there. Customers won’t be able to update settings or use features available from the Salesforce for Outlook icon on the Microsoft Windows desktop system tray. The Outlook Configurations page won’t be accessible from Salesforce Setup, so admins can’t access, create, or edit Outlook configurations. The Salesforce for Outlook page won’t be available from users’ Personal Settings, so users can’t download Salesforce for Outlook or view their Outlook configurations from Salesforce. Unresolved Items no longer lists unmatched syncing or associated items resulting from Salesforce for Outlook. Unresolved Items remain available for other products, like Einstein Activity Capture Lightning Sync, and Email to Salesforce. How can Salesforce admins identify that their users are impacted? From Salesforce Setup, admins can refer to the Salesforce for Outlook login history report and export a .csv file to see who’s logged in over the last 6 months. If a more comprehensive list is needed of all users who have access to Salesforce for Outlook, admins can check Outlook configuration assignments to see which of their users are assigned to sync, access the side panel, and more. What is the replacement and what are the key differences between the legacy product and the replacement? Salesforce offers the following products to replace Salesforce for Outlook functionality: Outlook Integration (replaces the Salesforce side panel experience, where reps can see Salesforce records and use some Salesforce features directly from Outlook) Einstein Activity Capture (replaces contact and event sync) For more details on the benefits of the replacement products, see Learn About the Next-Generation Microsoft Integration Products. Customers should familiarize themselves with the scenarios in which the next-generation features are not able to replace Salesforce for Outlook. The following list includes a high-level glance at some of the differences. While Salesforce for Outlook can connect Salesforce to Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Microsoft Exchange 2010, our next-generation products aren't compatible with those versions of Microsoft applications. Microsoft is planning to end support for those versions. To continue integrating Microsoft with Salesforce, we encourage customers to migrate to versions of Outlook and Exchange that both Microsoft and Salesforce support. For details, see Learn About the Support Differences Between Salesforce for Outlook and the Next-Generation Products. The Outlook integration supports IE11 through December 2021 for only Outlook 2013, Outlook 2016, and volume-licensed versions of Outlook 2019. For details about supported browsers, see Outlook Integration System Requirements. Next-generation features aren't available for all Salesforce editions and licenses. For details, see Learn About the Support Differences Between Salesforce for Outlook and the Next-Generation Products. The Outlook integration and Einstein Activity Capture have some feature differences with Salesforce for Outlook. For detailed feature comparison, see Compare Features Between Salesforce for Outlook and the Next-Generation Products. In the meantime, Salesforce continues to release new features for their next-generation Microsoft Integration products. Check out the Salesforce Release Notes for Outlook integration and Einstein Activity Capture to learn what's new upcoming releases. Where can I get help migrating to the replacement products? Check out our migration guide, Move from Salesforce for Outlook to the Next-Generation Products. Summit Technologies also offers migration and customization services. What about Lightning Sync? You may recall another Microsoft integration product, Lightning Sync, which also syncs contacts and events. Starting in Winter ’21, Lightning Sync isn’t available to new Salesforce customers. At that time, no additional enhancements are being made to the product. For that reason, Einstein Activity Capture is the long-term solution for syncing contacts and events between Microsoft or Google applications and Salesforce, and we recommend that customers first explore Einstein Activity Capture to sync their contacts and events. We continue to introduce improvements to Einstein Activity Capture based on the needs we hear about from customers. To see when new features are available, keep an eye on the Salesforce Release Notes. If you have more questions, open a case with Support via Salesforce Help. To view all current and past feature retirements, see Salesforce Product & Feature Retirement. To read about the Salesforce approach to retiring products and features, read our Product & Feature Retirement Philosophy.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Personalization is a crucial component in enhancing engagement and building trust between healthcare providers and patients. By creating customized communications and experiences based on patient demographics, health status, and preferences, healthcare organizations can establish themselves as trusted partners in their patients' health journeys. One way to achieve personalization is through the use of data insights to access rich audience information, optimize physician relationships, and enhance acquisition. Salesforce's Health Cloud can be used to connect siloed systems, allowing healthcare providers to create a 360-degree view of their patients and deliver more personalized care. Additionally, marketing automation tools can be used to deliver personalized communications to the physician community at scale. Creating tailored journeys, utilizing omni-channel communication, and automating workflows can also be effective in personalizing the healthcare experience. By leveraging these strategies, healthcare providers can improve trust and retention, ultimately resulting in better health and business outcomes. Overall, personalization is a powerful tool for healthcare providers to build trust and improve patient outcomes. Summit Technologies is your Salesforce implementation partner and our discovery process ensures we build a Salesforce solution for your business 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.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Mental health and wellbeing have become a pressing concern among college students, as evidenced by a study by the Healthy Minds Network and the American College Health Association, which found that student anxiety rose from 17% to 31% in just six years. From preschool to post-graduate studies, students are facing higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression than ever before. The COVID-19 pandemic has only made matters worse, with 60% of students reporting difficulty accessing mental health care. This situation has also worsened the equity gap in higher education, particularly among Black and Latino students, with a 20% drop in college applications from disadvantaged students. One only has to turn on any news channel to see that bullying, suicide, depression, anxiety, and more are all on the rise in all levels of education and with our youth. Faculty and staff are not immune to these challenges either, as hiring freezes, furloughs, staff shortages, increased workloads, and layoffs have caused added stress, leading some to consider early retirement or leaving teaching altogether. To mitigate these issues, higher education leaders must prioritize individual wellness and create a campus culture that values and promotes wellbeing for everyone. This can be achieved through various means, such as providing wellness spaces, hiring coaches, offering online tools and noncredit courses, and being proactive in addressing students' and employees' needs. For example, Cornell University has created a Health Leaves Coordinator position to support students taking a leave of absence, while Wake Forest University's Office of Wellbeing leads the campus in making wellness a part of every experience for students, faculty, and staff. Indiana University created a Wellness Story sharing tool so students and faculty could encourage each other to seek wellness in one or more of 8 dimensions of wellness with actions big and small. Classroom wellness initiatives are supported byTeachThought.com. Today everyone is focusing attention on keeping students and staff happy and healthy. Creating a culture of wellness and having a comprehensive approach to addressing mental health and wellbeing issues is crucial. By doing so, universities can enhance academic performance, retention, satisfaction, enjoyment and graduation rates and support the overall success of their students. The Salesforce Education Cloud can help in creating a culture of wellness on campuses and Summit Technologies LLC can assist you in creating a healthy learning and working environment using the Salesforce infrastructure. As a Columbus, Ohio-based Salesforce Consulting Partner, Summit Technologies consists of a talented team of Salesforce certified consultants, developers, analysts, and project managers, who specialize in building innovative solutions using Salesforce products including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, CPQ, Experience Cloud, Nonprofit Cloud, Education Cloud, Pardot, Field Services, and Salesforce Communities. Summit Technologies has worked with multiple higher education entities developing custom Salesforce solutions that bridge the gaps not only in student wellness but campus engagement for everyone. Let Summit Technologies help bring custom Salesforce technology to work for your university.

Businesses are facing economic challenges this year, and many are turning to data and automation to stay resilient. By collecting the right ecommerce data at the right moments, businesses can create more efficient and personalized shopping experiences for their customers. Digital leaders, who consider digital commerce key to their success, are more likely to effectively use data to personalize and automate processes. In fact, 56% of customers expect personalized offers, so it's important for businesses to upgrade their approach to data and automation now. To do this, businesses can invest in tools for end-to-end automation, artificial intelligence, and real-time engagement, and ensure that all data flows into a single unified platform to be used as a single source of truth. This allows businesses to deliver intelligent, personalized experiences and create a VIP shopping experience for every customer. Use data to optimize the customer journey The key to operational excellence is to collect the right ecommerce data at the right moments. You can use the insights to create more efficient, personalized shopping experiences. Data can help optimize every step of the journey, from storefront search to checkout to order management. Those relevant product recommendations that make customers feel understood and increase average order value? They’re powered by data. What about breezy purchase experiences like one-click checkout? Also powered by data. Digital leaders — organizations that consider digital commerce key to their success — know data strategies for personalization and automation are critical. In fact, they’re 1.7 times more likely than their less technologically savvy peers to effectively use data to personalize commerce experiences. They’re also 1.6 times more likely to successfully use data to automate processes. Personalized commerce experiences are no longer a nice-to-have. In fact, 56% of customers expect offers to always be personalized. With so much hinging on customer data, it’s critical to upgrade your approach now to prepare for the future. The shift to greater privacy regulations and a cookieless internet is imminent, and getting a jumpstart will help bolster your success. Personalize at scale with automated, intelligent, and real-time tools After you develop a strategy for collecting customer data, know where to look for actionable insights and how to scale. To get started, invest in the right tools for end-to-end automation, artificial intelligence (AI), and real-time engagement. The average company runs 976 different applications. That’s a lot of data flowing in from a lot of different channels. To harmonize it all, make sure the information funnels to one unified platform where it can be used as a single source of truth. This ensures that the right ecommerce data fuels features like predictive intelligence, personalized offers, and targeted campaigns. Ultimately, you can deliver intelligent commerce everywhere and create VIP shopping experiences that feel like magic for every customer. 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/Revenue Cloud, Experience Cloud, Nonprofit Cloud, Education Cloud, Marketing Cloud Account Management (formerly Pardot) and Field Service Lightning. Summit Technologies' strategic services solutions bring custom Salesforce technology to work for your business. Our leadership team has over 40 years of CRM experience designing sales and marketing automation solutions for growing organizations. We actively listen to and work with our clients to craft technology solutions tailored to their specific needs, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. ​ We work with many industries, including: nonprofit, small businesses, higher education, transportation and logistics, insurance, healthcare, retail, telecommunications and municipal and state government.

In 2022, businesses must continue to prioritize agility and personalization in their customer experience (CX) strategy to stay competitive. Here are some ways to evolve your CX program: Optimize digital platforms: With an increased shift towards digital-first experiences, it's crucial to ensure your websites and apps provide the best user experience. Use a comprehensive guide to help deliver extraordinary digital user experiences, such as user research, user testing, and A/B testing, and measure success through metrics such as page load time, bounce rate, and conversion rate. Create a holistic feedback loop: As customer feedback becomes more important than ever, it's essential to create a holistic customer experience journey map, analyze each key touchpoint, and take quick action to address any issues. This includes not only collecting feedback, but also analyzing it and taking action on it. Furthermore, organizations should also make sure that the feedback is collected in real-time and make it available for all the relevant stakeholders, so that they can take action on it. Advance personalized experiences: Personalizing customer experiences can be challenging, but there are tools available to automate the process. Learn best practices for hyper-personalizing your CX program from CX experts. Utilizing data analytics and machine learning (ML) can help to gather insights on customer behavior and preferences, and personalize the experience. Additionally, organizations should also focus on creating personalized experiences by understanding customer needs, preferences and history, and tailor interactions accordingly. By focusing on these key areas, organizations can stay competitive in the ever-evolving CX landscape and ultimately deliver outstanding customer experiences. Summit Technologies LLC will work with you to customize your Salesforce tools and create amazing customer experiences.

Since a living account plan is an ongoing, dynamic document, the final step in ensuring its usefulness to your organization is to continue modifying the plan, measuring results, and reassessing your strategic direction throughout the sales cycle. Wash, rinse, and repeat some sales managers would say. An account plan creates wins of up to: 75% better closes 72% improved customer understanding of your offerings 58% shorter sales cycles 55% higher customer loyalty 49% higher deal sizes Clearly, a well built and executed account plan can be a critical tool for ongoing revenue. Here are a few suggestions from Summit Technologies LLC on how to keep things moving forward after Q1 implementation. Check In Regularly It’s impossible to have weekly or monthly conversations with all of your contacts, but you can focus on the most strategic accounts. Routinely reach out to your best customers, being sure to let them know you’re interested in their success and there to help. Grow Your Partnership Up-selling and cross selling can help your business become more profitable as well as offer opportunities to create additional connections outside of your customer base. When talking to customers, be sure to capture key conversations or interest that may signal that your account may be interested in moving into an additional vertical, expanding their current footprint, or wanting additional capabilities. Reassess Your Strategy Account planning offers the ability to understand an account from all angles and prioritize various tasks based on goals and requirements. As you execute your plan throughout the sales cycle, it will become easier to see the big picture and understand where the biggest rewards will be. The way we work is changing, and it’s time to reimagine sales processes for a more digital future. Get your selling team off to a fast start by embedding account plans inside Salesforce with Quip. By bringing your living account plans into Salesforce, your reps have the entire context of the account right next to the live CRM data that they work with on a regular basis. Plus, account plans in Quip can be easily shared with team members who might not have a Sales Cloud license so that they can view and collaborate without using disparate apps like chat and email that cause information to get lost. With Quip, your sales team can: Log calls and tasks right from the account plan View, update, and share live Salesforce data Get real-time alerts when records change or are updated Comment in the context of the data and context of work Standardize workflows and selling motions with templates A well built account plan makes it clear for everyone involved in the success of the customer relationship to see what needs to be done, the timeline for completion, who is responsible for the attainment of milestones, how success is measured along the customer journey, what the plan of action is if anything goes wrong, what roles everyone plays, and how to reach your goals. It is all in one place. It is actionable. It reflects SMART goals. It is measurable. And most importantly it serves as a duplicatable road map for success. Equally as important to account management, the account plan provides a road map for opportunity planning as well. With a solid plan for documenting new opportunities as they arise in a relationship with a client you can monitor and manage opportunities from within your Salesforce CRM. Preventing opportunities from falling through the cracks or getting left on the table as a backlog item in a project means happier customers and more revenue. Your account plan should be your blueprint for ongoing success in continuing to meet your clients’ needs. A quick search online for an account plan or account management blueprint will yield a large variety of tools to choose from. At Summit Technologies our account plan blueprint is just that - a suggestion for one method of managing your key accounts. Working with your sales and marketing enablement professionals at Summit Technologies will provide you with a customized account plan that is built on your business model and is designed to grow at scale as your business does. Just like the Salesforce platform you do business on, the enablement partner you do business with should be the best Salesforce partner for you and your business. Talk to Summit Technologies LLC today and see how we can be a part of your account success team!

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Once you've decided that Salesforce.org is the right CRM solution for your organization, the next step is to choose an implementation partner to work with. As the resident marketing and SEO specialist at Summit Technologies, I can tell you that as often as any term relating to Salesforce is searched for, “the best Salesforce implementation partner” or consultant or firm ranks right at the top. Any Salesforce partner can proclaim themselves as “the best” while a good ranking on the Salesforce AppExchange is an indicator you can trust. Just because they show up at the top of the Google searches is only proof that they excel at search engine optimization. Or invest heavily in pay-per-click advertising. Even the fact that they are geographically local is only an indicator of their location, not their capabilities. Ultimately you have to find and select a Salesforce implementation partner who is right for your organization. Here are a few tips to consider when making this decision: Look for a partner with experience in your specific area of focus, your industry, your business model, or any other criteria that makes you unique. Salesforce is a versatile platform which can be modeled to suit many companies, and different partners may have different areas of expertise. It's important to find a partner who has experience with the specific process or use case you are interested in. Seriously consider engaging a potential Salesforce partner to do a discovery independent of your implementation so you can feel confident in their recommendations knowing they understand your business needs and technology requirements. This smaller investment can lead to greater ROI on the major investment in software licenses and implementation services. While we are on the subject of costs, approach your Salesforce implementation partner search with a ballpark budget in mind. You aren’t looking for the cheapest or the most expensive solution, necessarily, but there is no point in discussing at great length a five figure project with a seven figure potential partner. If you have opted to do a discovery prior to your full-on Salesforce partner search you will have a fairly good understanding of what your unique project should entail and cost. Consider a partner's track record and reputation. Look for partners with a history of successful projects and positive customer reviews. Focus on Salesforce integration partners with a long relationship with Salesforce, with a wide range of satisfied customers, and an internal team that can encompass all your development and customization needs. Ask if your Salesforce implementation partner’s track record includes expertise in data migration. If you have existing data in legacy systems which may or may not be 100% clean and accurate your Salesforce partner is going to need to understand how to help you clean it up. Data migration whether handled in house or outsourced can quickly become 5-40% of an entire project’s cost. Evaluate a partner's communication and project management style. A good partner will be able to clearly explain their process and keep you informed throughout the project. Your Salesforce implementation partner team should include a delivery manager and an account representative that clearly understand your needs and communicate well with you on a regular and timely basis. Take into account the other tools in your technology wheelhouse and ensure they are in your Salesforce partner’s wheelhouse, too eliminating costly learning curves or downtime where one tool breaks another. If your Salesforce partner won’t be working hands on with these ancillary systems make sure they are able to work well and during normal business hours with the owners of the ancillary systems. Look for a partner with a proven process. A partner with a well-defined process is more likely to deliver a successful project on time and on budget. If your Salesforce implementation will be delivered in stages ensure that your Salesforce partner has the bandwidth required to get you from start to finish. Consider a partner's ability to adapt to your organization's needs. The right partner will be able to tailor their approach to meet the unique needs of your organization and the key stakeholders for your Salesforce project. Not only does your consulting partner have to be able to adapt but they must be skilled in helping you and your organization adapt as well. Implementing Salesforce is not just a technology project but for many companies an entire change management process. A skilled Salesforce implementation partner will assist, coach, monitor, and advise throughout the process ensuring maximum adoption and success. Before you select the partner who will work hand in hand with your organization to implement a fully customized Salesforce solution identify the primary project sponsor or administrator within your organization and involve them in the search process. Your project sponsor is not only a primary stakeholder in the Salesforce implementation but your new most valuable player because they bring to the table both the institutional knowledge of how your new Salesforce system was designed and deployed. They are also the key person who understands how your company works, who needs to be involved in major implementation decisions, who needs to be present for all Salesforce training and sync meetings, and where the coffee is stored. Seriously, this individual will be nearly as key to the success of your Salesforce deployment as the Salesforce partner you employ. Finally, seek out a partner who can provide you with ongoing support fostering a long-term relationship. Salesforce is designed to grow at scale as your business grows. Your future Salesforce development goals are easier to reach if the same team gets you from start to finish. And a tremendous amount of time can be saved when each step or phase of your process does not require a large knowledge transfer from one partner to another. By considering these factors, you can make an informed decision and choose the right partner for your Salesforce.org project. Your Salesforce Account Executive may be able to point you in a good starting direction based upon consulting partners he has worked with in the past. Salesforce has a list of partners on their website. A quick Google search can provide you with a wide variety of potential candidates as well. Wherever you start your search, make sure that you end it with a solid Salesforce implementation partner who will be with you for the long haul. Summit Technologies would be thrilled to be considered in your Salesforce implementation partner search. We seek to maximize our clients’ Salesforce return on investment with a proven project management and delivery strategy. Contact Summit Technologies to learn more.

CX professionals or teams that collaborate cross-functionally are 27% more likely to have a high or very high rate of ROI on their programs and three times more likely to have a high business impact compared to those who engage in little or no collaboration. 84% of customers consider the experience a company provides to be just as important as its products or services. A customer-centric focus can increase a company's revenue by an average of $775 million within three years of investing in customer experience, according to a study by the Temkin Group. However, many companies struggle to meet customer experience expectations, particularly in the digital space. Only 11% of companies believe they truly understand their customers' digital behaviors, according to a report by CMSWire. Customers expect a simple, effortless, seamless, personalized, convenient, and fast experience, but silos within companies can hinder cross-functional collaboration and lead to a fragmented customer experience. To ensure a consistent customer experience, companies must establish a customer-centric culture, effective governance, and a customer data platform to facilitate cross-functional collaboration. A customer-centric culture is one in which the entire organization is focused on delivering a seamless and consistent experience for the customer, and silos are either connected or non-existent. Governance includes structures and processes to ensure accountability, transparency, responsiveness, and participation in the design and delivery of a great customer experience. It includes both oversight by cross-functional committees and the operating model, which outlines who is involved in the work and how it will be done and measured. A customer data platform supports collaboration by allowing employees to share feedback, data, and other information across departments and channels. It also helps to ensure that all customer interactions are tracked and analyzed to improve the overall customer experience. To deliver the best possible customer experience, every department within a company must have a clear understanding of the customer's needs and be able to share feedback, data, and other information with other departments. This enables a holistic view of the customer journey and helps to ensure a seamless experience. These foundational elements must be in place for a company to succeed in providing a consistently excellent customer experience. Summit Technologies LLC works with clients to create custom Salesforce ecosystems that empower cross-collaboration. Contact Summit today to learn more.

Salesforce Flow is a comprehensive platform for creating and managing automated processes and workflows within the entire Salesforce ecosystem. Salesforce Flow empowers users to build custom processes that can be triggered by a wide range of events, such as the creation of a new record, the completion of a task, or the update of specific fields. This allows organizations to streamline and automate a variety of business tasks and processes, such as data validation, record creation and updates, task assignments, and custom interfaces for collecting user input or displaying data. With Salesforce Flow, users can create customizable and flexible processes that can be tailored to their specific business needs. This can help organizations improve efficiency, reduce errors, and save time and effort by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Additionally, Salesforce Flow's integration with Salesforce's other features, such as Salesforce CRM, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and Salesforce Einstein, allows users to easily access and leverage data from across the platform to create even more powerful and sophisticated processes. Salesforce Flow is an essential tool for any organization looking to streamline and automate business processes within Salesforce and achieve greater efficiency and productivity.

Salesforce announced Einstein (their Artificial Intelligence engine) in 2016, after ten company acquisitions to make it a reality. Since then, the Einstein brand has been attached to many Salesforce ecosystem features and functionalities. Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud and more all have Einstein branded components for everything from lead scoring to segmentation to case assignment. Pre-2023, the buzz around AI and Einstein in the Salesforce world had dropped from its peak and possibly some users working with the AI tool overlooked the real machine intelligence powering their work. Then ChatGPT launched – showing the entire world what’s possible with a true AI model. ChatGPT writes everything from content and emails to sql queries and jokes. The frequency with which the tool is unavailable due to high demand tells us at least how much folks are enjoying playing with it. At TrailblazerDX ‘23 (March 7), Salesforce will announce EinsteinGPT, which likely is their direct integration between the Salesforce platform and OpenAI’s GPT model. Marc Benioff, and Salesforce more broadly, announced the teaser via Twitter on February 8, 2023. Sans official press release, Marc has shared a few cryptic clues on what to expect. You can’t help but be reminded of Apple’s famous “But wait there’s more” product launch announcements. Is Benioff’s tweet the least of what we can expect from Saleforce’s version of ChatGTP or the most? His tweets include phrases such as: “It generates Leads, closes deals” and “No more boring reports, now it’ll write them for you with jokes included.” And the tweet he sent out in Spanish translated as: “The CRM that knows your customers better than you do and can even predict their next move.” Natural Language Models that use Natural Language Processing are smart. Their conversational approach to machine human interaction is oftentimes amazing and have been evolving for several decades. Salesforce’s “but wait, there’s more” Tweet leaves us all wondering how far beyond Einstein, Genie, and Snow the new EinsteinGPT will take us. We know better than to speculate based on Salesforce’s marketing materials, however, it does look like EinsteinGPT will be focused primarily on Sales Cloud (for now). What “Generate leads, closes deals” means remains to be seen! As a marketing professional, your job is probably still secure in the short term. However it is safe to say that if Salesforce’s EinsteinGPT is going to capture and warm leads, marketers better ramp up to focus on other challenges in the sales and marketing arena. Likewise the growth of tools like Tableau, Salesforce CDP, and automations in general give us both platforms to grow our skills around and opportunities to re-focus on other steps in the sales and marketing process with the belief that computers are increasingly able to handle some of our current workload. Automation, computer-aided everything, and human-like computerized interactions are here and probably here to stay. What is obvious is that this technology has reached a level of maturity that is becoming disruptive in a multitude of marketplaces. And OpenAI is not alone; Google has similar technology which it has been unwilling to launch just yet due to concerns about the quality of the results, as well as its reputation. But back to Salesforce ChatGPT. Salesforce’s hint about writing reports is also intriguing. Could this be an extension of Einstein Search, which has the ability to retrieve answers to basic queries using natural language processing? If you haven’t experienced this feature in your Salesforce org’s search, try typing a name of an individual in your company. Salesforce’s Einstein Search will return results of every instance of that name in your database - not just instances in leads or contacts or opportunities (whichever tab you are currently working in). Whatever Marc and Salesforce have in store for us in the future, all eyes will be on Trailblazer DX, taking place on March 7. It is interesting that the launch may happen at a Salesforce developer conference when the power and implications of Salesforce ChatGPT will impact a far wider user base in the Salesforce ecosystem. This built-up anticipation just goes to show that the world has been waiting for this kind of technology. We’ve all known about artificial intelligence – ever since the original Terminator movies. AI has been portrayed on the big screen as the savior and the demise of humanity. Likely right now many people are viewing it from the far end or the other of that spectrum. Even though we are told AI is the ‘next big thing’, there hasn’t been much that’s tangible for the general public. Finally, the world is now able to see the true power of AI, and how it might influence their daily lives in the future. Whether we acknowledge it or not, AI is all around us (ChatBots, Maps, Siri, Alexa) – however, this is mainly proprietary technology, built by app companies behind closed doors. It isn’t an accident that what you tell Alexa to do in your home impacts the advertisements and recommendations you see on your devices. Let’s face it. Marketers are always collecting data to reach prospects when they are in the mood to hear about our products and services. OpenAI is a little different, although it will be embraced by marketers as well. OpenAI’s mission is to create a public AI model to power the next generation of developers and the applications they build. Salesforce’s low to no code evolving model has functioned for some time to make customization of its tools and platforms more accessible without a computer science degree. Your ‘everyday Joe’ has access to one of the most powerful AI models to help them perform manual tasks, either by using the free beta version or the subscription version of ChatGPT Plus. Although OpenAI’s GPT model has taken many industries by storm, Salesforce users can safely say that the Salesforce ecosystem is very excited about the possibilities that ChatGPT will provide. When the beta launched on November 30, 2022, it didn’t take long for people to realize that ChatGPT could generate code, pages, rules, and much more. Which begged the question: Will Salesforce Developers and Admins become obsolete in the near future? At Summit Technologies we doubt it. Although there have been existential questions flying about, there is a clichéd response that seems to summarize a widely held opinion: ChatGPT won’t replace developers, but it might replace those who fail to use AI to assist them. Embrace change or get left behind. Since the initial release, there have been other use cases that Salesforce professionals have been learning about – everything from summarizing text, generating mock data, writing up proposals. Coincidentally, on the same day that Marc Benioff announced the new integration, we also saw the release of one of the first Salesforce ISVs to announce an integration with GPT. PipeLaunch have announced their beta integration, which will tie the GPT model into their sales application, helping sales users to generate prospecting emails and overcome objections. Marketing content developers get a chuckle out of having ChatGPT generate messaging. Not only can it write a basic email but when asked can rewrite said content with everything from humor to sarcasm. Take caution, however, when employing AI to write anything. When in doubt AI just makes things up. No one wants to send out a marketing email that is just inaccurate. Just look at Google, for example. They’ve pumped billions of dollars into their DeepMind subsidiary over the years, and it’s one of the leading global AI research bodies. But as soon as ChatGPT was released, the question was raised: could this kill Google Search? In response, Google declared a Code Red, and presumably started working on releasing their own version. Google’s own version was announced this week, as they introduced “Bard”. However, Bard failed to live up to ChatGPT yesterday, after it provided factually incorrect information in a promotion ad. This sent Google’s stock into freefall, losing over 100 billion in market cap. When has a competitor such as OpenAI generated such a response as this in the lifetime of the internet?! To make matters worse for Google, Microsoft has already integrated GPT into Bing - the step child of the search engine world. As a result, it has threatened Google’s 20-year dominance for, perhaps, the first time ever. There’s no doubt that the ChatGPT release by OpenAI has taken the world by storm, and could usher in a new age of true AI-powered applications that go far beyond what we have ever seen before. The difficulty we are all having logging in and playing with ChatGPT shows that there is a demand, even if it is only curiosity based. But how will Salesforce integrate this artificial technology into their platform? Could this be a premature launch to get ahead of competitors (such as Microsoft and their Dynamics platform), or could we see a simple but powerful integration that can deliver instant value, just like Microsoft has done with Bing. Stay tuned to Summit Technologies as we not-so-patiently await more information to share with you.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist In the coming year, sales organizations are facing various challenges such as working remotely, changing buyer expectations, increased competition, and potential economic downturns. But despite these obstacles, the opportunities for growth and success are endless. By embracing the power of sales enablement, companies can empower their revenue teams to achieve new heights. Sales enablement is not just a strategy, it's a game-changer. Organizations that have implemented sales enablement have seen a 7% improvement in win rates, and 80% of sales enablement teams have been in place for over two years. This is no coincidence. Investing in sales enablement is investing in your team's success. To create an effective sales enablement strategy, it is crucial to define your goals and target audience, evaluate your current sales process, and identify gaps and areas for improvement. By providing your sales team with the appropriate resources tailored to their specific needs and target audience, adopting the right technology, and measuring the impact of your sales enablement efforts, you can ensure success. The time is now to take action. 19% of organizations are considering implementing sales enablement tools, which can increase efficiency, provide insights into successful sales techniques, and enhance the rep experience. Don't let your competitors get ahead, take the lead and invest in your sales enablement team. It's time to unlock your team's full potential, and achieve long-term impact from your enablement efforts. The future is bright, and the opportunities are endless. Let's make the most of it! Summit Technologies is your Salesforce implementation partner and our discovery process ensures we build a Salesforce solution for your business 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.

Success in the Fourth Industrial Revolution requires a different mindset and operating model. The key is shifting decision making and operational focus from internal efficiency to external customer engagement. Business leaders must accept that transformation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is never over. It is a mode of thinking, working, and operating that enables a company to continuously sense and respond to the emerging and unmet needs of customers, partners, employees, shareholders, and more. In our sense and respond model the next step is an iterative building methodology. In building a set of respond mechanisms, you focus on a series of quick iterative wins and tests over all-encompassing programs. Summit Technologies LLC helps our clients sense, respond, and evolve to meet the needs that are constantly being uncovered. Don’t stop reading because you think this iterative development process in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is only for technology companies. Summit Technologies LLC performs Salesforce innovation projects for higher education, government, transportation, logistics, nonprofit organizations, and more. Iterative building with Salesforce and Summit Technologies could be mapped out like this: Conduct experience-focused research Map the experience Co-create with business and IT stakeholders Design, prototype, and iterate Plan and build a roadmap Use agile and iterative development approaches coupled with Salesforce to build a first set of experiences. Pilot functionality prior to full-scale rollout. Work with a small enough team to capture data but large enough to generate a full set of potential results from the changes. Ensure pilot criteria is met prior to rollout. According to Wikipedia, the basic idea behind the iterative method is to develop a system through repeated cycles and in smaller portions at a time, allowing developers to take advantage of what was learned during development of earlier parts or versions of the system. Learning comes both from the development and the use of the system and this is the key to success. At each iteration, design modifications are made and new functional capabilities are added. At Summit Technologies, we look at it this way. Think big but act small. Tackle the whole turkey one bite at a time. Empower small teams to identify challenges and build a Salesforce prototype to tackle them. Define and build a sample. Bring your idea to life giving end users a taste of what will be and give valuable feedback. Pilot, test and learn. Have the call center test a new call flow. Have your service team test a new method of handling customer inquiries. The proof is in the pudding and the folks who deal with the issues daily will know best how to manage and test the prototype. When you have a solid batch of feedback and several rounds of testing it is time to take the prototype to scale and roll it out. Sometimes a change as simple as adding an automated workflow in Salesforce can be the change you need to get through one iteration of improving your Salesforce experience and be ready to tackle the next. Having a well-designed, architected, and implemented solution that addresses unmet customer needs as outlined in the first three steps is important, but value generation ultimately depends on people adopting the solution and making it part of the way they work, day in and day out. Gone are the days of the “if you build it, they will come” mentality. It worked for Kevin Costner, but hey, that was Iowa. Having tools and mechanisms in place to measure adoption and engage stakeholders in driving ongoing improvements is essential if you want to achieve sustained end-user engagement, and ensure that what’s been built will meet and exceed the evolving needs of your customers. Consider taking the following steps to measure progress, gather insights, and apply learnings to optimize solution value: Measure what matters Empower leaders Engage end users Close the feedback loop Now let’s work together to roll out each iteration and measure our success. In the next article we will look at measuring and scaling results.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Omnichannel marketing is a communication strategy that combines all business communications over a single platform across various marketing channels, consolidating operations-related information and customer experiences to maintain uniformity. This approach focuses on connecting all communication channels with each other and with customers to provide a seamless and personalized experience at every touchpoint. In contrast, multichannel marketing involves the segmentation of direct and indirect customer interactions, with traditional channels such as physical stores and websites, and more recent channels such as email, social media, and phone or chat. However, these channels are often isolated from each other, resulting in siloed information and a lack of integration. Omnichannel marketing is a proven way to increase customer engagement and conversion rates, while also providing valuable insights into customer needs and preferences. However, it requires a significant commitment and effort from business leaders to fully implement and maintain.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist Self-service channels, such as a help center, customer portal, and customer community, can provide customers with a way to find answers and resolve issues without the need for direct interaction with a customer service agent. A help center, also known as a knowledge base, is a collection of articles and resources that customers can use to find answers to common questions. A customer portal is a branded website where customers can access information and complete actions, such as ordering a new debit card or checking their order history. A customer community is a digital gathering space where customers can share ideas and offer peer-to-peer support. These self-service channels can be unauthenticated, meaning they are open to anyone, or authenticated, requiring a user to log in to access more personalized information. To increase engagement in a customer community, companies can gamify the experience by offering points and badges for participation, and encourage customer service agents to contribute to the conversation. By empowering customers to find answers and resolve issues themselves, businesses can deflect cases and reduce costs while also prioritizing more complex issues for their customer service team. Summit Technologies is excited to help you implement Salesforce Self-Service. With our customized Salesforce solutions and Salesforce’s ready-to-install partner solutions including process libraries, robotic process automation, and building blocks for workflow automation we can help you save time and money. Today’s consumer expects a seamless digital experience that is fast and user friendly. Salesforce Self-Service makes it easier than ever to engineer more efficient customer processes that can extend to any touch point including self-service, guided screens, and proactive service notifications and status updates. Salesforce Self-Service lives in your Salesforce ecosystem meaning you can empower your teams and streamline your workflows with easy access to critical customer 360 degree data from any system, application, or department. Self-service channels are also important to your organization’s broader business strategy. Data from your self-service channels can reveal patterns in recurring requests. If you use self-service channels well, you gain firsthand insight into what customers are saying about your product or service — data you can use to make improvements. Summit Technologies is your Salesforce implementation partner and our discovery process ensures we build a Salesforce solution for your business 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.

Does salesforce have a time tracking solution? Want to know how you can track time in Salesforce? The Salesforce ecosystem is a collection of cloud-based productivity software tools that’ll help you automate many time-consuming and tedious aspects of your business. From products aimed at sales, marketing, analytics and more, Salesforce has a solution for virtually everything. But how do you track the time your employees spend on any of those Salesforce solutions? Are there other time tracking features you can use in Salesforce? Can Salesforce track employee time outside of their specific work in the application? Are there industry specific Salesforce solutions with tracking capabilities? Summit Technologies will cover what Salesforce is and why you should set up a system for Salesforce time tracking. We’ll show you how to track time in the app and also give you a breakdown of a few Salesforce products to use to track time. Salesforce offers multiple cloud-based SaaS products that focus on sales, marketing, customer service, and commerce – used by companies in industries like: Banking and Finance Communications Consumer Goods Healthcare and Insurance Manufacturing Media Travel & Hospitality Salesforce offers tools that can streamline your workflows. And when you use a comprehensive software like Salesforce, it’s always a good idea to have a time tracking system in place. Here are three key reasons why: 1. Get A Grasp On Project Progress And Improve Transparency Have you ever realized that a task was taking longer than usual, but couldn’t accurately check how much time it actually took? While opinions are useful, they don’t provide you with all the information you need. Andnobody wants to approach the C-suite with an opinion they cannot back up with facts, right? By using a time tracking system in Salesforce, identify which tasks are being completed on time and which tasks are taking longer than expected. As everything is updated in real-time, you’ll get accurate data regarding the time your projects take. Salesforce allows you to build custom reports and dashboards that put all this time tracking information at your fingertips in graphical representations that are easy to understand and up to date. Additionally, when you track time across all Salesforce apps, you won’t have to ask your employees how long they spent on each task. They won’t waste precious time counting minutes or turning timers on and off on their phones. Using a time tracker will even help you be more transparent with clients. Time tracking in and with Salesforce is easy, useful, and intuitive. Clients paying for services expect your business to execute tasks with perfect time management because they don’t want to waste their money. When a client asks why a project took so long, you can always produce a report from your time tracking system to show them which tasks were the most time-consuming and whether the time drain originated from an issue on your side of the project or their side. 2. Analyze Profitability And Quote More Accurate Prices Do you know how much income you lose when you don’t track project times in Salesforce? Some businesses set standard prices for their services irrespective of the actual time it takes to accomplish that specific task. But in a competitive market that isn’t necessarily your best policy. For example, you’d charge both Company A and Company B $500 for some consulting work. But while you could complete the work for Company A in under 5 hours, Company B’s task could take more than 10 hours to complete, including changes. That doesn’t sound like a fair price, right? With a time tracking system in Salesforce, you’ll know exactly how much time you spend on a client’s project. This way, you can charge them for the actual work instead of setting a standard price that ignores the time and effort that goes into your task. Clients can then be rewarded - or penalized - for being the blocker on a project’s completion. Once you have a time tracking system in place, you can also use it to identify which clients you do the most work for, helping you differentiate your more profitable clients from others. With this data in hand your Salesforce analytics allow you to do targeted account based marketing going after the highest profit potential deals. 3. Helps You Identify Issues With Productivity When you use a time tracking system, it allows you to see how your employees are faring with their tasks in Salesforce. With a time tracking system, you’ll have previous data to give you an idea of how long it typically takes to complete a task. This way, you can always know if any employee is taking too long or having trouble with their tasks. You can then step in to help them or assign it to another team member capable of handling it. Armed with this data you can build employee training enhancements with Salesforce Experience Cloud or target custom trailheads from Salesforce. Additionally, some time tracking tools offer distraction management features to help employees focus on their assigned tasks. This way, you can keep your teams productive and avoid any bottlenecks that affect your team’s attitude and performance. How do you do all this in Salesforce? You need an accurate system that will help you keep track of each projects’ progress and how productive your employees are while using Salesforce. Here are two ways to easily track time in Salesforce: A. Use An App From The Salesforce AppExchange The Salesforce AppExchange is a web store that allows you to download tons of extensions for your Salesforce ecosystem. The AppExchange features over 2.7 million applications that range from customizable project management tools to apps that connect Excel to Salesforce. You can also download various time tracking apps from the AppExchange. With a custom Salesforce integration from Summit Technologies LLC we will handle all the Salesforce AppExchange tools you need for a fully customized Salesforce org. Here’s how you can install an automatic time tracker from the Salesforce AppExchange yourself: Step 1 Log in to your Salesforce account and go to the Salesforce AppExchange. Step 2 Search for Time Tracker and click on an app of your choice. Step 3 Click on Get It Now and select the environment type you want to install it in. You can choose to install it in Production or Sandbox (Test). Step 4 Enter any required information like your contact information. Then, check the checkbox at the bottom and click on Install. Step 5 You can then decide to install the app: For admins only. For all users. For specific users. Once the installation is complete, you can use the app extension to track time in Salesforce. Most time trackers offer different features for: Tracking the time your employees spend on work. Invoicing clients based on billable hours. Managing payments of your employees based on their work hours. However, since these applications are designed only for Salesforce, you won’t necessarily be able to use it with any other software you use at work. Additionally, while they’ll allow you to track time in Salesforce, you won’t know if your employees were actually productive or just wasting work time running the timer. B. Use An Integration From A Comprehensive Time Tracking Software If you want a more comprehensive time tracking solution than what’s offered on the AppExchange, you can integrate Salesforce with a dedicated time tracking system. As these time tracking tools are designed to integrate with Salesforce, they offer tons of additional standalone features that can help you understand how your employees work and analyze how productive they are. To integrate a time tracking solution for Salesforce that also communicates with other applications you can look for available integrations with connectivity tools like Zapier or custom integrations from a Salesforce partner like Summit Technologies LLC. So you now know how to set up time tracking in Salesforce. Salesforce time tracking integration gives you visibility into what is going on with your teams and your business. In fact, you can utilize trackers for more than just time. Salesforce tracking software solutions can calculate the distance field reps travel, can track an employee’s location for safety and security reasons, track expenses and reimbursements, and for tracking appointments. With Salesforce time tracking, you can see hours scheduled, completed and remaining for each task, with hours broken down into billable, non-billable and overtime. But how do you put it to use in your unique organization? When you download a time tracker from the AppExchange or integrate a separate time tracking app, you can use it with most Salesforce products. Let’s take a look at five such Salesforce products you can track time in: 1. Sales Cloud Salesforce’s Sales Cloud is a cloud-based product that focuses on sales automation, sales forecasting and sales management. It helps sales, marketing and finance teams manage business strategies and track performance — helping exceed customers’ expectations. Once you use time tracking within Salesforce, you can monitor how long your sales processes take and where you can save time. 2. Service Cloud Salesforce Service Cloud is a product designed to help customer service teams deliver better solutions to their customers. Using time tracking on Service Cloud can help you identify how much time your team spends on sales tasks like answering incoming queries and providing customers with solutions. The Track Time Lightning Component is a great addition to case management in Service Cloud. Every time an agent opens the Case View page for a specific Case, the timer automatically tracks time spent viewing the Case. If the agent closes the view page or navigates away to a different page, the component automatically updates a Time Detail log. 3. Marketing Cloud Salesforce Marketing Cloud helps you understand your customers and produce more meaningful and engaging content. The Marketing Cloud app features an easy-to-use interface and is broken down into several “studios” like “email studio,” “audience studio,” “data studio” and more. You can use Marketing Cloud to engage in B2C or B2B marketing and analyze trends with its AI-enabled features to cater to customers better. Time tracking with Marketing Cloud helps you get an idea of how much time your team spent on devising plans and reaching out to prospective customers. 4. Commerce Cloud Salesforce Commerce Cloud is aimed at firms selling products to other businesses and consumers. This platform syncs up customer data in real-time so your agents can serve them better. It also keeps track of your customers’ preferred communication channels, so you can engage them wherever they want. Using a time tracking system with Commerce Cloud can help you keep track of how much time your employees spend dealing with customers. 5. Analytics Cloud (formerly known as Tableau CRM, now commonly called Salesforce Einstein) What’s the most important tool you need to run your business smoothly? The answer is data, and Salesforce and Summit Technologies LLC understand the importance of it. Salesforce Einstein is a complete data analysis solution that helps you bring together your organization’s business information. You can then visualize all your complex data in Salesforce — which will help you easily understand the data in front of you. Using a time tracker with Salesforce Einstein will help you gain an idea of how much time you can save by centralizing all your data in Salesforce. You’ll also know how much time it takes to generate valuable insights to develop your business strategies. Salesforce is a massive collection of productivity apps and for some businesses, it might be all they need in their digital toolkit. However, when your employees are on Salesforce the entire day, you need to monitor their activity — to ensure that all that time is spent productively. Take a look at the Salesforce time tracking options and see which one works for you. With time tracking tools for Salesforce, you’ll be able to easily manage your employees’ productivity and payroll, as well as bill your clients accurately for any project. Summit Technologies builds custom solutions as well as integrates time tracking solutions from the Salesforce AppExchange. Salesforce offers a powerful suite of reporting and analytics tools that work together to help you understand and act on your data, as well as distribute insights to business users.

Salesforce Customer 360 is the suite of products and services that provide you with a complete 360 degree view of your customer and the power to connect with them for all the moments that matter. With Salesforce Customer 360 as the hub of your Salesforce ecosystem your customer is always at the center of your business and every decision you make. The world’s number one Customer Relationship Management platform unites marketing, sales, commerce, service, IT and analytics in one unified platform and provides a single, shared view of every customer. All on one integrated platform, configured to work with your business model by Salesforce solutions partners like Summit Technologies, LLC. This centralized data model keeps your customer at the center of your business where they expect connected, personalized experiences across your company. Every touch point. Every platform. Every interaction. Summit Technologies can enable you to grow with this 360 customer view connecting each data stream so no matter whether sales, service, or support anyone who is connecting with your customers is connecting in a personalized manner. The digital transformation when you deploy Salesforce Customer 360 customized for the way you do business creates customer interactions that “wow” every time. With Salesforce’s customized reports and dashboards no matter how you interact with your customers the KPIs that matter most will be visible in real-time at a glance. What is digital transformation? Digital transformation is the process of using digital technologies to fundamentally change how an organization operates and delivers value to its customers. It involves the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how the business operates and delivers value to customers. Digital transformation can take many forms, depending on the specific goals of the organization. Some common examples include: Automating business processes: Using technology to streamline and automate manual processes, such as invoicing, payroll, and customer service. Enhancing customer experience: Using technology to improve the customer experience, such as by providing personalized recommendations or offering self-service options. Improving decision-making: Using data and analytics to make more informed business decisions. Enhancing communication and collaboration: Using technology to improve communication and collaboration within the organization and with customers and partners. Overall, digital transformation is about using technology to drive innovation, increase efficiency, and deliver a better customer experience. It requires a holistic approach that involves changes to people, processes, and technology. Summit Technologies has been helping organizations cross the digital transformation barriers since 2016. Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that enables organizations to manage and track their customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. It provides a single, unified platform for sales, customer service, marketing, and more, which can help organizations streamline their operations and improve the customer experience. Salesforce can enable digital transformation in a number of ways: Streamlining processes: Salesforce can automate and streamline business processes, such as lead generation, sales forecasting, and customer service, which can help organizations become more efficient and productive. Enhancing customer experience: Salesforce's customer relationship management tools can help organizations personalize the customer experience and provide a single view of the customer across departments. Improving decision-making: Salesforce's analytics and reporting tools can help organizations make data-driven decisions by providing insights into customer behavior and preferences. Enhancing communication and collaboration: Salesforce's collaboration tools can help teams stay connected and work together more effectively, even when they are not in the same location. Overall, Salesforce can help organizations transform how they interact with customers and drive innovation and efficiency across the organization. With Salesforce’s Customer 360 and custom Salesforce implementations from Summit Technologies, LLC you can transform your organization and provide amazing customer experiences through every touchpoint of the customer lifecycle. With its fully customizable features, Salesforce can be implemented for digital transformation for your business across all these industries and more: Financial Services Healthcare and Life Sciences Retail Consumer Goods Manufacturing and Automotive Communications Media Public Sector Economic Development Environmental Health Community Development Citizen Request Management Energy Travel, Transportation and Hospitality Education Nonprofit Professional Services High Tech What is the most amazing? According to the 2022 Salesforce Multi-Cloud ROI study based on over 1600 Salesforce customer interviews 98% of the customers who implemented Salesforce Customer 360 met or exceeded their ROI goals!

The High Velocity Sales name has changed to Sales Engagement. The automation features within the product now include customer engagement tracking, chat bots, and sales cadences. The new name captures all the tools to use to automate processes and to engage strategically with leads and customers so that your sales team can focus on selling. Sales Engagement is built on the Lightning Sales Console, which provides you with everything you need in a tab-based workspace. Work Queue provides a prioritized list of emails, calls, and custom sales actions. And that it’s divided into three separate tabs. Sales Cadences: These are sequences of activities created by Jose for different types of prospective customers. For example, Jose’s created a specific sequence for handling leads from the recent Shoetacular Trade Show. My Feed: This includes any activities that need your attention. For instance, one of your messages bounces and you want to remember to follow up and figure out what might have happened. My List: These are separate one-off calls and emails that aren’t tied to a sales cadence, like follow-ups to a prospect about a seasonal discount. Features include: Sales Dialer: It’s Salesforce’s in-app calling solution. Make and receive calls, take notes, leave pre-recorded voicemail messages, and track call results, all natively within Salesforce. Inbox: More than just your standard email inbox, this integrated tool allows you to send mobile and email messages with calendar availability, Einstein Email Insights, and Recommended Connections—all from within Sales Engagement. You can even schedule messages to send later, ensuring you communicate with prospects at just the right time. Einstein Activity Capture: Save time by syncing your email and calendar with Salesforce. Email and events are automatically added to the activity timeline of related records. If Einstein Activity Capture is turned on, users are prompted to connect their email accounts and calendars to Salesforce. Until they do so, they can’t send emails in Lightning Experience. Einstein Lead Scoring: Prioritize your most valuable leads with a numeric score to see which leads are the most likely to convert.

By Shannan Hearne, Summit Technologies Marketing Specialist One the easiest things to start off on the wrong foot with in Pardot is how you organize your data. All your data. Lists, prospects, email assets, campaigns, and forms need to be “filed” correctly to fully utilize the tracking and reporting features available with your Pardot (Marketing Cloud Account Engagement) digital marketing tool. Without organization, there is a much higher risk for the business. Just a few negative consequences of disorganized data in Pardot may be: Teams wasting time as they search for assets or troubleshoot errors. Inaccuracies between Salesforce and Pardot data. Manual reporting needed to interpret true marketing performance. Inability to accurately report on data due to broken customer journeys Incorrect use of prospect data and potential GDPR violations. Inaccurate results for KPIs and ROIs. Lost or duplicated Campaign assets. Higher costs due to maxing out Pardot usage limits. A key action for keeping your Pardot account organized is to check if there are any sync errors that need to be repaired between Salesforce and Pardot. And any additional systems from which you share data to maintain a 360 degree customer view. You should also check that the Salesforce connector has all of the permissions required. Don’t wait for an automation or reporting feature to fail to discover that your connector is not configured correctly. By regularly checking in with your connector, you can ensure data is syncing accordingly between the critical platforms and avoid misalignment between the information sales has access to, versus marketing. Enabling features like email send result reporting back to your Salesforce database helps to give sales teams visibility into the results of marketing campaigns and the health of the connector on a daily basis. Your Pardot Campaigns enable you to track and report on prospects and your marketing efforts, so it’s vital you always associate your assets to the correct Pardot campaign (or Salesforce campaign, if you’ve already got Connected Campaigns turned on – which we recommend! When your assets are associated with the correct campaign, check for campaigns that are no longer relevant. To keep your Pardot account clutter free, simply remove them to the recycle bin! It is important we ensure that all of your custom fields are necessary. Frequent reviews of the custom fields created will ensure you are removing any fields which have become redundant. By reviewing your custom fields on a regular basis, you can also spot if there are fields that you need to add for segmenting data and if you should pull more data from Salesforce for automated email programs running in Pardot! When creating custom fields it is important to use proper names that make sense and match the corresponding fields in Salesforce if they live there as well. This will help when it comes to reviewing fields in the future. If a coherent folder structure is already in place, this will save you time when browsing through marketing campaigns and content and also reduce the risk of lost, wasted or duplicated assets. Use your spare time to organize Pardot marketing assets into logical, relevant folders and sub-folders. Doing this means ensures that your Pardot account will remain transparent, tidy and easy for other Pardot users to access the right assets when they need them. Proper and agreed upon naming conventions is another great way to ensure your Pardot marketing content is easy to find! With naming conventions in place, you can quickly filter through to find exactly what you’re be searching for. If marketing assets are used in other platforms in addition to Pardot or shared across platforms like Microsoft SharePoint then maintain the naming convention organization wide. Summit Technologies recommends any Admin / Marketing users who create assets in Pardot going forward maintain a consistent naming convention. Set up a company wide naming policy and ensure that everyone follows it. Do not fall victim to using the default naming that Pardot gives files and assets when you upload them to the platform. Tags help with sorting, organizing, reporting, searching, and more. By using Pardot tags, you can organize our content by Campaign & track Campaign touchpoints. Tags also enable you to keep assets together by brand, business unit, product or service so they are easy to use for future campaigns. Pardot tags can also arrange your content by its type and organize assets (especially lists and email assets) by your prospects! By adding a tag to all items associated with a Campaign you can easily find them at a later date. This is beneficial if you need to duplicate/copy an asset. Organizing Pardot content in campaign specific folders also make it easy to delete any unused data all at once should that be necessary in the future. When you upload new files into Pardot you should apply a tag relating to the file type as well as brand and campaign specific tags, such as ‘logo’ or ‘datasheet’ etc. This will make it easier to find the specific file and also allow you to report on particular items. Apply tags to prospects by using the prospect table or automation rules. This will enable you to easily pull the tagged prospects for either review or reporting. Or to bach move from one campaign to another. Reviewing your email templates, drafts and list email drafts you can check whether any need to be removed. Companies with multiple Pardot users often have many versions of the same email even though only one is being used to send to leads or customers. Delete the unused versions. Ask yourself questions. Do we have lots of ‘Test’ emails that can be removed? If so, remove these so they don’t confuse other users and get in the way of finding needed email drafts. Was an employee “learning” to use Pardot by creating multiple emails and not deleting them? Has the same logo or image been uploaded by multiple users and not named according to the naming convention? If Pardot Lists are no longer used you can send them to the Pardot recycling bin. This is really beneficial as it will not only clean up the account, but any prospects who are associated with the deleted list will not be deleted and will remain in the system. Of course, Pardot Dynamic Lists are really useful to help organize an account. Dynamic lists are “smart” lists that automatically add or remove prospects based on the criteria you set up. They're easy to set up and they maintain themselves. Use Dynamic Lists to automatically segment prospects based on matching a set of rule-based criteria. After you have defined the rule criteria once, the Dynamic List will continuously use that rule to add prospects from the list. If they no longer meet the criteria, they will be removed from the list automatically! Use these Lists to organize prospects into recipient lists or suppression lists for Pardot Engagement Studio programs or emails. This is a great way to organize prospects in the back of Pardot, with little work required from your users. But don’t forget to delete dynamic list rules once they are no longer needed. For example, you might have dynamic lists that manage prospects by account rep. If an account rep leaves the company, you no longer need a dynamic list to manage their prospects. A great thing about the Pardot recycle bin is it never really lets you delete anything (other than content files!). The recycle bin will hold and not permanently delete even after a long length of time. Anything moved to the recycle bin will remain there until you choose to restore it. For example, if you delete a specific prospect record this month, and then next month restore them, all of their visitor activity that happened in the meantime will be restored too! In addition, prospects will also retain all of their previous histories from before they were put in the bin, for example, the lead scores that they had amassed or the forms they had filled out. When you delete files in Pardot, you need to be confident that they are not actually being used in any active email templates. This links back to your use of naming conventions and tags for assets! Files which are deleted will no longer be visible or available online, so make sure you double and triple check before pressing the delete button. If you make sure to tag all assets that are being used on a Pardot landing page or email, you will be able to see whether this Pardot file you want to delete is actually being used in a live asset. You can also retrieve what you have put in the file (this excludes content files, empty folders and dynamic content which cannot be retrieved once they have been deleted). This is great, as you can correct quickly if you move something to the recycle bin that’s still needed. By accessing your Usage in the admin panel of Pardot you can spot whether you are approaching any of your limits. Say you are close to reaching the limit of file storage, you should consider upgrading or cleaning up the account by deleting outdated Pardot-hosted files. This is another great way that the recycle bin can help organize your Pardot account. Anything that has been put into the recycle bin will not count towards your Usage Limits. This means, once you put something in the bin, it will free up more space for the required items you need in Pardot. Prospects in the recycle bin also do not contribute towards your database limits. This is very useful if your mailable prospect count is nearing the limit, and you need to start making some decisions as to who gets removed based upon engagement, mailability, etc. As we touched on earlier, these prospects can be retrieved at any time from the Pardot Recycle Bin. You can use the recycle bin to move inactive prospects that may be cluttering up the database. If these prospects re-engage and submit a form, Pardot will automatically take them out of the recycle bin and place them back into the campaigns and lists they were previously members of. Ideally, HML (Handlebars Merge Language) should be turned on, as this opens up more advanced levels of personalisation in your emails and landing pages. To ensure you’re getting the most out of your Pardot account it’s vital to stay up to date with the new features available. Summit Technologies managed services clients never have to worry about their Pardot instances being outdated as we manage all required updates and system upgrades for you. Those pop-ups on the dashboard which recommend turning on specific features are there for a reason! We recognise that even though many companies have been using Pardot for some time and are familiar with the platform, a lot do not know where to begin when it comes to reaping the rewards! Summit Technologies provides customization and training to ensure that Pardot is a powerful part of your martech stack. Contact us today about a Pardot analysis and clean up for your company.

Example Pre-Deployment Checklist Allowlists—Update your allowlists for any new domains. Custom Visualforce pages or custom apps—Replace references to the org’s instance URL with relative URLs and dynamically generated hostnames. Note any URLs that require a hard-coded reference. Einstein Bots—Identify the web pages and sites that use your bots. For each chatbot, review the Permitted Domains field in the chat deployment settings. External software that accesses your Salesforce org—Verify that the external software that uses your Salesforce URLs, including site URLs, can process redirections. If the software can’t process those redirects, work with the software owner to get that redirection functionality in place or plan to update your use of the software with your new URLs after you deploy the change. Firewalls and Proxy Servers—Update trust settings that filter by hostname. Include all applicable URL formats for your new configuration. Identity providers on your Salesforce login page—Note any authentication options available to your users. Installed Packages from AppExchange—To get the latest fixes, potentially including fixes for enhanced domains, install the latest version of each package. Note the package providers so that you can report any issues detected. If the change to your My Domain updates your My Domain login URL, complete these tasks. Authentication options such as single sign-on (SSO), authentication providers, and named credentials—Plan to update authentication. Document your existing settings for your rollback plan. Knowledge articles served on your *.my.salesforce.com URL—Search for hard-coded references to the knowledge article URLs. Preserve login access for your admins and end users. If the change to your My Domain changes your Experience Cloud sites login URL, complete this task. A Mobile Publisher for Experience Cloud app that uses your Experience Cloud site login URL—Before you deploy enhanced domains in production, upgrade to Mobile Publisher version 10.0 or later. If the change to your My Domain changes your Experience Cloud sites or Salesforce Sites URL, complete these tasks. Authentication options such as single sign-on (SSO), authentication providers, and named credentials—Plan to update authentication. Document your existing settings for your rollback plan. Knowledge articles served on your Experience Cloud site URL—Search for hard-coded references to the knowledge article URLs. Identity providers on your site login page—Note any authentication options available to your users. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) for your site—Preserve login access for your admins and end users. If you have Experience Cloud sites or Salesforce Sites and the My Domain change includes deploying enhanced domains, complete these tasks. External integrations—Work with third parties that currently integrate with your *.force.com site URL to ensure that they support Server Name Indication (SNI). IP restrictions are configured in Salesforce with only IPv4 addresses—Update your IP allowlists or restrictions to allow IPv6 source addresses for authorized users. Review and update the login IP range restrictions for the relevant profiles, including the site’s guest user profile. Trusted domains for inline frames—Review and update the list of trusted domains for clickjack protection. Ensure that *.my.salesforce.com is trusted. Visualforce pages with embedded Lightning components—For each Experience Cloud site with Visualforce pages that include embedded Lightning components, update the Security & Privacy settings, and add your Lightning Components URL to the Trusted Sites for Scripts.