Implementation Strategies section consists of 12% of total score in the Salesforce Sales Cloud Consultant certification exam, covering topics such as implementation rollout plans, sales deployment, measure of Sales Cloud success and etc. Without further ado, let's get into it!

NOTE: This post is written in April 2020 and content might be changed/updated overtime. The content is inspired by focusonforce.com.

Guideline for Implementation Strategies

• Given a scenario, determine how to facilitate a successful consulting engagement (plan, gather requirements, design, build, test, and document).
• Given a scenario, determine appropriate sales deployment considerations.
• Given a scenario, measure the success of a Sales Cloud implementation project.

Implementation Process

Rollout Plan

• Plan Phase
  • identify reasons for change and high-level requirements, and start mapping out possible solutions
  • consulting team kickoff
  • ex: a company would like implement Sales Cloud for the first time
  • Discovery
    • Discovery step helps to prepare for the Analyze Phase, including conversations with key stakeholders to understand their current system and processes
      • Key activities are:
        • questionnaire to gather information from the customer
        • discovery interviews with key stakeholders to understand pain points
        • understand as-is processes
        • observe interactions with current systems
      • Key information to gather:
        • organizational charts
        • process maps
        • report samples
        • requirement docs from previous system implementations
        • required objects and fields
        • stakeholders and roles
        • key fields, validation rules, and business rules
  • Scope Creep
    • happens when new requirements are added to project after the original requirements have been documented
    • cause project to be delayed
    • ways to prevent Scope Creep:
      • implement a change control process to review and approve all additional requirements before they are added to project
      • prioritize the requirements and avoid low priority requirements
      • verify the scope with each stakeholder of the project
      • define written contract clearly to set expectations at the beginning of project
  • project plan sign-off
• Analyze Phase
  • gather and prioritize requirements, identify gaps and create requirement documents
  • requirements document sign-off
  • ex: certain stakeholders of a company require a new application with custom functionality and objects
• Design Phase
  • transform requirements into solutions, and prepare solution design documents
  • implement solution design
    • use cases and a prototype application to give the client a clear vision of how the system will look like and how it will be used based on use cases
  • implement technical design
    • includes any customizations that require code development (if not, just use out-of-the-box features)
  • solution design sign-off
  • ex: a detailed prototype of the Sales application need to be presented to the stakeholders
• Build Phase
  • develop and configure application in sandbox
  • conduct alpha and beta reviews to confirm on configuration and demonstrate how it works
  • build and review data migration
  • develop training material
  • ex: client has provided sign-off on the solution design document, and the application is ready to be developed/configured in Salesforce.
• Validate Phase
  • validate application functionality through types of testing:
    • User Acceptance Testing (UAT) - allow system users to validate the process and usability of the system through test scripts consisting of use cases
    • System Integration Testing (SIT) - validate data flowing into or out of Salesforce from or to external systems
    • Performance Testing - test and validate speed and response time
    • End-to-End Testing - validate the functionality of a system from start to end
  • validate configuration and code, fix bugs and more testing
  • develop training material
  • project ready to sign-off and go live
  • ex: client needs to very that the application functions according to the requirements, make sure the application is error-free
• Deploy Phase
  • conduct training sessions
  • migrate data, configuration and code into production
  • transfer knowledge to support
  • project sign-off
  • gather project feedback via customer satisfaction survey
  • ex: application can be rolled out with training for certain group of users on a specific date

Rollout Plan (table view)

Plan	Analyze	Design	Build	Validate	Deploy
Project plan	Requirements workshops	Solution Design	Config and coding	SIT, UAT	Training
Identify key resources	Prioritization and documentation	Technical Design	Data migration build and preparation	Data migration validation	Deploy config and code
			Training material development	Performance testing, end-to-end testing	Production data migration
				Go live support plan	Go live
					Post deployment support

Implementation Strategy

• Crawl, Walk, Fall, Run Strategy
  • Crawl
    • focus on implementation of minimum viable product (MVP) with "must-have" features only
    • ex: customization of accounts, contacts and opportunities
  • Walk
    • focus on adding "nice-to-have" and any additional "must-have" features
    • ex: sales process can be defined, products can be customized
  • Fall
    • certain common failure points resulting in failure
    • ex: no proactive plan, process map unclear, no clear vision or end goals, no success metrics defined, no clear expectations or communication plan, no proper roles and responsibilities
  • Run (last phase)
    • can implement "great-to-have" features if still have time
    • ex: integration with other system and automation of business process

Project Rollout Challenges

• undefined or unclear process map
• unclear or incomplete requirements
• lack of communication
• canceled or delayed meetings
• lack of availability
• complicated requirements
• and etc.

Sales Deployment

• Deployment (last phase) refers to migration of all configuration, code and data from test environment to production.
• Success is measured at the end of deployment through reports as well as user feedback.
• Deployment Plan specifies deployment activities as well as release date of the deployment.
• Deployment should be performed when users will not be making changes in production.
• A full-copy sandbox can be used as a staging environment for test deployment.
• NOTE: tests should be run in staging environment to avoid any issues before deploying to production.

Sales Deployment Plan

• Pre-Deployment Activities
  • set up announcement for maintenance window
  • stop changes in production
  • create staging environment and migrate changes to staging environment
  • replicate changes based on production
  • log users out of system
  • set up testing deployment
• Deployment Activities
  • Communication
    • communicate with the users of release date and maintenance windows for the update
    • detailed release notes should be sent out to the users as well
    • communicate with stakeholders as well as end-users to ensure adoption and successful deployment
  • Training
    • develop training materials for instructors (trainers) as well as end-users
    • develop different training material sets for each group of end-users if necessary (ex: cross-country org, different roles and etc.)
    • conduct on-the-job training for knowledge transfer
  • Migration
    • migrate configuration and code via Change Sets, Ant Migration Tool or Visual Studio Code
    • import data using Data Import Wizard, Data Loader or 3rd party tools
    • data import order:
      1. User
      2. Account
      3. Contact
      4. Opportunity
      5. Lead
      6. Campaign
      7. Campaign Member
  • Measurement
    • measure adoption success with reports and dashboards
  • Feedback
    • conduct satisfaction survey to measure level of satisfaction
    • send emails to end user to gather information regarding their issues, suggestions and requests

Measure Success

Implementation Success

• Measure Implementation Success:
  • communicate with users to build awareness regarding the implementation
  • gather user feedback to improve solutions related to the implementation
  • deliver training before launch date
  • provide on-going support and training after implementation
  • monitor usage metrics

Sales Cloud Success

• Measure Sales Cloud Success:
  1. Lead Quality (lead quality score, conversion ratio, percentage of dead leads)
  2. Revenue Generation (opportunity pipeline report and stage duration)
  3. Sales Productivity (opportunity related activities, number of closed won opportunities)
  4. Campaign Effectiveness (ROI, number of leads generated)
  5. Forecast Accuracy (actual sales against quota, percentage of quota obtained)
  6. Sales & Marketing Alignment (lead conversion ratio, number of leads generated)
• Others:
  • business goals and desired outcomes that drives the measurement of implementation success
  • use reports and dashboards to monitor Sales metrics and KPIs
  • generate more leads and higher revenue and increase productivity

User Adoption

• Measure User Adoption:
  1. Usage (login rates, date created, updated)
  2. Data Quality (completing key fields)
  3. Business Performance (analytics tracking key business metrics such as opportunity pipeline, activity types)
• Others:
  • measure the user login frequency, further analyzed by department, region and role
  • measure number of records created by users
  • measure how much sales activity is being recorded
  • measure if data quality is maintained
  • track key business metrics with reports and dashboards
  • measure how much users are collaborating using the system, ex: volume of Chatter post

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Well, that's all about it. See you in next post!

Post was published on 23 Apr 2020, last updated on 5 May 2020.

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