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March 20, 2017

Part 2: The Many ‘Hats’ of a Salesforce Administrator… Our Tips to Wearing Them Well

EMPAUA Salesforce Partner

Last month we released Part 1 of The Many Hats of a Salesforce Administrator… This week we look at our tips to wearing Them all!Having covered off on some of the many ‘hats’ a Salesforce Administrator wears, we wanted to set you up for success by giving you our top tips to stand out and excel whilst wearing each ‘hat’. Hopefully this will help keep you motivated and happy in what you do (and become an even more kick-ass Salesforce Administrator than you already are!), and more importantly, that your organisation gets the most out of Salesforce. Let us know what you think and if you have any other tips you would like to share!

Hat 1: Salesforce Administrator

Tip: Book a meeting room where no one can disturb you and dedicate a couple of hours each week to exploring Salesforce - both its existing features and the constant new releases. Read blogs; find out how other companies are using Salesforce; ask questions through the Salesforce Community… the objective is to get inspired and discover new ways your organisation can benefit from Salesforce. Think to yourself: is there a better way to do this? For example, your company has metrics in place for their customer support team which are currently manually maintained through Excel… could Cases be used instead? The best thing about this tip is that you too benefit by continually developing your own skills and knowledge, a win-win!

Hat 2: Trainer

Tip: It is important to understand that everyone learns differently. Try and provide training materials in different mediums e.g. face to face; video; written, which gives your users options. In addition, consider using Chatter Questions & Answers as a Wiki - this is a great way to search for information and capture questions and problems and will mean users can possibly source the answer themselves, saving you time. An effective training programme in place for new users will also kickstart their Salesforce experience positively, so it useful to work with your HR team to ensure it gets included in the on-boarding process.

Hat 3: Business Analyst

Tip: Once you have gone through the requirements gathering process, work with the Project Owner to prioritise them - MoSCoW Prioritisation is an effective way of doing this. That way when you begin the work you will start with the ‘must have’ requirements and will end up delivering these and therefore value back to the business sooner. This Agile approach is effective in a role like yours because it puts you in a position to deliver results quicker and it will also make the Project Owner very happy if they can see solid progress!

Hat 4: Project Manager

Tip: Using a Scope document (which is an absolute must) to ensure all requirements/deliverables are included, create a clear timeline of when the project will be completed, broken down by tasks. Include how long each task will take and also when it should be completed by, For example, a task might take you 4 hours to do, but you might only be able to allocate an hour each day to doing it due to other commitments. Completing projects alongside doing your BAU tasks can create a lot more work so this really helps you manage your time effectively plus it also sets your expectations with the Project Owner. Ensure you save the document in a location that all stakeholders can view - this transparency will help reduce the amount of status update requests you receive.

Hat 5: Change Manager

Tip: Your Change Management approach will vary depending on the change being made i.e. if it is high impact then you might need several phases, through different mediums to ensure everyone is across the change. For a tiny change then an email should suffice. When communicating the change, the best advice I can give you is to start with the WIIFM: ‘What’s In It For Me’. Tell the user exactly how this change is going to benefit them and that way it will get their attention. You might need to tailor this to different audiences, so make sure you have this covered. It is also a good idea to get someone to proof-read your communication before you send - two heads are always better than one… Plus poor grammar and punctuation can sometimes distract the user from reading the content itself.

Hat 6: Salesforce Ambassador

Tip: Actions speak louder than words! Find out a user’s pain point and find out a way to overcome this using Salesforce. You will not only impress them by demonstrating your initiative but you provide them with a clear example of the potential value of using Salesforce. Slowly but surely you can start converting everyone to be fellow Salesforce Ambassadors!

Hat 7: Support

Tip: It is important in a Support role that you communicate to users. An email acknowledging you have received their support request can make all the difference, especially if you set their expectations as to when they should expect to get it resolved. However, what sets you apart in this role is putting something in place to try and reduce/avoid this issue ever happening again. For example, records are missing from a report because the filter relies on a free text field and a user had made typo’s on these records. Is there a way you can filter the report by a picklist field to avoid this happening again? Or can you use a validation rule to reduce typo’s happening again? If so, put this in place then communicate to the user the measures you have put in place - I promise you they will be seriously impressed with your proactive approach.

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