When used properly, Salesforce is an incredibly powerful tool that can be tailored to make your business’s processes much more efficient and therefore raise your team’s productivity. Salesforce can be developed so that a number of processes that will support your business goals can be built, but to do this, it is vital that Salesforce is properly implemented into your business. Without an easy setup and proper Salesforce training, you’ll find it harder to keep your employees engaged with the tool in question.
Salesforce houses hundreds of excellent features that will make your transition and Salesforce set-up easier, but these functions often overshadow some of the basic features that are usually forgotten about. If you’re a Salesforce admin looking to make the most of your Salesforce platform, then check out these Salesforce admin tips that will make your processes a lot easier for both you and your users.
Improve efficiency by creating list views
How much time do you spend looking at numerous list views? It’s no secret that Salesforce users probably spend 70-90% of their time looking at a lot of list views – whether it’s finding out which leads have come from Facebook ads, to open opportunities that will be closing, looking at all this data is a task that happens on a day to day basis.
Those who’ve not got much experience with Salesforce are probably more than happy with the standard list views on a Salesforce dashboard. However, you know how your colleagues work, and can create a list view that suits their style. From creating multiple specific list views that your colleagues can go between to get the information that’s most relevant to them, or you can use a broader single list view that is listed in a specific way that you’ve decided.
Create relevant Dashboards
Standard Dashboards offer a visual representation of your reports, in the form of lists, charts or tables. You can have up to 20 charts, lists or tables, and every one of these is referred to as a component. You can arrange each component to suit your personal preference, but they can only focus on one report.
However, when you create personal dashboards, you’ll have access to custom information that gives you the information you need, giving you the information a lot quicker. Custom dashboards are especially useful if you want to quickly glance at your stats.
Make the most of the Automation
What makes Salesforce so great is the fact that you can easily automate any process, so that you can create a more productive and efficient work environment. When you choose to automate every single action that doesn’t need to be completed manually, you’ll be saving time and it means your users can complete their admin so much faster. Unless it’s absolutely necessary, you shouldn’t allow users to perform any automatic actions manually, as you’ll run risk of duplicating records within Salesforce, and skewing the data.
Streamline your workflow and implement automations to display, hide or make read-only certain fields when certain criteria are met. Update a record type and its related page with a workflow or the process builder. Automatically lock all the fields on a closed opportunity page and ensure the record can no longer be updated.
You can automatically update the account record type and display more fields on its related page layout when a prospect becomes a customer. You can also lock all the fields on the opportunity page when it is closed to ensure the record can no longer be updated. By doing this, you’re ensuring that your data is accurate and you’ll make your users fall in love with Salesforce.
Make Fields easy to understand
Inexperienced Salesforce users should be able to understand the type of data that’s required for each field, and which field said data should go in. However, you’ll probably find that the field names aren’t as easy to understand as they should be. This is where the ‘help text’ box comes in. You can explain exactly what is required in each field. For example, if there’s a formula that updates the values and the field is read-only, you could add help text that highlights which criteria they will see the field getting updated with a certain value. Put yourself in a new Salesforce user’s place and make the process as simple as possible.
Create Email Templates
Salesforce gives you the option to create personal email templates to suit you, and these are great for users who have a specific way they like to address Leads. If you find that you’re writing the same message repeatedly throughout the day and you have to remember pieces of intel from an account so that you can personalise said email, then this tip is perfect for you!
The chances are, you’ve probably come across email templates within Salesforce, and have probably used some standard templates alongside a bit of mail merge functionality. Now it’s time to take it that step further and create personal templates for yourself.