Salesforce Practice 2019 Year in Review: Success Stories

Our practice saw a huge uptick in customers who wanted to enhance their Salesforce experience. How could you blame them? Salesforce CRM is the powerhouse for data! Three hot products for our practice this year were CPQ, Field Service and of course, integrations. Let’s look at some of the success stories of 2019 here at Apps Associates and see if you’re in a similar situation to some of our clients.

CP(A)Q- Configure, Price, APPROVE, Quote!

Client’s Challenge: A software company specializing in manufacturing processes needed a way to streamline their quote approval process already existing in Salesforce. Salesforce has a standard approval system, however it was too limited for the client’s business requirements. The system needed to examine the content of the quote and route the approval to the correct levels of management. The approvals could be assigned from lower level managers all the way up to the CFO/CEO. In addition, there needed to be a manual override for special exceptions and verification.

Apps Associates’ Solution: Upgrade the standard system with Salesforce CPQ Advanced Approvals and create the custom verification interface with Visualforce and Apex. The finished product is able to screen hundreds of quote conditions and automatically assign desired combinations of approvers. Before any approval is sent out, all requests go to a queue where approvals can be manually re-routed by a verification team if needed.

Transfer of Configuration Data

Client’s Challenge: A medical company focused on women’s health needed help optimizing their time handling data movement. Salesforce CPQ configuration data needed to be transferred between orgs more quickly on a regular basis. Configuration data can often be difficult to move between Salesforce orgs. Most cases require a manual transfer, however manual transfer was too slow and inefficient. Apps Associates’ Solution: The AppExchange Package “Prodly: AppOps Release” came to the rescue! This Salesforce friendly package makes it easy for the orgs to handle the transfer of this configuration data. Transfer is be automatic and allows admins more time to focus on other tasks.

360 Degree View of the Customer

Client’s Challenge: A large, international, Life Sciences company had asked Apps Associates to replace many diversified service models throughout its numerous branches with one uniform system. They wanted to implement a system that would track a product from its initial sale to repairs/replacements, as well as handle field service repairs. In addition, large amounts of data were stored in a system outside of Salesforce and needed to be kept there due to the high record volume.

Apps Associates’ Solution: Implement Service Cloud across most of the company’s divisions and implement Field Service Lightning for field repairs. Store key data in Oracle where needed and reference that data in Salesforce so it could still be accessed. Our process consisted of:

• Identifying common service structures across the company to help merge them into one unified system.
• Implementing Salesforce Out-of-the-Box Best Practices wherever we could and creating customized solutions where the gaps were identified.
• Integrating with Oracle to store larger amounts of data that could be referenced in Salesforce yet avoid data storage limits in Salesforce.

Building a Case

Client’s Challenge: A client specializing in clinical laboratory services needed a better way to manage their cases and view current workloads. Shared email inboxes had been used to create cases, and customer service reps were in risk of duplicating cases. Employees also needed a way to track cases being worked on and those that had been completed.

Apps Associates’ Solution: Implement Email-to-Case, a native Salesforce feature, which will automatically convert emails sent to a support inbox to Salesforce Cases. This process can assign contact information to the case based upon the content within the email. In order to track case progress, a Service dashboard was created for service reps to help monitor overall numbers and service goals.

Einstein to the Rescue!

Client’s Challenge: A global leader in cloud-native real-time communications that provides software and cloud network products approached Apps Associates with pain points centering around periodic manual updates, adjustments, and the import of data for visual analysis. They needed a better way to analyze and visualize the data they worked with on a day-to-day basis.

Apps Associates’ Solution: Implement Salesforce Einstein Analytics, a breakthrough in modern analytical AI and utilize Salesforce best practice methods for table adjustments, calculations, filters, and dataflow automation. These solutions are designed to be flexible enough to work in tandem with legacy system setups our client had, while still harnessing the power of the Einstein Analytics Platform to expose and visualize summary datasets that can be updated on a regular basis.

Apps Associates is customer-focused. Our goal is to find and design the solution that aligns best with your business needs. We are an official partner with Salesforce and our expertise has only continued to expand as Salesforce has expanded its diverse line of products and services. We have certifications in nearly every aspect of Salesforce implementation including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Einstein Analytics, and Salesforce CPQ.

So what pain point is your company facing today? Have you considered looking at Salesforce as a possible answer? If so, consider reaching out and let us know how we can find the solution that will improve the way you do business.