![Determining the True Cost of CRM Ownership]()
by Henry Abenaim | May 15, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
When considering taking on the initiative to implement a new CRM for your business, it is always a good idea to consider the many factors that combine to form the “True Cost of Ownership”.
When most people think of the cost of ownership, they will often consider only the upfront price of the software or hardware and look no further.
However, this is not the whole story. Price alone does not take into account many of the harder to define (but absolutely real) costs associated with a new CRM solution, such as maintenance, support, training, user adoption, and efficiency. When you add in all of these other factors, the true cost of ownership becomes clear, and it may be dramatically different than you expected!
Generally speaking, there are 3 main ways we can break down the cost of ownership: Purchasing Cost, Implementation Cost, and Support Cost
Purchasing Cost
To illustrate the different factors, let’s take the example of purchasing, implementing and maintaining Salesforce. We begin with what people typically think of in terms of cost, the price. Of course, this is simply the price you pay to buy and use the software. The purchase here will be your Salesforce licenses and the products you are interested in, such as Sales Cloud, Service Cloud or Marketing Cloud.
Also, because Salesforce has so many different options and products available, the planning, research, and negotiation usually take a couple of weeks. This time and effort should also be factored into your purchase cost. This may even include hiring a consultant to help you find the best solution.
Additionally, your purchasing cost may include the necessary pre-conditions to enable the new technology to function properly, such as new hardware or upgrades to existing hardware and software. Salesforce, being cloud-based, doesn’t have significant hardware costs, but we don’t recommend trying it with a 15-year-old computer. Altogether, any one-time purchase would be counted towards the purchasing cost of the technology.
Implementation Cost
Once Salesforce has been purchased, it needs to be set up and made usable. If your company has a very knowledgeable Salesforce Admin and only needs a basic setup of the system, you may be able to get away with not hiring an implementation partner. So your costs here would again be the time and effort cost.
However, if you are like most companies, you will want to take advantage of the Salesforce tools to the fullest, and won’t have enough knowledgeable staff to handle this. So you will need to hire a consultant. Costs here can vary significantly, depending on how much custom development you need and what solutions the consultant offers.
Additionally, you should include the cost of training users on the new technology and the changes in both short-term and long-term efficiency. Most companies who implement a new CRM see a dip in efficiency right away, but overall improvements in the long term as the employees get the hang of things. In many cases with Salesforce, the day to day processes become significantly more efficient int he long term than they were before adopting the CRM.
This is also why choosing the right CRM is important, because if you don’t end up with good rates of user adoption, you may see overall decreases in your business efficiency in the long term, which would be a significant and unintended cost.
Support Cost
Finally, when considering the true cost of CRM ownership, we turn to the support cost. If you have gone with a cloud CRM like Salesforce, you do not have to worry about updates, upgrades and bug fixes, they will all be taken care of. But you will, of course, have to pay Salesforce a monthly fee for that service. If you have a local CRM but a support plan from the developer, that will also be a recurring fee, or if you have a local CRM, built in-house, then you will have costs associated with IT staffing and overhead.
Other support costs that may come into play are support contracts with external vendors, ongoing licenses and the potential costs of adding new features or enhancements. In the end, these all add up to allowing you to scale (or not). If you have a flexible system that can change and grow with you, you will be able to minimize many of these support costs down the road. However, if the system doesn’t have that ability then your support and maintenance costs will grow significantly down the road, and may eventually force you to replace the whole system.
So, when it comes to evaluating the true cost of CRM ownership, sometimes a system with a larger price tag, will actually cost less in the long run when you take the other factors into consideration. Salesforce is a great example, because while the system is admittedly not the cheapest option on the market, it can help you save money down the road due to high rates of user adoption, more efficient processes and simply put, if you get it set up right the first time, you will likely never need to buy and implement another CRM again.
No matter which direction you choose to go with your CRM, proper planning or budgeting using all of the above criteria will help you out significantly. Nobody wants to spend a lot of money on a system that they outgrow in a couple of years, and by taking into account the various factors of purchasing costs, implementation cost and support cost, you will be able to get a better idea of how to spend your money
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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![Things to know about Einstein Activity Capture]()
by Henry Abenaim | May 10, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Salesforce has put a lot of energy into promoting Einstein Analytics in 2019. And for good reason, the predictive AI software is pretty powerful and integrated with Salesforce, it can give a big boost to your company. Einstein can be applied to many areas of CRM, from analyzing your pipeline to automating workflows. A less glamorous, but certainly valuable feature, is Einstein Activity Capture.
What is Einstein Activity Capture?
Einstein Activity Capture is a tool that lets you easily sync up your email, calendar, and Salesforce. It works in two ways, 1) capturing email and events from either your Microsoft or Google account, and then adds them to the activity timeline of any related records in Salesforce, thus saving you the step of manually entering activities into Salesforce. And 2) syncing events and contacts between Salesforce and your Microsoft or Google account.
These two features work hand in hand. Capture grabs the data and holds it for a brief period of time so you can see and use it, sync, when setup, then saves and stores the data in the system.
Sounds pretty great right? And it is, however, it isn’t as easy as snapping your fingers. Activity capture requires some setup and a bit of admin work to make sure it works the way you want it to.
Considerations for Activity Capture
There are a number of technical considerations and restrictions you need to be aware of before diving into Activity Capture. We highlight some of the key elements below, however, for a complete list, click here.
General
- By default, Einstein Activity Capture configurations capture emails and events. But you decide whether to sync contacts and events and in what direction.
- The capture functionality of Einstein Activity Capture is supported in sandbox environments but sync is not. After you set up Einstein Activity Capture in sandbox, any sandbox refresh turns off Einstein Activity Capture and removes all connected accounts from the sandbox.
Capture
- Custom objects aren’t supported. When emails are sent from a custom object, the email is logged on the activity timeline of the associated contact.
- Activities added to Salesforce with Einstein Activity Capture are stored outside of Salesforce and don’t affect your Salesforce data allocations. There’s no additional costs for this storage.
- The Last Activity field on accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, and person accounts doesn’t reflect emails and events added to Salesforce with Einstein Activity Capture.
Sync
- Recurring events aren’t synced.
- You can sync contacts and events with Einstein Activity Capture or Lightning sync, but not both.
- If you turn off Einstein Activity Capture, we stop syncing events. If you turn on Einstein Activity Capture later, events that you created while Einstein Activity Capture was off don’t appear on Salesforce calendar. This condition is true even if the events occur in the future.
Analytics
- Because activities added to Salesforce with Einstein Activity Capture aren’t stored in Salesforce, they don’t show up in standard Salesforce reports. However, Einstein Activity Capture provides access to the Activities dashboard, which summarizes sales activities added to Salesforce manually and by Einstein Activity Capture.
- To access the Activities dashboard, API access is required. If you use Professional Edition, you must purchase API access. If you use Salesforce Essentials, you can’t access the Activities dashboard because API access isn’t available.
Click here to see the Activty Capture setup guide
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-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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by Henry Abenaim | May 2, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
For this weeks’ blog post, we would like to help you add some lighthearted fun to your Salesforce org. With just a few easy steps, you can add custom, fun sounds to play when a big deal closes! So let’s get into it.
There are 4 primary steps needed to setup your custom sounds. Rather than re-invent the wheel and type up the whole process, we have some fantastic resources from Salesforce to guide you through it from start to finish.
As for the sounds themselves – there are plenty of websites databases with free sound files to download. This blog post lists some of the best options for researching the perfect sound effects for you and your team.
That should be everything you need to add sound effects to your Salesforce Org, just keep it work appropriate ok? If this works for you, reply below. We would like to see what you come up with! Happy noisemaking!
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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by Henry Abenaim | Apr 26, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Automation is the name of the game when it comes to getting the most out of Salesforce. Capturing lead information with the handy web-to-lead functionality is one of the core elements for enabling Sales teams. Not only is the information the lead entered from the web form stored directly onto a lead page in Salesforce, but you can set up the system to auto assign a Sales rep, and have that user notified regarding the new inquiry.
But what if your Sales team isn’t going to be able to follow up right away? You don’t want to lose that momentum. Or maybe you just want to buy your team a bit of time to ensure they can do their research before reaching out? You guessed it, automation is the answer.
The best option here is the web-to-lead autoresponse emails. Once the template and sending filters are setup, an email will be automatically sent out to the new lead, as soon as their info registers in the system. As this feature comes standard on the CRM, we have a few tips below for setting up and optimizing your Salesforce autoresponse emails.
Setup your template (letterhead)
To make life easy on yourself, start by setting up a template, also known in Salesforce as a letterhead. This way, every successive, similar email you want to build will already have the same basic components, such as a header logo, and ensure they all look the same. Click here for steps on creating a letterhead
(This can also be done in Pardot if you want nicer looking emails. By default, Salesforce offers limited formatting options for your emails)
Create the different variations dependant upon the use case
For this, you need to define the when and the why of each email you are going to be using. Did you capture the lead from a demo video, whitepaper download, or simply someone clicking a “contact us” button?
Best practice for both Sales and Marketing is to send different emails in each of these use cases. But now that you have your letterhead, the basic formatting is already taken care of. From there, create your first email, and you can always use the clone option when making more to quickly build variants that feature small tweaks.
Content is king
Of course, you need to make sure that the content of the email is relevant and specific to the use case. Don’t get off to a bad start by thanking someone for watching a video if they haven’t seen any video. A few other tips for these autoresponse emails.
- Use merge tags – marketing researchers have proven time and again that adding in a merge tag and personalizing, like the lead’s first name, can have a big impact on improving how an email is received.
- Give added value – another handy marketing trick is to follow up with added value to further engage. Whether it be a blog post, success story or any other content you have created, just be sure that it can add some real value for your lead.
Define your web to lead autoresponse rules
Once you have all of your emails built, it’s time to make sure they send to the right lead. For this, Salesforce allows you to build your sending rules on a large number of fields in either the lead, campaign or current user.
For example, a common use here is the “Lead Source” default field. Simply that you will send a different email to each lead, based on where they came into the system. Whichever fields you choose, do make sure to pick reliable fields that won’t be changing frequently, or can have data error problems. Click here for steps on setting up the autoresponse rules.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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by Henry Abenaim | Apr 19, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
For anyone who has looked around our site, or shopped for any software solution (ex. Salesforce) in recent years, this post is for you. The question of whether or not to post prices has come up a ton in this industry, with varying viewpoints on the benefits and drawbacks.
By and large, most software and SaaS companies keep their pricing sheets gated, and only available at the discretion of a sales rep. While this can certainly be frustrating for potential buyers, especially when all you really want to learn at that moment is the price and not to talk to someone about value and benefits, there are a number of reasons leading to this practice.
In this article, we will look at some of these reasons, and using our own first-hand knowledge, hopefully shed a little more light on why it can be for the benefit of both the selling company and the client to not have prices posted outright.
The relationship of software quality to price isn’t always 1 to 1
- More expensive isn’t always the best solution for your company. Maybe you don’t need the top of the line option – or when you get partway into a demo, you realize it has tons of features you don’t need and don’t want to pay for.
- Conversely – just because something is affordable to purchase up front, doesn’t necessarily mean it will work as well as advertised.
- Buying software isn’t like buying everyday items, like food or clothes, where it is pretty easy to estimate how much quality you get for your price. With software, it really does take thorough vetting of a product to determine if it will really meet your needs – and you can easily discount the right decision too early if it seems either “too cheap” or “too pricey” from the outset
Posted prices can scare away buyers who would actually save money in the long run
- Poor software, that costs less up front, might require more investment long term just to maintain. A few years later when you have grown too big for the product, you have to buy a more expensive version anyway – effectively spending more over that time span than if you had gone with a more expensive option to begin with.
- How much you should spend on a software solution is a complex calculation, and involves much more than what your budget is, and how much does X product cost. You need to factor in things like, how much money am I losing by not having a better product, and if my processes were X% more efficient, how much more money could I be making? When you start doing advanced calculations, often times higher priced software options turn out to be the better option because they pay for themselves quickly, and after that its all profit.
- Finally, companies shopping for software are often buying something they have never purchased before. As a consequence, they may not have a particularly concrete idea of what the solution should look like, let alone how much it should cost. In these situations, sticker shock can push businesses onto the wrong product.
The price isn’t fixed!
- What’s the real price? “Well, it depends”. If you have heard this before and want to pull your hair out, know that the feeling is shared by many, but that doesn’t make it less true.
- For many SaaS and software companies, their products are not one size fits all, or even available as Out of the Box packages. They are designed to be customized and tweaked. Yes, this is a built-in cost, but it also means that you get a solution that is tailored to your business.
- Then, of course, there is always the fact that Sales just might change the price, depending on the situation. Trying to make their quarterly goals, you just might get a discount if you sign right away. Or maybe additional options and features are thrown in to sweeten the deal. Simply put, posted pricing gives Salespeople less wiggle room to get the deal done.
Too transparent pricing leads to competitors undercutting you
- Isn’t this a good thing? Competition leading to the best possible product, for the lowest possible price? … Not always
- When a product is all about man-hours, and expertise, competition undercutting prices can dehumanize the people who built the software. This could potentially have a huge ripple effect in the company if they are forced to cut the price of their products, leading to decreased profits, resource turnover and a whole host of other issues.
- This can also put excessive pressure on the software builders to make the product “cost-effective” – leading to corners being cut. And do you really want all of your hard earned business data being housed on a system that is less than thoroughly vetted?
On the other side, there are a number of arguments for more transparent pricing that are equally valid, ex. Pricing pages can quickly weed out unqualified buyers, or they increase trust. While these are both true, they can also lead to some of the negative effects discussed above.
No matter how you slice it, there is no clear cut best answer for whether or not software companies should post their prices. There are benefits to both sides of the coin, and in the end, it’s up to each individual company, knowing their target markets, their business model and their history to determine what will yield the best results for both themselves and their customers.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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by Henry Abenaim | Apr 12, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
A question that every company who uses Salesforce asks, at some point in their growth is, “should we hire a Salesforce admin?”
While this is a pretty important question to ask, unfortunately, there is no cut and dry answer. It’s different for every company, based on their individual needs. However, with that being said, let’s take a look at some of the values of bringing on a Salesforce admin, and when to do so.
Why you would need dedicated admin support
So let’s start with why you would even need an admin in the first place. Salesforce Admins do more than just set up users in the system. A good admin is essentially the workflow builder, data buster and all around problem solver that keeps your company’s processes and data on track.
Often times, a small company will either have done a makeshift job installing and configuring Salesforce, or otherwise used a consultant to set everything up correctly at the beginning. Either way, over time, the system grows and needs to be maintained or tweaked here and there.
For mid-size to large companies, where having dedicated admin support is mandatory – these are the people that your in-house staff will come to whenever they need the system to accommodate some request or change, for example, sending congratulations emails to the new client when a deal is closed.
What type of Admin
When it comes to in-house admins, it is fairly straightforward. Many times, for small to mid companies, there won’t be a full time, dedicated Salesforce admin, but someone who has the basic skills, and does it part-time / as needed. In-house admins have the advantage of generally being faster to deliver results, they already know the system, and if you have enough work for them to do, they end up being more cost effective.
Of course, not every company has enough workload to justify keeping a full-time admin in house. If you want to outsource, there are plenty of options, from lone wolf Salesforce experts to implementation consultants to Salesforce admin companies. For the solo contractors, they can be a cost-effective option, however, it may be hard to verify their qualifications, and they may not always be able to respond right away.
There are many Salesforce partners and implementation consultants, who primarily install, configure and develop Salesforce solutions. They will have in-depth technical knowledge, especially if they installed your system, and so will know exactly how to make the changes you need. This does also come at the cost of the normal consultancy rate.
Finally, you can utilize Salesforce admin services, from companies who are dedicated to that sort of thing. These groups may have a couple to dozens of trained admins available at any given moment to handle your needs. Their advantage is response time. However, like the individual contractor, you need to do your research to ensure they really know Salesforce. Their rates generally vary as well.
When do you want to bring on a full-time admin?
There is no right or wrong ratio, but many companies start finding they need one full-time admin, somewhere between 30 and 40 users.
If you are a small to mid-size company and growing, you may want to get ahead and plan for the future. Keeping your long term grown plans in mind is always a best practice when hiring anyway.
Whichever way you choose to go, in-house, outsourced or hodge-podge, Salesforce Admin work will inevitably need to get done. Hopefully, this has given you a little bit more insight on the why you need to think about it, who to consider, and when it is necessary to bring in a Salesforce admin.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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