![Determining the True Cost of CRM Ownership]()
by Mike Walsh | 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
Want to get started with Salesforce?
Need some custom consulting or development to enhance the Salesforce you already have?
Contact us
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Jan 31, 2019 | Success Stories
AgileCap provides insurance agencies with a simple, quick source of funding, making timely business growth attainable. Banks traditionally require large, tangible business or personal assets to secure loans. AgileCap does it differently.
AgileCap considers the entire book of business to be an asset. A substantial asset that allows them to provide the funding needed to grow. This paradigm shift in how collateral is defined has allowed AgileCap to provide financing to all ranges and types of agencies over the past 15 years.
The Challenge
AgileCap had leveraged their unique business model into many years of successfully providing funding to insurance agencies nationwide, and substantial company growth. However, they had reached a bottleneck in their ability to scale.
After many years of growth, AgileCap was using many disconnected systems for accounting, data processing, storage and more. Because none of these programs could share data through smart integrations, the AgileCap team was forced to do a lot of duplicate data entry, which is, of course, time-consuming and error-prone. Some other specific challenges included:
- Lacking the desired variety and complexity of deal tracking tools
- The invoicing process could have been easier
- Desired overall increased visibility and transparency
- Reporting could have been faster and more comprehensive
Overall, their disconnected systems were slowing down their underwriting process, weren’t giving them the tracking or metrics they needed to deeply analyze their business and lacked smart workflows and automation to that would save them time.
The Solution
CloudMyBiz is a certified Salesforce Partner. We develop and implement custom Salesforce solutions, integrate systems, enable user adoption and give businesses the foundations to reduce costs, increase efficiency and maximize ROI. CloudMyBiz gives clients access to what
Salesforce does best: innovation. Salesforce is more than just a cloud or software tool, it can be the foundation for developing and growing a business in just about any way imaginable. Salesforce was not entirely new to Agile Cap. In fact, they had actually installed Salesforce previous, however, the basic layout was not user-friendly, and borderline overwhelming to figure out. Consequently, Agile Cap had stopped using Salesforce and returned to their other systems. What they didn’t realize, was that they needed a consultant and developer who understood their industry, and could tailor the system to their specific needs.
Eventually, AgileCap contacted the reps at Salesforce to get a consultant recommendation, and they were then referred to the Alternative Lending experts at CloudMyBiz. After in-depth discussions and a proper Business Process Review, we established that AgileCap’s specific needs included:
- A single, integrated system.
- Reduced human error so they could better scale.
- Enhanced reporting tools.
- Better visibility on where deals are in the process and better pipeline management.
- Improved ongoing monitoring of the loans.
- Streamlined communication internally and externally to create a better user experience for their clients.
The Result
To meet the needs of AgileCap, we implemented our FUNDINGO Loan Management solution, built on the Salesforce platform and designed specifically for the Alternative Lending industry. The FUNDINGO Underwriting and Loan Servicing Apps gave AgileCap the functionality, automation and data insights they were looking for.
Moving them onto a single platform also allowed CloudMyBiz to implement direct integrations with DocuSign, Experian, Conga, and Quickbooks, meaning that all data was now shared by the system, and could be instantly accessed from within Salesforce. This significantly reduced the time it took to process deals, as well as the frequency of data errors.
CloudMyBiz also built a brand new, custom Amortization Schedule module for AgileCap. This custom build-out has been essential to allowing AgileCap to continue growing. It allows for the invoices to be automatically created, sent out, and collected upon, with minimal oversight. What’s more, amortization schedules could now be easily created, updated and reported on. Finally, one of the biggest benefits was that it allowed for invoicing automation (including interest and principal amounts) as well as reporting projected cash flow and revenue for the portfolio.
AgileCap immediately realized that the new system was a vast improvement upon their previous solution. In fact, when they began testing the initial version, they discovered that they were going to be able to save up to 3 hours for each and every deal they processed. In a very time conscious industry, when potential clients are shopping between 10 different funders, and often expecting a turn around time of a day or two, those 3 hours were a huge win for AgileCap! The overall result: AgileCap removed the roadblocks in their way, streamlined their process and are now growing and funding deals faster than ever before!
Interested in learning more?
Have specific questions or want to talk to a FUNDINGO consulting expert?
Contact us at info@cloudmybiz.com
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Nov 14, 2018 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
When preparing for just about any new system or a significant upgrade, doing a Business Process Review (BPR) is one of the first places to start. If you are spending a large chunk of time, energy and money, you need to be sure that your new solution will meet your needs and solve any issues you are having. Only by being honest and figuring out what issues you are having prior to defining a solution, can you hope to make meaningful change.
What is a BPR?
While there is no standard BPR for all companies, you can generally expect a consultant (usually from outside your company) to come in and help you do a thorough analysis of your company.
To start, this will likely include a breakdown of your processes and day-to-day tasks, as well as reviewing any written process docs. In addition, consultants often meet with employees and/or stakeholders to get an inside perspective on what is going on.
The whole point is to do a thorough analysis to identify the pain points and inefficiencies in your company, as well as discuss potential solutions. Ideally, the BPR will shed new light on the problems for the client and give the consultant the information they need to make recommendations, and lay out a solution plan.
Why Conduct a BPR?
So you already know what issues your company is having and probably have a few ideas on how to fix them, so why do you need to pay someone to come in and confirm your hunches? Why not just get right to fixing things?
Well before you dive in, consider that an outside consultant can give you a fresh take on your problems, and might even have a level of knowledge or experience you and your team doesn’t have. This could potentially lead to shortcuts you didn’t know were there and all-around better results.
Aside from that, a BPR has three essential benefits that are good for any company:
Defines the scope and parameters of the Implementation
- By being able to discuss the current process and issues in-depth, the BPR gives the consultant a much better idea of what needs to be done. This leads to a more comprehensive plan and ensures seamless functionality where nothing can slip through the cracks. Without a BPR, there is always an increased chance that part-way through an implementation, a big-time issue will arise, derailing the whole project because it wasn’t foreseen and prepared for.
Better Cost Estimates
- Because the consultant is able to get a detailed plan in place prior to doing any work, cost estimates become much more accurate. A BPR helps avoid unexpected costs and allows both client and consultant to budget time and hours accordingly. Further, by identifying risks, you can also identify where money can potentially be saved before jumping into the implementation.
Sets More Realistic Expectations
- Almost no amount of success can make up for a terrible client experience. Imagine going out for a world-class dining experience and having terribly rude waitstaff. No matter how good the food, or how much wine you drink, your experience can be ruined. Same goes for an implementation project. We find that one of the best ways to ensure a quality client/consultant experience is to set realistic expectations up front. Sugarcoating a timeline or budget at the beginning only leads to tension and distrust later on. By doing a thorough BPR at the beginning, and forthright project terms, consultants can establish a happier working relationship through realistic expectations from both parties.
It can be challenging to truly change your business, especially if you have been doing things the same way for a long time. However, if you are going to make any changes, it is always best to thoroughly commit and scrutinize as much of your business as possible. A BPR is an essential tool to really dig in and lay out the path to a better future.
BPR’s for Salesforce
At CloudMyBiz, we do a Business Process Review for just about every project we do. Our years of experience have taught us that the BPR is an essential ingredient to every successful project. We perform our BRP’s prior to submitting any proposal, which allows us to create detailed and customized project plans, rather than generic, one-size-fits-all solutions.
Our BPRs aim to follow this general outline:
- Discuss and map out your current business process – including what is working, what isn’t working, and why
- Brainstorm solutions and potential changes – there are often a number of possible fixes, including customizations, apps or simply changing workflows and processes
- Identify any goals and significant needs from the project – it isn’t enough to know what needs to be fixed, knowing the why is just as important to a successful implementation. Goals and needs are often broken down into an order of importance. Critical solutions are of course first, while the minor adjustments will come after.
- Design a solution that will not only fix the issues but meet any goals along the way.
- Submit the proposal
This formula allows us to create a roadmap for success for each project we do. So when the question comes up “Why don’t we create project proposals without doing a BPR?” it is because we believe in the old adage of “measure twice, cut once”.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Oct 10, 2018 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Data Migration can be a stressful and challenging process, even for seasoned professionals. The more complex the system, and the longer you have been collecting data, the harder it can be to accurately understand, process and transfer all your essential business data.
Over the years, maybe you changed some of your business processes or added a number of new apps. Either way, the way you handle data can change over time. Not to mention that different people simply are more thorough at inputting data than others. Because of all of these factors, data migration often gets the reputation of being quite a headache.
However, when working with any new implementation, your data migration stage is crucial. Small hiccups can be annoying and cause delays, while significant problems can potentially cause the implementation to fail completely. So with all of this in mind, and in the interests of everyone migrating data out there, we want to present a few tips to help ensure a successful data migration.
1. Start by deciding on what data you want to migrate
Especially if you are moving to a new CRM or another system, do yourself a favor and start fresh. Don’t just transfer everything. You wouldn’t throw all your old junk and trash from your old car into a new one, so don’t do it with your data either.
Early on in the project, you should decide exactly what it is you really want to keep, and how far back you need to go. If you have been in business for 20 years, is it really going to be that helpful to know open and close dates for accounts in 1998? Was your system even digital then? Don’t be afraid to clip out fields and data that you just don’t use anymore.
Also, because you are already taking the time to look at your business process, you can also take this opportunity to identify what fields or data you don’t currently have but would like to begin adding and tracking.
2. Make realistic time estimates
Data migration is complex and time-consuming. Don’t assume it will be quick and easy, no matter how “simple” you think your database is. There will almost always be a number of hidden challenges and slowdowns along the way that you weren’t able to foresee when you got started.
What takes so long? Well for starters, some amount of time is needed for every aspect of every field, including understanding the field, mapping the source field to the target field, configuring or building transformations, performing tests, measuring data quality for the field, and so on.
In particular, understanding the source data – which is likely the most important part– cannot be automated by tools, but requires analysts to take time going through the list of fields one by one.
Long story short, making an accurate estimate can be challenging, but no matter what you come up with, make sure you are generous with your time so you have realistic expectations going into the project.
3. Take a look at your data quality
Having poor, or ‘unclean’ data can be one of the biggest issues you can encounter during data migration. For example, incorrect formatting on phone numbers or dates can throw off the whole process via mapping errors. And while it may not make the migration fail, let’s be honest, things like N/A in a name or company field doesn’t really do much good for anyone.
Yes, it can be a lot of work to look into all of the different data fields and fix any outstanding issues, but if you don’t, the whole data migration may fail. So, it should go as a given that you should get started cleaning your data ASAP, and give yourself plenty of time to do it right.
4. Involve the business team
So far we have been talking a lot about working with fields, but an essential ingredient here is to loop in your business people. You know, those people who actually use the fields in their everyday jobs. They are the ones who know the system’s ins and outs, and can best advise on what data to keep, what to get rid of and what can be done to make improvements.
A recommendation here is to run a test batch and let your business team look at the data through the new UI so they can really see and get a feel for how it works. Not only can your team see it in action, but you get to ensure that all fields are populated and all expected relationships are working. If all is good, then go forward with the rest of the data migration.
5. Get ready for long data loads
As great as Salesforce is, it does have a few drawbacks. One of them is slower speeds when it comes to moving data back and forth from the cloud.
Local databases with good hardware can move at lightning speeds, however, a Salesforce Cloud transfer has many factors that can slow down the process, such as the network speed, Salesforce API bottlenecks, and custom Salesforce code which can also limit loads and processing.
A common strategy is to batch your data loads to ensure successful transfers, smaller load times, and to avoid clogging up the entire processing bandwidth. Just imagine how upsetting it would be to be 90% of the way through a 2-week data load and to be hit by a power outage…
6. Document everything
Ironically, our final data migration tip is to create… more data! However, this data is essential. You should ideally document everything you do in the process of data migration so that if there are any changes to the project team or you need to move your data in the future, you will have a guide available.
What information should be documented?
- How did you decide which data to migrate / not migrate? And why?
- Lessons learnt, including how long it took to prepare your data for the migration. This way, if you move your data in the future you have a better idea of how much time to allow.
- What exactly have you had to do with the data to ensure it is migrated successfully?
- Note the data restrictions for the fields in both the existing system and the new system.
- Project timelines including milestones and key dates you achieved them.
- An issue log which includes any problems you came across.
- The relationships between the records (primary keys and foreign keys).
- The project team and their roles.
Hopefully, these tips have not only given you a better understanding of the data migration process but the next time you are moving all of your records, you can have a better, smoother and more successful project.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Oct 4, 2018 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Here’s the situation: your business has a number of great products/services. You are doing a robust business. And you have a whole bunch of customers contacting your support team every day asking for help. Of course, you are happy to support your customers in any way you can, but the sheer volume of calls and messages is beginning to overwhelm your support team and causing other operational slowdowns. So what do you do? Salesforce Communities Cloud!
What is a Community Cloud?
Community Cloud is a Salesforce platform that gives companies the tools to create a branded online community to connect with customers, external partners and employees.
Customer communities can be used for many different needs, including:
- Support and feedback
- Qualifying leads
- Tracking revenue
- Discussion and collaboration
- Providing product information and training
- HR and IT information resources
The Salesforce Communities Cloud is a great addition to the Salesforce Service Cloud that can significantly streamline all of your service needs. Communities can function as many things: a portal, a help site, a support forum, and whatever your preferred iteration, Communities allows you to better engage and support your customer community. How so? Communities creates an interactive and secure online site where customers can log on to self-service any questions or issues they may have, access account information, or connect and collaborate with one another.
This has a couple of effects. First, it drastically reduces the number of cases your team has to handle. It gives your community an easy way to find solutions without sitting on hold for hours. Finally, it allows a better way to engage the community, increase support and build trust among your client base.
Getting Started
So now you might be thinking, yes, it sounds nice to have a vibrant and comprehensive online portal and community, but we don’t have the time or budget to create something like that! Good news, Salesforce Communities Cloud is designed to be easy to set up. In fact, many communities are up and running in as little as 30 days!
Communities come with a number of different, scalable templates to make development a breeze. No coding is necessary, custom components can easily be integrated and everything can be customized, on brand, and totally mobile-ready.
Finally, Communities comes built to seamlessly integrate with Salesforce CRM data, such as leads, accounts, activities, and opportunities. No time-consuming processes, or wonky integrations here.
Benefits of Communities Cloud
So now we come to the fun part. We have told you that the community cloud solves for a number of common service issues, but the community cloud is about more than just making things easier for your support and service teams. Below we have listed a few of the other benefits you can see from using Communities Cloud:
Improved Customer Relationships
You can populate your online hub with just about anything that will help your customers, such as tutorials, FAQ’s, databases of questions and answer and even allow them connect with each other and your company. The more resources and content-rich you get, the better your customers can have a self-guided experience that lets them find all the info they need! Not only does it deepen your relationship with the customer, but it builds trust, dependability, accessibility and improves customer loyalty in the long run.
Better Feedback
A hidden gem of Communities Cloud is that it allows you to research your products, and get all sorts of feedback and use cases directly from your customers!
By observing your community’s natural behavior, you can easily find out the biggest sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, what new features your base is hoping to see, and what issues or questions are the most common (pointing the way to items that should be fixed)
Save Money
Which part of management doesn’t like saving money?
In the end, providing quality customer service and support takes time and resources. So, by having a quality portal that lets customers self-solve their issues, you will free up many of these resources to be used elsewhere. This results in a significant reduction of expenses. For example, in England, it’s estimated that a popular online community for diabetes patients has saved the National Health Service over a million dollars each year in hypoglycemia cases alone.
Additionally, because a quality community hub better establishes your reputation, builds customer loyalty and increases engagement, companies often see an increase in sales and long-term customer retention as a direct result of activity within their community!
Who Should Use Communities Cloud?
An online community isn’t just for B2C companies. Just about anyone who is already using Salesforce Service Cloud will benefit from Communities. No matter your business, you can make your service and support much more pro-active and timely with Communities.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
If a highly customizable community solution sounds like something that would help your business, drop us a line. CloudMyBiz works with you to develop and implement the best possible community, custom tailored to your business’ unique needs.
Contact Us
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
