Today’s modern Salesforce administrator is someone who wears many hats. They are responsible for setting up applications, enabling new features, training users and more! Not only that, but admins are more and more filling roles that used to be filled by traditional IT departments, such as answering user questions, setting up reports and dashboards and configuring application customizations. Luckily, because Salesforce has been built with the mindset of ”clicks not code”, doing all of these things has never been easier.
All of that being said, you still need to choose your administrator wisely and make sure that you are providing them adequate support. Additionally, administrators themselves need training and guidance, to ensure they fully understand their role and are equipped to tackle the problems that come their way. Below, we have a couple of tips and thoughts that should help you achieve outstanding Salesforce CRM Administration, and set your business on the course for success.
Table of Contents
Choosing an Administrator
Not everyone makes a good administrator. Let’s face it, there are some people who do fantastic work, but you wouldn’t trust them to organize a birthday party, even for your dog. Organizational skills and vocal leadership are important but most important is someone who can find the balance between meeting the needs of your users, and understanding the capabilities of the system. Below are a few more characteristics of great CRM admins:
- A solid understanding of your business processes
- Knowing how to build and maintain relationships within the team, groups and understanding how they all work.
- Be a bit of a business analyst. Having the ability to understand issues or change requests, and figure out how to bring them to life.
- Strong communication abilities. Willingness to stand up in front of the group, speak and motivate
Poor administration drags down just about everyone in the company and will have an especially negative impact on your Sales team. Not taking your administration seriously will likely lead to your Sales team underperforming, and will also leave your admins frustrated and themselves unsupported.
Make sure you invest in your administrator and provide them whatever Salesforce CRM training they may need. Alternatively, keep in mind that some customizations or jobs may be a little too complex or technical for your in-house admins, and you may need to bring on a certified Salesforce consultant and developer.
Support Staff
How many admins and/or business analysts do you need for your company? No, this isn’t a rhetorical question and has nothing to do with screwing in light bulbs. In fact, there are some pretty easy to understand guidelines for just how much administration you need, based on the number of people in your company. Of course, keep in mind that for more complex implementations, you may need additional resources above what is listed in the chart below.
| Number of users | Administration resources |
| 1 – 30 users | < 1 full-time administrator |
| 31 – 74 users | 1+ full-time administrator |
| 75 – 149 users | 1 senior administrator; 1 junior administrator |
| 140 – 499 users | 1 business analyst, 2–4 administrators |
| 500 – 750 users | 1–2 business analysts, 2–4 administrators |
| > 750 users | Depends on a variety of factors |
Source: Salesforce Help Article
Top CRM Complaints
Now that you have picked out a qualified Administrator, and have the right amount of support staff for your business, there is one more consideration: what pain points can your Admin best help relieve? While all business will certainly have their own unique challenges, the list below (source) outlines some of the top complaints users have with their CRM:
- CRM gets in the way and reduces my selling time
- Different processes or data sets don’t sync up as they should
- It takes too long to enter notes
- It takes too long to update a forecast
- It takes too long to find the correct prospect or customer record
- Manual data entry is taking up too much of my time
- Every weekend, I need to copy my sales forecast data to Excel, update the deals and email it to my boss
- My CRM system doesn’t sync with MS Outlook (or Google mail) …or sync just doesn’t work
- Sales Managers spend too much time on the weekends to prepare reports for their bosses
- CRM doesn’t link with the order system, inventory system, support system, phone, social, marketing, etc.
- There are too many duplicate records in the CRM, so I just add another new record rather than figure out the correct record
- I was never trained on the original or new version of the CRM system
We could go on, but you get the idea. However, with proper Salesforce CRM administration, most if not all of these complaints can be solved, and your team given the tools they need to have their best chances of success.
Want More?
6 Admin Tips to Make Your Salesforce Org More User Friendly
8 CRM Administration Best Practices
-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.