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Services:
Salesforce Development, Software Custom Development, QA and Testing
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Industries:
Software Development
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Technology Stack:
Backend: Apex, SOQL, SOSL Frontend: Lightning Web Components, Aura Components, Visualforce, Bootstrap; JavaScript, HTML, and CSS Declarative Development – process automation: Lightning Flow, Process Builder, Approval Process, Validation Rules, Workflow, Escalation Rules, Assignment Rules
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Project Summary:
After switching to the Salesforce platform, the customer got: 1. A unified system, which is easy and convenient to work with. 2. A desired expansion of the sales department, as work process automation and grouped data allowed getting rid of time-consuming bottlenecks in the sales staff's work. 3. Decrease in support and administrative expenses.
Fast facts about our client
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Customer: Ciklum
Employees: 3500+
Industry: Software Development, Integration, Salesforce, IT Professional Services
Timeframes: Software development (May 2016 – November 2016)
Maintenance (May 2016 – present)
Request
Challenge
The difficulty of working with such a wide range of systems was in
● exchanging data between the systems;
● need in data synchronizing, saving duplicate data;
● a large amount of support and modification.
It was costly, slowed down the working process, distracted from main tasks, and didn’t bring the desired result.
Our goals were:
1. To build a customer data management platform and an internal process management platform for the sales department.
2. Transfer all the business processes to the new platform in a short period of 6 months.
Why us?
Having a large staff of their in-house developers, the customer could have solved the task by themselves. Nevertheless, they decided to engage an off-site developer so that not to distract their engineers by a one-time task and to speed up the realization, engaging experienced integrators.
What we did
1. We built a project team of experts with different skills: consultants, developers, administrators. The team had to learn the customer’s business processes, see into all the details and scenarios of the business.
2. We were working closely and actively with a representative of Ciklum, who quickly and efficiently consulted us on the customer’s business processes, helped to understand peculiarities, answered questions. We should admit he did a good job.
3. After that, we analyzed already available client’s software solutions to find out what processes they cover, why they were inefficient, and vice versa, what advantages they had.
4. We offered the Salesforce Sales Cloud to the customer as a unified platform for all business processes. We thought over the architecture and developed a step by step plan with strictly defined timeframes. The plan was discussed with and approved by the customer.
5. The next step was data migration from the former CRM to the Salesforce platform. At this stage, thorough work was done to arrange the database, detect duplicates and unify formats.
6. The bulk of the work was devoted to the implementation of processes on the Salesforce platform. They included sales processes, project management, company resource management, etc. We implemented custom Sales Path, customized work processes with Leads and Opportunities, implemented approval processes for deals, set up export to an Excel file, and also PDF document generation. We offered a range of processes, which facilitate team and staff management: team review, dismissal process, resource management.
7. The final stage was Salesforce integration with the client’s external system for receiving full operating cycle and all processes in one interface (Salesforce).
Difficulties
As a motto says, “The customer is always right.” Nevertheless, a couple of times, we had to say “no” to our customer when we saw that the result would be poor. As the customer was used to working with the former CRM interface, they wanted to transfer the habitual scenarios to the new CRM. When we realized that it was prompted exclusively by habit, we had to persuade to look into new scenarios.
Go-live
The implementation was done step-by-step, which was a sage thing to do. We implemented the main functional block, trained a test group of employees, and, after three months since the project kick-off, they already had an opportunity to work with the newly introduced product. We received their feedback and fixed the bugs. After that, we set about a new implementation stage – workshop, i.e., working on the platform by the test group, feedback, implementation of improvements.
These three stages were enough for all employees of the company to start using the platform, which was preceded by training.
Results
After less than six months, the customer started working on the new platform with improved, automated, and customized processes. The switch was done without interrupting working process. The customer was pleasantly surprised to find out that the platform was scalable.