- Why Should We Test Implementation Of Salesforce Crm?

By Author: Michael Wade
Total Articles: 67
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Organizations implement the Salesforce CRM with high expectations of increased sales, productivity and visibility of their sales. With planning, some of these implementations go very smoothly, but sometimes the opposite happens. Such implementations barely meet the expectations and ROI is just marginal.

Some of the reasons why Salesforce CRM implementations fail can be listed as follows:

- Lack of clear goals: Most of the times, the management does not have clear goals of implementing Salesforce CRM other than to increase sales. The reports required to manage the sales activities are either not available or the system is not configured in a way to match the requirements and capture the required data. In order to increase sales, reports are required to base the increase in certain actions, activities and behaviors. Hence, all Salesforce CRM implementations should be started by deciding the number and types of reports required by the sales team.

- Inability to shift the work culture as per the CRM: There is always an existing process with which the sales team works. This process forms over the years. Once ...
... the Salesforce CRM is implemented, the sales team is expected to use it every day as a primary tool. Sometimes the CRM may not support the way the sales team works, so it is viewed as an obstacle rather than a tool to accomplish their goals.

- Lack of knowledge: A lack of proper administrative knowledge of the CRM causes its utilization to get bogged down. If the admin level support is not efficient and immediate, then questions and problems that come up will not be addressed immediately, which will force work around solutions by the sales team.

- Lack of support during implementation: Sometimes the implementation process may require additional support from the management team. This may not be available and hence the implementation is finally not efficient and cannot be put into practice.

- No initial training: Any new software needs a basic level of training to be used. Most of the times, the teams receive no training and as a result a perfectly implemented new system is not used to its full potential.

The process of Salesforce implementation starts by defining the business objective and identifying the underlying purpose of implementing the CRM solution. Acceptance from the stakeholders is the primary step to avoid any failure in Salesforce implementation.

In order to avoid the failure of Salesforce implementation as discussed in the above points, it is very important for the organization to test its Salesforce implementation. It is important to select a test strategy that fits into the testing needs successfully.

Salesforce Testing entails Unit Testing, Functional Testing, Manual Testing, Automated Testing, Deployment Testing and Security Testing.

Conclusion
If done successfully, Salesforce implementation can bring about business transformation and translate into commercial success. A methodical test can be carried out by collaborating with a partner who has an extensive experience in Salesforce implementation and testing.