CRM - Vertex Computer Systems

Using Salesforce to Drive your Manufacturing Growth

Posted on October 17, 2021April 19, 2023 by Sudip Nandy

You may already think of Salesforce as a powerful Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) application, but it can also help manufacturers to identify, prospect and track opportunities, customers, and cases to drive revenue and growth opportunities. Manufacturers who take advantage of the full breadth of Salesforce’s functionality realize improved revenues and growth margins – all while lowering their SG&A and Operations Costs.

How Can You Improve Your Revenue?

Vertex Computer Systems has helped manufacturers conduct B2B marketing campaigns that expand their ability to understand and respect their customers and ultimately contribute to the continued success of those valued partners. Similarly, Salesforce Sales Cloud can be utilized to attract and engage new customers before, during, and after the sale. If you’re serious about keeping track of your customers at every stage, Vertex has the Salesforce expertise to help you leverage customer relationships to grow sales and improve customer satisfaction.

Because Salesforce provides a true 360° view of the customer, manufacturers can get a clearer understanding of customer needs as well as their journeys through the sales process. Would you like to shorten the cycle from prospect to sale? Salesforce provides standard and custom pricing solution options to help manufacturers accelerate deals. The Partner Portal’s Community Cloud can also enhance collaboration with a manufacturer’s business partners for greater efficiency.

Key Salesforce Features That Help Manufacturers Grow Sales Revenue

B2B marketing campaigns
Lead scoring and automated assignments
Lead-to-Cash process optimization
Custom pricing solutions to accelerate deals and maximize gross margins
Partner Portal access via Partner Community for maximum collaboration
Streamlined/automated customer service experience
True 360° view of the customer providing revenues, returns, support costs, et al

The other side of the profitability equation involves the standardization, optimization, and automation of processes. If you’re interested in lowering your SG&A and operations costs, Salesforce can help. Did you know you can eliminate manual spreadsheets, replacing them with real-time processing, reporting, and alerts? Salesforce provides your Manufacturing team instant access to the same up-to-date detailed information. That’s just one way of many that Salesforce enhances operations.

Key Salesforce Features That lower SG&A and Operations Costs

Eliminating manual spreadsheets with real-time processing, reporting, and alerts
Demand Forecasting – both revenues and units
Contract management
Simplified order processing/ERP integration
MS Outlook/Gmail integration
Reduced customer service and support costs
Integrated, automated, and streamlined credit checking

If you want to leverage Salesforce to quickly move the needle for your manufacturing firm, give Vertex a call. You won’t be disappointed.

An Overview of Salesforce Security & Compliance Measures

Posted on July 8, 2021April 19, 2023 by Sudip Nandy

Salesforce has rightfully earned and held on to the title of the “World’s #1 CRM Platform” by going to great lengths to enable their customers to access to their data across all devices, all while ensuring the data is protected from unauthorized access. As the adage goes, “Security is only as strong or weak as the weakest link in the chain.” Salesforce, from its early days, recognized its part in its customers’ security chain and has taken all measures possible to protect customer data at every layer of the OSI model. They also offer powerful and flexible tools to their customers to secure their data exactly the way they want. Let’s look at the tools in each of these categories.

Infrastructure

Salesforce’s office sites, development centers, support, and data centers are secured by state-of-the-art technologies and are ISO 270001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 certified by an independent party.
Salesforce hosts multiple tenants on the same shared set of resources. Tenants are completely isolated from each other via an “Organization ID”.
In addition, the platform is HIPAA, FedRAMP, and GDPR compliant. A full list of Salesforce’s certifications may be found here.
These security measures are entirely under the control of Salesforce and have been made available to the general public for informational purposes alone. The ones below are more important to the Salesforce customer and require careful review, planning, and execution.

Encryption

All data is encrypted using TLS 1.2 the moment it leaves the user’s browser or mobile device. Data is always encrypted as it moves around within Salesforce’s own networks.
Salesforce offers the ability to encrypt data in sensitive fields at no extra cost, so they may only be accessed by authorized users
For an additional cost, customers may purchase Salesforce Shield, which encrypts all customer data, at rest.

Real-time Monitoring

Salesforce offers event monitoring at an additional cost for Enhanced Transaction Security and Threat Detection.
- Enhanced Transaction Security offers customers the ability to define policies around sensitive operations such as login, API access, and reporting.
- Threat Detection alerts customers in real-time to unauthorized access from session hijacking, credential Stuffing and other anomalies

Authorization

Salesforce offers a myriad of ways for customers to log in, ranging from traditional password-based logins to SAML or OAuth-based SSO.
In addition, users also have the option of a wide range of two-factor authentication mechanisms. The simplest one (which all users are enrolled in, by default) is through an activation code emailed to the user. Other options include text messages to the user’s registered phone, Salesforce Authenticator App, or a physical security key.

Application Security

The final and the most important piece of the security chain, from a customer’s perspective, are the security configuration options in the Salesforce app itself.
- System and Object access levels
  - Profiles control Create, Read, Delete and Edit access to objects as well as access to fields. They also dictate the scope of what the user can do on the platform.
  - Permission Sets allow additional permissions to be added to the ones provided to a user by their Profile.
  - Permission Set Groups are a recent addition to the platform that allows grouping multiple Permission Sets together. They have been introduced to simplify the metadata representation of a user’s access levels and are projected to make Profiles less relevant soon.
- Data access levels
  - For a user having at least Read access to an Object, access to individual records is controlled by a combination of Org-Wide Defaults, the User’s Role, the Object’s Sharing Rules, and Record Ownership. In addition, there are features like Sharing Sets, Queue Membership, Enterprise Territory Management, Manual Sharing, and Account/Sales and Case Teams that can provide a user access to certain records.
- Process execution contexts
  - Custom Screens and Automations designed on the Platform using Code or Flows may be run under the System Context or User Context. It requires careful planning and execution on the part of an admin or developer to ensure these processes always run with the least privileges necessary and don’t turn into attack surfaces, or inadvertently expose sensitive customer information

The features listed above are merely an overview. There are many intricacies to configuring and fine-tuning data security in Salesforce. Although most small-to-midsize customers start out with an “open” model, where access to data is pretty much unrestricted to all users, the approach may not be suited to all customers and can quickly prove inadequate as the user list starts growing.

Careful planning and execution, driven by an experienced Salesforce Consultant or Administrator can end up saving you a lot of time and money as you start to scale usage of the Platform. At the same time, a lack of proper planning and improper implementation can end up costing you time, money, and customer goodwill.

Vertex Computer Systems is a trusted Salesforce Solutions Provider with specializations in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Business Process Automation & Transformation. If you would like to schedule a Salesforce security audit or just learn more about Salesforce security, please contact us.

Four Common Reasons for Failed Salesforce Implementations and How to Avoid Them

Posted on February 2, 2021April 19, 2023 by Suraj Pillai

Limitless Potential or Expensive Headache? Make the Most of your Salesforce Implementation to Avoid Pitfalls.

As customer relationship management (CRM) tools go, Salesforce is the Cadillac of systems. It empowers organizations to retrieve vast and deep pools of customer information. Users can easily view and act on individual accounts, contacts, tasks, opportunities, leads, and events. With detailed customer data and robust planning and collaboration tools, you instantly gain efficiency and productivity. So, why do so many organizations often experience an enthusiastic start with Salesforce only to be disappointed after several months of use?

Here are four reasons that lead to Salesforce fatigue or outright disillusionment – along with how to avoid them.

Lack of Vision, Planning & Communication

If you purchase Salesforce only because every other successful business is using it, and roll it out to your Sales teams, you’re not going to get much value. Before you jump in, ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish.

A successful Salesforce implementation requires a clear vision, definition of goals, careful planning, road mapping, and a well-thought-out communication plan for your teams. Only then will the execution work. In fact, insufficient and incorrect communication is the number-one reason we see Salesforce implementations fail. Without a well-defined vision, it would be impossible to carve out a roadmap and without a roadmap, you’re pretty much guaranteed to fail in your Salesforce journey.

Inexperienced Admins

Often, we see customers, especially those in the nonprofit world, dive head-first into configuring their Salesforce instance after reading a few blogs or tutorials. While this may work in the short-term, and with smaller teams, it’s ultimately not scalable. As your business and team grows, Salesforce will morph into its own bottleneck. While the platform itself is built to serve businesses at scale (almost all Fortune 100 companies use Salesforce), it takes an experienced admin or solution architect to avoid common pitfalls. To avoid this problem, either invest in the necessary training for your in-house resource or work with a qualified architect who understands how to configure your instance, considering how your needs will change over time as your organization grows.

Improper Schema

One of the biggest strengths of Salesforce is the ease with which it allows you to define new objects and fields to hold your data. A few clicks makes it available to everyone on your team. However, in the wrong hands, this can be disastrous. We have seen inexperienced admins go trigger-happy, adding new fields and objects with very little thought. This results in hitting all kinds of platform limits, frustratingly long data input forms, bad and insufficient reporting, and poor user adoption and satisfaction. In worst-case scenarios, it can prevent your business from scaling altogether. As I’ve mentioned previously, clear planning and knowledgeable admins will prevent the creation of improper schema and associated problems.

Automations

Salesforce prides itself on being the market leader in Sales Automation for fourteen years in a row. It offers multiple options when it comes to automating data enrichment and processes, each with its own pros and cons. However, being a multi-tenant platform, Salesforce enforces strict governor limits regarding the utilization of resources in each transaction. Consequently, poorly designed automations can hit these governor limits once your data and/or processes reach a certain scale. In worst-case scenarios, this can happen without warning and could bring your business to a standstill.

In fact, automations hitting governor limits is the single biggest problem that growing organizations struggle with, in Vertex’s experience. Fixing the problem after it happens costs more and takes longer than setting it up correctly in the first place. In some cases, backward engineering never fully alleviates the risks and issues. Identifying the right automations and designing them the right way, technically and architecturally, right from the beginning, is the cornerstone to Salesforce success.

Questions?

With the right planning, properly trained users, and an understanding of how data will be used and configured, Salesforce can transform your organization. Vertex is a trusted Salesforce solutions provider to manufacturers, suppliers, nonprofits and other industries. If you would like to discuss how a Salesforce CRM system can propel your organization to new heights, give me a call.