FAQs

A CRM system, like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365, allows you to store, manage and organize information about your customers, partners and sales prospects in a central location giving you a 360-degree view of your customers and your business.

A CRM system contains information critical to driving your business including:

• account and contact data
• sales leads
• sales opportunities
• product details
• knowledge databases
• documents
• reports and dashboards

A CRM system is a core business application for any industry — from retail and manufacturing, to real estate, construction, and many more.

Benefits of a CRM

• Increase transparency across all areas of your organization including: sales, customer support, project management and even human resources.
• Organize and automate your sales process.
• Scale your business and sales organization.
• Increase sales velocity enabling you to work and close more deals.
• Expand your reach to capture and drive more sales leads.
• Drive larger and more complex sales deals.
• Expand and drive your marketing strategy and activities.
• Drive customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Forcify Consulting can help you with your Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or other CRM implementation including set up, configuration, training, and custom applications. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

Forcify Consulting is made up of a passionate group of certified Salesforce,  Microsoft Dynamics 365 and project management professionals eager to help you with your project. We provide a customized experience based on your unique business needs. We strive everyday to listen to you, our customer, and to make your project successful.

Forcify Consulting provides you with a detailed Business and Sales Process Review identifying your goals, objectives and challenges before the project begins to ensure the success of your implementation.

Forcify Consulting can help you with your Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or other CRM implementation including set up, configuration, training, and custom applications. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

Our consultants have more than 25 years of combined CRM implementation experience.

Our principal consultant, Brad Tocher, has been involved in CRM implementation since the early 90's when CRM was predated by contact management applications like Act. Later, he was involved with Sales Force Automation (SFA), which included Goldmine, and then more sophisticated SFA enterprise systems run from relational databases like SalesLogix and then the CRM market leader Siebel.

Salesforce is now the market leader in CRM and all of our consultants and project managers are certified in various aspects of Salesforce or Project Management.

Forcify Consulting can help you with your Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or other CRM implementation including set up, configuration, training, and custom applications. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

A CRM helps you organize and maintain your contacts and sales leads in one central location. Whether you are a new business just getting started, an established business or a large enterprise, implementing a CRM can help you drive more leads and sales.

A CRM is a long-term investment and critical component of a strategy to scale and optimize your business.

Benefits of a CRM

• Increase transparency across all areas of your organization including: sales, customer support, project management and even human resources.
• Organize and automate your sales process.
• Scale your business and sales organization.
• Increase sales velocity enabling you to work and close more deals.
• Expand your reach to capture and drive more sales leads.
• Drive larger and more complex sales deals.
• Expand and drive your marketing strategy and activities.
• Drive customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Forcify Consulting can help you with your Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or other CRM implementation including set up, configuration, training, and custom applications. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

Salesforce CRM is not just about sales. One of the critical benefits to CRM is that it gives your organization a 360-degree view of your customers, prospective customers, partners and vendors.

It can also track your assets, equipment or employees in the field and manage your HR process.

Understanding the interactions these players have with your company is absolutely crucial to running your business, enabling you to make better decisions with better data, more transparency and speed.

The Salesforce CRM can do all of this. You can significantly increase the value and ROI (Return on Investment) of using Salesforce by utilizing more of its power and capabilities--not less.

While the Salesforce CRM can help you do all of this, it can be just as important to have a partner to help guide you throughout the process.

Forcify Consulting can work with you to create an adoption strategy and roll-out plan that meets your requirements and budget. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

Some CRM solutions target very small businesses providing a limited solution, while others have more options to customize complex business processes and integrate external applications. Each vendor provides different levels of functionality or product limitations.

Prioritizing your needs and weighing each need against your priorities and budget is important.

The following are the questions that will help you choose the right CRM solution for your organization:

1. Does your company have a complex sales process? Does the process require team selling, working with partners or tracking different products in sales opportunities?
   If so, some of the lighter CRM solutions may not fit the bill and won’t provide as much flexibility to customize to your process.
2. How important is customizing reports and dashboards allowing you to track key metrics in various areas of your business?
   Many of the lighter CRM solutions will allow you to customize reports, but don’t have robust dashboards. Some options will only provide canned reports and dashboards. The higher end systems will provide more flexibility in customizing both.
   Dashboards are run from the data contained in reports. Being able to customize those reports and dashboards may be important if you want the transparency to see what is happening day-to-day.
   Some of the dashboards you may want to consider include: company performance, sales team performance, product sales, partner or channel sales, customer support metrics, email marketing metrics and CRM user adoption.
3. Is automating certain sales or business processes important?
   Customized workflow rules are included in some of the lighter solutions, but are limited in their functionality. Enterprise or higher end solutions will allow you to create workflows and validation rules that ensure data integrity. Much depends on the vendor and the version you choose. We can help you sort out the differences.
4. Is integration of external business systems or other software important?
   Many lighter weight solutions will provide for the integration of email and accounting solutions. Some may require additional applications that you can purchase on a subscription basis. When it comes to integrating other types of solutions like mobile workforce, ERP or heavier, enterprise back-office or accounting systems, you will need a CRM solution that provides APIs allowing a developer to integrate those solutions.

Forcify Consulting can work with you to choose the CRM that is right for you. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

There are three main factors to take into consideration when choosing a CRM:

1. Your Goals. Determining your long term goals and priorities when implementing a CRM will help you understand which features and capabilities are needed to be successful in meeting those goals and setting your priorities.
2. The Desired Functionality. Finding the CRM best suited to your needs based on the features or capabilities needed to achieve your short and long term success. CRM features vary, you need to evaluate which features are important for your business success and how well a particular CRM meets those needs.
   The features you need to evaluate are reporting and dashboard capabilities, custom workflow and automation, a robust marketing component, the ability to build a highly customized User Interface, integration of external applications and the ability to build custom applications.
3. Your Budget. Everyone and every company has a budget. The more you understand the available options and your budget, the easier it will be for you to prioritize.

The experts at Forcify Consulting can help you in this process. We can perform a comprehensive Business and Sales Process review that will help you prioritize and determine the best solution for your organization based on your budget. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

Forcify Consulting supports a number of CRM solution providers. We understand the pros and cons of many systems and can make recommendations based on your specific need or challenge. We are experienced with the following solutions:

• Salesforce https://www.salesforce.com/
• Microsoft Dynamics 365 https://dynamics.microsoft.com/en-us/
• SalesforceIQ https://www.salesforceiq.com/
• Infusionsoft https://www.infusionsoft.com/
• NetSuite http://www.netsuite.com/portal/home.shtml
• SugarCRM http://www.sugarcrm.com/
• Zoho https://www.zoho.com/
• Contactually http://www.contactually.com/
• Solve360 https://solve360.com/
• Insightly https://www.insightly.com/
• Highrise https://highrisehq.com/

Forcify Consulting can work with you to choose the CRM that is right for you. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

Free versions of a CRM typically limit the number of users, accounts, contacts or other data you can create as well as your ability to customize and expand the functionality of the CRM.

Paid editions offer greater flexibility allowing you to build and expand the CRM to meet your specific business needs, include unlimited user creation, allow for the creation of custom types of users, and often include minimal training and support.

Forcify Consulting can work with you to choose the CRM that is right for you. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

A well trained Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365 administration team is crucial to any successful implementation. Successful training is a multi-step process beginning with the initial implementation and continuing weeks after, when users have worked with the system and have additional questions.

We include training and support as part of all initial implementations. We also recommend training to new clients who already have installations, particularly if they are adding solutions, functionality or new users to their instance or environment.

Forcify Consulting can help with all your training needs. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

You can implement a free version of a CRM, but it will have limited functionality.

There are other CRM solutions where can invest as little as $25/user/month to get started.

Support for a more robust CRM with additional data requirements, users or customization are available from $25 - $125/user/month or more depending on your needs.

You will also need to budget for services to help you customize your solution as well as to prepare and migrate your data from another CRM.

Forcify Consultant can help you determine which plan is best suited for your business. Contact us for a free consultation.

Many factors contribute to the overall implementation timeline including the client's immediate needs, longer term strategy, and budget as well as the recommendations we make concerning your specific requirements.

Forcify Consulting strongly believes in taking a phased implementation approach. A phased approach allows your organization to prioritize how and when features are implemented and when other solutions and applications are integrated with your CRM. It also allows you get started quicker, getting your team working more effectively sooner.

We believe the sooner you start deriving value from the system the better. It need not take weeks or months to get you started. We can help you prioritize the roll out in line with your priorities and budget.

Though every implementation is different, as a rule of thumb:

• Smaller organizations with a limited number of users and customization can be up in running in as little as a day or two.
• Smaller organizations with more complex business processes that support many products, sales channels and marketing might take a couple of weeks to a month.
• Larger organization with complex business processes that support different departments (e.g. sales, marketing and customer support) and that require integration of external applications like accounting or inventory systems might take a month to many months.

Forcify Consulting can help with your implementation. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

An integrated accounting system will save you time and help you make decisions based on more data and with more efficiency. Integrating accounting systems is important, although it isn’t always the first thing you need or want to do. You may want to consider a phased approach that allows for a quick installation providing more immediate benefits from your CRM and then integrating your accounted system later.

While a number of accounting systems will integrate with Salesforce, you may want to consider one built on Salesforce technology providing a native integration with Salesforce (for example, FinancialForce.com). The benefits of a natively integrated system include lower cost and quicker time to integration, seamless integration with Salesforce, and a familiar user interface allowing users to quickly learn the application and processes.

Besides accounting, email is one of the first systems you should integrate. It is a simpler implementation, saves time by reducing data entry and toggling back and forth between systems, it's not expensive, and helps you gain more insight by directing that data from email systems into your CRM.

Other systems to integrate include:

• ERP systems
• Mobile workforce/field technician systems
• Marketing
• HR
• Customer Service and Technical Support
• Telephony

Forcify Consulting can help you with your Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or other CRM implementation including set up, configuration, training, and custom applications. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

Here are the 5 most important ways to increase user adoption of CRM or Salesforce:

1. Train your users--continuously and consistently.
   Provide initial training when implementation occurs, but don't stop there. Follow up with training each quarter and each time you roll out additional features. Make user adoption a topic of every weekly sales meeting having one person pick a topic about a feature or use case and share it with the group.
2. Document your expectations for updating the CRM.
   Review this document as part of your on-boarding process with new employees. In addition, have your current employees review and sign off on any new policies and procedures.
3. If it's not in the CRM--it doesn't exist.
   Run your sales meetings from your CRM. Going through your sales pipeline or funnel in team meetings and conference calls will significantly increase user adoption. Furthermore, to make the data collection and usage of CRM practical for field sales or a mobile workforce you must provide mobile access.
4. Consider tying compensation to usage.
   Incentivise the team or offer a sales spiff as part of sales contests and make it fun--create enthusiasm. Also, providing bonuses to employees who take a leadership role in rolling out the CRM or training the users. Furthermore, appointing a CRM Super User can help support other users when they need help and have questions and can be your eyes and ears. In some cases, withholding commissions for sales deals not entered in the system should be considered too.
5. Measure usage and survey your users.
   Keep track of the use of your CRM or Salesforce, and not just the users who log in. Track the quality of data input into the system and also your business performance after implementation as well. Utilize a survey from Survey Monkey to ask your user base what they find useful, difficult to manage or features and enhancements that they would like to see.

For more ideas refer to our blog post on increasing user adoption here.

Forcify Consulting can help you with your Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or other CRM implementation including set up, configuration, training, and custom applications. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.

Our consultants have marketing and sales expertise and would be happy to help you develop a strategy best suited to your business. We deploy marketing solutions: Pardot, email marketing platforms (MailChimp, Constant Contact and others) and social media integrated with your CRM and can support your marketing and lead generation campaigns on an ongoing basis.

Forcify Consulting can help you with your Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or other CRM implementation including set up, configuration, training, and custom applications. Contact us for a complimentary review of your needs.