Satisfy Your Business Needs With Managed Services

In the 1965 classic Rolling Stones song, although he tries and tries, Mick Jagger can’t get no satisfaction. Everybody knows what it is like to have an unfulfilled desire, to be unable to get satisfaction. Perhaps the relatability of the sentiment is why the song has endured for nearly 60 years. It speaks to a basic human frustration. But when a path to getting what you want is clear, there is no need to endure frustration.

There are times when going unfulfilled is no big deal: you missed the big goal at the game because you were in the bathroom, your favorite ice cream parlor is out of mint chocolate chip. No big deal. That is life. But other times, it can make a world of difference. Managing your Salesforce is one of these situations. Your company has unique needs, both for Salesforce rollout and upkeep, and you need to make sure the relationship with the team handling such an important aspect of your business is getting the satisfaction you need.

Knowing What You Need

Salesforce has almost staggering capabilities. It has a function for nearly anything your company might require. Sifting through everything alone can be grueling. An experienced partner can help you understand what sort of things are necessary for you to go live. Those features will determine the scope of your need, which breaks down into two categories: implementation and managed services.

The best way to think about implementation is to think of it as the essentials. These core elements are the scaffolding of your Salesforce. They hold everything up. From the outset, your partner should do deep discovery to tease out precisely what your business needs are, which in turn will determine what is a must-have before going live.

The way Salesforce is structured, your company pays each month for Salesforce licenses. So, you don’t want to spend an obscene amount of money purchasing through capex. To not waste money, you will want to go live as soon as possible. Your partner’s job is to understand what things are logically and technically necessary for going live and what things are simply nice to have.

Those “nice-to-haves” can come later. Of course it is possible you have things that fall into the “must have” bucket, but aren’t necessary for going live. Both of these fall under the managed-services umbrella. Once Salesforce is live, your company might need ongoing maintenance or to add more features.

The First Model

When opting to have your partner manage services, there are two models that your company can choose between. As already mentioned, getting those specifics that weren’t necessary to go live but are still essential or are simply “nice to have” up-and-running is one model.The other model is a general upkeep.

Once Salesforce is set up, it will require some maintenance. This is called administration. Maybe you need to add a new user, delete a profile or generate a report. Perhaps, now that Salesforce Marketing Cloud is set up, you need your newsletters built out for you.

While these minor tweaks are not fundamental changes to Salesforce, they can eat up a lot of time. Maybe nobody in your company has the expertise — or, more likely the bandwidth — to deal with them, so you contract with your partner to do the upkeep since they already know the ins and outs of your business.

The Second Model

Then you have the other end of the spectrum. This aspect of managing services sets up all those bells and whistles that give your business those little additions that distinguish it. We call these additions enhancements. Sometimes these enhancements come down the road, when something fundamental about your business has changed. Maybe how you provide customer service is different since your company’s launch. Now, you need to make adjustments.

Think about it like a physical business. If you were starting a brick-and-mortar business, you need lights, plumbing and heat before you can open. However, now that sales have increased a bit, you want your storefront to have a large neon sign advertising your wares. This would be analogous to enhancement, while, if you needed someone to mow your lawn, that would be administration.

The Right Sized Team for the Job

Having the right sized team is key when determining how best to manage services. Enhancements have more moving parts, likely requiring a business analyst, architect and developer. The idea is that these experts will take a look at the backlog of things you want tackled over the next couple weeks.They will work with you to determine how to best go about achieving the result you want on the schedule you want.

Administration is more straightforward since it just requires the partner to be apprised of what maintenance needs tending. These two options are not mutually exclusive, either. It is possible your business needs both administration and enhancement, either concurrently or subsequently. Whatever the case, your partner will constantly be right-sizing the team to ensure you are always getting what you need.

Don’t try and try. Get managed services. Get satisfaction.