Time to get your hands dirty!

Have you been checking this site daily and wondering where I’ve been? Were you concerned? Frustrated? Or even sad? Hmmm… wouldn’t have known it – you didn’t even email me to make sure I was okay. But alas, I am back and ready to help you learn Salesforce.com so that you can become prepared to pass your certification exams!

I have started something new in my office – an Implementation Boot Camp. It’s an opportunity to learn more about Salesforce and to be creative and have some fun. I split my trainees into two groups and they each are defining a company to implement Salesforce for. I am going to do the same here and would encourage you to do the same.

What do you need to do first? Sign up for a free developer org from Salesforce.com. To do that, go here: http://developer.force.com/

Next, come up with your company name. I am going to use Strive Training.

And here is the fun part… you need to define your business requirements. Here’s what I have and know about the org  I am going to set up for this exercise. Use these same questions to define your company before you play around!

Below is a short list of high level questions you should have the answers to before beginning any implementation:

Users

Who should have access? Sales and Marketing

Will our hierarchy in Salesforce.com reflect our organizational hierarchy? Yes

What should each user have access to? Sales should be able to see any account but only edit the accounts they own. Marketing should have the ability to see and edit all accounts.

Should the application display different data for different users? No

Accounts

What is our company definition of an account? A customer that has booked or is booking a speaking engagement

Who will own each account? A Sales Representative

What will the sharing rules be? A Sales Rep can share an account and those users above the Reps in the hierarchy should be able to see and edit the accounts

What accounts will we load into the system? 10 Active Customers and 20 Active Leads

Who can create accounts? Any Sales Rep

What fields are required and when? Account name, address, phone number, contact name, and email

What custom fields do we need? Typical Event Speaking Budget

Contacts

Who will own each contact? The Account Owner

What will the sharing rules be? Same as Account

How will we record activities with contacts? Tasks and Events

What custom fields do we need? None

Opportunities

What is our sales process? Networking and Prospecting (Lead) -> Qualification (Account) -> Proposal -> Booking -> Event Completed -> Schedule follow up for next year’s event

How many sales processes do we have? 1

Should we associate products with opportunities? Yes

What fields are required and when?

How do we track competitive information? When an opportunity is Closed-Lost the winning company should be recorded

What custom fields do we need? # of attendees, Handouts Required?, Charge Expenses (Y/N)

Products & Price Books

How many price books should we have? 2 (Standard and Specials)

Should our products in Salesforce.com be integrated with our finance system? No

Should we use list price? Yes

How do we handle discounting? Specials price book

What custom fields do we need? Can we add attachments as a related list?

Reporting

What reports do we need? Events, Opportunities, Inactive Accounts, Leads

Who needs access to the reports? Everyone

How will we distribute reports throughout the organization? Scheduled / Emailed reports and Dashboards

Of course, this is just a small, sample list of questions.  There are hundreds of additional questions related to forecasting, campaigns, customer support, document management, lead management, and analytics. And because this is a mock company and pretend implementation we can’t really do interviews with our Executive Sponsor, Stakeholders, or Users. Ideally, though, you would want to have your implementation deliverables include the following documents:

Vision & Scope Document

• Vision / Goals
• Business Needs
• Scope of Implementation
• Success Measures

Requirements Document

• Business Requirements
• Technical Specifications
• Application Settings
• Customizations Needed:  e.g. Data migration controls to improve data quality (reduction of outdated and duplicated data, etc.) and Transfer of legacy data
• Reports Needed
• 3rd Party Applications / Integration Needed
• Custom Software Development (if necessary)
• Training
• Support

Now it is time to start your implementation. Begin with setting up the security, roles, and profiles. Then meet me back here to see what to do next.