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Best Practices Blog User Adoption

Why you need an elevator pitch for your CRM project

We often will walk into an organization’s large meeting room for a project kick-off meeting to discover that the people in the room fall into two camps. CRM Veterans:  They’ve used a CRM before and it’s been a relatively positive experience. They know that this will (mostly) impact their lives in a (mostly) good way.…

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Administrator Best Practices Blog User Adoption

Six easy ways to optimize Salesforce for your nonprofit

Merriam Webster defines Optimization as an act, process, or methodology of making something as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible. I don’t know of any CRM system that is perfect but we should always strive to make our system as fully functional and effective as possible. Here are six things that you can do…

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Administrator Best Practices Blog User Adoption

Should you disable Quick Create for better Salesforce data integrity?

What is Quick Create?  Quick Create is the “new” button that appears in lookup windows or the Quick Create section in the sidebar on Account, Contact, Opportunity, or Lead tabs in Salesforce.   In the picture below, I was adding XYC Corporation to Dewey Duck’s contact record.  In the Lookup panel, I found that XYC didn’t…

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Administrator Best Practices Blog Misc User Adoption

Why every Salesforce user needs their own license

Nonprofits who use Salesforce benefit from a generous grant: Each 501(c)3 gets 10 free licenses that provide access to features that cost business users thousands of dollars each year. Organizations with more than 10 users get a steep discount — about 75% off the regular price — for additional licenses. But even with that discount,…

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Blog

Implementing performance measurement systems

The following post is an excerpt from David Hunter’s excellent book Working Hard–and Working Well, a “roll–up–your–sleeves” companion to Leap of Reason by Mario Morino. We have consistently found we can build more effective Salesforce systems for organizations that have a clear vision for the outcomes they want to achieve. This excerpt includes important tactics to employ when driving user adoption…

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Administrator Best Practices Blog

It’s Your Data: Have Some Integrity

Our data isn’t very good, people don’t trust it. I’m always cleaning data. When will it end? Why do organizations get to the point where they don’t trust or can’t act on their data?  Often the reason is poor data quality and integrity.   How does that happen?  There are a lot of reasons but the…

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Administrator Best Practices Blog User Adoption

From the trenches: Salesforce user adoption tips and tactics

We are pleased to have Nicholas Merriam share his user adoption tips for a Salesforce implementation he oversaw while at Building Changes in 2011. Now Operations Director for Vittana, Nicholas is using some of these same techniques at his new organization. The Challenge Prior to implementing a centralized database, Building Changes used five databases and…

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Blog

Our Agile Approach: No Surprises

At some point during a project kick-off meeting, I usually explain what we don’t do at Bigger Boat Consulting. I’ll say something to the effect of “We don’t gather a bunch of requirements, scurry away and disappear for three months, and then come back to deliver our database solution to the client with a smile…

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Administrator Blog

What a nonprofit Salesforce administrator needs to know — the basics

Congratulations! You are a new Salesforce Administrator at a nonprofit organization. As the Salesforce administrator, you are responsible for driving user adoption, providing training, and ensuring data integrity. You will also need to be a reliable go-to person for reports and help. This is a critical role in the organization that requires training and organizational…

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Administrator Best Practices Blog Featured

Top questions to ask when choosing a Salesforce app for your nonprofit

Note: A version of this post first appeared as a guest post on the Salesforce.org blog and is also a resource in the Power of Us Hub. You are ready to adopt Salesforce for your organization’s core program management work. The vendor’s demo was impressive and the checklist of features looks good. Now is the time…