A start of something new

I've been thinking about creating a blog for several months now. I've been paper journaling for decades, but haven't done an electronic blog before. I don't plan to stop my paper journals, but only add the electronic blog for thoughts I want to share with the world specifically around technology. I have a LOT of Salesforce learning that I have done these past few years that I would like to share in a more public format than in OneNote. 

I started seriously learning about Salesforce in the fall of 2019. I came across Salesforce in past employers that have wanted to switch out of Personify360, but none ever did while I was employed for them. I knew of Salesforce in passing, but didn't really dig into learning functionality until 2019. During my time at those associations, I had seen numerous demos of Salesforce specifically with Nimble & Fonteva product lines. All great products that would have fit their business requirements if only the association(s) had the budget & desire to make a change.

Technology change is challenging especially for a non-profit association. Most likely the association is well entrenched into business processes & systems they have used for decades. Tenured staff have been doing these processes for years. They do not want to change nor understand how a new technology could better help them do their jobs. For any CRM change, it is important to have buy-in from all stakeholders regardless of organizational hierarchy level. It is vital to have an executive level buy-in, but also from the staff planning to use the system. Communicate early & often. Work with the business users on their processes. Symphasize with them & show them how it can be better in the new system. Get users excited about the change. Find a pain point with the old system to have better in the new system. Have a lot of end user training and when you think training is done have more training post go live. Education is important for a successful system adoption.

No CRM is perfect, but if your current CRM has been around decades & isn't keeping up with technology advancements, it is past time to consider something else versus waiting until the software becomes obsolete. In future posts, I will dig deeper into these topics until then... 

Welcome to my blog!