Challenge
A leading nonprofit serving higher education needed a strategic assessment of Salesforce to improve customer acquisition, retention, and internal operating efficiency. Specifically, the organization needed to address:
- Uncertainty around the current Salesforce ecosystem implementation and its ability to meet future strategic and tactical needs
- Lack of defined customer journeys and processes that impacted the organization’s ability to grow its customer base and mission impact
- Insufficient integrations between systems that prevent timely, comprehensive flow of data
- Need for marketing automation to improve interactions with prospective and existing customers
- Salesforce configuration and code base where had grown considerably over the years and presented maintainability, extensibility, and scalability challenges
Solution
Conducted a rapid holistic assessment of business processes and technology by:
- Conducting interviews and analysis to understand business and technical aspects of the Salesforce ecosystem
- Establishing a cross-functional team of client constituents to gather, assist with communications, and participate in collaborative workshops
- Documenting the as-is Salesforce ecosystem, including business processes and data flows, to define the complexity of interactions from people, processes, and tools on the customer journeys
- Defining a comprehensive future state Salesforce ecosystem that addresses key challenges in marketing, customer acquisition, customer servicing, and business operations
Outcome
Delivered a prioritized three-year roadmap of process, system, and organizational changes within the Salesforce ecosystem that:
- Identified opportunities to better leverage Salesforce capabilities to reduce cost, increase maintainability and maximize the return on investment in Salesforce
- Constructed customer journeys and identified where and how required data should be collected at key touchpoints to improve customer acquisition and retention
- Defined a marketing automation solution for improved communication and segmentation of customers to drive increased revenue
- Provided reference documentation depicting workflows across the organization to give the client a better understanding of interactions, communications, data, and tools available within the Salesforce ecosystem
Published February 21, 2020