The session shall involve the analyzing of the systems that can get embedded within the Sales Force Automation system. The session shall research on the software applications that support the sales force operation. The iteration shall analyze the main interface applied in developing the user interfaces that promote customer relations. The rationale behind this point is the fact that the information platforms that are present at Salesforce should make it possible for them to be applied in the customer relationship marketing as well as management. These attributes will aid in automating most of the sales as well as the sales force management functions. On most occasions they are used in combination with a marketing information system whereby they are referred to as the customer relationship management systems.

Planning

In engaging the plan for the assessment of the analysis of the Salesforce automation system, the overall objective was in ensuring that I can define the organization’s integration of Salesforce among the different departments. In this case, the guiding principles will the assertion that the failure to adopt and consequently integrate the system properly in all the departments will result in the growth of the communication challenges. The most probable impact of these communication challenges is the fact that the different department will be contacting the same client over the same issue thus irritating the clients, an attribute that could make them abandon a business. It is thus imperative that during my planning I ensure that the mitigation of the risks ranks high through ensuring that the Salesforce system has been fully integrated into all the departments in the organization to ensure that there is utmost effectiveness in the management of the customer issues and sales management (Bhatnagar, 2011).

The rationales behind the assessment of the systems will encompass ensuring that there is a huge boost in the sales productivity in the organization via promoting collaboration as well as team selling to ensure that the sales cycle has been streamlined. Promoting the ability to gain real-time visibility of the organization’s performance is going to generate visibility into the pipeline and additionally offer forecasts that make the sales more predictable. Improving customer relationships as the additional objective will offer the organization a true 360-degree assessment of the customer encompassing the sales, support cases along with the diverse financial transactions. Furthermore, enhancing the effectiveness of the management of the accounts as it generates a holistic assessment of all the accounts along with their contacts and the related activities in a single assessment.

The interactions with the SFA developers and consultants at the organization appraised me on the fact that they use the platform for numerous uses. The core objectives of adopting the SFA platform is to assist in automating most of their business tasks as sales processing, inventory control as well as the tracking of the customer interactions. They additionally adopt the platform to assist in offering a forecast of their sales along with the performance. Joseph told me that the development of a customized version of the SFA platform for the organization to meet their specific needs as well as those from the growing number of sales automation software products was the ultimate goal.

Observations

According to my observations, Salesforce is a term that encompasses a broad collection of business solutions that impact the development of customer enhanced solutions for business. It was clear that the Salesforce platform offers collations of automated customer management applications that promote the ability of business to realize their objectives on matters to do with the development of customer solutions and effective management of business processes and functions. Through the diverse consultation and interactions I had with the saleforce developers and integration experts in the organization; it was evident that the Salesforce platform offers the developers with some unique capabilities that facilitate their development of customer care management solutions.

Reflection

The implementation of this analysis and the consequent interactions with the developers presented a unique means of comprehending the Salesforce adoption processes and procedures. It additionally provided a unique view regarding assessing the Salesforce application needs that are necessary for an organization to assist enhancing their service delivery and consequently meeting their client needs. The overall issue is the fact that going to the field and requests for advice from the professionals is the best strategy that made it possible to gains the much I was able to obtain about the development of the Salesforce system to meet an organizational needs. The issues that are evident in this iteration specifically meet the exact issues and targets I had set about the development of the Salesforce platform (Nielsen, 2008). In this case, the general assessment of my study offers a direct implication that supports the fact that my study of the Salesforce solutions that a business needs was a success.

I also realized that the engagement of the top management echelon was instrumental in promoting the success of any interactions and system integrations in an organization. In this case, it was evident that the support that the management offered to the system developers is accredited to a huge extent, to the success of the team as the project enjoyed a buy-in from all the employees’ levels, the main reason it was a success (Nielsen, 2008).

Although most of the issues relating to the development of the organizational needs was a success in this iteration, there were minor issues that complicated my comprehension of the needs. The one thing is that I was afraid to ask for clarification relation to the diverse technical terms that were employed by the salesforce developers, an attribute that inhibited the speed at which I could understand the diverse issues of assessing the organization needs that will be meet with the integration of the salesforce platform.

Iteration 3: Embedding and Integration Process

The iteration shall concentrate on researching the technologies applied in improving the sales force. The research shall focus on the development of the appropriate database repository centers that promote sales force effectiveness. The session shall take into consideration the embedding of the technologies that support the sales force. The session shall consider the embedding of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The session shall also integrate the sales force with the Decision Support Systems and the Business Intelligent (BI) support systems.

Planning

The reality that I have been able to triumphantly address the main issues that revolve around the Salesforce makes it imperative that I undertake aggressive research to the assessment of the technologies that are going to improve the Salesforce. The consultations that took place in the previous iteration have played a huge factor in ensuring that I am well prepared to advance to the embedding and integration process. The advancement of the salesforce effectiveness in an organization is going to be the overall theme that guides this iteration in that the effectiveness of the Salesforce is imperative in business to enhance their success. I will take an advanced assessment of the technologies that can be integrated into the organization’s Salesforce platform in an effort to putting in place the technologies that will offer support to the salesforce platform and consequently promote the success of the organization mainly in the area of increasing their sales through effective customer engagement.

The main strategy that I will be employed in this case is making a follow up on the current Salesforce supporting software that the organization has in place. Additionally, through the help I get from the IT department officials, I will be able to assess the current shortcomings of the systems and consequently deliberate on the supporting systems that apply to the current status in the organization. The IT department and the Salesforce integration specialists will be of huge help in this endeavor. It is additionally my belief that I will have to undertake huge amounts of research on the various technology alternatives that support the Salesforce platform and thus making it additionally effective. Above all, I am going to implement an assessment of the possibilities of implementing the embedding of the customer relationship management (CRM) in addition to the also integration of the sales force with the Decision and the Business Intelligent (BI) support systems.

I know that these elements that are to be executed in this phase are many and complicated, and thus, it is going to demand a lot of dedication and concentration to manage to grasp these attributes of the iteration. It is additionally clear to me that the Salesforce integration team in the organization is well experienced and that if I follow their lead, I am going to gain a lot of experience from this iteration that will go a long way in ensuring that I am effective Salesforce specialist. My objective as I go into this phase is to ensure that I gain as much as possible from these specialists to an extent that I am going to be able to implement the integration and embedding of these support systems on my own.

Action

Once the duration that I was to commence on the participation in the embedding and integration functions, I did not rush into the processes immediately as I knew that I would be at a disadvantage if I went in without the basic of this iteration. I thus ensured that I implemented loads of research on the internet as well as in the library to ensure that I had as much material relating to this iteration as possible. I additionally went for guidance from the professors in our department who offered exceptional advice about the embedding and integration of software that was going to enhance the effectiveness of Salesforce.

From the research and consultations that I conducted, it was apparent that CRM is the main component that encompasses the salesforces platform regarding the service delivery. The additional categories that encompass the platform include the service cloud, the sales cloud, data cloud, marketing cloud, analytics cloud, community cloud, the app could work as well as IoT that has more than 100, 000 customers. It was also clear that the saleforce platform acts as the primary enterprise that offers companies with an interface for the task and case management as well as a system that automatically escalates and well as routes the important events.

The technologies that I found to be used to promote the Salesforce platform include the Apex, which is a proprietary programming language offered by force.com platform to the developers who are similar to Java. Apex is a strongly typed as well as objects oriented programming language that follows a dot-notation along with curly brackets syntax. The utilization of apex is in executing programmed functions in most processes on the Salesforce platform to include custom links and buttons, updates, event handlers on record creation.

I observed that there were constant arguments between the IT and Salesforce integration personnel with the factions complaining that the other party was not doing all that are necessary to enhance the adoption of the platform. It was also common that these two groups would blame one another for the failure to meet the deadlines saying that they were misled or were given wrong information. The argument would still get to the deliberations on what the best software or platform is about the adoptions by the organizations. In all these arguments, the heads of these two factions stepped in and resolved the argument, until the next one arose.

Reflection

The fact that I ensured that I set goals during the embedding and the interaction process was instrumental to my successful participation in thus integration. The fact that the goals and objectives were in a handbook and that they were timelines on them ensured that I maintained my focus throughout the iteration irrespective of the numerous challenges that arose. The additional thorough research I conducted was instrumental in ensuring that I had a grasp of almost all the issues that were related to the embodiment and the integration of the Salesforce platform. The research foundation that I had offered the basis that I used in observing the action of the team as well as asking for clarification and guidance on the issues that I found complicated and hard to comprehend.

The additional participation of the diverse training and appraisal sessions that the integration team was taking part in had a huge impact on the promotion of my technical knowledge of the salesforce adoption systems and software.

The fact that I will gain the certificate that acknowledges my contribution during the embodiment and integration of the Salesforce platform in the organization offers a huge strength to my credentials as a Salesforce developer that promote the likelihood of getting a job. One of the detrimental attributes I noted is the fact that the constant conflicts that the teams engaged in had a negative impact on the attainment of the set goals as well as on the team spirit. Some members of these teams felt that these conflicts had an adverse toll on their psychological wellbeing, attributes that affected their productivity negatively. It was additionally evident that even though teamwork is a good attribute in an organization when it is a requirement in the entire operations end up complicating the making of decisions and the consequent meeting the set targets due to the conflicts between the members.

I believe that the iteration was a success and that in future it will be vital if the organization puts in place training for the junior employees that specifically sets the targets that these training should attain about the integration of Salesforce.

Planning

In this iteration, my focus is going to the assessment and implementation of the Salesforce automated system in the organizations. The main attributes that govern this installation are in the assessment of the needs of integration that the diverse departments within the organization consider the installation of the system to encompass. The main point, in this case, will be in the implementation of a feasibility study relating to the ease and need of use of the system by both the departments and the clients who will be relying on the system for most of the interactions with the organization. The foundation of implementing this platform is in the assessment of how the installation of the sales force automation software is going to save the organization money, valuable time as well as the automation of the sales process. It is additionally going to encompass an assessment of the sales automation software which is made of the Salesforce, the base as well as the Oracle CRM on demand and how the integration of these components s going to nurture, convert leads and consequently develops stronger and long-lasting relationships with the clients

Action

In this phase, the entire business managers can forward with the requirements that they would like the new system to meet. The issues demand by these managers were on the issues of customer relationship management, sales and inventory management as well as the automation of business operations as tracking of orders. Once these requirements were addressed, the Salesforce integration team in consultation with the head of departments developed a tutorial session that would be applied in educating the employees on the use of the platform. In this case, the installation of the Salesforce platform would go hand in hand with the training of the employees. My team was tasked with the development of a tutorial session that these clients would use to learn the basics of the Salesforce platform that the organization was adopting as well as the steps they will apply in maneuvering around the platform to make their transactions.

The installation of the Salesforce automated system took place in phases, with the initial step encompassing the automation of the operations of the sales department.

Reflection

Before I took part in the installation of the Salesforce automated systems, I had always imagined that it was an easy process whereby one just inserted the program they wanted and installed immediately. It, however, became clear that there are numerous issues that take place in the successful integration of the Salesforce automation system in an organization. It is the iteration that I came to know more about the installation of the Salesforce automated systems that I had known in the theoretical as well as the initial iterations. The Salesforce installation team was very instrumental in my successful completion of this iteration as they ensured that they explained all the steps they took as well as they took these steps. It was thus very effective regarding understanding the diverse attributes relating to the integration of the Salesforce platform. Additionally, the team carried out constant to all the members of the team on any issues that led to challenges in the execution an attribute that further ensured that we all understood the installation issues that could inhibit the successful implementation.

References

Bhatnagar, N. (2011). Effective Communication and Soft Skills. Pearson Education India

Drexl, A., & Haase, K. (1999). Fast Approximation Methods for Sales Force Deployment. Management Science, 45, 10, 1307-1323.

Erffmeyer, R. C., & Johnson, D. A. (2001). An Exploratory Study of Sales Force Automation Practices Expectations and Realities. Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 21, 167-176.

Girolami, M. (2015). Got Salesforce?. CRM Magazine, 19(8), WP14.

Hedges, N. (2015). Drive High-Velocity Selling Through Salesforce. CRM Magazine, 19(8), WP12-WP13.

Holloway, B. B., Deitz, G. D., & Hansen, J. D. (2013). The Benefits of Sales Force Automation (SFA): An Empirical Examination of SFA Usage on Relationship Quality and Performance. Journal of Relationship Marketing, 12, 4, 223-242.

Jones, E., Sundaram, S., & Chin, W. (January 01, 2002). Factors Leading to Sales Force Automation Use: A Longitudinal Analysis. Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 22, 145-156.