Digital business transformation has long been an imperative for organizations everywhere. Turbocharging your operations with an overhauled “engine” powered by new technology has helped countless businesses to get the edge they need. But today, faced with an economic downturn, many are scaling back their tech budgets and staff — and transformation is deprioritized due to budgetary concerns.
In this article, I’ll propose that Salesforce digital transformation in a recession is actually much more vital and urgent than it is during less-difficult times — and explain exactly why that is, and how it can best be done for all kinds of organizations — from enterprises to nonprofits and small businesses.
Businesses are, understandably, scaling back many of their investments right now — including technology spending. But while making necessary cutbacks, it’s important not to be set back at a time when competition is arguably fiercest.
Think about the factors that affect your success and competitiveness. Whether the economy is booming or slumping, the quality and speed of the service you provide to customers and partners will always matter — in fact, more so now. These factors, as well as the productivity and satisfaction of employees, depend on whether your internal business processes are smooth and effective or clunky and poor. If your processes are lacking right now, the consequences can be a lot more severe than they may be in a more forgiving economic climate — and, more than anything else, your technology defines the fitness of your processes.
Digital transformation with Salesforce® technology — and a capable Salesforce implementation partner — has a unique capacity to help organizations stay ahead of the rest. You can achieve the positive changes you need in a cost-effective way that makes the best use of your budget and maximizes return on investment (ROI). It’s the best route to get your business processes in the right shape to give you the best chance of success.
A partner that offers expert Salesforce consulting services has the potential to play a huge part in your transformation. Their consultants will analyze your business processes, identifying areas where your processes are failing or could be improved, as well as how to fix or enhance them. They will be able to see precisely where process automation can be used to streamline and speed up your team’s work, cutting down laborious workloads. They will also discover the perfect opportunities for Salesforce integration to bring your business-critical tools, services and information more tightly together, to form a seamless productivity platform.
VRP recently helped our client Connex Partners in just this kind of way. Thanks to our work, they now have a faster, better sales cycle due to their newly-optimized processes, with four times less syncing of data needed and troublesome duplication of data eliminated. They can now easily track and report on engagement with prospects, allowing new insights that can help them further increase their effectiveness, sales and revenue.
We also helped Ukrainian Red Cross Society, another client, to transform their processes to be more effective — at an extremely challenging and demanding time for them. From the start of the crisis, they were receiving vastly more donations than previously, and VRP Consulting’s team quickly integrated a new payment solution to handle it. We also implemented Salesforce Marketing Cloud and configured new fundraising and engagement campaigns to help them provide richer donor experiences.
Many organizations may think they’re priced out of digital business transformation. Some nonprofits and small or growing businesses, such as startups, often find themselves dealing with challenging budgets at the best of times, and may be especially discouraged during an economic downturn. But there’s good news: Salesforce is a very affordable and cost-effective platform, and VRP Consulting has a dedicated QuickStart practice offering Salesforce Quickstart packages designed with exactly these organizations in mind. It’s a short-term, fixed-price engagement that uses our templated method to bring you the benefits in as little as four weeks.
Our client BVT Sweden took advantage of a Sales Cloud QuickStart from VRP. They were growing quickly and needed to transform the way they worked to be more efficient and effective. We moved BVT away from spreadsheets and onto a powerful Salesforce solution, simplified the opportunity conversion process and gave them the foundation they needed for success. We also built this engineering company a tool for site visit tracking, planning and note-taking, to help optimize their field operations. Their new solution has a 100% adoption rate, proving to be popular, useful and delivering high ROI.
One nonprofit organization that benefited from a QuickStart implementation was Hope for the Future. This UK-based climate charity works to help communities, groups and individuals to communicate the urgency of climate change with local politicians. Their existing systems had a significant administrative overhead and they couldn’t easily gain insights into the effectiveness of their fundraising and lobbying activities. VRP performed a Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud QuickStart that got them up and running, configuring key features for fundraising, grant administration and program management. Our experts streamlined lobbying, providing them with a tailored process to track, manage and analyze it. We also integrated key data from the UK government, so that this powerful, unified platform would provide even deeper insights, usefulness and value.
If you want to optimize your own operations, and give your team enhanced, technology-powered processes that help them really shine — even during an economic downturn — we can help.
VRP Consulting is an award-winning, global Salesforce Partner — recipient of the 2022 and 2020 Salesforce Partner Innovation Award. We empower organizations of all sizes and industries to be the best they can be, whether it’s enabling transformation for enterprises through our Salesforce consulting or for nonprofits and small businesses via a QuickStart implementation . With the scale and capabilities of a global system integrator (GSI) but providing the flexibility and individual attention of a boutique partner, we know we can help you achieve the kind of successes our other clients have.
We want to help get your business processes ready for anything, so you can be confident they’ll take you into the future performing and delivering everything they need to. Crucially, we’re dedicated to doing this in a way that delivers the most value and is right for your budget. Contact us and we’ll find the right route for you.
Coen Backer
Head of Regional Delivery, VRP Consulting
Coen Backer is Head of Regional Delivery at VRP Consulting and is based at our Krakow office. He is an experienced Consultant, Project Manager, and Team Leader with a strong focus on customer experience and satisfaction.
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