It is important to be able to adapt and move with the times. It’s a fundamental part of life and there’s no difference here in the business world. With the rapid advancements in technology that we’ve seen in the 21st century, it has become apparent that a slow up-take of new ideas and resources is a sure way to failure.

You might have heard of or realised that from October 2019, Salesforce will automatically turn on Lightning Experience for all Orgs one group at a time. But don’t worry, you can stick with the Salesforce Classic version if you’re happy with that. However, that will mean that you will be missing out on new features for faster business growth and more productivity, so it’s best to just bite the bullet and switch over sooner rather than later.

Still not convinced? We’ve compiled a list of the top 5 features with the latest Lightning features that you’ll be glad we told you.

1. Insert Quick Text into Your Emails

We’re starting the list off with a small feature that has a big impact. The use of predefined text on standard and custom objects has been made even faster now with the addition of a new button in the email action toolbar. With this, users can insert pre-made messages with just one click, this new addition makes the feature more user-friendly and accessible without having to remember keyboard shortcuts.

2. Cut Search Times with Recommended Result

Searching a huge database for just one record can be a massive pain, especially if the search engine isn’t intuitive. This is no longer an issue with the Salesforce Lightning version as it’s now quicker to get to the record you’re looking for.

With Recommended Result, the system will bring up a preview when you search for a record so that you know instantly whether it’s the one you want. Not only is it easy to view but you can also perform any action on it that you’d usually do in the record page, so you can get everything you want to do done without having to leave the page.

3. Share Your List View

Do you often find yourself collaborating with others on Salesforce? It’s become even easier to do so with the share list view ability. You can now share a list with your chosen filters on it to your team members so you can all see the same view instantly. This can save a lot of time when working together as the exact same list can be seen across multiple screens simultaneously.

 4. Add Tabs and Accordion for Sections on Your Home Page

Having clutter on your homepage is never beneficial to anyone. Not being able to find what you want quickly will only add disruption and slow down your workflow. That’s why our fourth tip highlights the tabs and accordion components that you can add to your homepage as it’ll help keep things tidy until you need them. With this feature, you can create, update and delete tabs as you please. Or you could use the accordion component to organise data into collapsible sections.

5. Improved Einstein Predictions

We’ve saved the best one for last. Einstein has proven to be a very useful tool for many Salesforce users, and now the forecasting system has only got better. The AI program now uses your customer opportunity fields to give you more accurate forecast predictions. It does this by only using the fields you ask it use, this will narrow down and improve the accuracy of the prediction as there are fewer influences to disrupt the calculation. This results in better forecasts and ultimately better business decisions.

Looking for expert help?

The Lightning update has so many more exciting and useful features than what’s just in this list. Are you interested in seeing how Salesforce Lightning could improve your business? At Zon Projects, we’re Salesforce specialists we’d be happy to answer any Salesforce related questions – Get in touch with us today!

Now more than ever people, companies and governments are creating huge amounts of data every day. This rapid expansion of data collection and usage has resulted in more companies investing more time and research in learning how to keep it safe. 

Data breaches have now become a re-occurring theme in the news as major companies such as Yahoo and eBay have shown us what the consequences could be when you haven’t got your system configured correctly.

In order to combat this, companies invest in what is known as DevSecOps. This is the intersection between DevOps and Security where security protocols are developed and fed into the design process of the system.

What does this have to do with Salesforce?

In the Salesforce space, security is managed through profile setting, access permissions and sharing rules. The security procedures don’t stop there, systems are also at risk of overwrites and deletion, as a result, measures are put in place to prevent this from happening.

One of the most essential security procedures is to establish a Sing Source of Truth. By utilising a control system like Git, you can isolate any changes that are made to the program, which reduces any chance of mistakenly overwriting the current version. The benefit of this is that Admins and Developers can work the same code to make true changes based on the same source. 

This leads onto the next step – creating an audit trail. Once a change has been made it’s important to make a log of it so see who made the change and whether it was the right one to make. By using a Git Repo as the Single Source of Truth you’re able to capture all of the changes to your settings and code so you can keep track of the system changes as they happen.

Quality control is also important. Just imagine investing loads of time and money into a system just for it to be destroyed as soon as you add an extra feature? This is where tools such as Selenium, Prover and Fusion can help with verifying that features work as expected. The benefits of Quality Gates go beyond just this, they can also be used to align multiple developer’s coding styles into a universal method. Tools such as Static Code Analysis can, therefore, be used to minimise coding variation and highlight bad developer practices. 

To ensure that your system is secure, it’s important you take proactive measures by creating backups of your data and profile configurations – it might just save you a lot of time and money in the future. There are two types of data that you should be backing up. Firstly, your Metadata should be regularly backed up using Git as a Single Source of Truth. By marrying the changes to the User Stories, it will provide the stored data you need for a Rollback and Restore. The other data type refers to the large-scale datasets with huge amounts of data inside them. These are more difficult to do on a regular basis due to its size, but this data is critical to your business and so a tool that allows you to do continuous incremental backups is needed from the beginning.

Securing your system is an ongoing battle. It may never be 100% perfect, but that’s okay because this is a learning process that takes place over the long term. But what’s important is that you get started sooner rather than later, as the more data you gather whilst remaining unprotected the worse the impact will be if it does go wrong.

Looking for expert help?

If you need assistance on configuring your Salesforce system or have any questions relating to Salesforce – make sure to get in touch today! At Zon Projects, we’re your friendly Salesforce specialists and we’d love to help.

There are two types of salespeople – successful ones and unsuccessful ones. What usually determines which category you fall into depends on how well you use the resources available to you, i.e. – The company’s CRM – Salesforce Lightning. 

This is echoed by a Harvard Business Review study conducted by Steve Martin, as he found that 52% of salespeople that surpass their quota are users that make the most of their company’s CRM. When you combine that with the fact that only 31% of underperforming salespeople take advantage of the CRM, it’s clear what the solution is – Learn to master the CRM.

The real question is – How do you get users to easily adopt Salesforce Lightning?

We’ll answer that below.

The very first step is to get the users involved. From the beginning, they need to be included as they’re the ones that are going to make this transition with you. While it might seem a bit impractical to get every single member of each team present for each meeting, so it’s a more sensible idea to get one stakeholder from each group to represent their viewpoints and pass on information down the grapevine. 

The benefit of doing this means that you can receive and implement feedback along the design process so that you’re not missing out any critical components needed for the teams to operate. When selecting these stakeholders, it’s a good idea to identify your super users, these are people that are willing and capable to train other members on the system. These individuals can, therefore, help with both the design stage and the post-launch phase as they become the go-to person for the inevitable questions that are will to occur.  

It’s important to know that you can’t decide how your users will react to the system changes. However, through the provision of in-depth training and effective resources, you can guide their attitude towards the changes into a more positive stance.

You can ease the adoption process by delivering training in multiple formats ahead of the actual roll-out so that it’s not all just thrown on top of them when it goes live. There are a few practical ways to achieve this such as training videos, 1:1 sessions and post-launch support. 

Looking for expert help?

That’s why a company such as Zon Projects can be majorly beneficial in smoothing the transition process over to the new Lightning system. We can provide friendly tuition to help get your users up to speed in no time if you’re interested in finding out what we can offer – get in touch today!

Make Better Business Decisions

Being a salesperson isn’t easy. From making inquiries to nurturing deals and then closing a sale there’s plenty to do – but what if there was a system that could take out half the guesswork?

Welcome to Einstein, the new generation of AI which integrates directly with your Salesforce data.

The Einstein Prediction builder can anticipate which opportunities are most likely to close and the which products the more likely to be purchased. To determine this, it uses your existing data to provide predictions, insights and the next best steps.

How does it work?

Using a scoring system, Einstein gives you a lead score with a prediction of how likely they are to convert into a sale. The system has many more benefits than simply just predicting sales, for example – it also can provide you with estimates such as an amount that a donor will donate. The benefits of predictions and real-time insights don’t just apply to people closing the deals but also for people working in service, commerce, HR, non-profit.

The Main Features

• Bots – The bots inside the Einstein system can be trained on your Salesforce data, the more they learn, the more they’ll be able to utilise it more effectively. For example, they can automatically resolve routine customer issues or get information together for a qualified agent handoff.
• DIY System – Not all companies have coders around to implement new software, but that isn’t an issue with Einstein as the program includes guided screens to help you build the predictions you want it to make – no code required.
• Customisable – The program is completely scalable as you can increase the complexity to make more specific predictions about targeted segmented groups, so you can expand its uses as your business grows. 

Einstein Voice

Just had a meeting with a client? In the current day, most of us are extremely busy so it doesn’t leave much time to sign into Salesforce, find the prospect and log notes about them via the conventional methods. That’s where Einstein’s voice comes in as you can use your voice to update the log and even schedule reminders for you to follow up.

Sound interesting?

Sound interesting? Our team are more than willing to help get your business set up on the Einstein Prediction Builder in no time. So, if you’re looking to start making better-informed decisions about your clients, get in touch with Zon Project’s today!

Switching over to a new system can be a daunting task. Especially when you’re feeling settled with your current process and way of doing things. Fortunately, transiting from Salesforce Classic to Lightning isn’t too difficult if you follow a step-by-step guide such as this.

Firstly, why do you need to upgrade to Salesforce Lightning? You don’t have to transition over to the new system but it’s certainly in your best interest to do so as eventually technical support for the classic version will end, and most the new features are now only available in the Lightning version so you’d be selling yourself short.

Step 1 – Outline goals:

Before you begin to move any processes over to the new system, you need to decide why you want/need to transition. All businesses can benefit from the upgrade to the Lightning version of Salesforce but some companies simply don’t need the functionality enough yet to make the shift. The best thing you can do is create a clear list of goals for the Lightning migration and why you need it more than the classic version. Try and align these with your business goals and highlight how specific new features on the lightning version will help you achieve them.

Step 2 – Prepare teams:

Moving over to the Lightning version has the potential to cause disruptions in workflows as internal processes will also be making a shift as well. It’s an old saying that failing to prepare is preparing to fail, so make sure to train all the affected teams to discuss any concerns before moving onto the development stage. You’ll need to remember to include all teams as every function will use Salesforce differently so a new system will impact them in unusual ways.

Step 3 – Create a battle plan:

The next step is to develop a clear guide for the development team to use during the transition period as it will help to avoid disruptions. By prioritising what features you’d like, scheduling time scales and providing resources for developers to be able to collaborate you can keep bumps in the road to a minimum. This is the point where you need to look at the wider picture to visualise how you might integrate Lightning with outside systems and how this will change the workflow of your teams.

Step 4 – Squash the Bugs:

There’s not much worse than completing a project only to find that it breaks down as soon as its operational. To prevent this, you’re best off running a Lightning Readiness check to pick up on any potential or unforeseen bugs and incompatibilities. Once this is finished, you should use a sandbox to isolate and test changes before an official launch. This allows key stakeholders and Super Users to try the functionality and provide feedback so that updates can be made.

Step 5 – Ensure alignment:

Remember those goals you set out in step 1? Now is the time to check with your stakeholders that the system will accomplish them. If not, you need to go back and change a few things to make sure they’re set to be achieved. Once they’re met then it’s time to launch the program. Start with all changes to Power Users only, as doing this means that each user account can test the new functionality individually. This helps to ensure that each feature lines up with what each user group needs. Be sure to implement their feedback at this stage before releasing it to the whole organisation as it prevents the issues impacting on the rest of the business.

Step 6 – Documentation:

Having a fully functional program is important, but it’s not much good if people don’t know how to use it in the right way. That’s why you need to create a detailed document which outlines workflows and processes so that developers can edit the Lightning system as the business adapts in the future. You can then use this document to train the users on the Lightning functionality before going live to the rest of the company.

Step 7 – System Launch:

The final step is where you can take the system live, but this comes once everyone is fully trained on how to fully utilise it. It’s best to keep a few developers close by following the launch to help with any potential issues that inevitably occur, but after a few weeks, it’s time to let the system administrators take over.

Thinking of switching over to Salesforce Lightning?

System migration and integration can be tricky without professional guidance. That’s why many clients find our help extremely useful in these situations. At Zon Projects, we offer long term solutions that require complex process planning and architecture design. Get in touch today!

Now and again you come across technical phrases without having a clue what they mean. Today, we’re going to solve two of them: Lightning Components & Lightning Web Components. Essentially, the latter is a more up to date version of the former, but it’s still important to know what it means for the various users and developers involved – especially if you’re a regular Salesforce user.

Find out more below.

What Is a Lightning Component?

First, let’s get the basics down. The Lightning Component framework is a UI framework for developing single-page applications for mobile and desktop devices. These are mainly used by Salesforce Admins to provide a secure end-to-end experience on the platform for a wide variety of different uses.

Why Do We Need Lightning Components?

The framework allows developers to create responsive applications that can be applied to any part of the Salesforce interface. The aim of this is to improve the user experience for people interacting with the user-interface. These components can also work alongside each other in a collaborative way so users aren’t forced to have separate pages for each application.

Lightning components benefit all parties that use Salesforce. For example, not only can developers easily develop apps using standardised JavaScript but also Admins are able to use the components to do their job more efficiently as the company can design bespoke web pages for themselves on Salesforce.

Time for An Upgrade – Lightning Web Components

Lightning Components are incredibly useful but they’re often seen as difficult to use by those that aren’t used to the complexity of the Salesforce platform. The up to date version, Lightning Web Components is more user-friendly to those haven’t got much experience with the system.

The Lightning Web Components also makes better use of the latest additions in JavaScript. Without diving too deep into technical jargon, the latest applications are more simple and easier to develop for as they can utilise code better without requiring a set framework. This is because they’re in-line with updated web standards and are more future-proofed for the inevitable advances in technology.

Both components can be used together, which indicates that the original Lightning Components still have a massive part in the Salesforce system. You should always invest your time in the more recent Lightning Web Components as it will help to optimise the user’s experience and the website’s speed.
Salesforce is a powerful tool that has the potential to improve the productivity of any business.

Need help with your Salesforce Components?

At Zon Projects, we’re confident that we can get your business up to speed with Salesforce. Whether that includes staff training or simple quick fixes – we’re here to help. Get in contact with us!

Adjusting to a new program can be a difficult task, especially when you’re so used to the previous way of working. This can lead to an uncomfortable transition period as you change your working style to suit the new program.

The switchover from Classic Salesforce to the new Lightning system has been difficult for many people. That’s why we’ve put together a list of 5 top tips to help you get the wheels rolling on your journey to mastering the new program:

1. Set It to Default on Details

Adjusting to a new program can be a difficult task, especially when you’re so used to the previous way of working. This can lead to an uncomfortable transition period as you change your working style to suit the new program.

The switchover from Classic Salesforce to the new Lightning system has been difficult for many people. That’s why we’ve put together a list of 5 top tips to help you get the wheels rolling on your journey to mastering the new program:

2. Prioritise Key Information in The Dashboard

Being able to highlight key information quickly will save tons of time in your workflow as you won’t have to spend ages sifting through heaps of data just to get to the one you want to see. This was the issue with the Classic version as we were only able to see three different columns which made it incredibly difficult to find what data we needed quickly on the dashboard.

This problem has been rectified in the Lightning version as you can now choose to use the 12-column version of the Lightning Dashboard. This gives you more room to move items around and organise the dashboard in a more user-friendly way.

3. Make Your Frequently Used Functions Easily Accessible

There’s a reason why every internet browser and social media platform has some form of Utility Bar on it. This is because it allows for easy access to functions that you’d commonly use daily.

Salesforce Lightning is no different. They have a Utility Bar that runs along the bottom of any Lightning page and follows you as you go. You should take advantage of this by customising it to your preferences and add the functions you’d frequently use. Something as simple as an important pipeline chart can help you to keep an eye on the most important figures. You can also use Process Builders, Dashboards, CTI Smartphone, Visualforce Pages and more.

4. See More of Your Opportunities – The Kanban View

An up to date pipeline is essential to the success of a business’s sales. An outdated one would increase the possibility for mistakes to be made during the selling process as the salesperson wouldn’t have all recent information on the prospect. Therefore, Close Date, Amount and Opportunity Stage needs to be easy to view and fresh.

That’s where the Kanban View comes in as the solution. This makes it easier for salespeople to drag and drop Opportunities between Stages meaning that they’re more likely to keep the pipelines up to date as it requires less admin work. This view has many benefits, for example, it allows for an overview of all the clients along with warning flags to highlight prospects that have no open Opportunities so salespeople know where action needs to be taken.

5. Decide Where to Put Your Notes

Keeping notes for calls, meeting and information about opportunities is essential for any business that wants to keep up to date with the progress of their sales. Therefore, they need to be easy to find for future reference.

However, there are 3 different options for where to put them in Lightning.

1. Create an activity – If you like automation you’ll prefer this option. The Log a Call button automatically sets the task to complete – so you don’t have to worry about closing it off afterwards.

2. Create a chatter post: If you often find yourself needing to share the information with another person – this is the option for you. This allows you to easily pass information to another salesperson about the opportunity without having to send it to them afterwards.

3. Create a note: Just like the notes page on your smartphone, you can create an on-going notes list which is attached to the Opportunity. The benefit is that is all the notes are collated into one place, however, salespeople often don’t check the sales notes as its frequently forgotten about.

Therefore, your decision for this depends on the working style of your sales team and which method they’d be able to stick with consistently over the long term.

Are you having difficulties adjusting to the new Salesforce Lightning system?

We’re happy to help answer any of your questions related to Salesforce – get in touch today!

Automation – We all love it when things are done for us.

Whether it’s a simple auto-save on a computer file or an auto-pilot system on a plane, it’s a great addition to our daily workflow. Some of the best aspects of life are automated, and that doesn’t stop with marketing.

Marketing can be quite a time intensive process as it requires a lot of data to be painstakingly gathered to be used for analytical purposes. However, there is a solution: Automated Marketing. 

Using automated features can save you a lot of time and so we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 marketing automated features that you can start using today!

1. Tracking Visitors

Being able to know who, when and why people are visiting your site is incredibly valuable. With this information, you can follow their journey through your site to see how long they’re spending on each page, the sort of content they’re engaging with and the type of consumer they are.

Demographic information such as age, gender and location can help you to form a customer profile for who you want to be targeting. You can also tie this alongside behavioural information such as their preferences and the way they interact with content to give you a clear all-round view of who of your consumers really are. This way you can target them more effectively.

2. Data in Real-time

With most offline marketing channels, there is a time lag between the viewer seeing the advert and then the person making the decision to purchase the good/service. Trying to track this data manually is extremely time-consuming, and incredibly boring.

That’s why the use of up to date sales information can smooth this whole process over, as you’re able to quickly access heaps of data that has accumulated by itself over time. The benefit of this is that it takes out the guesswork for the sales team, as they have access to an updated log of information it means that they can get up to speed with relevant information before contacting the prospect.

3. Nurturing Leads

Following on from the previous point, the sales team have access to a real-time log which prevents them from wasting too much time on consumers that aren’t in the “ready-to-buy” phase. No-one just makes a sale, usually, it’s the result of taking the consumer on a long journey down the sales road, and some customers take more time to get to that stage than others.

This is where automated marketing comes in, as it can be used to either slowly feed content into their news feed or establish 1:1 connections over time through private messaging. This feature also frees up valuable time so you can focus more time on securing the more lucrative deals.

4. Dynamic Ads

Have you ever seen an advert on social media for a nearby restaurant? Or an ad for a top you were just looking at on a different website? That’s a dynamic ad, and it’s all pushed to you automatically based on your location and profile etc.

In today’s online world, consumers expect a personalised digital experience. By tailoring the adverts to appeal to your consumers you can increase the chance that they’d click-through as its more enticing to them than a generic advert.

5. Email Marketing

Many of us have heard about the time-saving benefits of easily sending out a single email to thousands of people with one click. That’s impressive, but the positives go beyond just sending out emails.

With automated marketing, you can gather useful information from performing many different tasks such as A/B test your email content to see engagement rates, preview emails across platforms and devices for maximum effectiveness and get access to advanced email reporting. Marketing is all about segmentation and with automated email marketing you can reach out to groups of people based on their job titles, product preferences and location etc. So, you can tailor your sent emails to suit the audience you’re trying to target.

Are you interested in integrating automated marketing into your business? If so, you’d need a solid yet functional program such as Salesforce. Contact us today to see how we can help your business!

Salesforce introduced Lightning couple of years ago and have been steadily making improvements with each release.

Around Summer 2019 Salesforce started to send out messages to clients about pro-actively migration existing Orgs over to the new Lightning interface.

During the last few years we have helped several UK companies migrate from Salesforce Classic to Lightning both for Professional and Enterprise editions. Although we don’t expect Salesforce to remove Classic for some time yet, they do have a vested interest in getting all their customers over to the new Interface. To that end, all new developments are only on the new Lightning platform and when logged in to Salesforce, you will be experiencing pop-up screens with various messages about new Lightning features.

Before you contemplate a Salesforce Classic to Lightning migration, you can run some tests using the tools that Salesforce provides you. This is called a Lightning Readiness Test. Once started, the tool will go and check any customisations in your Org and will also look for items that may be challenging to migrate. It will then send you a report of the highlighted areas. The report is useful, though can raise as many questions as it answers, for example, it may report on issues with an installed Managed Package that utilises old Classic technology. However, it does not take into account that the object is no longer used!

We find the Readiness report useful, but it is not a replacement for detailing your current processes and mapping those against how that would work (or not0 in Salesforce Lightning. However, we have always found a solution to any problems and we believe that Salesforce Lightning will offer multiple benefits over the Classic interface. 

However, we believe the biggest issue is not the technical changeover, but the change to your Users. If you automatically switch over to Lightning from Classic, you invariably will receive negative feedback from you Users. That is because Lightning is very different and common items are often in very different places. For some strange reason, Salesforce doesn’t automatically add a lot of the common features to the record pages. Items such as ‘Log a call’ and ‘Close Case’ can sometimes be missing and have to be added back in! When things like this happen, Users get frustrated and start to lose faith in the system. That is why it’s important to seek the help of someone who has experience with this type of migration.

We recommend that you setup a Salesforce Sandbox and change that over to Lightning, Then run your common processes through the system from start to end. This will give you a clear idea of what needs fixing before deploying to your live Users. Once you have a list of the items and have fixed them in the Sandbox, you can then move to making Lightning available for Systems Administrator in your Production environment whilst your work through the setup. Only then should you start to migrate Users over to Lightning.