Securing Funding and Engaging with Salesforce and Implementation Partners

In this chapter, we enter the financial and legal dimensions of Salesforce projects. First, we will cover how to create and present a business case to secure funding for your project. Next, we explore engaging with Salesforce to get a quote for your license costs, and we’ll go through the intricacies of communicating with implementation partners, and what to look for when selecting one.

You will be introduced to methods of financial forecasting, including how your Salesforce project will increase your company revenue and diving into what costs you need to consider – and forecast – as part of your Salesforce implementation. You will learn what roles you are likely to encounter when engaging with Salesforce and how to best request a quote from Salesforce. Finally, you will learn about the value of working with an implementation partner, what types are available, the selection process, and...

Creating a business case to secure funding

In the previous chapter, you determined how you are going to deliver your Salesforce project – the delivery methodology, communication, and the change management strategy – and envisioned your Salesforce CoE to govern your Salesforce implementation. It is now time to secure funding for your project and begin to engage with Salesforce and implementation partners, as shown in the following diagram:

Figure 4.1 – Activities in the pre-development phase

Before being able to create the financial forecast, let’s get specific about what business outcomes you are expecting from your Salesforce project.

Determining KPIs and targets for your required business capabilities

If you want to be able to measure whether your Salesforce project is a success when it is rolled out, you need to establish how you will measure performance and what targets define success. Your Salesforce taskforce should...

Engaging with Salesforce and implementation partners

Once a budget for your Salesforce project has been pre-approved, you can begin to engage with both Salesforce and implementation partners simultaneously. In this section, we’ll cover the basics of how you can do so effectively.

Engaging with Salesforce

To validate your business case assumptions for what your Salesforce license costs will be, you need to get a quote from Salesforce.

Let’s see who you will engage with to get your quote.

Parties involved from Salesforce

When you visit www.salesforce.com and request to watch a product demo or download a whitepaper and fill out your information, you will be contacted within 24 hours – or in most cases within the same business day. A business development representative will call you to find out whether you want to speak to an account executive.

You will, as you progress your dialogue with Salesforce, be introduced to a number of different roles:

...

Iterating in the pre-development phase

As mentioned previously, although the chapters of this book are laid out in a linear manner, you will iterate through the activities and decisions within them before you are ready to contract with Salesforce and your chosen implementation partner. Perhaps when presenting your Salesforce project’s business case to senior leadership, you don’t gain approval for the budget requested, or the business case does not live up to the criteria for your company’s investment board. If this is the case, be sure to capture the reasons, so you know what to improve or modify. Then, go back to Chapter 2, Defining the Nature of Your Salesforce Project, to redefine the scope, considering dependencies between the capabilities.

Once you have gone through that iteration, continue through the cycle – the chapters in the pre-development phase – update your RAID log and business case, and present again.

Summary

In this chapter, you have summarized your Salesforce project in a business case containing a financial forecast based on the estimated revenue and cost impact of your Salesforce project. You have determined your partner model and target Salesforce CoE operating model and presented your business case to senior leadership to secure funding for your Salesforce project and have engaged with Salesforce to get a quote for your required licenses, and finally, you engaged with implementation partners, went through the process of selecting one, and contracted with your chosen implementation partner. Concurrently with selecting your implementation partner, you began establishing your Salesforce CoE by allocating resources – internal and external.

Up until now, you have created a vision for your Salesforce project – the why – as well as the nature of it – the what. You have determined how to deliver your Salesforce project – the how – and now...