Introducing Trailhead for Students: Empowering the Next Generation of Trailblazers for a Top Career In Tech

From the Salesforce Blog:

New technologies are creating new jobs globally. The Salesforce ecosystem alone will create 2 million jobs by 2020—covering a broad spectrum of business and technical career paths. Unfortunately 80% of companies struggle to find skilled talent to fill these jobs. The loss in productivity caused by this skills gap costs companies a staggering $1.3 trillion dollars per year. While students should be a great source of new talent, employers say recent grads don’t have the skills they need.

Source: Introducing Trailhead for Students: Empowering the Next Generation of Trailblazers for a Top Career In Tech – Salesforce Blog

 

Full-time Salesforce Administrator Position with Emergo Begins Today

It is with great pleasure I share news of my new position as Associate Salesforce Administrator at Emergo, a global medical device regulatory consultancy.

 

Emergo Logo

Established in 1997 to help US medical device companies export to Europe, Emergo has grown to become a leading consultancy with more than 2,700 medical device and IVD clients worldwide. Today, Emergo maintains offices in 25 countries, offering a wide range of compliance and market access services. Among other things, Emergo assists companies with global regulatory strategy, device registration, quality management system compliance, clinical trial consulting, in-country regulatory representation and distributor qualification.

I will have the opportunity to work closely with John Brundage who currently holds four Salesforce certifications, and am looking forward to many new challenges.

 

Customizing Salesforce for the Alagille Syndrome Alliance

After interviewing a number of applicants, the Alagille Syndrome Alliance chose me to lead their Salesforce expansion efforts. Alagille syndrome is a genetic disorder that affects the liver, heart, kidney, and other systems of the body. Problems associated with the disorder generally become evident in infancy or early childhood.

bloglogocatchafire Thanks go to Catchafire.org for bringing us together. Catchafire matches professionals with nonprofits based on their skills, cause interest and time availability.  It’s been a great couple of weeks. Custom objects, reports, and even training are on the list.

 

 For this project I’ll be using the Agile Accelerator app (free) released by Salesforce labs

aa why salesforce Now I will be leveraging the same app used in-house by Salesforce developers

 

CRM Systems That Don’t Deliver

CRM Systems That Don’t Deliver

Gene Marks wrote an interesting Forbes article titled “11 Terrible CRM Systems for Your Company“. With a link bait title of course I started reading. With an overview of popular CRM systems he circles back to his title. He writes

They are terrible when they are not implemented the right way.   They are terrible when companies don’t appreciate that all of these magical applications are nothing but databases and don’t put the right processes in place to ensure that all interactions are entered into this database so that the data can be properly used for further sales, marketing and service interactions.  They are terrible when companies don’t assign strong administrators, or cut corners on training or try to do too much at one time.  They are terrible when senior managers don’t pay the attention needed to make these systems successful and instead cave in to the complaints made by lower level employees who don’t want to do the extra work.  These applications are terrible when managers don’t insist on the reports they should be using, don’t enforce rules for entering new opportunities and don’t commit to long-term, consistent and repetitive drip-marketing and communication campaigns using the information maintained by their CRM system to keep their prospects informed and their customers close.

 Yes, these CRM systems are terrible.  As terrible as an automatic rifle given to a child or a nine-iron handed to a monkey.  But placed in the right hands, like a soldier or a professional golfer, a CRM system (like the popular ones listed above) can be a powerful tool for growing a company’s profits and increasing its value.  So is your CRM system terrible?  Or is it you?

 

For a CRM project to be successful it takes diligent planning coupled with smart implementation. You can’t wing it. Keep in mind, CRM is never a one-shot implementation. Ongoing management and tweaking is required.

Salesforce Secrets of Success by David Taber

If you are considering Salesforce for your company, you owe it to yourself and your company to at least read the Executive Summary chapter from Salesforce.com Secrets of Success: Best Practices for Growth and Profitability (2nd Edition) by David Taber.

Together with its companion website (SFDC-secrets.com), you find questionnaires, worksheets, templates, checklists, and other resources for every executive, team member, developer, and stakeholder.

Photo by SkyFireXII

Sharing My Salesforce Certification Tips

Sharing My Salesforce Certification Tips

Part of the study process involves research, and Evernote is one of the best tools you can use to organize your research. I put together an Evernote notebook of the best resources I’ve found for anyone studying for the Certified Salesforce Administrator certification. You are not required to have an Evernote account to access this… Read More

Official Salesforce Training Completed

Official Salesforce Training Completed

Recently I completed the official Salesforce training Administration Essentials for New Admins. This intensive instructor-led 5 day training course was a blast. Salesforce recommends this course for new system administrators responsible for the setup, configuration, and maintenance of their organization’s Salesforce applications. The extensive self-study I completed beforehand came in handy. Other classmates were sent… Read More