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crm Archives - 501Partners LLC

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Understanding What ‘Operational Capacity’ Means for Your Salesforce Project (Part 2 of 2): Managing Salesforce Throughout Its Lifecycle

By | 501Partners News, CRM & Salesforce, Data Management, Good Governance, Nonprofit Management, Nonprofit Resources, Nonprofit Tech, Operations and Development

In our previous post, we introduced the idea of the organizational capacity model and the graph of decision variability over time that helps illustrate the idea. In this post, we take the same graph but break it down differently, to reflect a project’s lifecycle.

The first takeaway in this series is that knowing your current organizational capacity can help you align the type of Salesforce projects you pursue for optimal success. You can read about that in more detail here.

Takeaway Two: Your technology enforces your organization’s business processes, which puts a burden on your organization at the same time it offers efficiency gains.

Graph displaying decision variability over time
Everybody wants technology that fits them perfectly—technology that helps them do their work faster and better while alleviating pain points. When you adopt an enterprise system such as Salesforce, you have access to a powerful platform that can be made to automate just about any business process you can think of. In our ebook on the Data Maturity Model, we explain why that should be approached with some understanding of what your organization can support. In this post, we want to further explore the lifecycle of a Salesforce customization, and illustrate both the types of skills you may want to look for outside of your organization, and the tasks your organization should be prepared to take on for a healthy, well-maintained custom project.

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When Should You Automate in Salesforce?

By | 501Partners News, CRM & Salesforce, Data Management, Good Governance, Nonprofit Management, Nonprofit Resources

…I have observed that people want the magic new thing more than they want improved management to fix problems. Managers need to carefully determine the areas in their business where new technology is the right choice and other areas where a back-to-basics management approach may be more effective.

- Temple Grandin, quoted in Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferris

Is Your Organization Truly Ready to Automate?

Nonprofits are in a unique position with their technology needs. With complex program delivery and ever-changing funder requests for new and different data, it is often a struggle to map an organization’s processes, let alone find the right technology to support those processes.

In my role as 501Partners’ senior solutions architect, I’ve had the opportunity to build or design dozens of interesting, complex technical solutions for a range of organizations using Salesforce. Needless to say, I’ve learned some important lessons along the way.

Lesson 1: Assess internal capacity. It’s critical to align internal capacity with technology selectionthis is so important that it became the subject of an entire ebook.

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The word Plan Action on two matching puzzle on orange background.

Understanding What ‘Operational Capacity’ Means for Your Salesforce Project (Part 1 of 2)

By | 501Partners News, Case Management, Data Management, Data Maturity, Nonprofit Management, Nonprofit Resources, Nonprofit Tech
501Partners often works with organizations who are trying to use their Salesforce implementation to help transform their operations. We’ve learned that our clients’ chances of success are dramatically improved when they are able to think about where their organization is in terms of operational and data maturity.

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New Name, New Features: The Nonprofit Success Pack

By | CRM & Salesforce

The Salesforce Nonprofit Starter Pack has been rebranded and renamed to the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack. Along with the renaming, Salesforce.org has released two new features, Engagement Plans and Levels. We are really excited about these two new features, primarily because we can see the value they add to the NPSP, and to nonprofits organizations.

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The Free Puppy Problem (AKA – Why Custom Consulting Works)

By | Our Services

Is better data management on your list of New Year’s resolutions? Does your organization get overwhelmed when it’s time to crunch numbers and deliver annual reports? 501Partners has you covered. With the help of Salesforce and our custom consulting solutions, data collection and reporting can be a breeze. There are 22,000 nonprofits already using Salesforce for these reasons, and why shouldn’t you join them? Salesforce offers ten free licenses to NPOs and comes with the Nonprofit Starter Pack 3.0, a powerful set of tools for data management.

But the ten free licenses are kind of like ten free puppies.

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salesforce support

Why Salesforce Support Subscription?

By | Our Services

This week, we wanted to feature one of our lesser known services, the Salesforce Support Subscription. Just as it sounds, this subscription is offered to any nonprofit that is interested simply in on-demand Salesforce help. We developed the Salesforce Support Subscription because, while many consultants will implement a project and move on, 501Partners recognizes that organizations often need an ongoing relationship with their consultancy in order to continue Salesforce success beyond the initial project. When your organization enrolls in the Support Subscription, you are ensuring that there is always access to a dedicated, on-demand Salesforce solution.

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First, Do No Harm: Does Your Salesforce Instance Need Preventative Care or Major Surgery?

By | CRM & Salesforce

What do Salesforce and the human body have in common? And why are we about to compare 501Partners to your primary care physician? The answer is simple: Implementing and maintaining a Salesforce instance at your nonprofit requires a lot of moving parts; kind of like maintaining your health requires multiple systems, organs and cells to organize and cooperate. What the human body does is amazing, and we think Salesforce is pretty amazing, too. Sometimes, though, such powerful tools are complex and require some explaining to understand their complexity. Kind of like that anatomy class we all had to take in high school.

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salesforce

Why Salesforce for Your Nonprofit?

By | CRM & Salesforce

salesforceAt the core of your nonprofit’s CRM selection is a question: Which service is going to be the most beneficial for our organization and our clients? Chances are, someone within your nonprofit is familiar with Salesforce. At the very least, they are aware of its existence and its position as the leader in CRM services for nonprofits. Salesforce is likely to be the first service that you research. The question does not become “which CRM service?” but rather “why Salesforce?”  From the vast features of the Nonprofit Starter Pack (NPSP) to the fact that Salesforce is free to nonprofits, let us explain why this cloud-based service is the best for your nonprofit organization.

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Salesforce API Announcement (September 2014)

By | CRM & Salesforce, Nonprofit Resources, Nonprofit Tech

Salesforce has made some changes, but you don’t have to worry about what they mean for your NPO. That’s what we’re here for. Salesforce has changed their API (Application Program Interface) a little bit and this may affect some of your connected apps. The impact should be minimal and you will be able to login, but some features may act strangely until the permissions are corrected. Outlined below are the specifics of this change, along with screenshots to better help you understand how to deal with the shift. Read More