Law 1: Commitment
Repeat after me: IF IT’S NOT IN SALESFORCE THEN IT DOES NOT EXIST.
It’s that simple. SalesForce, especially for nonprofit organizations, can be an incredibly powerful and valuable system. This means, however, that other systems must go away, reporting systems must get consolidated, and people must have the expectation that relevant information must find its way into SalesForce.
IF IT’S NOT IN SALESFORCE THEN IT DOES NOT EXIST.
At my former nonprofit agency, I was tasked with helping implement a SalesForce system designed to capture programmatic outcomes. The problem was, post-launch, I kept having the same conversation with program directors. It went something like this:
Director: “I don’t trust SalesForce, what if it loses my information? I WILL NOT change my reporting system to SalesForce unless I’m absolutely sure that the information won’t disappear.”
Me: “Bwah?”
This meant that, even post-launch, program directors insisted on keeping additional reporting systems in place for several months after SalesForce was operational. This also meant that program staff had to shoulder the burden of keeping the exact same information both in SalesForce and in other systems.
To keep up, the already very busy/incredibly busy/way too busy staff (power to my direct service friends out there) had to find the time in their already jammed schedule to keep up with multiple reporting systems on the EXACT same information
IF IT’S NOT IN SALESFORCE THEN IT DOES NOT EXIST.
The moral of the story? Commitment. Proper expectations will have your staff inputting their relevant information into SalesForce and, with that, SalesForce (properly set up, of course) will have your data available at your command at all times, from literally anywhere on planet Earth (provided an internet connection). To get there, though, takes a leap of faith and the dedication to set the expectations/trust that the data WILL be there. It’ll be worth it.
I promise.
