Mike Boyle:

What are the two Salesforce tools, just so folks are aware?

Richard MacDonald:

Yeah, so the two that come to mind… So, there’s a cutover point in terms of volume, and I mentioned volume a little bit earlier. You can use the Import Wizard through Salesforce to process up to 50,000 records, and you can map this information to ensure that the data coming from is mapped properly to where it’s going to go in Salesforce. But then after that, we can then use Dataloader.io, is a very popular one that we see here at Salesforce for bulk uploads.

Mike Boyle:

You are listening to the Salesforce Simplified podcast from Ad Victoriam solutions. I’m Mike Boyle, and your guest today, our guest, is Salesforce lead technical architect, Richard McDonald, who is Chicago based. We’re talking about moving a legacy system to a Salesforce solution and the things that need to go into that, the steps that you will be taking, if you will. Number five on this list of eight, Richard, is data governance. What goes into that? What should people be knowing about that ahead of time?

Richard MacDonald:

Now, data governance is a huge, huge, huge piece. Essentially defining what information are you storing, where are there any requirements, regulations around this data? And then, perhaps even more simply, who can access which data today, right? So, in your legacy system, you will most likely have data governance controls in place to segregate sensitive information from non-sensitive information. So, it’s important to ensure that, when you’re moving to a Salesforce solution, that you have similar levels of control in place to ensure that once you do make that cutover, you’re not going to be releasing information to resources where it shouldn’t be consumed.

Mike Boyle:

Number six on our list is train your users. Richard, I hear so many people talk about the struggles that they encounter with adoption. Training your users, talk about how important that step is to moving from a legacy system to a Salesforce solution.

Richard MacDonald:

I mean, it’s critical. You’re going to have a length and breadth of users, some of which are familiar with the general UI of Salesforce, and some of which are not. So, obviously you want to make sure that anyone who is starting to use a Salesforce solution has a good understanding of what they’re going to be doing. Now we have a free to use learning platform called Trailhead, which is absolutely amazing for learning some of the core Salesforce features and functionalities.

So, of course anyone moving to Salesforce, I would imagine as part of this migration plan, they would be, “Hey, please go on and take this module from Trailhead and please go on and take this one.” They’re kind of pulled out from Trailhead to shoot the particular solution which you’re going to.

And then of course, as I mentioned earlier, there are steps to customize the solution that you are going to be getting from Salesforce. You can also create those customized training plans through… I believe it’s now called Enablement of some sort, used to be called My Trailhead back in the day. And this allows you to create quizzes and workbooks and other types of trading material that is going to be specific to your instance. And the reason that’s important is because, when you do cutover to your Salesforce solution and you ask your users to then use the Salesforce solution, they are able to get up and running very quickly, and they’re not going to be stuck and flooding your help desk with training related tickets.

Mike Boyle:

Well, obviously Trailhead is just such an amazing place to go to gain knowledge.

I should mention, since I was talking about user adoption, we here at Ad Victoria, Solutions put together a knowledge-based tip sheet that you can download for free, and I will put a link to that document in this show’s notes. So look for that, adoption tips from AdVic.

Number seven on our list of eight here, Richard, things to consider when you are moving from a legacy system to a Salesforce solution, continuous monitoring and improvements. In other words, you just don’t install this thing and let it go. There needs to be monitoring and improvements. Talk a little bit about that.

Richard MacDonald:

It’s actually a fairly complex area, and if you’re not really familiar with Salesforce or other cloud platforms, it can be a little daunting to even consider that it’s not a set up, press go, leave it alone type deal. The platform is so advanced that anything you do, from a click of a button, to opening a list view, to downloading a report, these can all be tracked to a granular level of detail where you can figure out if you have any adoption issues based on this sort of information.

So, it’s important to keep an eye on exactly what’s happening inside your org for that improvement, because efficiency is the name of the game here for Salesforce, and we want to make sure that your users are using Salesforce as efficiently as possible. So, you can set up tools and dashboards to give you exact information on which pages are loading slowly, which areas of the application people are not using, to make sure that you’re getting the most out of the solution.

Mike Boyle:

And this last one, number eight, kind of piggybacks on all of that, Richard. And not to scare people, that’s not the intention, but you really should seek professional help when you’re moving from a legacy system to a Salesforce solution, correct?

Richard MacDonald:

I always think so. It’s obviously a very important step in a lot of businesses to change systems, so it makes absolute sense to ensure that you have consultants in place and expertise in place from people that have done this before, that have length of breadth of experience in this issue. Because the likelihood is they will have seen potentially the system before, they will have seen this type of migration before and they’ll know some of those little bits that could trip you up along the way and deal with those effectively.

Mike Boyle:

Any other last bits of wisdom for a company making this kind of a leap, Richard? Anything? I mean, you deal with this day in and day out.

Richard MacDonald:

Yeah, I’d say that the data is obviously very, very important from the switchover, but I think just as important is how you’re going to be making small changes to the Salesforce solution itself, if you are making any, and then ensuring that you have a good application lifecycle management policy in place, so ALM. To ensure that you’re making the changes in the correct environment, you’re then pushing those changes between environments properly. Because to point seven, right, so continuous monitoring and improvement, there are going to be small things that are changed throughout, and just as much as the initial migration is important, making sure you have that in place going forward is also a big consideration.

Mike Boyle:

Well, Richard, I want to thank you for joining us today and giving us your thoughts on this topic, legacy system to a Salesforce solution. No doubt we’ve calmed some fears here today. I think we can all go to bed tonight feeling good about that. Richard, thank you so much and I hope you’ll come back and visit us again on the Salesforce Simplified podcast.

Richard MacDonald:

Well, of course, thank you very much for having me.

Mike Boyle:

And if you’d like to learn a little bit more about what Richard and I were speaking about today, I will be placing some helpful links, including that aforementioned link about the adoption tips, in this episode’s notes. And if you like listening to this podcast, and maybe this is the first time you’ve heard it, we appreciate you being here and I’d appreciate it even more if you’d let your friends know about this, especially those who are in the Salesforce ecosystem. This show is specifically for you.

You can follow our podcast anywhere you get a podcast, and we’re on YouTube now as well, just FYI. I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions. Thank you for joining us for our latest Salesforce Simplified podcast. As always, our next episode is just around the corner.

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