Top Three Mistakes to Avoid When Moving from Salesforce to Dynamics 365
While Salesforce may have worked for your business in the past, there are legitimate reasons why many businesses are migrating to Dynamics 365 to manage their sales, marketing, and customer service. In many cases, the annual cost for Salesforce has grown to be too much to bear, the system doesn’t have the functionality you need, or you need a solution that integrates to your ERP. No matter the reason, the migration from Salesforce to Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement can be a smooth process when you have a plan in place to avoid these three common mistakes.
Mistake #1: You don’t talk to your software users
Your daily software users – those in sales, customer service, or marketing – know your system in and out and can provide you with the information you need to ensure Dynamics 365 is set up and optimized to ensure the technology you use empowers your users and helps you reach your goals.
Talk to your users about the functionality they really love within your current system and then ask about what they wish the solution could do. Examples of questions that you can ask include:
- What manual processes are you completing monthly? Weekly? Daily?
- What would help you enhance the experience for a first-time customer? Long-term customer?
- What feedback have you heard from customers or prospects related to how they interact with you and your company?
- What has changed in the last year in your processes?
- What challenges do you face in your role?
Having this base information will help as you design your system with your software partner.
Additionally, having buy-in from your end users will only increase software adoption when you go-live. When your users know the system was designed with their needs in mind, they’ll be more apt to embrace the system change. Too often times, users feel like they are slaves to data entry and don't find value in the system that is supposed to help make their jobs easier. Showcase to your users how Dynamics 365 will help them in their day to day and highlight the value of the solution to each specific role type you have. The end goal is for your system to work for your people, not your people working for the system.
Mistake #2: You fall victim to the Goldilocks Syndrome
In the classic story of Goldilocks, a little girl breaks into the home of three bears to find a set of porridge – one that is too hot, one that is too cold, and one that is just right. Similar to Goldilocks, businesses implementing software can often times find a solution that is too “hot” or too “cold” and may struggle to find something that is “just right”.
Dynamics 365 is a robust solution that can become anything you need it to be in order to fit your business processes. This can also be a tricky line to walk, as too much customization or overly complex requirements can leave you in the “too hot” camp. Additionally, you can launch a solution that is “too-cold” if you don’t take a close look at your needs and business processes.
The right solution means it fits your immediate needs to help you keep moving business forward. From there, you can plan subsequent phases to enhance the solution by adding more functionality and adapting your system as your business changes. This helps increase adoption up-front, as the solution isn’t too overwhelming at first.
Focus, first on your people, who they interact with and what processes are in place today that a system could better support. Then, tackle the technology by make a list of must-have features or areas where processes could be improved within the solution and then a list of those that would be nice-to-have. Go over that list with your partner as you plan for your software launch and make considerations for subsequent phases.
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Mistake #3: You import all data from Salesforce to Dynamics 365
No matter how long you’ve been using any CRM solution, you likely have stacks of data on customers, vendors, partners, support cases or trouble calls, and much more. A common mistake is thinking all historical information needs to be imported to your new system. While much of that information can be saved outside of the system, you should only migrate in the key information you need, free of duplicates, errors, and incorrect data. Data is a system hog and can make system migrations and implementations considerably more expensive if you don’t map out a strategy.
- Take Inventory of Your Data
- What have you been storing? Is the information you’ve collected going to be relevant in 6 months or 6 years? When and why would you need to access this data?
- Evaluate Data Integrity
- Is your data accurate and up to date? Or do you have old information that you no longer need? Have you been capturing the right data on your customers, contacts, vendors and partners?
- Assess Historical Information
- Map out what historical data is important to you and why. Is it important for reporting purposes? Is there somewhere else it could be stored for reporting purposes? How will you need to access this data moving forward? Who needs this information?
- Look for Redundant Data
- Remove any duplicate or redundant data. Archive or purge any historical date past a certain point.
There are many benefits in moving to Dynamics 365. To learn more about how your sales, marketing, and service teams will succeed with Dynamics, reach out to the experts at Stoneridge.
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