by Mike Walsh | Apr 12, 2019 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
A question that every company who uses Salesforce asks, at some point in their growth is, “should we hire a Salesforce admin?”
While this is a pretty important question to ask, unfortunately, there is no cut and dry answer. It’s different for every company, based on their individual needs. However, with that being said, let’s take a look at some of the values of bringing on a Salesforce admin, and when to do so.
Why you would need dedicated admin support
So let’s start with why you would even need an admin in the first place. Salesforce Admins do more than just set up users in the system. A good admin is essentially the workflow builder, data buster and all around problem solver that keeps your company’s processes and data on track.
Often times, a small company will either have done a makeshift job installing and configuring Salesforce, or otherwise used a consultant to set everything up correctly at the beginning. Either way, over time, the system grows and needs to be maintained or tweaked here and there.
For mid-size to large companies, where having dedicated admin support is mandatory – these are the people that your in-house staff will come to whenever they need the system to accommodate some request or change, for example, sending congratulations emails to the new client when a deal is closed.
What type of Admin
When it comes to in-house admins, it is fairly straightforward. Many times, for small to mid companies, there won’t be a full time, dedicated Salesforce admin, but someone who has the basic skills, and does it part-time / as needed. In-house admins have the advantage of generally being faster to deliver results, they already know the system, and if you have enough work for them to do, they end up being more cost effective.
Of course, not every company has enough workload to justify keeping a full-time admin in house. If you want to outsource, there are plenty of options, from lone wolf Salesforce experts to implementation consultants to Salesforce admin companies. For the solo contractors, they can be a cost-effective option, however, it may be hard to verify their qualifications, and they may not always be able to respond right away.
There are many Salesforce partners and implementation consultants, who primarily install, configure and develop Salesforce solutions. They will have in-depth technical knowledge, especially if they installed your system, and so will know exactly how to make the changes you need. This does also come at the cost of the normal consultancy rate.
Finally, you can utilize Salesforce admin services, from companies who are dedicated to that sort of thing. These groups may have a couple to dozens of trained admins available at any given moment to handle your needs. Their advantage is response time. However, like the individual contractor, you need to do your research to ensure they really know Salesforce. Their rates generally vary as well.
When do you want to bring on a full-time admin?
There is no right or wrong ratio, but many companies start finding they need one full-time admin, somewhere between 30 and 40 users.
If you are a small to mid-size company and growing, you may want to get ahead and plan for the future. Keeping your long term grown plans in mind is always a best practice when hiring anyway.
Whichever way you choose to go, in-house, outsourced or hodge-podge, Salesforce Admin work will inevitably need to get done. Hopefully, this has given you a little bit more insight on the why you need to think about it, who to consider, and when it is necessary to bring in a Salesforce admin.
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
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CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Sep 19, 2018 | Blog, Salesforce Tips
Today’s modern Salesforce administrator is someone who wears many hats. They are responsible for setting up applications, enabling new features, training users and more! Not only that, but admins are more and more filling roles that used to be filled by traditional IT departments, such as answering user questions, setting up reports and dashboards and configuring application customizations. Luckily, because Salesforce has been built with the mindset of ”clicks not code”, doing all of these things has never been easier.
All of that being said, you still need to choose your administrator wisely and make sure that you are providing them adequate support. Additionally, administrators themselves need training and guidance, to ensure they fully understand their role and are equipped to tackle the problems that come their way. Below, we have a couple of tips and thoughts that should help you achieve outstanding Salesforce CRM Administration, and set your business on the course for success.
Choosing an Administrator
Not everyone makes a good administrator. Let’s face it, there are some people who do fantastic work, but you wouldn’t trust them to organize a birthday party, even for your dog. Organizational skills and vocal leadership are important but most important is someone who can find the balance between meeting the needs of your users, and understanding the capabilities of the system. Below are a few more characteristics of great CRM admins:
- A solid understanding of your business processes
- Knowing how to build and maintain relationships within the team, groups and understanding how they all work.
- Be a bit of a business analyst. Having the ability to understand issues or change requests, and figure out how to bring them to life.
- Strong communication abilities. Willingness to stand up in front of the group, speak and motivate
Poor administration drags down just about everyone in the company and will have an especially negative impact on your Sales team. Not taking your administration seriously will likely lead to your Sales team underperforming, and will also leave your admins frustrated and themselves unsupported.
Make sure you invest in your administrator and provide them whatever Salesforce CRM training they may need. Alternatively, keep in mind that some customizations or jobs may be a little too complex or technical for your in-house admins, and you may need to bring on a certified Salesforce consultant and developer.
Support Staff
How many admins and/or business analysts do you need for your company? No, this isn’t a rhetorical question and has nothing to do with screwing in light bulbs. In fact, there are some pretty easy to understand guidelines for just how much administration you need, based on the number of people in your company. Of course, keep in mind that for more complex implementations, you may need additional resources above what is listed in the chart below.
| Number of users |
Administration resources |
| 1 – 30 users |
< 1 full-time administrator |
| 31 – 74 users |
1+ full-time administrator |
| 75 – 149 users |
1 senior administrator; 1 junior administrator |
| 140 – 499 users |
1 business analyst, 2–4 administrators |
| 500 – 750 users |
1–2 business analysts, 2–4 administrators |
| > 750 users |
Depends on a variety of factors |
Source: Salesforce Help Article
Top CRM Complaints
Now that you have picked out a qualified Administrator, and have the right amount of support staff for your business, there is one more consideration: what pain points can your Admin best help relieve? While all business will certainly have their own unique challenges, the list below (source) outlines some of the top complaints users have with their CRM:
- CRM gets in the way and reduces my selling time
- Different processes or data sets don’t sync up as they should
- It takes too long to enter notes
- It takes too long to update a forecast
- It takes too long to find the correct prospect or customer record
- Manual data entry is taking up too much of my time
- Every weekend, I need to copy my sales forecast data to Excel, update the deals and email it to my boss
- My CRM system doesn’t sync with MS Outlook (or Google mail) …or sync just doesn’t work
- Sales Managers spend too much time on the weekends to prepare reports for their bosses
- CRM doesn’t link with the order system, inventory system, support system, phone, social, marketing, etc.
- There are too many duplicate records in the CRM, so I just add another new record rather than figure out the correct record
- I was never trained on the original or new version of the CRM system
We could go on, but you get the idea. However, with proper Salesforce CRM administration, most if not all of these complaints can be solved, and your team given the tools they need to have their best chances of success.
Want More?
6 Admin Tips to Make Your Salesforce Org More User Friendly
8 CRM Administration Best Practices
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz Team
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Mar 20, 2018 | Salesforce Tips
Automation is one of the best ways to power up your business and improve your team’s everyday routines and tasks. Data can be auto-populated, pages auto-generated or records auto-updated. But what do you do if you have no coding experience and a limited development budget? Salesforce Flows!
A flow is an application that automates a business process by collecting data and doing something in your Salesforce org or an external system. Flows operate in a number of ways. They can require user actions, such as a wizard or guided UI, or they can be set up to run on their own in the background. Either way, using Salesforce Flows is a great way for any admin to create streamlined processes without any coding. Ready to get started? The folks over at Salesforce Ben have put together a great intro article to get you started with creating your own flows.
Read “An Introduction to Salesforce Flows”
-Ryan and the CloudMyBiz team
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
by Mike Walsh | Jan 30, 2018 | Blog, Salesforce-Apps-AppExchange
Administrators often have lengthy and somewhat tedious processes to keep their companies running smoothly. Creating a new user profile is no exception. This app simplifies that process. Clone This User allows you to quickly clone an existing user profile, keeping the settings and permissions intact for the new profile. For whatever your use, from mass adding new hires of similar permission to needing to create a backup profile and more, this app does it easy.
With Clone This User the administrator can look up the existing user that serves as the basis for the new one, enter a name and email, and generate the username & password immediately.
Check it out here!
CEO of CloudMyBiz Salesforce CRM consulting services with a deep knowledge in the lending industry. Taking keen interest in the project management side of operations, playing a vital role in the 31% YOY company growth. Strategic leader, mastering the ability to problem solve at every level of the business, providing effective solutions for clients.
