Business professionals often change positions to gain a better salary, more desirable benefits and new opportunities and attaining business certifications is a great step to take toward that change.

Defining a “business certification” can be difficult. To narrow the field, we reviewed general business and management credentials, customer resource management (CRM), supply chain, sales and purchasing certifications. Most of the certifications we selected are vendor-agnostic — not tied to a specific system or application — and we researched several credentials from SAP, SAS and similar companies that specialize in business applications.

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In the ever-evolving landscape of business technology, adapting to change is no longer a choice — it’s a necessity. And when it comes to managing those changes seamlessly, Salesforce stands tall as a powerhouse. However, navigating the intricate realm of Salesforce Change Management can often leave even the most seasoned professionals scratching their heads.

We unveil six invaluable tips that promise to unravel the complexities, making the process not just manageable, but downright straightforward. Whether you’re a salesforce novice or a seasoned pro, these insights will empower you to wield change as a tool for growth, without breaking a sweat.

Clear Change Identification and Prioritization

Before embarking on any salesforce changes, it’s essential to meticulously define the scope and objectives of the proposed modifications. This involves a detailed analysis of the current system, identifying pain points, and recognizing opportunities for enhancement. Once potential changes are identified, a rigorous prioritization process should be employed.

This prioritization should be based on factors such as the anticipated business impact, alignment with strategic goals, and feasibility of implementation. The impacts of any change should be thoroughly evaluated, considering both short-term and long-term consequences. This includes assessing potential disruptions to existing processes, workflows, and user experiences, as well as estimating the financial, resource, and time investments required for successful implementation.

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Cross-Functional Collaboration

Successful salesforce change management thrives on collaborative efforts across diverse departments. Forming a dedicated change management team comprising representatives from different functional areas fosters a holistic approach. Involving stakeholders early in the process ensures that all perspectives are considered, mitigating resistance and enhancing buy-in.

Open communication channels must be established to facilitate idea sharing, status updates, and issue resolution. This collaborative synergy not only promotes comprehensive change planning but also empowers a sense of ownership among stakeholders. By uniting expertise and insights from various disciplines, organizations can navigate change with collective strength and drive more successful implementations.

Comprehensive Change Documentation

Thorough documentation is the backbone of effective salesforce change management. Detailed records of change requests, requirements, and implementation plans ensure a clear roadmap for all involved. A well-maintained repository of version-controlled documentation facilitates transparency, aiding in tracing the evolution of changes and reducing confusion. This meticulous documentation also supports knowledge transfer, enabling seamless onboarding and continuity.

By meticulously capturing every step and decision, organizations establish a reliable foundation for change, ensuring that stakeholders remain informed and aligned throughout the process. Robust documentation safeguards against uncertainties and serves as a valuable resource for future enhancements.

Thorough Testing and Quality Assurance

Rigorous testing and quality assurance are cornerstones of successful Salesforce change management. Crafting comprehensive test plans and scenarios allows for the meticulous examination of new configurations and functionalities. User Acceptance Testing (UAT) involving end-users validates the changes from a practical standpoint, ensuring they meet user needs and expectations.

Addressing any detected bugs, performance issues, or discrepancies during testing guarantees a smoother transition. A robust testing phase minimizes post-implementation disruptions and fosters user confidence. By prioritizing quality assurance, organizations fortify their change management process, delivering dependable solutions that align seamlessly with business objectives.

User Training and Support

Empowering users through effective training and ongoing support is pivotal in salesforce change management. Developing comprehensive training materials, including guides and tutorials, equips users with the knowledge to navigate new features and processes. Conducting engaging training sessions and workshops enhances user proficiency and fosters a positive transition experience.

Providing accessible avenues for user support, such as help desks or forums, ensures timely issue resolution and knowledge sharing. Prioritizing user training and support cultivates user confidence, reduces frustration, and promotes efficient utilization of the salesforce platform, ultimately contributing to the success of change initiatives.

Effective Change Rollout and Monitoring

A well-executed change rollout and vigilant monitoring are pivotal to salesforce change management success. Careful planning of controlled rollouts or pilot launches ensures gradual adoption and minimizes disruption. Monitoring user adoption, feedback, and system performance provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of implemented changes. Iterative improvements based on real-time data help fine-tune configurations and address evolving needs.

This proactive approach guarantees that the change’s impact aligns with expectations, promoting sustained user satisfaction. By maintaining a watchful eye on the ongoing change process, organizations can swiftly adapt, optimize, and enhance the Salesforce environment, driving long-term success and continuous improvement.

Simplifying Salesforce change management is a multi-faceted endeavor that demands strategic planning, collaboration, documentation, testing, training, and vigilant monitoring. By adhering to these key principles, organizations can navigate transitions with clarity, engage stakeholders effectively, and ensure seamless system enhancements. Embracing change as an iterative process allows for agility and continuous improvement, leading to a Salesforce environment that not only meets current needs but also lays a solid foundation for future innovation and success.

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In the ping pong match of generative AI announcements, it’s once again Salesforce’s turn to make a stir. This past week, the company announced its newest venture, Einstein Studio, which allows users to “BYOM”—bring your own model—to the generative AI sphere. With Einstein Studio, customers can use Salesforce’s custom AI models or their own custom AI models to gain greater insights form their internal, proprietary company data. In turn, businesses will be able to generate smarter, faster insights and content from the data they’re already using via “enterprise-ready” AI.

According to Salesforce, data from Salesforce Data Cloud can be used to train models from throughout the Salesforce ecosystem, including Amazon SageMaker, AWS, Vertex AI (Google Cloud) and others. The company says it can connect and synergize customer data from any source to generate a single customer profile that adapts to customer activity in real time.

Touted benefits include:

● Faster deployment: Einstein Studio doesn’t require businesses to extract, transform, and load (ETL) their data across platforms, which means teams can “point and click” to get their information to the cloud to train their LLMs. This, in turn, means a more productive data/engineering team.

● Generate more content and predictions. Salesforce says Einstein already generates more than 1,000,000,000,000 predictions a week throughout the company’s apps. With Einstein Studio, it will undoubtedly be able to create even more, including content like meeting transcriptions and auto-responses to inquiries, as well as product recommendations, customer segmentation, and personalized pricing. Indeed, it should allow businesses to gain even more insights—and generate even more value—from the data they are already gathering.

● Increase revenue, decrease churn. With greater insights, Einstein Studio will Excellerate the overall customer experience with more personalized and relevant content. This, in turn, will help increase revenue opportunities and decrease churn. In other words, it will enhance the ROI of a company’s investment in AI. Research shows almost 60 percent of companies say they’re a year or more out from implementing AI in their business. Einstein Studio could help make AI more accessible.

Just as importantly, Einstein Studio enables users to determine how their data will be used in training other LLMs, ensuring that enterprise data should be kept safe and secure.

Absolutely not. Salesforce launched its first AI solution Einstein in 2016. The strategy then, according to some, is that it would use machine learning, packaged as AI, to differentiate itself across the industry. At that time, however, predictive and generative AI were far less understood than they are now. Einstein’s value, at the time, may have been negligible, but it did create both visibility and intrigue into the power of AI embedded in SaaS—helping pave the way to this year’s AI momentum.

Fast forward to 2023, and it seems like Salesforce is just as committed to finding cutting edge solutions to keep itself relevant while also providing real value to its users. In March, Salesforce announced it would be bringing ChatGPT to its CRM as Einstein GPT. In April, we saw Salesforce begin to integrate its Einstein GPT and Data Cloud into its automation kit called Flow. This allowed users to auto-generate responses using natural language prompts and real-time data sharing to create personalized experiences more quickly. Then, in June, Salesforce announced both Marketing GPT and Commerce GPT to auto generate things like emails, marketing segments, personal shopping experiences and more. And of course, this month, we’re seeing the announcement of Einstein Studio and BYOM. The pace of its offerings in AI have been significant and had to be in order to keep up with commercialization efforts of its competitors.

But is Einstein Studio et al. enough to compete with Microsoft’s Copilot solutions?

The big question now is whether Salesforce’s AI investments set the company up well to compete with Microsoft’s segment of the marketplace. The answer is nuanced because Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI partnership is being used across a portfolio that spans well beyond business apps into search, productivity, collaboration and more. Furthermore, Salesforce is leveraging OpenAI as part of its AI stack, which of course benefits Microsoft.

With its current AI related offerings as well as its BYOM announcement, Salesforce’s most direct Microsoft competitor would be Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 offerings including its Sales Copilot, a sales-specific AI assistant. The Sales Copilot tool connects user CRMs with Microsoft 365 and Teams apps to do—well—all the things Salesforce’s solutions aim to do: generate real-time tips for meetings, summaries of customer data, emails, and reports. And, although it’s a Microsoft tool, it can be added to CRMs like Salesforce. Which serves Microsoft well to get parts of the business even if it doesn’t win the CRM part—which is an advantage for Microsoft to play in so many parts of the software suite. But also reduces the competition from all or nothing to harmonious partnerships of heterogenous software, which are often how enterprise software stacks are comprised.

Right now, it’s early to make a call on how Einstein Studio, and Salesforce’s Marketing and Commerce GPT tools will fare in the race to AI and in head-to-head competitive sales. As of now, reviews are scarce, likely because the technology is advancing far faster than enterprise teams can adequately adopt it. Philosophically, I’m positive on flexible AI model deployment strategy as each LLM and smaller language and foundational models bring different attributes. I see such flexibility as a competitive advantage in the long run. Nevertheless, the final story will be told in numbers. But undoubtedly AI is changing the way companies buy and consume software, and I believe that the pace of innovation will only get faster to the benefit of businesses and users everywhere. So, bring on the competition and keep the innovation coming!

Dan Drees, President, AvidXchange.

The emergence of generative AI technologies has opened exciting possibilities for businesses, ultimately changing the way organizations and their people function on a day-to-day basis.

The powerful technologies, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, promise to transform entire organizations, including empowering them to operate more efficiently, Excellerate customer relationships, bolster sales success, gain deeper insights from their data and so much more. The majority of IT leaders recently surveyed by Salesforce are jumping at the opportunity to reap these benefits, prioritizing generative AI for their business within the next 18 months, and one-third of them ranking it a top priority.

However, paving the way for the successful adoption of advanced technology in the workforce, including generative AI, requires business leaders to prepare their employees for how the technology will impact their experience and help them continually adapt to modernization as it evolves. In a accurate summit hosted by The Wall Street Journal, some executives dubbed this as the biggest workplace challenge so far for 2023, yet it boils down to understanding how technology can replace mundane processes to free people for more rewarding work and providing them with the tools and training they need to succeed.

Considering The Benefits Of Modernization Through AI

Technology, including AI-driven solutions, has been transforming businesses for decades, helping them save time and money, adapt to change and seize competitive advantages to ensure a more profitable future. Half of the companies surveyed in McKinsey’s Global Survey on AI are already using AI in at least one area of their business, and most plan to increase their investments within the next three years.

Businesses that have embraced modernization recognize that AI doesn’t replace people but rather serves as a powerful support tool to help them better serve their business and their customers. In the finance department, for example, automated software solutions help staff review documents, reconcile invoices and process payments more efficiently and securely than they could with manual processes. AI also reduces the likelihood of errors that could result in additional loss of time and money.

By automating work, AI liberates people from time-consuming aspects of their jobs and frees them into more rewarding roles. Chatbots and virtual assistants, for instance, liberate customer service reps by providing 24/7 access and enhanced experiences for customers and partners. Machine learning, one of the most common types of AI, can quickly sift through data, pinpointing areas of concern, identifying patterns and providing insights that staff can then use to make swift and strategic decisions, making them more valuable to their organizations.

The use of AI is proliferating as technologies advance, and organizations realize the advantages it offers. Although still in their infancy, generative AI tools are being leveraged throughout organizations across industries—from education and journalism to legal, real estate and software development—largely through content generation, coding, security and data analysis. The tools have tremendous potential to transform work as we know it.

Preparing The Workforce For New Ways Of Working

Understanding the liberation that comes with modernizing roles at work is the first step in helping employees embrace change. Additionally, success hinges on providing training and confidence-building support through an investment in employee development.

While almost all organizations that participated in Saleforce’s global digital skills survey believe that employers should prioritize AI skills in employee development, only one in 10 think their people are skilled in AI. It’s not surprising, as less than one-third of employees in IT and far fewer in non-tech roles use AI skills in their current jobs.

Business leaders are responsible for closing the skills gap by providing employees with the training and support that can prepare them to succeed and advance in their roles. For example, business leaders should encourage all employees, not just sales, to develop soft skills like customer relationship building, communication and leadership to round out their expertise.

The investment leaders make in employee training and skills development will also empower them to move toward more skills-based operational models. This is an approach that yields a myriad of benefits, according to a accurate Deloitte study, including higher retention, increased productivity and richer employee experiences.

Embracing Change While Evolving at Work

As the potential impact and implications of advanced technologies, including generative AI, continue to unfold, business leaders are in the midst of a powerful opportunity. They can invest in technology, and through education and development, they can nurture their workforce and help them reveal more rewarding work and greater job satisfaction.

The investment will also pay off in digital transformation benefits, including increased productivity and more efficient operations, while also strengthening retention and hiring efforts. It will also help to chip away at the worldwide AI skills shortage, ensuring organizations across industries can readily embrace and benefit from modern technology as it redefines work.

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Having demonstrated much of its own AI capabilities (and successfully implementing them into its range of CRM software), Salesforce is now giving businesses the tools to build and deploy their own AI tools.

The new service, called Einstein Studio, adopts a new ‘Bring Your Own Model’ (BYOM) principle whereby companies can use their own data to power their own applications.

Customers can pull in Salesforce Data Cloud data to train models from Salesforce’s ecosystem of models, such as AWS’s Amazon SageMaker and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI.

In its announcement, the company cites a Gartner study that found that only 54% of AI projects make it from pilot to production. Salesforce hopes to make it both more efficient and more cost-effective for companies to make their own tools this way.

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