The client is a growing SaaS company providing enterprise project management and collaboration tools that help teams streamline workflows, manage tasks, and enhance productivity. Operating on a subscription-based model with tiered pricing plans, they cater to various organizational sizes, offering essential features for small teams, advanced tools for mid-sized organizations, and customized solutions for large enterprises.
Despite adopting Salesforce as their CRM platform to manage customer relationships and sales processes, the client faces challenges in fully leveraging its capabilities due to data silos, customization needs, user adoption issues, and integration difficulties, which hinder their ability to maximize the value of their CRM investment.
Challenges:
The client faced several challenges that were specific to its SaaS business model and growth trajectory. The challenges encountered were not attributable to legacy systems, but rather to the growing complexity of operational requirements and the imperative need for deeper integration between Salesforce and existing platforms.
1. Manual Customer Onboarding Processes:
While Salesforce was used to manage customer data, the onboarding process for new enterprise customers required significant manual effort. Sales and implementation teams had to configure customer accounts, set up user permissions, and integrate the platform with clients’ existing tools (e.g., Slack, Jira, Microsoft Teams) outside of Salesforce. This disjointed process led to delays and inefficiencies.
2. Limited Visibility into Customer Usage:
Their customer success and sales teams lacked real-time insights into how customers were using their platform. Usage data was stored in their product analytics tool, which was not integrated with Salesforce. This made it difficult to identify at-risk customers, track feature adoption, and uncover upsell opportunities.
3. Disconnected Support Operations:
The customer support team used a dedicated ticketing system that operated independently of Salesforce. While the system was effective, the lack of integration meant support agents had to manually cross-reference customer data in Salesforce, leading to inefficiencies and slower response times.
4. Complex Subscription Management:
Moreover, their billing and subscription management system was not integrated with Salesforce. This created challenges in tracking subscription renewals, managing mid-cycle upgrades or downgrades, and generating accurate invoices. The finance team had to manually reconcile data between systems, which was time-consuming and prone to errors.
Solutions:
By leveraging our expertise in custom Salesforce development services, we designed and implemented a tailored Salesforce solution with seamless third-party integrations to address the client challenges. The solution focused on enhancing automation, improving data visibility, and streamlining operations without overhauling their existing
1. Automated Customer Onboarding Workflow
To streamline the onboarding process, our team developed a custom Salesforce app that automated account creation, user provisioning, and integration with third-party tools.
Salesforce Flow Automation: Multi-step onboarding workflows were automated using Salesforce Flow. For example, when a new customer was added to Salesforce, the flow triggered a series of actions, including:
- Creating a new account in the client’s platform via API.
- Assigning user roles and permissions based on predefined templates.
- Initiating integrations with third-party tools like Slack, Jira, and Microsoft Teams.
- Custom Lightning Components: Our experts built a custom Lightning component for the onboarding dashboard, providing a user-friendly interface for sales and implementation teams. The dashboard displayed real-time status updates for onboarding tasks, such as account setup, user provisioning, and tool integrations.
- Third-Party API Integration: We also integrated Salesforce with their platform and third-party tools using REST APIs. This allowed seamless data exchange between systems.
- Error Handling and Logging: Custom Apex classes were developed to handle errors during the onboarding process. Detailed logs were stored in custom objects within Salesforce, enabling teams to troubleshoot issues quickly.
2. Real-Time Usage Analytics Dashboard
To provide actionable insights, our team created a custom analytics dashboard in Salesforce that pulled real-time usage data from their product analytics tool.
- Data Aggregation with Apex: Custom Apex classes were developed to process and aggregate usage data from their platform. The Apex code queried the product analytics tool’s API to fetch metrics like active users, feature adoption, and session duration.
- Salesforce Einstein Analytics: We leveraged Salesforce Einstein Analytics to generate predictive insights and trend analysis. For example, Einstein identified patterns in customer usage data to predict churn risk and recommend proactive engagement strategies.
- Custom Dashboards and Reports: Using Salesforce Lightning, our experts built custom dashboards and reports for the customer success and sales teams. These dashboards displayed real-time metrics, such as:
- Customer engagement scores.
- Feature adoption rates.
- Alerts for declining usage or low engagement.
- REST API Integration: The product analytics tool was integrated with Salesforce using REST APIs. This ensured that usage data was synced in real-time, enabling teams to make data-driven decisions.
3. Unified Support Operations
We integrated the client’s ticketing system with Salesforce, creating a unified support platform.
- Middleware Development with MuleSoft: Our team built a middleware layer using MuleSoft to sync data between the ticketing system and Salesforce. This middleware handled real-time data exchange, ensuring that support cases, customer information, and interaction history were always up-to-date.
- Custom Objects in Salesforce: Custom objects were created in Salesforce to store support case details, such as ticket status, priority, and resolution history. These objects were linked to standard Salesforce objects like Accounts and Contacts for a unified view.
- Apex Triggers for Automation: Apex triggers were developed to automate case assignment and escalation.
- Real-Time Data Sync: The integration ensured that any updates made in the ticketing system were reflected in Salesforce in real-time, eliminating the need for manual data entry.
4. Streamlined Subscription Management
Our team integrated their billing system with Salesforce to streamline subscription management while ensuring robust data security for sensitive billing and records management.
- Custom Apex Classes for Billing Logic: Our experts developed custom Apex classes to handle complex billing logic, such as prorated billing for mid-cycle upgrades or downgrades. These classes processed subscription data and generated accurate invoices.
- SOAP API Integration: The billing system was integrated with Salesforce using SOAP APIs. This allowed real-time syncing of subscription data, such as renewal dates, payment status, and invoice details.
- Custom Reports and Dashboards: We also created custom reports and dashboards for the finance team to monitor subscription health. These reports included metrics like:
- Upcoming renewals.
- Failed payments.
- Revenue forecasts.
- Alerts and Notifications: Custom workflows were set up to send alerts for overdue invoices and failed payments. These alerts were triggered automatically based on data from the billing system, with notifications designed to comply with data security standards to protect client information.
5. Training and Ongoing Support
To ensure that our clients can fully leverage the tailored features and functionalities we implement, we provide a structured training program that includes hands-on workshops, user guides, and tailored resources designed to meet the specific needs of their teams. Additionally, we offer ongoing support through dedicated helpdesk services, ensuring that any questions or challenges are promptly addressed.
Benefits
The custom Salesforce solution and third-party integrations delivered by our team had a transformative impact on the client’s operations:
- The automated onboarding process reduced setup time and improved customer satisfaction.
- Real-time usage analytics helped the customer success team identify at-risk customers.
- The unified support system reduced average ticket resolution time and enhanced customer experience.
- The billing integration eliminated errors and improved revenue tracking, resulting in a reduction in billing-related disputes.
