In this week’s podcast, we interview Jamie Meldrum, President of Meldrum Horne, an employee benefits, insurance, and financial planning firm based in Ottawa, Canada. In this wide-ranging discussion, we cover the origins of Meldrum Horne, Jamie’s decision to transition to Salesforce before the pandemic, and his views on the future of the benefits and financial planning industry.
To find out more about how Navirum can you implement or maintain Salesforce, contact Kristina Mustapic, our Marketing Manager at [email protected]
About Meldrum Horne
At Meldrum Horne, we are here to help you attract and retain the best people. Comprehensive employee benefits, group retirement programs, and individual financial planning for your employees give you a competitive edge in the relentless fight for talent. We also protect and prepare your business for the unexpected with strategies that involve buy-sell insurance and key man (person) insurance. Locally owned and based in Ottawa, Canada, we service the needs of national and international companies with teams ranging from five people to well over 5000. Our independence allows us to be nimble, innovative, and responsive. Each of our clients receives timely, customer service that suits their unique needs.
DISCLAIMER: The views in this recording are personal views and should not be considered as any type of financial advice.
What is Salesforce On-Demand? If you need access to Salesforce administration and support services on a partial or full-time basis, Navirum On-Demand could be for you. Hiring a qualified Salesforce Administrator on a full-time basis is expensive. With Navirum On-Demand you get all of the benefits of a Salesforce Admin on a budget that works for you
What Does The Service Include?
Salesforce administration services: Our team of Salesforce consultants is available to customize your Salesforce org, from creating new fields and objects to adding new users, our team of experts is here to help.
Salesforce training: We offer a range of Salesforce training across multiple clouds and are available to deliver custom training to our Clients
Technical support: If you having technical issues with Salesforce, one of our Salesforce engineers will diagnose the problem and recommend a solution
Financial services expertise: The support needs of financial services clients are different from other industries. At Navirum we deliver support services through the lens of banking regulations and privacy constraints, while at the same time advising and guiding clients with support solutions that are in line with peers in their industry.
What Are Benefits?
Flexible rates: Starting at two hours per month, Clients can access Navirum On-Demand on a rolling basis with no minimum contract length.
Access to a certified Salesforce expert: All of our support staff are fully Salesforce certified and continue to upgrade their skills as part of their personal development
Focus on the customer and their unique needs: Our goal at Navirum is to get to know each business and its unique needs and provide support services that are specific to that company
Access to your own Navirum portal: We give each of our customers access to their own support portal to raise and manage tickets
Multiple contact channels: As well as access to your own portal, clients can raise tickets via phone, email, and SMS.
The Navirum Salesforce Health Check is designed to help you get the most out of your Salesforce investment and ensure you are using the system most effectively. The only constant in business is change, and ensuring your Salesforce org is keeping up with that change is not easy. Our Health Check is designed to help you understand where your Salesforce instance is versus Salesforce implementation best practice and limits, industry standards, and whether or not the system is inhibiting or enabling you to reach your goals. Our Health Check is designed to help you spot the opportunities for improvement so you can take your Salesforce implementation to the next level. We can Health Check a range of Salesforce products, including:
Sales Cloud
Service Cloud
Financial Services Cloud
Community Cloud
Revenue
Marketing Cloud
Pardot
Our focus on Financial Services gives us a unique perspective on how to leverage the Salesforce platform to be as efficient and productive as possible using the world’s leading CRM. Navirum offers a unique Salesforce Health Check which is tailored to Financial Services clients including an analysis of the following:
Security and access: Ensuring access is only limited to verified users is paramount in today’s world with so many staff working remotely. We can advise on how to firm up your security policy and implement basic techniques like two-factor authentication to limit access
Data privacy and regulations: If you are concerned about Salesforce and data privacy standards like PCI, HIPAA, and GDPR, we can guide you on how to align your Salesforce instance with these unique regulations.
Internal data sharing: Worried about internal data sharing? We can advise on ‘who sees what’ and make recommendations to implementation structures like Chinese Walls using Salesforce
Alignment with financial services best practice: Are you using Salesforce in alignment with other Financial Services firms? Our Health Check process allows us to benchmark your Salesforce implementation with a variety of sub-verticals e.g. Wealth Management, Insurance, Banking, Fintech, Lending, Private Equity, and many more.
Review Salesforce configurations, customizations, and code: We will take an in-depth look at your customizations and, if needed, will make recommendations for improvement and optimization.
Current usage versus allowable Salesforce limits: We will benchmark your current usage e.g. data storage, the number of custom objects versus limits, etc. This will allow us to answer many common questions. Are we maximizing our investment in Salesforce? Are we at risk of being hit with extra charges from Salesforce? When will it be time for us to upgrade?
Health Check Deliverables
As part of our Salesforce Health Check we deliver the following valuable assets, which can be used to guide the direction of your Salesforce journey:
Summary of areas to optimize and improve
Key risks and how to mitigate them
High-level Salesforce roadmap
Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help you take your business to the next level!
Understand your business goals: The Salesforce CRM offers a huge amount of functionality. It’s really important to understand what your business goals are so these can be aligned with specific functionality in Salesforce. For example, a business goal might be to grow your business by 30%. This can be aligned with growth functionality in Lead and Opportunity Management in Salesforce. Another goal could be to increase customer satisfaction by 20%, which can be aligned with customer service functionality in Salesforce Case and Account Management.
Get stakeholder involvement: Be sure to get a range of people across your company involved in the project. ACT! has been around for a while. For many of the ACT! migrations we have helped with, customers have had the system in a business for 15-20 years. Bringing multiple stakeholders e.g. from sales, customer service, management, etc, is a great way to get a broader understanding of your requirements and will help improve user adoption through a wider company-wide contribution.
Sharing ACT! access: As ACT! runs on traditional servers, sharing access with external consultants can be a challenge for many reasons. This shouldn’t put you off migrating. We recommend you share screenshots of the objects to be migrated including the subtabs in scope. Also, export data samples into excel spreadsheets and sharing these with the implementation team. Check procedures with your legal counsel before sharing customer data. Signing NDAs, encrypting data, etc is the norm for these types of projects.
Get ready for a different data model: Although there are similarities between the ACT! and the Salesforce data model, there are differences. It’s important to map the data model and fields from ACT! to Salesforce at the start of the project as part of the design phase. This will allow you to bring over some of the key fields you want to retain from ACT! as well as ensuring your data is imported as efficiently as possible.
Focus on the benefits of Salesforce not ACT!: When migrating many customers want to bring some of the old ACT! functionality with them. It’s normal to bring some, including objects and fields, as mentioned above. Outside of the data model specific to your business, the vast majority of ACT! functionality already exists in Salesforce. Try to match the functionality during the migration but stay focused on the benefits of Salesforce as this is where the long-term value will be for your company.
Prioritize training: Moving from ACT! to Salesforce is not just a technology project, it’s an exercise in change management. Many habits, behaviors, and informal processes more than likely surround ACT! in your business. It’s really important to invest in training your staff on Salesforce using classroom-based training, as well as using other channels like Trailhead, which is an amazing free online learning platform that can be customized around each users learning need. This will help create a healthy system adoption and ensure you get off to possible start using Salesforce!
Get in touch with us today to learn more about how we can help you take your business to the next level!
navirum_admin6 Tips for Migrating from ACT! to Salesforce
