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““The bigger and more successful Salesforce becomes, the more we'll invest in our public schools, the more we will invest in homeless, the more we will invest in public hospitals, the more we will invest into NGOs. “ – Quote by Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce CRM.
The Nonprofit Success Pack (NPSP) is the right tool for NGOs with out-of-the-box capabilities and holistic insight into your relationships with various stakeholders. A free and open tool, it is the ideal Constituent Relationship Management system for NGOs of all hues. In this blog, we look at how the pack should be incorporated in stages/phases of the NGO’s already existing Salesforce edition/instance. Employing a Salesforce Consultant is the ideal way to go for any NGO.
How to proceed in a phased manner?
Begin with a goal. The first step in any plan/project is to identify its end goal/objectives. Everything must happen for a purpose. After identifying the goal(s), the concerned team can also jot down the goals for each phase of the implementation. With this approach, the company team and the Salesforce Consultant/implementation partner can gauge along the journey whether a requested piece of functionality was supportive of the goal by determining if it was on the critical path.
Have a process. Once the plan has been cast in stone by the concerned stakeholders, the next step is to have a process put in place. The process includes usage of best practices, such as different Salesforce environments, or sandboxes, for development, testing phase, and integration. Tech tools monitor every novel deployment to a staging environment. Best practices are used by the Salesforce Consultant. They enable the spotting of future issues at the beginning of the implementation and holistically test the new functionality with the current Salesforce processes & integrations.
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Details in a phased manner. Developers from the Salesforce Consultant and project managers can become familiar with the issues and concerns of varied stakeholders as they come to the stages where they need to be addressed. At the planning of every stage, the Salesforce Consultant/implementation partner engages with all based upon which they make additional design changes, etc.
Break up the project into small components. The project work should be divided into small sections which can be finished, tested, and deployed. While the vendor is customizing NPSP, the Salesforce Consultant team is meant to test the deployment and give constructive feedback on improvements that ought to be done. Everything is manageable and stress-free. Attention to detail is possible and timelines set adhered to. This all ensures that the users are already familiar with the functions & features of the software and not overwhelmed, leading to rejection or low user.
Practice and testing. Keep testing the deployment at various stages and get feedback to the Salesforce Consultant to make corrections.
Any Salesforce tool deployment is a serious affair and needs due diligence by all concerned especially the Salesforce Consultant. A phased approach is the right way to go about doing so. Every phase of the project depends upon the successes of the previous phase, so get it right and get it aced.
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About the Author
Anand Sharma
Anand is a Salesforce Evangelist, joined the Salesforce ecosystem in 2014 helping customers to be successful with Salesforce, and joined Codleo to share the goodness with even more developers all around the world. He is based in New Delhi, with his wife, and he tries to escape summers every chance he gets.
