8 effective ways to spend your EOY Salesforce budget

Use it or lose it: 8 effective ways to spend your EOY Salesforce budget

It’s not uncommon for an organization to find itself in the very fortunate position of having some IT budget left over at the end of the year and what better way to invest that money than in the world’s #1 CRM, your Salesforce. After all, what you don’t spend this year, you may well lose next year!

Based on our work with several clients, here are a few options for putting that money to work right now that won’t take much effort or stakeholder corralling on your part. Take a look at our 8 suggestions for investing your budget in the most impactful way.

1. Refresh your dashboards

If you have been relying on the same format of BI for over a year, then now is a good time to review whether or not you are getting the data you actually need day to day. KPIs get updated, people move on, product lines are launched, and the way you report revenue changes. A dashboard refresh will be invaluable.

2. Update your Salesforce sales process to fit your actual sales process

A lot changed over in 2020 and 2021, and we saw many businesses change their sales processes to accommodate a new virtual environment. Not all of them updated Salesforce to match their processes, however. If you are one of those businesses trying to retrofit new ways into old workflows, then now is a great time to make those updates. Your 2022 self will thank you.

3. Tighten up a service delivery process that works in an online-first world

Same as above, but delivery. Remember the colleagues that used to sit near you in the office? Well, that’s probably one more thing that we can add to the ‘changed forever’ list. Teams need to collaborate online now to deliver the success customers expect, and there are a whole host of excellent apps and accelerators you can implement right away to support you. In fact, with Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack, there has never been a better time to tighten up and streamline your service delivery on Salesforce.

4. Clean up that data (now everyone has moved jobs)

However you experienced the Great Resignation, the fact is that there’s a whole lot of CRM data out there that is no longer current. If you thought that this would be a hefty manual effort, then think again: there are some smart ways you can clean up that data quickly, and you can get back to trusting Salesforce again.

5. Train your team and boost adoption

It’s really easy to see who is using Salesforce in your organization. The hard part is getting everyone to use Salesforce. There is one tried and tested way that works every time - training. People need to understand Salesforce, not only how to use it, but importantly how it will benefit them. That is what a good trainer will do for your team. Better adoption = better ROI; this is something you can do right now to make a positive impact.

6. Use all of your licenses ahead of your renewal date in January.

Did you allocate every one of your Salesforce licenses to a user this year? If you didn’t, you left money on the table. Whatever the blocker, we can help you make sure that each of those licenses is being put to good use. It’s not just ‘use it or lose it’ with budgets; it can be the same for licenses too.

7. Audit your current Salesforce setup

If you are looking for the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card, this is it. Just grant access, sit back and let the Salesforce partner do the heavy lifting. Typically your partner will focus on key areas, such as Lead Management, Sales Management, Sales Process, Customer Services, and Security & Setup, but of course, you can mix and match as you will. The end output will be both an internal Salesforce checklist and an excellent wishlist for the year ahead.

8. Roadmap, plans, and projections for the coming year

An audit and a roadmapping session go together like mac and cheese, Cagney and Lacey, gin and tonic, we could go on, but you get the idea. Once you’ve had an audit, then it’s a great time to use the resulting report to springboard a roadmapping session with an expert partner. They can gently guide you away from the dead ends and get you motoring to greatness.

That’s eight ways that you can spend that remaining budget before the end of the financial year. Of course, this is not exhaustive, and there’s a bunch of other Salesforce improvements you can move on very quickly that will make your world a better place. If you would like to know more about any of these options, just get in touch with us right away, and let’s see how we can help before the year is out!