How to Become a Certified Salesforce Admin?
Introduction – What Is The Certification About?
The Salesforce ADM 201, or the Salesforce Administrator Certification, is the basic level of qualification for professionals who are involved in and have experience in the application of Salesforce in their organization. Salesforce systems help to manage CRM (Customer Relationship Management) through marketing and management.
This certification is offered by Salesforce.com, a cloud computing company based in San Francisco, California.
Ace Salesforce ADM-201 certification exam in your 1st attempt with our Salesforce Administration Certification course.
The Salesforce Administrator credential is useful for a wide array of applications, functionality, and features, and is specially designed for maintaining the Salesforce implementations. This certification course offers professionals an alternative in terms of management options and administration strategies across sales, collaboration clouds, and services. The Salesforce Administrator credential is useful for a wide array of applications, functionality, and features, and is specially designed for maintaining the Salesforce implementations. This certification course offers professionals an alternative in terms of management options and administration strategies across sales, collaboration clouds, and services.
The Salesforce training sale helps professionals get a better grasp of the Salesforce platform and optimize their usage and efficiency. Salesforce systems help organizations automate sales and Salesforce management functions. Other important aspects covered by Salesforce Automation system might include; sales forecasting, order management, and product knowledge.
These applications, when used with the right amount of training and understanding, can help you leverage available services a lot more effectively.
What Do Salesforce Administrators Do?
At the most basic level, Salesforce Administrators are professionals expected to have a broad knowledge of Salesforce applications, who help configure and manage Sales and Service Cloud applications. They also suggest ways for the organization to gain more from added features and capabilities.
Why Get Certified?
No matter the amount of professional experience you have gained in the Salesforce domain, a certification is bound to improve your proficiency with it. It provides you with essential information that helps you get acquainted with parts of the platform, which you may not be as knowledgeable on.
So, ideally, Salesforce experts who are involved in managing users, data and security, maintaining and customizing Sales Cloud and Service Cloud applications, and building reports, dashboards, and workflow, are professionals who would benefit from the certification.
Some of the key areas covered by the certification in which candidates are expected to have a strong grounding are:
- Sharing
- Role Hierarchy
- Reports and Dashboards
- Native CRM functionality – briefing and defining on Opportunities, Leads, Accounts, etc.
- Difference between standardized and customized objects
- Capabilities of Chatter
- User Configuration
- Validation Rules
- Data Loader
- Page Layouts
- Record Types
What makes this certification sought-after is the overall administrative edge, the easy availability of hands-on training that this course guarantees, as well as the career benefits on offer: the demand for Certified Salesforce professionals has risen 159% since the year 2008, and a professional with the Salesforce Admin certification can expect to take home $112,000+ salaries.
It’s no wonder, then, that this certification serves as a stamp of approval and as recognition of a professional's dedication, commitment, integrity, excellence, and efficiency in the workplace. Potential employers no doubt give precedence to candidates with this credential, and it acts as a major positive on a candidate's resume.
The Accreditation Body
The certification is recognized by the Salesforce University Training and Certification. Beginning life as part of the Salesforce customer success platform, the core mantra driving its growth is ‘Training is the basic platform to drive customer success.’
From small firms to large ones, both businesses and professionals armed with Salesforce expertise have noted an exponential rise in the prospects for success and efficiency levels. Studies indicate that the return on training related investment is significantly higher in the case of the Salesforce certification.
Eligibility For The Certification
As the name indicates, you need to be an administrative professional to acquire this certification. If user management and security comprise your core functionalities and involve Sales and Service Cloud features with reasonable workflow experience, then this is the ideal certification to take you to the next level of Administrative service.
The Advanced Administrator exam follows the basic Admin Certification and is aimed at further boosting your expertise in dealing with complex functionalities in the given field of employment. The Certified Administrator or Advanced Administrator certification from Salesforce are aimed at achieving these superior efficiency levels. In terms of formal degrees, candidates must possess:
- A Degree in BBA, or;
- A BCA, MCA, or;
- An MBA
These are the basic requirements. A clear grasp of the basic Salesforce concepts is the other major pre-requisite. Navigating Salesforce and working knowledge of the sales cloud are welcome additions but aren't compulsory to apply for the certification.
Essentially, this makes the certification a perfect choice for anybody in this field, from system administrators to IT managers. Some roles that would benefit greatly from this Certification include:
- Developers
- System administrators
- Architects
- Sales operations professionals
Process To Get Certified
The certification process is fairly simple.
Submission of an application constitutes the first step in the overall certification procedure. If you are an eligible candidate and are keen to improve your repertoire of administrative functionalities, log onto www.salesforce.com after completing your training schedule to register for the exams.
Level 1 of this certification involves taking the Salesforce ADM 201 exam. Registration for the exam may be done via the Salesforce website.
You can log onto http://certification.salesforce.com/ for detailed information on the sample questions, study patterns, and crucial information that can enable candidates to put their best foot forward when taking the exam. The cost for the Admin Certification Exam is $200, and candidates need to pay the fee directly via the Salesforce website without involving any middlemen in the process.
Choosing The Right Training Partner
Of course, a key link in this chain is choosing the right training partner.
Simplilearn, with its global network, commendable international presence, and a trainer base of over 2000 professionals sets itself apart as an outstanding means of achieving success. A trusted name among a wide cross-section of Fortune 500 companies, Simplilearn is known for its strong training legacy and has many years of experience in helping professionals turn their careers around.
Recognized, approved, and accredited by many global academic majors like the Project Management Institute of USA, APMG, CFA Institute, GARP, ASTQB and IIBA, Simplilearn is an administrative professional’s dream destination to pursue training for this certification.
The training modules are framed in a way that helps candidates optimize the time spent in training. The 36-hour live instructor-led training with 98.6% pass rate makes this training indispensable.
Planning for a career in Salesforce? Examination Structure
The Certification exam for Salesforce aims to assess a candidate’s skills and knowledge in this field and those related to the objectives of the Administrative job layout. Having hands-on experience is very important to gain the Salesforce credential.
Salient features of the exam format and structure are as follows:
- Registration fee: $200
- 60 multiple-choice questions
- The duration of the exam: 90 minutes
- Passing score: 65%
- Candidates cannot refer to any reference material, either hard copy or online during the exam
- Language options include English, French, German, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese
What If You Fail To Pass In One Go?
If, or one reason or another, a candidate fails the exam the first time around, a retake fee of $100 needs to be submitted to be able to appear for the Salesforce Admin Certification a second time.
Career Growth And Roles Post Certification
On average, administrators with the Salesforce certification earn around $78,000 compared to peers without this credential.
Efficient processing ability, innovative application, and excellent response times to customer requests constitute the highlights of performance in professionals who are Salesforce Admin certified. Some jobs relating to Salesforce, and roles that can benefit from a Salesforce certification, include Salesforce Cloud Architect, Salesforce Developer, Salesforce Business Analyst, and Senior Architect Manager. Here’s a salary chart for different Salesforce related jobs, from indeed.com.
Post Examination Requirement
Upon successful completion of the certification training and clearing the exam, candidates need to appear for release-specific Salesforce Certified Administrator exams to maintain them. Normally, these Salesforce release exams are published thrice a year in each of the major products.
After a few years, candidates are also charged a $100 maintenance and registration fee for every third maintenance exam.
While we have thus briefed you on the certification path and what the journey might look like, you might be apprehensive about how the certification will be a value-add that is directly proportional to the growth in your career graph. In the article, ‘How A Salesforce Certification Can Accelerate Your Career’, we discuss more on how the certification can aid a career boost.
Here’s a video that introduces the Salesforce certification and offers an overview of the certification process.
Are you already Salesforce Admin certified or on your certification journey? Please do share your insights and experiences in the comments section below. We would love to learn and benefit from your stories, as well!
