Salesforce Implementation Checklist: 9 Steps to Success

Through it all, Salesforce continues to remain one of the largest players and one of the best platforms in the market. But we all know that it's an extremely complex platform with plenty of depth- and finding the best implementation for your company can be difficult.

So, you find yourself here after making the great decision to use Salesforce to fulfil your business needs and extract the greatest value from your data and processes. But the out-of-the-box configuration will rarely serve all of your unique requirements. A Salesforce implementation will get you and your users started using a platform that is tailored to your business. And the difference a well-planned implementation can make is well worth the resources you put toward its design.

We've put together a comprehensive, downloadable 9-step checklist that will help guide you down the right path with your Salesforce implementation. Whether you choose to hire a consultancy like DB Services or go it alone, these steps will help to ensure you have a successful implementation.

Step 1. Build Your Team

At the onset of any project, it is important to identify all of the relevant people who will have a stake in the outcome. Whether it is literal stakeholders with a vested interest or an end-user who will be interacting with the system, their input, needs, and feedback will be vital to consider at various points during the project. To assist with this task, define important roles or responsibilities that certain people can fulfil in your project team.

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Step 2. Define Your Vision and Metrics for Success

The dream team you have now assembled will allow you to discuss and outline the high-level goals of the project and determine what a successful implementation looks like.

Step 3. Gather and Prioritize Requirements

With your goals and metrics now defined, you may begin gathering requirements from your stakeholders. Requirements should be specific regarding the functionality that the system should possess to achieve the goals from the previous section.

Step 4. Establish the Project Timeline

When creating the project timeline, you will be responsible for first identifying key dates and dependencies to consider over the project lifetime.

Step 5. Start Building!

Now with all that preparation out of the way, you may finally begin building out your dream system. As with each of the previous steps in this guide, you may choose to complete this yourself or hire a consultant to handle the heavy lifting.

Step 6. Testing, Demos, and Feedback

If in your project timeline you outlined recurring progress meetings, these will be important dates to consider when compiling enhancements that you want to test and demo to get feedback from stakeholders.

Step 7. Prepare for Go-Live

The building has been completed and Go-Live is now in sight! In anticipation of this important event, taking proper steps to facilitate the transition will prove very helpful.

Check out another amazing blog by DB Services here: Salesforce Winter '22 Release Highlights

Step 8. Go-Live

The day of reckoning is nigh and all your hard work is about to be shown for all to see. Not to worry though, you had been preparing in the weeks and months leading up to now that will ensure a smooth deployment.

Step 9. Post Go-Live

Congratulations on your successful deployment! You have reached the goals that were outlined at the beginning of the project and all of your users are now on the platform.

For more details and instructions, download the full Salesforce Implementation Checklist.

System maintenance will be critical to getting the most out of your org as time goes on. With 3 yearly updates that Salesforce releases which include valuable new tools and product changes, you will want to keep up with the latest and greatest improvements. We highly recommend determining a check-in cadence with your Salesforce Consultant or partner if you have one to continuously update and improve your system.

Feel Great About Your Implementation

After completing all the steps, building, testing, training, deployment, and beyond, you can certainly feel great that your Salesforce org was incepted with the utmost care and consideration. It will provide a steady and scalable framework that will provide the greatest value for your business for years to come.

If you are interested in crafting your best Salesforce implementation or if you have any other Salesforce needs, contact us at DB Services and let's discuss what we can accomplish together!