Implementation Project – Case Study/Scenario – Jim’s Solutions, LLC

This will be the first in a series: “Implementation Project – Case Studies/Scenarios”! We get asked a lot about if we can send over some case studies or a project scenario that folks can use to practice implementing Salesforce. Well here is the first one! The rules are as follows:

1. You act as the Salesforce Implementor.
2. We will give you:
   1. The description of a company
   2. Their current system overview
   3. Their requirements
   4. A list of pain points
3. You will create:
   1. A Statement of Work, outlining your proposal for the discovery and design phase of the project. Don’t worry about actual pricing to the customer. Make it whatever you think is appropriate for you! Make it in Word or Excel or the google docs or powerpoint! Maybe even in a diagram app!
   2. A requirements document, containing a *current* System Diagram and an organized summation of their requirements. Sometimes this can be a regurgitation of what the customer gives you but, make sure to clarify things that are not clear and, if needed, organize the requirements in a more logical flow of document organization.
   3. A Salesforce Solution Design Document, including a new system diagram, and process flow diagram
   4. Another Statement of Work, outlining your proposal for the implementation, testing, and go-live phases of the project. Again, don’t worry about pricing! 🙂
   5. A developer sandbox containing the implemented solution
   6. A spreadsheet of test scripts outlining testing steps to make sure the system works as designed
   7. Admin documentation containing information regarding any updates they’ll need to make moving forward (ie. product/pricing, new approvals, new discounts, etc.)
   8. User documentation containing a “how-to” for their sales team that describes how to use their new solution
   9. A list of potential new work for this customer that you can inquire about while doing the project for the customer

All of the things you create can be kept as part of your portfolio and included in a resume. Sound good? Good! We start off with a company who implements Salesforce! This will be a simple one to start with and we will get more complex as we do more scenarios.

Project Scenario – Jim’s Solutions, LLC

Jim’s Solutions is a new and small Salesforce business. It’s one guy (Jim) implementing Salesforce for other small businesses in his area. He started this business because his neighbor heard he was the only local person doing Salesforce work. The neighbor asked him to make a few updates to their system. He signed up for a free trial org so he could keep track of what he’s doing for his neighbor and also to keep track of potential new businesses. But he doesn’t have any time to build anything out in his org. That’s where YOU come in!

Current System

Right now, Jim has a trial org but that’s it. He has a spreadsheet where he’s been saving information about his neighbor’s company and details on what they need. In an effort to get his name out there, he’s canvassed local businesses in his area, talking to people about how they use Salesforce, if at all. He’s recorded some information about these local businesses in the spreadsheet too. He’s also had to do a ballpark estimate for his neighbor, which is, you guessed it, in the spreadsheet.

Requirements

Potential Customers

Jim wants to be able to record information about businesses he talks to and gets referred to during his networking activities around town, preferably, while on his phone, but that’s not super necessary. An important piece of information is the types of businesses. In town there are mostly restaurants, toy stores, snack places, and hair salons. There are also a few family fun places just outside of town, like a trampoline park, a roller rink, a go cart venue, and a multi-activity arcade (this is a national chain). He’d like to be able to record all of this in his Salesforce org.

The system will need to be configured to send email messages to the businesses he has visited. Some of the things he wants to keep track of: the date he visited the business, the last time he contacted the business, and some information on what kind of salesforce org they have, license type, how many licenses, etc. The last time he contacted the business should automatically update with today’s date when he sends an email to them from Salesforce.

He also will need the system to automatically create accounts for customers that feel ready to take the next step as well as record any potential business they want to do with him.

Customers

When the system does create a new account, Jim wants an account number to be auto-generated and stored on the account. That way, he can have an account number put on all communications to his customers (emails, any documentation, etc) so it will be easy to identify his customers when they call. He can just ask, “What’s your account number?” The account number generation will be smart where the number should be the date they became a customer, the first three letters of their business name and an auto incremented number (ex: 20230327-JIM-0001).

Potential Business

There will need to be a place to store potential business Jim might do with a given customer. He wants to record what type of work they might want him to do, how many hours he might spend to do the work, and a price per hour. The types of things he might do revolve around Salesforce work, like, General Salesforce training, report/dashboard building, sales cloud configuration, general security administration (profiles, users, permissions, etc), and automation configuration. Right now, he charges 150 an hour for everything, but would like to expand his pricing to be different based on the type of work.

When a customer hires him, he’d like to flag the respective business record as closed and that he won the business. If a customer decides against his proposal, he’d like to flag the respective business record as closed but that he lost the business. He also wants to have a few stages to reflect where a certain potential business exists in his sales process. So stages like, prospect, engaged, proposal, contracting, and then the closed stages.

Reporting

Jim wants reports. And a dashboard to show him things. He’d like to see how many new businesses he visited each week for the last rolling 2 months with a bar graph, if that’s possible. He’d also like to see how many deals he’s won month by month for the last year. Another report is showing monthly closed amount for the last year. And lastly, a report that shows revenue for this month so far.