Salesforce admins are the heart and soul of the Salesforce community, blazing new trails everywhere they go and fostering a culture of innovation at their respective companies. For those of us who have spent a lot of time with AppExchange, we know that Salesforce admins are also a huge reason that the marketplace now has more than 3,000 apps, 300 Lightning ready apps, and 4 million app installs.
But for many admins who have been a part of the Salesforce ecosystem since the birth of AppExchange or earlier, becoming a Salesforce admin was a twist of fate, or, in some cases, an “accident” that evolved into a career. Here are five such stories of Salesforce admins, and a go-to AppExchange app that has helped lead to success for each. And for more game-changing stories of admins, be sure to download our latest ebook, 25 Salesforce Admins Share Their App Secrets to Success.
Denise’s story: Denise Carbone has built an entire career around Salesforce. In 2004, as a sales marketing coordinator and business analyst, she was told: “You’re going to own Salesforce.” She worked in the ecosystem before AppExchange existed. Since its launch, she says it has been “a benefit for a lot of things,” and always recommends apps to her clients.
Denise’s recommended app: “DocuSign is a big one for getting contracts signed. It’s globally known and respected, and it’s used in a lot of industries. We’ve used it and other apps for our challenges.”
Listen to Denise tell her story:
Kristi’s story: Kristi became the Salesforce admin of a 50-person company 10 years ago when she started asking questions about processes and page layouts. Her first exposure to AppExchange came from a package of dashboards and reports for service. Early on, AppExchange proved a great starting point for someone just learning the ropes. She went on to get certified as an admin, and even later to join an App Innovation Partner.
Kristi’s recommended app: “Enabler4Excel has been pivotal to me to work in Excel and sync data. I was introduced to it in my last job, and it’s really been helpful for me to pull a report of accounts, push those accounts in, get a return of the new IDs, and then pull up the contacts and VLOOKUP to get the new account IDs.”
Listen to Kristi tell her story:
Amber’s story: Amber Boaz ran customer service for a startup eight years ago that implemented Service Cloud. She was in charge of implementation, eventually moving up to manage all of Salesforce at her company. Her first experience with AppExchange came through Salesforce Adoption Dashboards to learn more about usage, leads, and contacts. “It was great to just install an app and have it do its magic. The CEO thought it was the neatest thing since sliced bread. He thought I had built it, and I didn’t tell him otherwise.”
Amber’s recommended app: “TaskRay is great for very visual project management. I can move the task from ‘to-do’ to ‘in progress’ and I don’t have to tell anybody I did that. They can just go look. You don’t need that conversation with your project manager to say ‘I worked on this and this today.’ It’s amazing, I love it. To reassign, simply drag their little Chatter image onto the task, and all of a sudden they own it. Magic.”
Listen to Amber tell her story with help from her mom:
Sharif’s story: Sharif Shaalan started out as a Salesforce user 12 years ago, then become a trainer, an admin, and even started his own consulting company. He first started using AppExchange as an admin. “I always used AppExchange first to help me do less work. If somebody else already built it, why am I going to build it?”
Sharif’s recommended app: “Snapshot by Dream Factory is a bit expensive, but it allows you to do a lot of comparisons and to move between orgs that you wouldn’t necessarily be able to do otherwise. It fits in perfectly for larger, enterprise companies.”
Susan’s story: Susan Bruch has spent the last 10 years evolving from a Salesforce user, to a junior admin, up to a senior admin, to now leading data strategy. She says her personality is that type where “If I can’t find the solution, I’m going to Google it and try to figure it out, which includes using the Salesforce community.” That’s how, eight years ago, she landed on AppExchange, when community members started directing her there as a way to address challenges such as generating a report without having to learn custom coding.
Susan’s recommended app: “Popup Alerts by Riptide lets you put a ‘sticky note’ on a user’s record. Let’s say you used to refer to your industry as financial services, but suddenly your leadership says ‘We want to break that into either banking or insurance.’ You could put a popup alert for any of the records that equal financial services. When the record owner is in those records, a popup an alert will say, ‘Hey, please update the industry.’”
Download our latest ebook, 25 Salesforce Admins Share Their App Secrets to Success, today to read more about admins and their app secrets.
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