As Salesforce Administrators, you solve business challenges for your organizations. You make processes more efficient by automating repetitive tasks. You provide meaningful insights using reports and dashboards. And in this work-from-anywhere world, you design mobile solutions to increase productivity and help your users. You also customize the Salesforce Platform to personalize the user experience. You use your business and technical skills to do all of this, driving success for your organizations every day.
But how do you measure this success? How do you communicate this value to your users and executives? In this blog post, we’ll discuss how you can use the FREE Salesforce Optimizer tool, located within Setup of your org, to measure and communicate your success. But first, let’s talk about WHY you need to measure the value you add to a company.
Your company is investing in Salesforce as a tool to drive business results. As a Salesforce Admin, you’re in the driver’s seat to ensure that Salesforce is being used to meet the needs of the business and drive successful results. Being able to show measurable improvements quantifies your contributions to driving that success. It also helps you get the support you need from your leadership team to drive the right projects and prioritization — and ultimately, add value to the business.
Salesforce can be a black box for many people in your business who are not users. As a Salesforce Admin, you’re the subject matter expert on all things Salesforce, the go-to person who knows how to get the most value from your company’s investment in Salesforce. This value increases the more your users adopt key features and capabilities within Salesforce. You might be asking yourself, “But how do we know who is using what features?” Well, within Salesforce, the Optimizer tool provides these kinds of insights, so you’ll know exactly where to focus your efforts when it comes to adoption. Perhaps certain users aren’t logging in at all, or there’s a set of users who are inactive on Chatter. Optimizer will show you these types of things, and allow you to take steps to improve user adoption.
Optimizer also provides insights on how to drive the performance, productivity, and maintenance of your Salesforce org. This allows you to make changes based on the recommendations provided. It also gives you an opportunity to reach out to your users and executives to let them know of any improvements you’re making to correct issues. For example, fixing the number of components on a Lightning page may show noticeable improvements in page load performance for users. Or, checking field usage and removing unused fields will help declutter the user experience and increase productivity.
Any improvements that you make based on recommendations from the Optimizer report will make the user experience more efficient and productive. In other words, it can make everyone’s working life just a little easier — and who doesn’t want that?
Every time you run the Optimizer report, you gain insight into issues affecting your org. Some issues are more critical than others and marked as such. By taking timely and appropriate actions to fix those issues, they will no longer show up as ‘action required’ in the Optimizer report. This demonstrates the progress you’ve made in fixing those issues. By getting regular feedback from your users, you can also validate that the changes you are making are indeed working for them.
There are many other areas where Optimizer can help, for example, with security and org limits. As a Salesforce Admin, Optimizer can help you take proactive steps that your future self (and your company!) will thank you for. By being on top of important issues pertaining to your Salesforce org, you’ll ensure your org runs smoothly and securely — and possibly prevent a last-minute crisis. Regular reporting and communication with your execs on the timely actions of issues will demonstrate the value you add in running the business efficiently.
One particular time when Optimizer is especially helpful is when you move into a new Salesforce Admin role. While new opportunities may be exciting, they also bring many unknowns and challenges. The good news is that you have Optimizer as a tool — your “career assistant” — to help you get up to speed quickly. When you take over a new Salesforce org, the first thing you should do is access the Optimizer report. It provides immediate insights so you can start adding value from day one. First and foremost, you should always prioritize any issues related to org security or org limits that may pose an immediate risk. After this, you can then move on to other recommendations, like improving user experience and usage. Over time, as you continue to use Optimizer to stay informed about your org, you’ll continue to add value, make an impact, and grow as a Salesforce Admin.
There are many ways you can drive success and add value to a company as a Salesforce Admin. Optimizer is not just a great tool to help you stay on top of all the important things happening in your Salesforce org — it’s also an incredibly powerful tool to help showcase all the amazing work you’re doing as a Salesforce Admin.
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