In a recent webinar, Simplus clients explained how their managed services partnerships allow them to get more from their Salesforce implementation than they ever have, giving them a competitive edge in today’s challenging business environment.
If there’s a common theme in business of late, it’s around doing more with less. Leaders are being asked to develop operational flexibility and ensure they have the right expertise on board, while also dealing with economic uncertainty, hiring freezes and skills shortages.
That rings true whether in the private sector or government, says Jessica Griffin-Achmad, Regulation Manager at the Department of Treasury and Finance Victoria.
“We’re effectively a very small regulator – about 14 people who are regulating community housing, the delivery of housing services for low-income Victorians across the state. That means we are trying to do a lot with a very small team,” Griffin-Achmad said during the Small Teams, Big Dreams webinar, which discussed the ways businesses can use managed services to overcome resourcing challenges and boost their performance around strategic objectives.
Managed services as an extension of the IT team
As Griffin-Achmad’s team has limited IT expertise, but is armed with a bespoke Salesforce system to manage processes and decisions, the challenge has been making changes to that system to continually improve and streamline workflows.
Before her team moved to a managed services solution, Griffin-Achmad said, changes were slow and potentially not made in the most beneficial way. Now, the team is “agile and responsive”.
“We weren’t getting the efficiency and productivity that we could or should have been getting from the system,” she said.
Griffin-Achmad and her team worked with Simplus to upgrade their Salesforce system to Lightning. Since then, they have continued the managed services relationship.
“We’ve tended to use it for those micro projects and developments … so that we can make changes to the business and its processes, and support those process changes with system improvements,” she said.
Such improvements have included:
- the automation of previously manual, time-consuming processes
- automatic checks for essential documents
- ensuring all relevant information is in front of staff members who need it
- automating notices for when items expire or require updating
“We’ve had many conversations [with Simplus] about what we’re hoping to do, what that looks like, and how we can best use managed services to achieve those goals,” Griffin-Achmad said.
“We’ve been very well supported and have been given really good guidance for what is achievable, where we should be putting our attention and energy, and where we can best use our resources.”
Managed services that scale with your needs
How does a business know how many hours per month might be required for the managed services process? How does an organisation communicate its precise needs to a managed services partner? And what happens if the business requires extra work, every so often?
When businesses are being asked to be flexible by their leaders, it’s only right that Simplus assists them in that goal, said Mohit Bajaj, Managed Services Director at Simplus.
“Gone are the days where you have a managed services agreement which is fixed and won’t allow you to move with shifting priorities,” Bajaj said. “Our managed services team allows organisations to extend the capabilities and capacity of internal teams and gives them access to Salesforce expertise and talent.”
This offers teams the “space and the bandwidth to focus on strategic activities, while having the confidence and the backing of experts,” he said.
“It’s a service that evolves with the business’s needs, especially our flex utilisation model. Under this model, additional resources can be increased to handle spikes in demand.”
“We can flex in near real-time … This allows all of our customers to respond quickly, for now and the future.”
Ensuring the managed services team is up to speed around what the client business needs is all about relationships, Griffin-Achmad said.
“Good working relationships at all levels always makes it a pleasure to work with the team,” she said. “Part of that is the relationship, but also the understanding.”
“The managed services team has taken the time to understand the needs of our business. And within the business we have taken the time to really distil what it is that we are trying to achieve over different time periods.
“That has helped our relationship because we’ve had clarity of where we’re looking to go. And then we’re having these really productive conversations about how we can be supported and how we can best achieve those goals.”
The outcome: “Zero blind spots”
Anand Banerjee, Enterprise Digital Program Director with not-for-profit health fund HCF, agrees success is all about the relationship.
“You have to help them [the managed services team] to help yourself,” Banerjee said. “So, you make sure the support team is provided with enough information and support that they understand your system, your processes, your organisation, and become self sufficient.”
Banerjee utilises Simplus managed services to build scale, always with value in mind.
“One of the strategic objectives of our organisation is how we can drive affordability when it comes to health care,” he said.
One of the most important strategic objectives in driving affordability is constantly increasing the efficiency of over 700 frontline staff in contact centres and branches, as well as around 300 back-office staff.
This goal has, at its centre, the Salesforce CRM platform used in call centres and branches, on the brand’s digital channels, and throughout the business.
“Our frontline staff are able to know our members better, so anything that is done [by members] on the web channel or the digital mobile channel is known to the frontline staff,” he said.
“This platform, the Salesforce CRM platform, plays a central role in serving the entire business need. This provides near zero blind spots when it comes to interacting with our customers.”
When staff know members and prospects better, they can be more efficient, Banerjee said. That, in turn, helps the business achieve the strategic goal of affordability.
Solving the cyber challenge
With cyber security very much in focus, the relationship with the managed services team goes beyond efficiency and affordability and becomes about privacy, security and trust, Banerjee said.
“Cybersecurity is the number one priority for everyone,” he said. “Working with managed services does make this a bit simpler for us.”
“We have an in-house cybersecurity department. There’s a continuous review and based on that there are action items that need to be worked upon. You require dedicated time to implement those in any platform, including Salesforce.”
The managed services team, Banerjee says, provides HCF with the guidance required to conduct the essential enhancements and changes quickly, efficiently and safely.
Working with Simplus, Griffin-Achmad said, “has opened up the way we can think about process improvements in our business”.
“I’m always wary of saying a system is going to be the solution for a process problem,” she said. “But what it does is open up our opportunities. It lets us know what we can do.”
Find out more – watch the webinar
For more information about managed services, including how relationships and agreements work and where the real value comes from, watch the webinar HERE.
