Author: Atelier

Why did Xenogenix make the switch to FinancialForce?

Posted on February 26, 2020 by - Uncategorised

Our Principal Consultant, David Ryles, has recently been interviewed for an article on the Enterprise Times.

Xenogenix is a Salesforce Silver consulting partner that was a Sage Financials (Sage Live) partner and moved its allegiance to FinancialForce. 

The move comes shortly after Sage announced that it would close down Sage Financials at the end of 2020 or whenever the current subscription contracts expire. It ceased selling the product earlier in 2019.

Enterprise Times spoke to David Ryles, Principal Lead Consultant, Financials, Xenogenix about this announcement. ET asked Ryles why the Salesforce partner wanted to work with an ERP vendor in the first place.

Read more about Davids response and the rest of the article here:

https://www.enterprisetimes.co.uk/2020/02/25/sage-partners-defect-to-financialforce/

Finance On Salesforce

Posted on November 15, 2019 by - Uncategorised

We recently ran an online webinar to demonstrate the benefits of running finance on Salesforce. With our partner FinancialForce we looked in to the benefits and how managing finance on Salesforce improves customer experience and revenue growth. View our webinar here:

New Partnership – Financial Force

Posted on July 2, 2019 by - Xenogenix

Xenogenix are pleased to announce we have recently joined in a strategic partnership to implement FinancialForce products.

FinancialForce is an established and market leading financial app which allows customers to streamline, simplify, and automate financial operations on the Salesforce Platform. FinancialForce automatically gives you and your team a complete, customer-centric view of your business. Rapidly translate demand into new revenue models, run more predictable business operations, and increase customer lifetime value. Find out more about the FinancialForce products here.

Xenogenix have a unique team of financial consultants who all hold comprehensive knowledge of accounting fundamentals, relevant experience working with diverse businesses as well as Salesforce platform experience, both as users and certified consultants. This experience and knowledge allows them to professionally run the most complex of financial projects on Salesforce. Meet the team here.

Our team will be working with our customers to support them through the process of implementing the FinancialForce products alongside a current or new Salesforce Org. We provide flexible and tailored implementations based on requirements. Our SmartStart implementation is a comprehensive yet convenient packaged implementation for a simple org with a desire to get up and running quickly. We also offer a standard implementation service for more complex requirements. Find out more about our implementations here.

If you are interested in hearing more about FinancialForce and moving financial operations onto Salesforce, speak to your consultant, call us on 08456 525 625 or fill in this form.

SALESFORCE CRITICAL UPDATE – TURNING ON LIGHTNING EXPERIENCE

Posted on January 31, 2019 by - Release Information

In the recent Spring 2019 Salesforce release notes a critical update was announced which will affect many Salesforce Orgs. Starting in the Winter 2020 updates (October 2019) Salesforce will turn on Lightning Experience for all orgs with editions that support Lightning Experience. Our customers have been asking questions regarding this update so we thought it might be useful to provide you with and FAQ overview:

Why should I update to Lightning Experience?

The most important reason is that all future Salesforce innovations will be in Lightning, so you will need lightning to make the most of the latest CRM technology. The improved user interface Salesforce brings new features, increased productivity, faster deployments, and a seamless transition across desktop and mobile environments.

Which editions and users are affected by the update?  

This change applies to Group, Developer, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited editions for orgs that don’t yet have Lightning Experience turned on yet. All organisations with editions that support Lightning Experience will be affected by this critical update.

All users with the Lightning Experience User permission enabled are affected by this critical update. This includes all users with:

1. Standard profiles, which automatically include the Lightning Experience User permission by default

2. Custom profiles or permission sets that have the Lightning Experience User permission enabled by an admin.

What changes will users notice after this update?

In Salesforce Classic, users see two options to switch to Lightning Experience: a link to switch to Lightning Experience appears in the header and in the user profile menu. Every week, starting the Sunday after Lightning Experience is turned on, Lightning Experience enabled users working in Salesforce Classic are automatically switched to Lightning Experience when they log in. They see a welcome mat offering resources for learning more about the new interface. It is possible to change the frequency of the switch, exclude users from switching, or customise the welcome mat. After users have access to Lightning Experience, Salesforce begins encouraging Salesforce Classic users to start working in the new interface with in-app prompts. It is also possible to adjust or turn off these prompts.

Do I need to do anything? 

Yes! So that your users can benefit from everything Lightning has to offer it is important to prepare to transition. It is critical to understand how the features you use and the customisations you have made will perform in the new interface. It is also extremely important to prepare your users for the change. It may be a good idea to take control and turn on Lightning Experience for your users before this update is auto-activated, on your terms.

Is there anything that can help me transition? 

A great place to start is the Lightning modules on Trailhead. There is a great Getting Started with Lightning module that has some excellent information on rolling out Lightning.

The Lightning Migration Assistant has a load of tools put together to support your transition. This can enable you to see your org as it will look after migration and test out some of your business processes to see if they will work.

You can find the tools that automate and speed up transition on the Journey to Lightning Experience Learning Map. 

As always, Xenogenix consultants are available for support and assistance while migrating to Lightning, we have worked with many of our customers to ensure their migrations are as simple and their users are as confident as possible.

Our favourite features from Salesforce Winter ’19

Posted on September 12, 2018 by - Release Information

The latest Salesforce release, winter 19, is just round the corner. As always there are loads of great new features, so we asked one of our consultants, Danny Ross, to chose his favourite features. Here’s what Danny picked out:

Change Owner
Before, if I wanted to change a record owner, I would need to do them one by one, or go to Classic to do more than one record. Well now Salesforce have released the feature where this doesn’t have to happen now, going between Classic and Lightning, and now a user can change the owner of a Lead, Contact, Accounts or custom objects in one go. To make this work you simply select up to 200 records, then click Change Owner in the page-level action menu.

Change Owner button in more actions drop-down in page-level actions menu

Joined Reports available in Salesforce Lightning
Salesforce have now built in Joined reports into Lightning, now users can take advantage of Lightning Experience’s productivity-improving features like report run page filtering. Edit joined filters, groups (including cross-block groups), and columns with the Lightning report builder.

Editing a joined report (beta)
 
User Feedback when switching back to Classic
Some users are happy with their adoption to Salesforce lightning, but there are those who keep switching back to Classic. Now you can gain feedback from your users when they switch back to Classic, a form will appear and ask users for feedback. This feedback question can be edited, so you can gain specific answers to why users are flicking back to Classic.
Feedback form
 
Convert Actions and Buttons from Classic to Lightning
Is your company looking to move from Classic to Lightning, and you have a large amount of buttons and actions that you are dreading moving to Lightning. Well, Salesforce have made our lives a little easier with Lightning Experience Configuration Convertor. The latest Lightning Experience Configuration Converter feature does just that in a simple, easy to understand wizard. Select the objects and page layouts to work on, and Salesforce does the heavy moving. Easily move custom, standard, and global actions from the Quick Actions in the Salesforce Classic Publisher section of a page layout to the Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience Actions section. Also included the right mobile actions and move custom and standard buttons along the way.
 
How impactful has your email been? Has your email been opened?
You could only find this out if you had an email service provider that can provide this information, but now Salesforce has enabled users to see if their emails have been viewed, when it was viewed, and when was it lasted view by the end user.
Email tracking information
 
Email bounce backs
As a sales person, you may have prospects to reach out to with information about your product or service. Previously, it has never been clear if an email has bounced back due to an incorrect email address. Now with Salesforce, reps know which lead, contact, or person account has a bad email address, and they know which specific email wasn’t delivered.
Email bounce information
 

How to keep track of Salesforce maintenance projects

Posted on July 26, 2018 by - Project Management

As a busy Salesforce admin, your hands are full juggling update and change requests from across your company to help improve the efficiency of the platform – not to mention testing for each new Salesforce release.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had a way to manage all of your own projects?

With Cloud Coach Milestones, you can easily create projects for some of your most common Salesforce projects.

Project 1: Salesforce Release Testing

Salesforce has new releases three times per year. With each new release, you need to set aside time to review the release notes, attend release webinars, and test the new functionality in your sandbox. You may also need to test your existing processes and workflows to ensure that everything still works the way that you expect when the release is pushed into your production org.

With Cloud Coach Milestones, you can build a project with all of the readiness steps you need to prepare for a release. Then copy that project each time a new release is scheduled to ensure you’ve crossed every t and dotted every i.

 

Project 2: New App Integration

When your team asks to add new functionality to Salesforce, one of the first places you’re likely to look is the Salesforce AppExchange. In order to make the best product choice, you may need to review multiple options with your stakeholders to ensure that your selections meet their needs. Then you’ll have to install selected products in Sandbox, test configurations, and (for paid solutions) negotiate contract terms. To make sure you don’t forget any of the moving pieces, build a basic project plan in Cloud Coach Milestones. Any time you’re looking at a new app integration, copy the plan, add new tasks that are unique to the evaluation, and delete the ones you don’t need.

 

Project 3: New User Onboarding

As your company grows and changes, you need to add new users to your Salesforce org. With each new user, you need to consider their licenses, permission sets, and which applications they need. Plus, depending on how they’ll use Salesforce, you may also need to train them on your processes. In the same way that you’ve created template projects for Salesforce releases and new app integrations, you can create projects to help with new user onboarding. 

 

Of course, since Cloud Coach is native to Salesforce, you can also customize your projects so they work for you. You can add new fields, leverage processes, and more.

If you need any support with your Salesforce or project management contact us on 08456 525 625 or simply fill in your details here.

A pick of features from Salesforce Summer 18

Posted on June 13, 2018 by - Release Information

You may have noticed your org has recently updated to the latest Salesforce release – Summer ’18, if not, it will very soon. You will now see the bear taking a swim!

With pages of release notes we asked our consultants for a quick guide of useful features from this new release. 6 of the best are outlined here:

 

 

Encourage Users to Adopt Lightning Experience

You have a new way to amp up adoption without any additional setup. Users who have access to Lightning Experience are automatically switched from Salesforce Classic to Lightning Experience on a weekly basis. To ensure that users have the best onboarding experience, they see getting-started resources when they’re switched.

 

Get Insight into User Activities with the Lightning Usage App

Track adoption and usage of Lightning Experience. The Lightning Usage App includes charts for daily and monthly active users, number of users switching to Salesforce Classic, and more. These quantifiable measures help you understand your users’ experience and optimize your resources for training and other support.

Search the Object You Want Easily from Anywhere

When you want to search an object, cut the clutter, and see results only for what you’re searching for, from anywhere in the app. Choose any searchable object in the dropdown list next to the global search box. Enter your search term, and both instant results and full search results are limited to that object.

Save Time with Standard Synonym Groups

Synonym groups save users time by taking the guesswork out of entering the right search term. (Is it a hard hat, helmet, or brain bucket?) Now, Salesforce saves you time with standard synonym groups containing commonly associated terms, like file and document, or password and credentials. Standard synonyms are available for Salesforce Knowledge objects in all orgs.

Personalize the Navigation Bar in Less Time

We’ve made it easier for users to personalize their navigation in Lightning apps. Your users can get back to work in no time with an enhanced user interface. Or, users can simply drag items around the navigation bar to where they want them to quickly adjust the order.

See Field Dependencies While Editing a Record Details Page

It’s now easy to view and update all dependent and controlling fields when editing a picklist or checkbox on a Record Details page.

If you need any support with your Salesforce implementation contact us on 08456 525 625 or simply fill in your details here.

Top 6 Google Chrome Extensions for Salesforce

Posted on March 8, 2018 by - Salesforce Automation

There are now hundreds of different Google Chrome extensions which can be used to make your life easier when using Salesforce. Many of these extensions can save you time and increase your productivity so try a few out today. Here are some of our favourites as suggested by our team of consultants:

API Names
This small extension allows you to toggle between API field names and labels on your Salesforce details pages. Making finding out your API fields names as simple as the touch of a button.

 

Enhanced Formula Editor
This extension adds colour coding to your rich text editor and makes formulae building easier to digest. The great thing is it helps you to identify when/where errors are when constructing formulas.

 

Sandbox Favicon Extension
So you always know if you are working in sandbox or production. This extension adds an “S” to the standard Salesforce.com cloud favicon for all sandbox tabs in a Chrome window.

 

Salesforce Hotkeys
This great little feature adds keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) to your Salesforce record pages. For Example – CTRL + E for edit, CTRL + S for save and many more!
This extension provides 2 types of hotkeys:
★ Hotkeys with CTRL, ALT and SHIFT buttons
★ GMail like combo keys

Salesforce1 Simulator
Launch Salesforce1 in a mobile simulator so you can demonstrate what pages look like on an iphone or ipad.

Change Set Helper
This extension can improve the usability of Salesforce change sets. When you deploy a change set it can be quite hard to see what you need to add in and this shows you the date you last modified and lets you compare a sandbox to production.
Change set with sort, view all, and additional information, such as last modified date. Allows comparison with other orgs.

 

If you need any support with your Salesforce implementation contact us on 08456 525 625 or simply fill in your details here.

How to prepare a Business Case to upgrade to Salesforce Enterprise Edition

Posted on March 6, 2018 by - Business Process, Salesforce Automation

Business Cases are Tough Challenges

Many organisations fail to exploit the amazing benefits of Saleforce.com because they need help to create the business case to upgrade to the more powerful Enterprise Edition of the platform.

In the last year, the Professional Edition functionality has been extended to include some of the feature included in EE, but there remain powerful reasons to invest in the full upgrade to Enterprise Edition.

This note proposes subjects to be included in your business case to invest in a more powerful edition of the world’ leading SaaS platform.

Any business case must ideally attempt to quantify the benefits and reduced risk exposure to an investment to estimate a projected return on investment.

It requires some serious effort to quantify the benefits of the extended functionality of the Enterprise Edition, because most organisations:
• do not have a true understanding of their cost or revenue inefficiencies
• lack the knowledge to see how the upgraded edition can transform these inefficiencies.
Consequently most cases are going to be qualitative rather than quantitative.

Business Case Foundations

The Enterprise Edition permits the centralisation and automation of any business process.

The cost inefficiencies of any business process come from the errors of Omission, Delay, Duplication, non-compliance, and lack of integration and automation.

Risk liability is reduced through compliance to regulation and users not diverging from efficient processes or procedures.

Your business case must therefore be written in the context of your current and future enterprise business processes.

Xenogenix specialises in mapping and analysing processes, but if you have the resources to ensure that your current processes are properly documented and costed, you will be well positioned to prepare a quantifiable business case.

Critical Features of Enterprise Edition

The full list of features additional to Professional Edition, are listed later in this note, however the most advantageous EE features include:

• Workflow and development code to enable customisation and automation of any Business Process.
• An API to enable 1000’s of plug and play application packages and Integration with other systems
• More efficient record layouts and user interface
• More control over users and data security.
• Enhanced Business analytics

Process Centric Business Case Benefits

As your business case can be easily made in the context of your current enterprise processes, we advocate the installation of a powerful, free, application called Elements, into your Salesforce system.

This application allows you to map, streamline, control and communicate all your business processes. and business systems.

If you would like to get a sense of this application, please click this link (Link to be provided) to view an example interactive ‘Quote to Cash’ process map.

We use the following Generic B2B Enterprise process model which we adapt to map many of our clients business processes.

Enterprise edition permits installation of this application. Many clients are using this application to
• design, execute and control their GDPR compliance processes which become mandatory from May 2018.
• Document the configuration of their Salesforce.com system

Once your other processes have been mapped you can make them visible to any specified employees or partners, and for those processes that are running on Salesforce, users can see the process within the context of the relevant Salesforce record.

For example, our Purchase Order record contains our Purchase to pay process as shown:

The more processes you operate and automate in Salesforce, the higher the benefit of Enterprise Edition features.

For example, if you consider extending your Salesforce operated and automated processes to include any of the following:

• Marketing automation and communication
• Enquiry to Quote, or CPQ – Configure complex product pricing quotes
• E- contract signature
• Quote to Order
• Order Project Management
• Manage inventory
• Order to Invoice
• Invoice to Cash
• Forecast Sales
• Pay People
• Manage Sales Performance
• Manage Commission
• Purchase to Pay
• Manage Finances
• Integrate with financial Accounts
• Customer Service request to resolution
• Business Performance analysis and Intelligence

Then, you will need Enterprise Edition functionality for most of these solutions.

Many Organisations are surprised that Financial Accounting applications can run on Salesforce.com. Xenogenix is a certified consulting partners of Sage Live which has been designed to operate on the Salesforce platform. Many clients attach a significant benefit to having their accounts system hosted on the same cloud platform that runs their business critical enterprise processes.

The introduction of the ‘Lightning’ user experience transforms the users experience of Salesforce. This interface is available in Professional Edition, but has some limitations. In Enterprise Edition, these limitations can be overcome and complex records can be simplified and made specifically relevant to the users job role and profile.

The more data you use within Salesforce, the greater the benefits of the enhanced Business Analysis and intelligence features within Enterprise edition.

EE vs PE Features List
Finally, here is a detailed list of the additional features that are Included in Enterprise Edition. Our consultants or your Salesforce.com account manager can explain the potential benefits.

Analytics
• Joined Reports
• Bucket Fields
• Cross Filters (e.g. Accounts without Opportunities)
• Dynamic Dashboards
• Scheduled Dashboards
• 50 Custom Report Types vs. 200 in Enterprise Edition
• Compatible with Salesforce Einstein AI

Marketing
• 250 emails sent in a single mass email blast vs. 500 in Enterprise Edition
• API for Salesforce Pardot marketing automation

Sales (Sales Cloud)
• Account Assignment Rules
• Territory Management
• Sales Teams

Configuration / Security / Administration
• > 2 permission sets
• > 2 Custom user profiles
• > 3 Object record types
• > 2 page layouts
• 100 Validation Rules per Object
• 500 Custom Fields per Object
• 100 Custom Fields on Activities
• 25 Custom Tabs
• 200 Custom Objects
• Apex development code
• > 5 Process Builder Workflows
• Automated Record Approvals
• Visual process workflow
• Data Export for data backup

Customer Service and Support (Service Cloud)
• Service Cloud Console
• Salesforce Knowledge (Note: Knowledge is available at an additional cost in Enterprise Edition, and included in Unlimited Edition)
• Live Agent (Note: Live Agent is available at an additional cost in Enterprise Edition, and included in Unlimited Edition)

Extending Salesforce / Community / Portals
• Partner or Customer Portal
• Websites (aka Site.com / Force.com Sites)
• Salesforce Communities

Custom Development and Sandboxes
• Change Sets (which are needed to deploy custom code)
• API – to build custom integrations or deploy onclick Java Custom Buttons
• Partial Copy Sandbox
• More development sandboxes

If you would like some help to develop your investment plans and build your business plan for upgrading from professional to enterprise edition of Salesforce, please contact us by calling 08456 525 625 or filling in the form.

Salesforce Spring ’18 Feature Update

Posted on February 15, 2018 by - Release Information

 

It’s nearly Spring and Salesforce Spring ’18 release is being rolled out to all organisations. At Xenogenix we have been using and testing the new features for a while now and have noted a few additional features we feel are worth noting!  

Einstein Opportunity Scoring

Prioritize your way to more business with Opportunity scoring. Opportunity scores are based on the record details, history, and related activities of the opportunity and related account. Information about the opportunity’s owner, such as yearly win rates, is also used to calculate the score.

Opportunity Scoring in Lightning:

Opportunity scoring in Classic:

Pardot Campaigns Connection 

This is a great feature for Pardot users. You can now have a much better connection between your Salesforce and Pardot campaigns. Your marketing department can use the features of both Pardot and Salesforce with a single set of campaign records. When campaigns are connected, marketers can track campaign influence and view engagement history all on the same record in Salesforce. Marketing users can then work with their Pardot data right in Salesforce. Then, whether users work with Salesforce or Pardot features, they use the Salesforce campaign record.

 

Personalised Navigation in Lightning Experience

With Spring ’18 you can now personalise an app’s navigation bar to supercharge your productivity and suit the unique way you work. This new feature in Lightning Experience means you can reorder items, and rename or remove items that you’ve added.

Personalised navigation in Lightning Experience is similar to customised tab sets in Salesforce Classic but better. In Lightning Experience, the navigation bar can contain more than just object-level items, like Accounts. You can add granular items, like a dashboard, list, or record.

 

See More Relevant Objects First in Top Results

Top Results lists the most relevant results for your most frequently used objects. The improved ordering of objects means less scrolling and clicking around to the object you want and more getting work done. This change applies to Lightning Experience only.

In Top Results, objects are ranked according to the following factors.

Frequency—Prioritises objects that you use most often.

Search term—Prioritises objects that are commonly associated with a search term. For example, a person’s name is more commonly associated with contact or user objects.

 

If you need support implementing any of these features contact us on 08456 525 625 or simply fill in your details here.