Written by Matt Fiel
In this article, we’ll uncover the secret behind the success of top medical device, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and insurance companies that choose Penrod for their Salesforce Managed Services Partner.
1. Ongoing Maintenance
As mentioned earlier, many people seek the assistance of a managed services provider for ongoing Salesforce maintenance.
After all, maintaining a Salesforce environment is a crucial aspect of utilizing the platform effectively over the long term. This process involves several key tasks, including, but not limited to, regular system audits, data quality checks, user management, and feature updates. Regular system audits serve to identify potential issues before they become problematic, ensuring the environment continues to operate smoothly. Data quality checks are essential to prevent the accumulation of outdated or redundant information which can hinder system performance and negatively impact decision-making.
There’s also the day-to-day stuff. User management involves adding new users, deactivating old ones, and updating permissions and training as needed, ensuring that the system is used optimally and securely. Staying abreast of and implementing Salesforce’s regular feature updates helps to maximize the platform’s utility, taking advantage of improvements and new functionalities. Ongoing maintenance is critical for long term success because it ensures that the Salesforce environment remains an effective tool for business operations. It aids in preserving data integrity, ensuring security, enhancing user experience, and optimizing system performance.
Without regular maintenance, there’s a risk of decreased productivity, data loss, or security breaches – all of which can have significant long-term impacts. Utilizing a Salesforce managed services partner can significantly mitigate these risks.
2. Account Ownership Automation
Ever send a lead to the wrong rep because it’s not clear who owns the account?
It’s more common than you think – and one of our clients needed to automate the process.
Our Salesforce Managed Services builds a comprehensive solution to automate account ownership. This process was significantly enhanced through Salesforce’s customizable and robust features, including automated assignment rules, workflow tools, and AI-powered insights.
These tools were utilized to assign account ownership based on specific criteria such as geographical location, specialty, or account size, eliminating manual work and potential errors. Salesforce’s predictive analytics further assist in determining ownership by providing insights into account performance and engagement levels. This enhanced the distribution of resources, improved collaboration, and empowered better patient care.
3. Automating the Funnel
Salesforce Managed Services have also been utilized to automate the contracting funnel, a key focus for B2B life science companies.
This involves automating the entire contract management process – from creation, to negotiation, to renewal. Salesforce’s customizable templates, automated reminders, and standardized approval processes can make the contract lifecycle management efficient and seamless. Contracts can be automatically routed based on predefined rules to the appropriate personnel for review, approval, or renewal, thereby reducing manual input and potential errors.
This ensures that all contracts follow a consistent and compliant path, making healthcare companies’ contract funnels more efficient and transparent. Moreover, Salesforce’s comprehensive dashboard provides real-time tracking and visibility into the contract status, facilitating better decision-making and strategy formulation.
4. Simplifying Order Entry
Salesforce Managed Services were also utilized to simplify order entry. This is an especially important improvement for healthcare providers ordering supplies at their clinics.
Rather than sifting through stacks of paper forms or struggling with outdated systems, healthcare providers can utilize Salesforce’s streamlined platform. Here, supplies can be ordered in a few clicks, with automated features for entering and confirming the order. The system can be set up to automatically populate product details, pricing, and even vendor information, reducing the chances of manual errors.
In addition, Salesforce’s data management tools can track past orders, predict future needs based on historical data, and send notifications for reorders when stocks are low. This results in reduced order processing time, improved accuracy, and allows healthcare providers to focus more on patient care rather than administrative tasks.
The benefits extend beyond the individual clinics, as the transparency and efficiency of order systems can lead to better inventory management and cost control at the organizational level.
5. Documenting Processes
Utilizing a managed services provider to document Salesforce processes offers several significant benefits.
Firstly, it lays a foundation for standardizing protocols, which fosters consistency and improves the quality of the data entered into the system. Secondly, documentation serves as a valuable resource for training new users, promoting a faster learning curve and enhancing productivity. MSPs often incorporate visual aids and step-by-step guides in their documentation, making it easier for users to understand and follow the process accurately.
Furthermore, the documentation serves as a reference tool that allows users to troubleshoot issues independently, reducing the need for constant support. This translates to increased operational efficiency and time savings.
Lastly, having a well-documented process facilitates seamless audits and ensures adherence to regulatory requirements, a critical aspect in the healthcare sector. Through documentation, Salesforce users can demonstrate compliance with industry standards and regulations, thereby building trust with stakeholders and customers.
6. Creating Multi-Location Object Hierarchies
In a managed services engagement with a medical device company, we created hierarchical relationships between parent and child clinics using objects. This structure provides a clear and organized view of the relationship between different entities within the healthcare ecosystem.
Hierarchical mapping enhances data integrity and consistency across systems, ensuring that updates made in the parent clinic’s records are automatically reflected in the child clinics. This automation eliminates potential discrepancies and manual errors, thereby improving overall data accuracy.
Hierarchical relationships also facilitate efficient resource allocation and operational management. Salesforce objects can be leveraged to track and report on resource usage at each clinic, providing visibility and control over assets, staff, and services. This information can then be rolled up at the parent clinic level, allowing for effective decision-making and strategic planning.
Furthermore, this hierarchical structure supports in-depth analytics and reporting. With Salesforce, healthcare providers can glean insights into patient demographics, treatment outcomes, and operational metrics at both the child and parent clinic levels. This allows for comparative analysis, identification of best practices, and discovery of areas for improvement, ultimately leading to enhanced patient care and operational efficiency. Lastly, setting up hierarchical relationships between clinics in Salesforce promotes compliance with industry standards and regulations. It ensures consistency in processes and data across all clinics, simplifies audit trails, and makes it easier to demonstrate adherence to regulatory requirements.
Overall, Salesforce’s ability to create hierarchical relationships between parent and child clinics not only optimizes operational management but also fosters an environment of continuous learning and improvement in healthcare delivery.
7. Improving User Adoption
User adoption is a critical aspect of leveraging Salesforce’s full potential. A Salesforce Managed Service Provider (MSP) can significantly enhance user adoption through several strategies. Firstly, providing comprehensive and tailored training programs is key. These programs cater to various user levels and incorporate real-world scenarios for better understanding.
Secondly, MSPs can facilitate hands-on experience during training, as practical application enhances retention and comfort with the platform.
Finally, by gathering user feedback and making adjustments, MSPs can ensure that the Salesforce platform remains user-friendly and meets the needs of its users. Ultimately, active user adoption leads to maximized return on investment and enhanced operational efficiency.
8. Optimizing Fields
One of our managed services clients utilized one text field to collect patient details from physicians. This resulted in inconsistent submissions, many of which lacked several crucial details.
By replacing the text box with multiple fields, submissions can become much more thorough and accurate. Each field can be tailored to capture specific data types or categories, creating a structured format that promotes detailed data capture.
For instance, instead of using a single text field for ‘Patient Details’, separate fields can be created for ‘First Name’, ‘Last Name’, ‘Date of Birth’, ‘Gender’, ‘Contact Information’, and ‘Medical History’.
This approach not only ensures that all necessary data is captured but also enhances searchability and data analysis capabilities later on. Moreover, it reduces the scope for errors and inconsistencies in data entry, as each field can be customized with validation rules and picklist values to enforce data integrity.
9. Integrating AI
One of our managed services clients tasked us with a research project into how AI could improve their Salesforce instance.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be harnessed to significantly enhance Salesforce processes, workflows, and overall organization. Salesforce’s inbuilt AI platform, Einstein, can automate routine tasks, predict outcomes, recommend next steps, and even guide business processes. For instance, Einstein Prediction Builder can be used to create custom AI models, predicting business outcomes such as the likelihood of a patient missing an appointment or the probability of a specific treatment’s success. AI can also optimize workflows through smart automation.
Salesforce’s Einstein Bots can handle routine tasks and customer queries, freeing up time for staff to focus on more complex or sensitive tasks. These bots can be programmed to handle appointment scheduling, patient intake, FAQs, and even provide personalized health recommendations based on patient data.
The AI capabilities extend to improving data organization as well. Einstein Discovery analyzes huge amounts of data, identifies trends, and presents actionable insights in a digestible format. This feature can save substantial time spent on data analysis and can uncover hidden trends, helping to inform strategic decision-making.
AI’s power in Salesforce is not just limited to data and workflows. It also plays a crucial role in enhancing user experience. With features like Einstein Voice, users can update records, take notes, and navigate the Salesforce platform using voice commands, making the platform more accessible and easy to use. In conclusion, integrating AI into Salesforce can drive process efficiencies, enhance data management, and improve user experience, enabling organizations to leverage their Salesforce platform to its fullest potential – and having a managed services partner is the perfect way to do it.
10. Data Cleansing
Data cleansing is crucial for maintaining the accuracy and efficiency of a Salesforce system. It involves regularly removing or correcting obsolete, incorrect, or duplicated data.
To begin, our managed service team conducts a thorough audit of the existing data, identifying errors, duplicates, and outdated entries. Tools like Salesforce’s Duplicate Management and third-party applications such as DemandTools can assist with this.
Once problem areas are identified, teams can proceed to cleanse the data. This can be done manually for full control or through automated data cleaning tools, which save time by correcting inconsistencies, filling in missing fields, and removing duplicates.
Establishing ongoing data cleansing procedures is important. Using validation rules, picklists, and mandatory fields can prevent the input of incorrect or inconsistent data.
Conclusion
Healthcare companies utilize Salesforce Managed Services providers like Penrod to streamline their operations, optimize user adoption, enhance data management, and incorporate advanced AI capabilities. Salesforce MSPs provide comprehensive training, support, and continuous updates that foster user adoption and maximize the platform’s effectiveness.
The use of comprehensive fields ensures detailed data entry, enhancing data quality for insightful decision-making. AI integration, through Salesforce’s Einstein platform, automates routine tasks, predicts outcomes, and presents actionable insights, driving process efficiencies and improving user experience.
Salesforce Managed Services partners are a powerful tool for healthcare companies, enabling them to deliver exceptional patient care, maintain regulatory compliance, and achieve operational excellence.