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foreign [Music] good afternoon good morning for those of you that are joining us from the West Coast we're so happy to have you here today my name is Shannon Gregg from cloud adoption Solutions so pleased to be joined today from Annalisa preisener who's going to give us a wonderful talk on some of the ways that you can use Salesforce for automation this will really inspire you when she was sharing her ideas with me for this webinar I thought wow people are going to be really excited about this because there are some really cool things that you can do with automation that is going to be so helpful for you in your Salesforce organization whether you're in finance Marketing sales or anything that's ancillary to one of those positions you're going to be so excited to be inspired by some of the things that Annalisa has orchestrated to share with you today before we get started I do want to tell you our call for speakers for Life Sciences dreaming is open let me show you exactly where you can find that if you go on Lifesciences dreaming.com you'll see there's a little button right here you can click call for speakers we are taking speakers for all sorts of our events we've got lunch and learns coming up in the city of Philadelphia that will actually be in King of Prussia we've got one in Boston we've got one in Research Triangle Park North Carolina those will all be lunch and learn panel sessions and then we've got a two-day amazing event that will be coming up in Fort Lauderdale Florida August 24th and 25th this is a Dreamin event we are so pleased to be sponsored by some wonderful organizations Salesforce caps storm elements cloud Cloud adoption Solutions steady state media Fido SEO so if you're interested in being a speaker a sponsor or an attendee for any of these events please do let us know we are super excited about the reception we are already getting for these events they're going to be marvelous so please check that out I will tell you at the end how you can get more information on that but I do not want to delay you any further because I can see we've got friends rolling in everyone's on time I love that anna-lysa welcome to the stage and thank you so much for being willing to share your experience and expertise with us today automation is so key for 2023 we've got a changing economy we've got a really interesting amount of people who are available in the workforce everything seems to be changing and one of the things that I think is the answer to a lot of our challenges in the workforce today is automation so thank you for joining us absolutely I'm going to share my screen and um thank you for that excellent lead-in um today we're going to talk a little bit about and Shannon is bringing up automation a lot these this is really like lower touch automation for maybe like a higher or more complex kind of problem so what we're going to talk about today is not going to be anything intimidating or difficult but something to hopefully you know that resonates with you or you may have experienced similar problems before that you can apply Creative Solutions to that automation will assist with so first I'm going to talk about why you're talking with me today so this is kind of my life sciences Journey I started out in 2011 in a really small e-pro company back when it used to be called epro and everyone did everything so I got a lot of exposure uh to a lot of different aspects of the business although my primary responsibility was managing and writing proposals I did get first-hand experience with back-end Salesforce because it didn't take much to be an admin there right so they needed assistance they were looking for anybody who was willing to help um so really simple requests like at updating page layouts and adding Fields is what I learned how to do there but it was my first exposure to Salesforce and my first experience with back end Salesforce I got a lot of experience with excel in that role which helped me develop some transferable skills that I used today in Salesforce like solutioning requirements Gathering and testing logic simply because nobody really wanted to manage or own or be responsible for the pricing model there that which was an Excel based so I decided it was it was something that I should learn it was a gap that I saw that needed filling um and I ran with it that company was acquired and continued to manage a team of proposals writers and eventually move into a pricing manager role in 2015. and um after that I briefly took a year out of clinical trials and Life Sciences to work in healthcare I.T and in the next slide we'll take a look at the reasons that I I took the first opportunity that I could to get back into clinical trials but I found that it was really more suited for what I wanted to do and I was much more energized by the teams and the groups and the people so in uh 20 17 I moved to a new company and in 2019 that company which was about medium-sized was also acquired at that time they needed somebody to manage Salesforce their weren't really adequate candidates that were working directly with or responsible for Salesforce on either side of the business and I was fortunate enough that a couple of people um volunteered my name so they felt um they felt strong enough to put their name on the line right to push me forward and volunteered my name and I was asked to take over managing the sales technology and specifically Salesforce at this much larger company now more specifically I led the project to merge the two instances of Salesforce and that is where I absolutely was immersed in Salesforce setup and the basics to the automation and I was able to really develop the back end system knowledge so even though I didn't know really enough I would say for the job I knew more than everybody else that was at the company so so I ran with it uh finally after you know capitalizing on all the exposure and experience that I got during that process in 2020 I became officially a Salesforce admin and now my team has grown a little bit to um manage Salesforce plus about 15 or more applications and packages that plug into Salesforce as well as sales operations project management and training and onboarding for the sales organization so this is my sales perspective in clinical trials based on the different roles that I've had and um in my experience there are a lot of benefits to selling in this space I'm aware that there are a lot of hurdles as well and some of these things can go either way like having smart and creative buyers May mean that you're developing systems that you're selling or that you're developing the build of systems as you're selling them because people are Reinventing how they want things to function but for the most part having a firm and compelling event like first patient first visit and having really meaningful checkpoints along the way because of the regulated environment that are driven by the client really help you to tell if a deal is going to move forward and you know based on the experience that I had in other Industries for the short periods of time that that wasn't available to them and I can assure you it's not available to my vendors when they're working with me um it's fairly transparent in a lot of ways in this industry in clinical trials if that deal is going to progress if it's on the right path or if it's shaky on if there's uncertainty so I think it helps the sales process a lot and it helps the individuals that are working within the process to be able to forecast and understand their buying signals a little bit better so we're going to talk about a problem in early stage pipeline management and it's a little bit funny that we were talking about early stage development today because my contribution to um being a sales force admin in this space that's unique is that I sat in the roles that managed from you know quote request RFP request and Beyond so I lived and I worked them and I have a lot of first-hand knowledge of how the process works within those later stages I don't have unique experience of early stage Pipeline and progression but um in this case we're going to look at things that I've seen previously that I think can be improved upon with some flow and some automation to be able to help forecast better for early stage pipeline so things that are before you have that formal RFP come and um manage movement within those early stages particularly measuring meaningful activity activity itself in Salesforce can be very hard to measure at like a molecular scale like on an opportunity basis we find that a lot of people that are not as good as logging activity it's because they actually have higher volume the activity is occurring they just aren't taking the time to stop and pause and make sure that it's apparent in Salesforce especially if they have a higher volume of opportunities and accounts that they're managing so it's not always the best indication and then understanding if any of that activity was really meaningful produce the kind the right kind of results and gave you the right kind of signals can be difficult as well so in this case we're starting with what I've seen in the past which is two Sales Early funnel sales stages prospecting and qualifying a little bit ambiguous when you get into the qualifying stage and a lot of opportunities sitting and qualifying for quite a long time and you don't know the caliber of those opportunities if they're at the very beginning stages so you've just got someone to agree to engage with you but you don't know if that there's no um no way to measure if that engagement is really hot or or kind of cold and um understanding how qualified it is if it's in very beginning stages or if it's progressed down the line so in order to change that with automation here's an example of what you could do with some gated stage progressions so in this case this represents a flow that automatically pushes individuals and opportunities into certain sales stages based on achievement of buying indicators here we've added one additional stage but we've tied to two of these stages the basic indicators and the key indicators actions actions internally and actions that occur or driven by the client to um ensure that you understand those buying signals so if I'm moving from assessment to quote request here we have free entry into assessment which is really very similar to our previous prospecting stage you know we're just confirming that if we're doing our research and we're finding information online or through third-party sources that this is a real live study it's actually exists it's going forward in the time frame that we understand and in a time frame that's meaningful for us and working on gaining entry so understanding or connecting with somebody at that account that will engage with us the next two stages the reps are basically either excluded from entering those stages or Auto inserted into those stages based on achievement of those indicators so here I have some examples for our basic indicators that show good indications that that trial is going to move forward so the client confirms there's a protocol in development of course we have someone anyone at the account that is engaging with us doesn't really matter their level or what kind of persona they are but that engagement is that connection is made in this case we've added one for an internal clinical assessment so maybe we have some experts some scientists within our group or a team that reviews and and um analyzes study information to determine the likelihood of that study progressing and the client is communicated a budget in this case if our sales reps can check off at least three of these four buying indicators then that opportunity will automatically progress into our basic indicator stage and it'll give us a good idea or a good understanding that we really truly have qualified this opportunity it's in a space that we want we're getting a connection with somebody at the account and they're giving us some indications of progression towards RFP the second stages are key indicators so these ones are maybe a little bit more difficult to reach but they're giving us a really great indications that we would be include included in the quote request or the RFP process and that that process is pending and upcoming so in here we're talking about the client is sharing the protocol or protocol draft with us they're confirming that their funding has been approved they know the timeline of when they're going to start reaching out to um to vendors to collect quotes for their RFP process and they've maybe introduced you with the decision maker or they've agreed to meet with some of our Specialists on our side Consultants clinical leads individuals that have expertise to be able to consult on their protocol in this case if the rep can achieve two of these four indicators that flow will Auto progress them into the key indicators these are really great buying signals now that we're capturing that are very tangible and finite um that lead us to believe that we probably are in a good spot to push towards being included in that RFP process and then eventually when that happens we have free entry into the quote request stage as well and some of the reasons that we look at these um breaking out these early stages a little bit better to help with our forecasting is because in a lot of systems later stages from the time that you actually create draft or requested to create a proposal they're very tangible you really understand what's occurred it's a specific action something's been delivered you've gotten a specific response from a client that are moving those stages of progression while early stages don't have those really finite buying indicators so this is a way to be able to capture that and increase your insight into how you're progressing before you've received your quote request so what's the actual intent here right the actual intent is to be able to forecast better in your early funnel so that you can see what in your funnel is going to turn into pipeline what we're looking at here is movement and time frame so really specifically how many of those studies progress through each of those stages and how does that percentage change as we move from the you know early the the easiest achievement to the highest achievement stage what are the number of indicators achieved because we're managing this through let's say just a tick box that it's been achieved on the opportunity we can say is there a better possibility that something's going to move from basic indicators to key indicators when these particular indications um are met or these buying signals are received or do we see a drop off when we don't ever get that clinical review that's an internal indicator and then the time frame how long does it take things to progress so when does the progression stop do we reach a certain point where things sit in assessment or basic indicators and if they've been there for x amount of time we rarely see them progress any further than that so we can measure on our forecast timeline based forecast to see what we think is going to turn into pipeline later stage pipeline then segmenting that measurement Maybe by market segment by the channel That We're going through so how does this movement compare if we're going through a cro versus bidding direct client as well as which products are involved in the sale and the last piece of this automation which is one of the problems that we see a lot that you look to solve with these really early stage opportunities is ensuring that that funnel stays accurate and relevant so this is another flow that you can Implement to Auto age out those deals basically push the deals out of your system that sit there untouched and unactioned and really don't get cleaned up until you do maybe um your fiscal year account updates and those opportunities get moved to a new rep and they evaluate their pipeline so some of our reps are are not as good as others as keeping that information current especially when it's a very early stage they know less maybe less individuals or there's less scrutiny on the quality of deals that you have in there this flow is a time-based triggered flow so maybe once a month the first of the month or the fifth of the month take a look at all of the deals that are still sitting in the very first assessment stage and based on the trigger criteria so maybe they were created more than a year ago the stage is still sitting in assessment the booking states in the past no activity logged recently and the next step follow-up date is passed if any deals um hit all of those criteria then the flow Auto closes them with the closed type age apt which is a controlled close type so we know that this one was closed as part of the automation the Reps get emailed immediately that that's been done on their behalf so if the system you know happens to be wrong or if maybe they were logging activity to the account in this circumstance and not to the opportunity they can review that and they can really quickly act on it to make sure that it gets one of those triggers this map and gets moved out of there update the booking State reinstitute the stage so that is one way that you can use flow automation on a trigger-based flow and a time-based flow to be able to manage your early stage pipeline forecast a little bit better as well as track meaningful activity and buying indicators so I will stop sharing now that was amazing anna-lysa um if anybody has any questions please feel free to throw them in the Q a um I did have a question that came in anna-lysa um which is how do you know if there is a process of yours that you should even evaluate for Salesforce automation well typically in my experience in what I've been working on it is usually this problem solution right typically when things are going well um and their adoption is great and you have the visibility you need the metrics are producing what you're anticipating then um it's it's not a call to action but in a lot of cases it will be um you know we're having trouble getting insight into XYZ or we have low adoption so we're seeing the users are not they're bypassing this process that we've set up for them we have a way to do something and you know in Salesforce even if you set up a way to do something you there are probably still three to four other ways to do it um that either impossible to turn off or um or maybe you don't want to turn them off because in certain circumstances it is the right way to do something so when you see low adoption when you see that um data isn't coming through as cleanly or in the way that you want then it's really great to evaluate if you can basically guide the user through automation in this case we looked at restrict them from going into certain stages if they don't meet minimal criteria for that um in other cases it could be giving them warnings or guiding them to the correct location to be able to perform an action and it could be basic automation doesn't have to be flow it could be custom button creation on an object that basically guides them through a form and if they don't go that route a warning like a flow warning to to make sure that they understand that that is available for the circumstance that they need to apply it to I love it that's such a good answer thank you that was really thoughtful and I think pretty comprehensive so one of the things that I think um you know when people were sending us messages ahead of this webinar that people were asking about is um can you help clarify a little bit the difference between a validation Rule and Automation and would you ever use the two of them together yeah possibly um so what's nice about the flow is that it in in this case right we can combine the two although I would say the flow errors are not as human readable as you can set the validation errors up to be so that is something that that we've experienced in the past even by entering like a custom message to be displayed just the way that the flow errors come across it Spooks individuals that are that are not accustomed to viewing them um so it is possible that you might want to incorporate both particularly if um if there are cases that you can you know control things in a validation error bases it might be easier than always going in and updating a flow and you know testing it in the sandbox launching it activating it in production so there are much more steps sometimes in the higher Nano automation that you can eliminate those number of steps with some of the lower end automation like validation rules I love that I think that's a really good answer too you know when when we're thinking about how to help guide our users through Salesforce because that's what we're all here for you know that's why this crowd joined us today um we really want to make sure that our users get that help that they need now are there amazing outcomes sure you know Finance has cleaner pipelines Sales Management has a better idea of what are actually the right opportunities sales people um you know can get the access to the information they need about their conversion rates or the quality of their Pipeline and I think there's so many benefits to Automation and we've seen it change so much in the past you know five years right I mean Salesforce really has started to place I think uh an exorbitant and necessary amount of you know impact on automation right we've seen it change you know we've had process Builder we've had workflow rules we've had flow you know there's been so much and I think it feels intimidating so a question that I have for you is if I'm a brand new new person to Salesforce automation how do I get over that sort of fear of introducing automation I am not a flow expert by any means I um just have my basic Salesforce admin certification so and I actually did create this this flow to Auto progress stages and to do it I just did a Google Search and I found someone who had done Auto progression of stages prior and I looked at the guidance that they gave on the blog on the developer sites whatever it was I found an example and it didn't have anything to do with my example but it was close enough that I could use that basis to be able to build out the specifics of what I was doing um so my team and I like we we all say you know we don't our our main our primary skill that helps us with Salesforce is that we're all researchers so we search for the sales force knowledge articles that can help guide us through because it is so nice that the information is open source and that will get you so far and then with things like these customizations and these automations we look for someone else who's done it before and kind of viewed how they have done it seen what kind of tweaks that we need to make to be able to apply something similar to our problem to meet our solution I love that thank you for sharing that because I think it is it feels so heavy and hard to understand when you first come into it but the possibilities are endless and I know you're a dream Force expert and one of the reasons why I think it's called dreamforce is because you can start to dream about how to make things better for your for your entire team so I love that um we have a question do sales reps typically get an early warning before their opportunities are aged out and or how has this automation process been helpful for better managing outside sales reps yeah so we um did start out low Tech here with the auto a job process right so we just started with a report and we have a data quality dashboard that gets reviewed every two weeks by one of our Salesforce admins and basically the antennas to keep that dashboard down to zero so none of the components should have any data if any of the components have any data they either need updated reviewed and changed and we started at low Touch by especially when we first implement it because as you can imagine there were a lot of opportunities that met that trigger criteria when we first um implemented it but uh in that circumstance we just pulled a report out of Salesforce sent it to everybody that owned opportunities on that list and let them know we're instituting something new we'd like you to take one of the following actions if this opportunity is legitimate update the bookings date to a date in the future update the follow-up steps right and we gave them maybe a week and a half to do that and then Revisited the report anything that was still on there we closed out and then we've added two additional components to their home page dashboard sets so we've added a list View specifically shows them all their opportunities with booking states in the past so that information is pushed to them so they can manage it on an ongoing basis and on their homepage Dash we added a component that shows them all their opportunities that are eligible for age out since we're only running this once a month um they'll they'll have time to review those opportunities and go into them and make those updates to them so now we don't um we don't prepare them for the action it just occurs on an ongoing basis although we do give them tools to manage it themselves and then they get that notification when it does happen through email so if there are any that again like they've been logging activity against the account instead of the opportunity that wouldn't maybe have been caught they get immediate notification that that's occurred and they can go in and and basically ask one of our admin team to Backstage it for them that's amazing thank you that was a really detailed response and one of the things that I heard you saying um was how throughout the whole entire process you visited you know change management Theory because when you start with that sort of low touch and you work in the way that people are already working and continue to process it so they can see how it makes their life and their job better they're more likely to adopt it and so that was a beautiful response that I think you know went around one how do you handle it in the technology but two how do you help the people make the change because that's always the hard part you know people are running at 100 miles per hour so that was great uh thank you so much Annalisa this was a beautiful conversation hopefully everybody here today is inspired on how you can use Salesforce automation to help your team have better quality data how you can have a better pipeline how you can use Salesforce to make everybody's jobs a little bit better because we all know things are not going to get easier they just keep getting faster but Salesforce is fully equipped to help you with that uh before we leave today I want to make sure that we thank our sponsors we've got as our sponsors for the life for the life sciences dreaming whole entire series Salesforce capstorm elements cloud cloud adoption Solutions steady state media Fido SEO next month we have a webinar you will not want to miss we've got two experts in value stream mapping which you've probably done even if you don't call it that they're going to be talking about how you can value stream map your go to market process to reduce the waste that you have in your go to market process and apply things like annalize and just taught you about today Salesforce automation so we've got uh JT who's been a friend for a very long time actually Analisa I know that we've been students of JT's he's taught us a lot about how to use value stream mapping in a Kaizen approach and Ian from elements cloud is going to be facilitating that webinar that is um just in one month uh after that we've got a demo Jam in March a life sciences Tech Stars demo Jam that is going to be really fun everybody's got three minutes to show their goods so hopefully everybody is in attendance to that don't forget to visit lifesciencesdreaman.com because after our webinar series we're heading into three live lunch and learns in Philly Boston and Research Triangle Park and then we've got our keynote conference in Fort Lauderdale in Orlando we are currently looking for speakers and sponsors so if you're interested in that head yourself over to Lifesciences dreaming.com Annalisa thank you so much for this today it was really marvelous absolutely it was great uh chatting with all of you today thanks everybody have a wonderful day