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Technologies

• Salesforce case study review: the value of customer centricity

January 23, 2020

Table of contents

• #1. Digital channel upgrade doubles sales
• #2. Personalized services increase revenue 900%
• #3. Consistent omnichannel CX grows revenue by 70%
• #4. AI-driven upselling increases order value by 11%
• #5. Personalized recommendations increase conversion by 9%
• #6. History-based customer service brings 99% retention
• #7. A nonprofit personalized communication and increased donor conversion rate by 300%
• #8. Personalization ensures a 95% subscription renewal rate

Roman Erohin

Salesforce Expert

Businesses can no longer only consider sales when attempting to increase profit. Instead, they must carefully consider how they can help shoppers in a smarter way and offer them personalized customer service. Customers have more control over their relationships with companies than ever before. Above all else, they want differentiated services; they look for reliability and convenience, quickly condemning companies that fail to meet their expectations.

According to the third edition of Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer report, 84% of the surveyed say the experience provided by a company is as important as the products themselves. On top of that, 73% say one incredible experience raises their expectations of other companies, and 66% are eager to pay more for a better experience.

This means that being customer-centric is no longer a cherry on top of the company’s reputation; it is a must-have for companies who want to stay on the market.

So what does it mean to be customer-centric? In brief, there are three main targets to achieve.

1. Deliver personalized customer service . As many as 73% of customers say that a company should understand their needs and expectations. So companies should get to know their customers as closely as possible and tailor their services accordingly.

2. Master connected experiences . Customers want brands to remember their previous interactions, including purchase history and sentiments, through all channels.

3. Never stop innovating . Well over half of customers prefer buying from innovative companies. The more advanced digital experience a brand can offer, the more customers they will attract and retain.

While the figures above essentially prove the customer centric paradigm, let’s look at eight real-world examples of how getting Salesforce consultants on board can help increase companies’ sales and customer loyalty.

#1. Digital channel upgrade increases sales by 59%

adidas was already one of the sneaker market leaders, but in 2016 they invested in the enhancement of their digital sales channel with Salesforce. In particular, they improved three areas:

• Provided convenient omnichannel service support for customers via the Service Cloud.
• Collected and utilized a huge amount of customer data in order to provide personalized recommendations and create products based on customer sentiment. Commerce Cloud was used to tackle the task.
• Allowed customers to create products tailored to their personality and body type.

adidas’ new personalized customer service approach increased their online sneaker sales by 59%, or approximately €1 billion.

Analyzing customer data, delivering an integrated customer experience, and creating innovative ways for customers to participate in the product creation—these three components help brands market faster, deliver a better experience, and, as a result, boost sales.

#2. Personalized services bring a 900% revenue growth

YETI started as a cooler producer that focused on their customers. As their audience grew, they didn’t want to lose their customer-first approach. So, YETI switched from spreadsheets and sticky notes to the Salesforce CRM. Now closer to their customer-centric efforts than ever before, YETI managed to:

• Speed up their responses to customers through all channels by integrating Salesforce with their ERP. This way YETI could enable their managers to access the latest account information whenever necessary and respond incredibly quickly to requests.
• Start analyzing customer data and delivering relevant complementary products, suggestions, and personalized tips regarding their products.
• Provide an online product customization tool that let customers take part in manufacturing (customers can add custom logos and any text to any model).
• Set up a convenient and unified environment for the customer support team and thereby start resolving issues faster.

In two years, YETI’s personalized customer service grew revenue by almost 900%, reaching $450 million.

Small companies can grow fast by delivering highly personalized experiences. As they grow, this all-around customer orientation requires more advanced technologies that are costly but worth it in the end.

#3. Personalized emails and consistent omnichannel experience grow revenue by 70%

ALDO Group is a well-known footwear chain whose core values consist of a dedication to individual shoppers and society as a whole. Along their customer-centric journey, they did several things:

• Implemented data analytics and started generating insight into customers’ personalities. This allowed ALDO to provide better-crafted experiences both online and offline.
• Equipped sales assistants with mobile devices that held customer data, including shopping and browsing histories. This improved customer service in ALDO stores. Now sales reps know what customers are looking for the moment they walk in the store.
• Utilized predictive intelligence to provide smart recommendations online.
• Started managing interactions with top-tier customers, offering special perks and premium products.
• Reduced sales email volume by about 50% but made them better-aligned with individual preferences.

ALDO increased email conversion by 131% over one year, increased revenue by 70%, and created one-to-one connections with 200 million customers across communication channels.

Thorough customer data analysis can lead to less frequent (and less annoying) communication that is also more sales-provoking.

#4. AI-driven upselling & cross-selling increases average order value by 11%

Icebreaker replaced a third-party tool with Einstein , Salesforce’s AI driven predictive recommendation engine, in order to make product suggestions more personal and human. These tips are based on each customer’s buying history, the shop’s general sales, and lists of complementary products. As every successful recommendation further trains the underlying algorithm, the suggestions become more and more precise.

Recommendations powered by Einstein helped Icebreaker generate 28% more revenue from recommended products and increase the average order value by 11%.

Thanks to machine learning capabilities , AI-based recommendation engines perform tasks more effectively than their alternatives. Utilizing built-in Salesforce Einstein reduces integration and maintenance costs.

#5. ML-based personalized recommendations increase conversion rate by 9%

Black Diamond replaced the manual loading of product recommendations with Salesforce Einstein, which they used from their Commerce Cloud. This helped the company suggest related products in real time to both registered customers and guests.

Black Diamond’s conversion rate grew by 9.6%, and the total revenue per visitor increased by 15.5%.

In order to suggest complementary products more accurately, companies can utilize AI-based recommendation engines.

#6. A seamless experience and history-based customer service bring a 99% retention rate

DUFL is a luxury travel assistant that takes care of their clients’ luggage, including packing, shipping, doing laundry, and even fixing damages (e.g., broken shoe heels). They introduced Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud and made their service more personalized in the following ways:

• DUFL now remembers every client’s unique needs and provides highly-customized service.
• They provide omnichannel support experience and resolve similar issues based on the history of clients’ decisions.

DUFL’s team of just 25 employees easily manages their growing customer base (+10% every month) and maintains a 99% retention rate.

Robust technology can empower a small team to deliver an exceptional service to an expanding customer base.

#7. A nonprofit personalized communication increased donor conversion rate by 300%

DonorsChoose.org is a nonprofit organization that helps public schools receive support from the community. They increased funding by utilizing Salesforce Marketing and Sales Clouds to better engage with their donors.

They used this CRM technology to achieve several goals:

• Let individual donors collaborate directly with teachers and provide support for particular projects.
• Send donors profile-based personalized emails to encourage their participation in the projects they want and can support.
• Deliver dollar-for-dollar spending reports and personalized appreciation messages from classrooms to donors.
• Personalize conversation between donors and the DonorsChoose.org team by equipping the latter with a detailed communication history.
• Develop new donor outreach strategies based on the revenue funnel analysis.

Advanced technology helped DonorsChoose.org start delivering personalized services to 1.5 million donors (instead of only a few million-dollar donors).

As a result, the organization increased the donor conversion rate by 300% and exceeded their annual fundraising goal in just 6 months.

Nonprofit organizations can’t entice their target audience with discounts or coupons. This case proves that a personal touch, service visibility, and constant improvement based on analysis can do wonders even if you sell something as subtle as generosity.

#8. Personalization ensures a 95% subscription renewal rate on the information providers market

Encyclopedia Britannica started creating digital products and went online in order to combat a 97% decline in print sales over six years. To keep up with customers’ preferences, they needed to emphasize their core values of information reliability and a personal approach for every reader.

Utilizing Salesforce Service Cloud and Chatter, the rebranded Britannica Digital Learning started analyzing customer data, developing buyer journeys, recording customer feedback, and integrating all of this into their digital product development process.

The social media sentiment scores and subscription renewal rates of Encyclopedia Britannica grew to 95%, and their profit margins have increased 8% since Salesforce implementation .

Even though there is plenty of free information online, Encyclopedia Britannica won back its customers by promoting its high credibility and delivering personalized services. Yet again, this proves that being customer-centric is a sound survival strategy even in remarkably competitive markets such as information services.

Competition is only getting more and more severe across many markets, and companies have to be innovative and customer-centric in order to retain their loyal clientele and attract new shoppers. These latest Salesforce case studies show that customers want more personalized experiences above all else. They’re not willing to pay for just products and services; they need human interactions with brands that clearly care about their interests.

When the clientele grows fast, delivering highly personalized services without the proper technologies becomes impossible. This is when advanced CRM and marketing tools, such as Salesforce Clouds, can assist brands with data tracking and analytics. While machines manage routine tasks and sophisticated calculations, companies’ staff are free to do what they were historically responsible for: serving people in a more human way than faceless corporations often do.

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Salesforce: Revolutionizing the CI/CD pipeline with powerful VM machine types

About Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that offers organizations a range of tools and services to optimize marketing, application development, customer service, and more. Its flagship Salesforce CRM service is among the most ubiquitous customer relationship management solutions in the world.

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AMD, a Google Cloud partner, develops high-performance computing and visualization products to solve some of the world’s toughest and most interesting challenges.

Salesforce uses AMD EPYC™ Processor-powered N2D machine types on Google Compute Engine to boost performance and reduce costs associated with its mission-critical CI/CD pipeline.

Google cloud results.

• Supports scale of 250,000 VMs daily to power CI/CD pipeline
• Enables engineering team to conduct up to one million tests regularly
• Reduces overall costs associated with underlying VM infrastructure
• Enhances global reach through regionally available cloud services

Reduces time to scale up VMs from months to minutes

Customer relationship management (CRM) software is one of the most popular tools companies use to build strong relationships with existing and new clients. As more customer-related data becomes available to all organizations, solutions that can generate insights off the vast treasure trove of data can make the difference between thriving or struggling to stand out in today’s competitive markets.

Salesforce is one of the world’s leading providers of CRM solutions. Over the past two decades, the company has become ubiquitous across regions and industries. Today, Salesforce continues to push CRM innovation, constantly delivering new capabilities that enable organizations worldwide to optimize marketing, customer service, application development, and other vital business activities.

"Providing our scope of applications at scale requires tremendous IT infrastructure," says Vidur Apparao, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Salesforce. "We began leveraging the public cloud to more efficiently manage workloads, improve our developer and infrastructure agility, and speed product time to market in new regions."

Salesforce relies heavily on virtual machines (VMs) to support the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline fueling its flagship CRM software, spinning up as many as 250,000 VMs daily. After running VMs on-prem for years, it recognized the opportunity to reduce costs and improve performance by running AMD EPYC™ processor-powered N2D machine types on Google Cloud.

"Google Cloud gives us the infrastructure, agility, and workload support to scale our VMs as needed. With Google Cloud, we can move easily from being in just one region to several—all now offering greater reliability in our test systems. Google Cloud meets us wherever we need to be."

Supporting vital testing environments with no disruption

To provide people with optimized experiences when using Salesforce CRM tools, the company’s engineers constantly refine the software’s underlying code. With each change, Salesforce executes more than one million tests to validate the code’s quality and ensure development is progressing as planned. All of this is done through VMs.

VM utilization is also impacted by seasonal shifts, feature freeze deadlines, and more, meaning that Salesforce needs the ability to efficiently scale its number of VMs up and down as work requires.

"Google Cloud gives us the infrastructure, agility, and workload support to scale our VMs as needed," says Vidur. "With Google Cloud, we can move easily from being in just one region to several—all now offering greater reliability in our test systems. Google Cloud meets us wherever we need to be."

If issues arise with the infrastructure supporting VMs, code changes and testing would stop as thousands of engineers would be unable to work. Google Cloud provides a highly reliable infrastructure foundation that can scale to Salesforce’s needs and required speed of development. This keeps engineers, particularly those working within the CI/CD pipeline, focused on their work without disruptions.

"The systems supporting CI/CD are critical for us to be able to deliver exceptional experiences to Salesforce customers. They have to run reliably, quickly, and flexibly," says Vidur. "Google Cloud gives us the agility to grow or shrink our infrastructure as needed, take advantage of higher performance, and ultimately provide ideal tooling to our developers to be even more agile and innovative."

Keeping costs in check

With its infrastructure scaling to support an increasing volume of work, Salesforce looked to reduce costs while avoiding performance impacts.

"We could not cut costs if it impacted performance because we couldn’t have tests running slower or possibly even failing," says Vidur. "When Google Cloud and AMD came out with the N2D machine type, we saw an opportunity to get the best of both worlds – better performance at a lower cost."

N2D general purpose VMs are built on 3rd Gen AMD EPYC™ Processors, provide up to 224 vCPUs and are the largest family of machine types on Google Compute Engine. The VMs are particularly useful for high-performance computing (HPC) workloads like those Salesforce relies on for its CI pipeline, as they combine higher platform memory bandwidth and lower costs than other machine types.

"Now that we have the N2D machine type, we’ve been able to quickly scale our VM workloads and will continue to do so," says Vidur. "The cost benefits we realize allow us to test and support more workloads for new products and keep everything moving ahead within budget."

Along with the lower costs, Salesforce is better positioned to respond to issues as they arise and provide highly responsive customer services while continuing to deliver CRM innovations.

"Now that we have the N2D machine type, we’ve been able to quickly scale our VM workloads and will continue to do so. The cost benefits we realize allow us to test and support more workloads for new products and keep everything moving ahead within budget."

Partnering to further improve the CI/CD pipeline

Salesforce wanted a cloud service provider that could come to the table as a partner rather than a vendor.

"We felt supported in our journey to Google Cloud thanks to the people guiding us through the process," says Vidur. "Whether we have an architecture question or need to quickly scale up new VM instances by 10 percent, a simple phone call to Google Cloud gives us everything we need."

Before transitioning its VM infrastructure to Google Cloud, Salesforce had to plan infrastructure increases or decreases months in advance. Today, changes can be made within minutes, giving Salesforce the flexibility to manage its CI/CD pipeline fluidly regardless of spikes in demand.

AMD, Salesforce, and Google Cloud worked collaboratively from the outset of the project, relying on the power of the N2D machine type to make the project work. The promise of the technology helped to achieve the results required while deepening the partnership between the three companies.

Thanks to the collaborative approach, thousands of engineers dedicated to the CI/CD pipeline are able to make as many changes as necessary to continue improving customer experiences with Salesforce CRM. The high-performance, constantly available, and regionally accessible solutions also improve time to feedback on bug fixes, new feature rollouts, and more. Faster feedback in testing translates to quicker speed to market.

Growing the benefits of CRM

Salesforce continues to expand to serve new customers worldwide and benefits from its strategic investment in cloud services and technology partnerships. The company is moving more workloads, especially those that have regional data residency requirements, to Google Cloud to provide its global engineering teams with low-latency access to a responsive, agile development infrastructure.

"Improving our overall information and data management is a key initiative at Salesforce," says Vidur. "Google Cloud enables our development teams to work reliably in the public cloud in every region and at the scale, speed, and flexibility they need to deliver better customer experiences globally."

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Salesforce Case Study: Leveraging Salesforce to Elevate Customer Experience

In today’s highly competitive business landscape, effective customer relationship management plays a pivotal role in driving sustainable growth and success. This Salesforce case study explores how a mid-size manufacturing company, successfully leveraged Salesforce to transform their processes, enhance customer interactions, and achieve remarkable business outcomes.

Company Overview

This is a study of a leading manufacturer and supplier of industrial equipment, based in Denver, Colorado. With over three decades of experience in the industry, the company has built a strong reputation for delivering innovative products and exceptional customer service. However, as the business grew, managing customer relationships became increasingly complex, highlighting the need for a robust CRM solution.

Challenges Faced

Prior to implementing Salesforce, the company faced the following challenges in effectively managing their customers:

Data Fragmentation: The company struggled with fragmented customer data residing in various systems, leading to inefficiencies, data duplication, and difficulty in obtaining a holistic view of their customers.

Inconsistent Communication: The absence of a centralized CRM system led to inconsistent communication with customers, resulting in missed opportunities, delayed responses, and an overall suboptimal customer experience.

Limited Analytical Insights: The company lacked the ability to derive meaningful insights from their customer data, hindering their ability to make data-driven decisions and develop effective sales and marketing strategies.

Manual Processes: Manual data entry, repetitive administrative tasks, and reliance on spreadsheets consumed valuable time and resources, limiting the productivity and efficiency of the company’s sales and customer service teams.

Solution: Salesforce Implementation

Recognizing the need for a comprehensive solution, the company decided to implement Salesforce, because of its scalability, flexibility, and robustness, hoping to address their challenges and revolutionize their customer management processes.

Key Benefits and Outcomes

Centralized Customer Data: Salesforce allowed the company to consolidate customer data from various sources into a single, unified platform. This centralized view enabled their sales and customer service teams to access accurate and up-to-date information, resulting in improved collaboration, streamlined processes, and enhanced customer interactions.

Enhanced Customer Engagement: The company was able to personalize interactions, tailor marketing campaigns, and provide timely and relevant communication to their customers. This personalization led to increased customer satisfaction, higher conversion rates, and improved customer retention.

Actionable Insights: Salesforce’s advanced analytics capabilities empowered the company to gain valuable insights from their customer data. Through comprehensive reporting and analytics dashboards, the company could identify trends, forecast sales, and make data-driven decisions, thereby optimizing their sales and marketing strategies.

Automation and Efficiency: By automating manual processes, such as data entry, task assignment, and follow-ups, Salesforce enabled the company to free up valuable time for their sales and customer service teams. This increased efficiency, reduced errors, and allowed employees to focus on high-value activities, resulting in improved productivity and overall business performance.

Results and Statistics

The implementation of Salesforce at the company yielded significant results and measurable improvements in their CRM capabilities:

Customer Satisfaction: The company witnessed a 35% increase in customer satisfaction scores within the first six months of implementing Salesforce, as measured through post-interaction surveys and feedback.

Revenue Growth: By leveraging Salesforce’s personalized marketing capabilities and improved customer interactions, the company experienced a 28% increase in customer acquisition and a 1 5% increase in customer retention, directly contributing to a 20% growth in annual revenue.

Time Savings: The automation of manual processes resulted in a 40% reduction in administrative tasks for sales and customer service teams, enabling them to spend more time engaging with customers and driving revenue-generating activities.

The company’s successful implementation of Salesforce as their CRM solution exemplifies the power of leveraging advanced technology to elevate customer relationship management. By consolidating customer data, enhancing engagement, gaining actionable insights, and automating manual processes, The company experienced remarkable improvements in customer satisfaction, revenue growth, and operational efficiency. This case study serves as a testament to the transformative impact of Salesforce, demonstrating how businesses can leverage digital transformation to thrive in today’s competitive business environment.

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Salesforce: An Agile Case Study

Key Takeaways: What worked for Salesforce 

• Organizational culture and established values prime an organization to be ready to take on an Agile framework.
• When Agile values are communicated from the top, they are infused into the organizational mindset to occur organically without enforcement as “rules.”
• Finding the right language to explain Agile to un-transitioned departments encourages teams to use Agile frameworks in a way that works for them.  

  In 2006 Salesforce decided to go all in with agile and transform their entire R&D department from traditional “Waterfall” SDLC — a top-down software lifecycle process — to Scrum, an iterative agile framework. At the outset of the transition, company leadership knew they would face roadblocks if they couldn’t make clear to employees the compatibility between Scrum principles, their company’s mission, and their individual employees’ values. Without this critical first step, the same lightweight, adaptable quality that makes Scrum successful could also render it susceptible to misinterpretation. So, Salesforce began its agile transformation not by blindly adopting the Scrum framework, but by first educating employees on Scrum’s alignment with preexisting company values.    Their “Educate Without Enforcing” strategy generated positive results, in part because upper management and staff already shared a coherent sense of the company’s overall mission and each employee’s individual purpose and could easily explain how the Scrum framework was uniquely suited to achieve those ends.    “We are fortunate that our founders were as intentional about the culture they wanted to create as they were about the products they wanted to build,” says Arun Ramanna, an Enterprise Agile Coach at Salesforce. “Agile frameworks such as Scrum, XP, and Lean face less transitional challenges at Salesforce than at others, because Salesforce has an environment of trust, customer success, diversity, equality, and innovation.”   It was in 1999 that Salesforce founded their popular  V2MOM Process . The acronym stands for vision, values, methods, obstacles and measures, and is used as a management tool for organization wide communication and adaptive development.V2MOM had pre-established transparency throughout the organization, so the company had a cultivated sense of trust vital to successful Scrum practices. And as a result, Salesforce proved to be better prepared for Scrum than many other pre- or partially agile organizations.   Yet challenges remained. Project managers feared losing the accurate timetables and deliverables on which they relied, and it was difficult to explain to them the purposes of agility beyond its concrete definition or discrete practices. To address these issues, the company held frequent meetings with departments that had not switched to an agile framework, framing agility as a mindset uniquely compatible with — and already present within — the organization’s mission and values. Leaders were able to explain how and why agility aligned with Salesforce and its employees’ sense of shared purpose.    Salesforce also used the strategy of framing Agile techniques, such as XP practices, Scrum artifacts, and Lean thinking as “tools.” This helped the company explain the benefits of agility to the organization without imposing Agile principles as mandates.    “We often hear our leaders say things like ‘Make sure we are focused on our customer’s success’, ‘Better, better, never done!’ and ‘Let’s approach it with a beginner’s mind’ to keep us on this journey,” Arun explains. These phrases embody the values of the  Agile Manifesto . Salesforce leaders regularly communicate the sentiment of agile without directly enforcingthe values as hard rules.   “Salesforce is always looking to improve our technology, products, and processes to make us more agile and customer focused,” continues Arun. “It’s because Salesforce continues to have both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ organizational buy in and support for agile that it is able to be so successful and adaptive.”    Today, Salesforce continues to explore new approaches in applying agility within its different departments. As an organization, they remain flexible regarding their methods and open-minded about their results and are still discovering what practices work in different organizational contexts. Currently, their most essential task has become learning to tailor Agile methods to allow all departments and teams to have an iterative approach to work.    “The response has been very positive thus far, and it would be hard to imagine ever going back to a traditional waterfall approach,” Arun concludes. “In fact, our agile coaching team’s long-term goal is to spread this agile mindset beyond our R&D, IT and Marketing departments to our entire organization, and to all our partners and customers.”

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About 10 mins

Learning Objectives

Presenting salesforce maps, territory planning, case study: get organized with territories, create a report, plan the design, practice creating a data set, create an alignment, practice with the trailhead simulator.

• Challenge +100 points

Get Started with Territory Planning

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Design a territory plan.
• Create a new territory alignment.

Effective territory planning can result in an increase of sales, a decrease in cost, and an overall improvement in customer coverage.

Consider the following questions when thinking about territory planning at your company.

• Does your organization have territories?
• Is territory planning time-consuming for sales leaders in your organization?
• Are you often looking for a more efficient territory planning solution?

If you answered yes to any of these, look no further! You’ve come to the right place for answers.

In this module, we assume you are familiar with Enterprise Territory Management. If you’re not, that’s OK. Learn more about Enterprise Territory Management in Salesforce Help .

Territory Planning is an add-on product to Salesforce Maps. To utilize Territory Planning, the Salesforce Maps Managed Package must be installed and permissions to configure and use Territory Planning must be assigned.

While there are many ways to divide your sales territories, it’s time-consuming to manually comb through sales data to reorganize territories. If done incorrectly, you face an uneven distribution of opportunities. Unbalanced territories also negatively impact your business, whether a sales team is spread too thin or there are too many sales reps covering a territory. In either case, Territory Planning is the solution to help successfully navigate the difficult territory planning processes companies face.

Territory Planning helps you analyze and design territories in a logical, scalable manner. It provides business leaders with the tools they need to save time and improve accuracy by focusing on three main features.

Let’s look at how these Territory Planning features work in a real-world scenario.

Cloud Kicks, a custom shoe company, is going through a major territory realignment exercise. It implemented Territory Planning to manage these changes.

Cloud Kicks is expanding its sales team and adding additional territories. Cloud Kicks currently uses Salesforce Enterprise Territory Management to organize its territory alignment into groups of accounts and identify account owners. As part of its realignment, Cloud Kicks wants to use the annual revenue field to fairly distribute opportunities among sales reps. To do this, Cloud Kicks is focusing on three key areas.

• Realign territories to ensure reps can cover more accounts efficiently.
• Collaborate with leaders and sales team on territory design.
• Create territory plans to help reps build effective routes and schedules.

Linda Rosenberg, a Salesforce admin, uses Territory Planning to complete this realignment.

Territory Planning can be directly integrated with Salesforce reports. These reports can be created for any mappable object and display any field on that object. When creating a report, there are some required fields. These are:

• Object ID field
• Fields used to assign territories, like User Name, User ID, Territory Name, or Territory ID
• Latitude field
• Longitude field

Geocoded records are required. If records are not geocoded with latitude and longitude coordinates in your environment, use the core Salesforce Maps application to geocode records. Review the Salesforce Maps Configuration badge for more information.

In this case, Linda creates a Salesforce report to display accounts with the following key attributes: annual revenue, account category, and employee count. She adds Account ID, User ID, Longitude, Latitude, and some additional descriptive fields like Name, Category, State, Country, and Zip Code. These fields will measure territories and search for and reassign individual accounts.

Linda names the saved report Southeast Accounts by Annual Revenue .

Optionally, SOQL Custom Query Builder can be used to circumvent creating a report.

In Territory Planning, there are two components of the design process.

• Data Sets: A collection of records that define your Territory Alignments.
• Territory Alignment: The proposed territory model for the group of records defined in the Data Set. An alignment provides the visual framework of your territory classifications. For example, territories may be classified as regions or districts.

Linda selects the Create Data Set  button and names her data set Southeast Region: Enterprise Accounts .

She adds a brief description, then defines the scope of her territory boundaries.

The use of Territory Boundaries is optional. If defined, it applies to a selected country and provides additional geographical options. Linda selects the United States as the country and four additional options appear: Postal Code, State, County, and 3-Digit Postal Code. Linda selects 3-Digit Postal Code  and continues with her design.

Depending on the country you select, the additional geographical options (postal boundary, county/district, and state/province/region) may differ.

Now she can select the reports to make up her data set. She reviews the list of reports displayed and selects the Southeast Accounts by Annual Revenue report she previously created.

You can select one or more reports when configuring a data set. If selecting multiple reports, each report has its own legend view and display as different symbols on the map to distinguish between reports. This helps users plan territories based on data from multiple objects if needed.

Reports are not directly linked to data sets. Instead, a snapshot of your report is taken when you create a data set. Make your territory planning decisions based on reliable numbers that won’t change between sessions.

Next Linda maps her object fields. (1) Unit ID identifies the unique value associated with a record, such as account ID, (2) Unit Assignment Field identifies the preexisting assignment, such as account owner, (3) Billing Latitude and Billing Longitude specifies the Geolocation fields, and (4) Selected Attribute fields, such as Annual Revenue, are used to analyze her sales territories. 

Now that Linda designed her data set, want to give it a try? You can use Trailhead Simulator to practice creating a data set.

Get to Know the Trailhead Simulator

The Trailhead Simulator is different from a Trailhead Playground. The simulator doesn’t store your progress. If you close your browser, the simulation starts from the beginning each time you launch it. Use the navigation controls at the bottom of the simulator to get back to where you left off. For the best experience, view the Trailhead Simulator on a laptop or desktop computer. Also note that not everything is clickable in the simulator, just the steps that are laid out in the simulator.

Launch the Trailhead Simulator . 

There are a number of ways in which companies can organize their territories when planning the framework for a proposed alignment. Here are some common examples.

• By sales rep or service technician
• By size of business, such as mid-market and small business
• By managers assigned to different teams

At Cloud Kicks, the alignment focuses on sales reps. The proposed alignment includes additional territories and a model for reps to maximize account coverage.

Linda creates a new alignment.

She names it Proposed Alignment and starts the building process.

She now has three options.

• Populate and customize a sample model with different hierarchy levels already displayed.
• Import and configure an existing alignment plan. This is often used when creating an iteration of an existing alignment.
• Import an existing model from Enterprise Territory Management.

Since Cloud Kicks already uses Enterprise Territory Management, Linda selects the Import Salesforce Territory Model button. Next, she selects the Southeast branch and identifies Account Executive as the territory owner role.

Then, she defines the owner name and the unit assignment value. She uses Account Owner ID , the same assignment ID value identified in the data set. This value ensures each record in the selected Salesforce report is aligned with the correct territory.

After confirming the owner name for each territory, she selects the Unit Assignment Option to Auto-Fill with Territory Owner Id field.

Finally, before completing the design, Linda selects the Automatically assign nearby containers  checkbox. This feature automatically associates unassigned zip codes to a territory based on proximity to accounts. This helps eliminate any gaps in coverage. She selects Finish and the Southeast territory displays on the map.

Now, you can follow steps in a Trailhead Simulator to familiarize yourself with creating an alignment in Salesforce Maps Territory Planning. You use the simulator instead of a Trailhead Playground to follow along and try out the steps. 

Launch the Trailhead Simulator .

Throughout this unit, Linda completed the required steps to get her realignment project underway. She created her report, added it to the data set, and imported the existing territory structure from Enterprise Territory Management. In the next unit, she makes changes by adding and removing sales reps to ensure all areas have coverage. Then, Linda reviews the immediate impact of her changes on annual revenue, and collaborates with business leaders before finalizing her proposed territory.

• Trailhead: Increase Sales Efficiency with Territory Management
• Trailhead: Salesforce Maps Configuration
• External Site: Salesforce Maps Territory Planning Demo
• External Site: Sales Territory Alignment: An Overlooked Productivity Tool
• Salesforce Help:  Set Up Salesforce Maps Territory Planning
• Internal Site : Install Salesforce Maps
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Salesforce seeks competitive edge with its climate and nature action

Although Salesforce is cloud based, it aspires to keep its feet on the ground. Recognizing that action on climate and nature are vital for a sustainable future, Salesforce has made them a business priority. Its sustainability work spans six areas: emissions reduction; carbon removal; ecosystem restoration; education and mobilization; innovation; and regulation and policy. The company reported in 2023 that it had achieved 100 percent renewable energy across its value chain, while it aims to reduce its Scopes 1, 2, and 3 absolute emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and to near zero by 2050.

In an interview with McKinsey’s Tony Hansen, Tim Christophersen discusses Salesforce’s Climate Action Plan, as well as its Nature Positive Strategy that enables the company to measure, manage, and reduce the impact of its business on nature. With the knowledge gained from these initiatives, Salesforce aims to support its customers and stakeholders to accelerate their sustainability journeys.

McKinsey: What have you learned in your work toward net zero and what advice can you give companies pursuing similar goals?

Tim Christophersen: Sustainability is one of our core values, and making meaningful progress toward net zero requires the full power of the company to be behind the shift. Throughout our sustainability journey, we have published learning modules and resources to guide people working at other companies as they build and scale integrated climate and nature programs. We’ve learned that collaboration can lead to impact at scale and enable cost-effective, high-quality work that brings others along. Investing in high-quality, nature-based solutions has substantial returns for business and society, and we must remain focused on building integrity into decision making.

The ongoing transition is enabling us to develop more impactful relationships with our customers. The climate conversation is shifting from setting targets to collaborating on meaningful action, so we’re excited to continue closely partnering with organizations as we work through the “how” of significant emissions reduction strategies, whether that’s the energy transition, carbon removal, or nature restoration. We have, for example, cofounded the trillion trees initiative, 1t.org (which serves the global movement to conserve, restore, and grow a trillion trees by 2030 and, to date, has brought together over 100 businesses), and the Business Alliance on Scaling Climate Solutions. We have also joined platforms such as the First Movers Coalition, which pools members’ commitments toward clean technologies into the kind of large-scale demand needed to accelerate decarbonization.

McKinsey: Part of your approach to sustainability is to seek to influence both governments and the public sector to accelerate the transition to net zero and limit warming to 1.5°C. Can you tell us some specific accomplishments?

Tim Christophersen: The right regulatory environment is important to ensure that businesses step up to meet the challenge of the climate crisis. Advocacy is part of Salesforce’s public policy platform and our work is guided by our Climate and Nature Policy principles. A recent example of our engagement is the Nature Restoration Law debate in the European Union, a law that is critical for setting in place the necessary policy framework to restore nature in Europe. In alignment with our principles focused on scaling nature-based solutions, we have joined other companies to advocate for the importance of this legislation. We published a joint op-ed with Danone, Nestlé, and VELUX; engaged with parliament members at an EU Parliament session in May 2023; and signed joint business statements, including those coordinated by WWF and Business For Nature. 1 Tim Christophersen, Facundo Etchebehere, Bart Vandewaetere, and Fleming Voetman, “We cannot move forward with ‘business as usual’ for nature,” Euractiv, June 9, 2023; for more information on the WWF statement, see ournatureourbusiness.eu; “CEOs and executives from more than 80 companies and financial institutions urge the EU to adopt environmental legislation to address the nature and climate crises together,” Business Nature Forum, July 6, 2023. And, in advance of the global Biodiversity Summit in 2022 (COP15), we joined Business for Nature and other leading companies in successfully calling on world leaders to require organizations to address and disclose nature-related dependencies.

McKinsey: In April 2023, you announced a Nature Positive Strategy, which seeks to reduce Salesforce’s impacts on nature across its value chain. What have been the biggest hurdles and successes?

Tim Christophersen: Publishing the Nature Positive Strategy was an important milestone for Salesforce. While we were already doing work around climate and nature, this was an important step to demonstrate our holistic approach to these interlinked challenges. To develop a new strategy isn’t always easy. We performed benchmarking, interviewed stakeholders, undertook rigorous prioritization exercises, and assessed our own impacts to ensure that we were not only accounting for risks but also identifying opportunities. While I wouldn’t describe that work as a “hurdle,” we made sure to spend sufficient time with internal stakeholders to build up their knowledge around nature topics in the same way we did with addressing climate issues a few years ago. We also joined the pilot phase of the Taskforce for Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), which was helpful in terms of providing us with a stronger understanding of Salesforce’s specific nature-related impacts, dependencies, risks, and opportunities. What has been most rewarding so far is the positive feedback we have received from other companies telling us they are encouraged to accelerate their efforts.

The net-zero transition and nature-positive movements are also about value creation and bringing the private sector’s ingenuity to drive solutions for climate and nature. Tim Christophersen

McKinsey: Nature restoration is a major part of what you are setting out to achieve through your strategy. What is the business case and how are you going about this?

Tim Christophersen: Our economy is dependent on nature—whether in its role as a carbon sink or as a provider of raw materials. To achieve our climate commitments, we need healthy and intact nature, which is why we have prioritized investing into nature restoration. A critical avenue through which we support both our climate and nature commitments is via 1t.org. The platform is driving systems change by mobilizing multistakeholder partnerships in key regions and supporting innovation on the ground. To date, over 100 companies have pledged to conserve, restore, and grow more than 12 billion trees in over 65 countries. Salesforce has pledged to fund the conservation, restoration, and growth of 100 million trees by 2030. Last year we added new partners and projects, funding a cumulative total of 52 million trees to date. We have funded 29 projects in 13 countries that support people and trees, for example, in urban Texas, at a refugee camp in Uganda, and at ten schools in Gurgaon, India. We also support the UN World Restoration Flagships, such as the Atlantic Forest in Brazil. 2 “World restoration flagships,” UN Decade on Restoration, 2023; for further information, see decadeonrestoration.org/world-restoration-flagships .

McKinsey: What barriers prevent some of your customers from moving forward with a nature strategy? What lessons can you share from your experience?

Tim Christophersen: For many of our customers, assessing or managing nature-related issues has not been a priority. However, that’s changing due to regulation, stakeholder pressure, and the nature-positive movement. On the other hand, there are industries that have focused on this area for a while. For those that may have less developed nature strategies, plenty of resources and guidance are now available. Our customers often say that capacity and resources are a challenge, so we have embedded our nature efforts into our climate approach to create synergies within the company. For example, we have committed to purchase 1 million tons of high-quality blue carbon from restoration efforts in mangroves or other marine ecosystems that are critical both for climate mitigation and resilience. As it is challenging to find sufficient supply of high-quality blue carbon, we have committed philanthropic funding to a global collective effort called the Mangrove Breakthrough, which will improve the enabling conditions for blue carbon projects for interested investors.

McKinsey: Salesforce has hundreds of thousands of customers. How do you plan to integrate climate and nature into your product offerings to create greater value for customers?

Tim Christophersen: We believe that every organization has its core competencies to drive climate action at scale. For Salesforce, it’s putting technology into the hands of customers to help them navigate the future successfully. That’s why we built Net Zero Cloud, an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) management platform designed to help organizations manage their environmental footprint and track their progress to net zero. Today, we’re enabling organizations like AT&T, Clif Bar, Mastercard, and others to accelerate their sustainability journeys.

Looking ahead, and given our vast range of customers, we see the opportunity to support them on their nature-positive journeys by providing them with tools to identify, manage, and report on their nature-related risks, impacts, and dependencies. We have forged partnerships with leading biodiversity consulting firms and data providers to create innovative nature assessment and disclosure solutions tailored for large companies, including a new Nature Tech Alliance with Environmental Resources Management (ERM), Planet, and NatureMetrics. 3 Mark Hilldson, “Analysis: New nature-based frameworks keep biodiversity in the spotlight at Davos,” January 25, 2024.

McKinsey: How can a climate and nature strategy be turned into a competitive advantage for Salesforce and its customers? Please share examples.

Tim Christophersen: Integrating climate and nature into business decision making goes beyond managing risks and costs. The net-zero transition and nature-positive movements are also about value creation and bringing the private sector’s ingenuity to drive solutions for climate and nature. The transition presents substantial opportunities to develop new products, services, and technologies, as well as to work with our employees, customers, communities, and partners in new and better ways. Being a sustainability leader with ambitious commitments and measurable targets also helps us to attract and retain top talent.

McKinsey: What actions can corporations take now to help build a net-zero and nature-positive economy?

Tim Christophersen: Every company or organization must reduce its emissions and make the necessary transition to a net-zero, nature-positive future. Salesforce products run on cloud infrastructure, and this category comprises most of our emissions. To reduce emissions, we focus on increasing operational efficiency while collaborating with our public cloud suppliers to optimize our deployment. Since 2021, we have cut carbon emissions by more than a quarter while delivering our services and invested in solutions to help reduce, remove, and compensate for these emissions. 4 FY23 stakeholder impact report, February 1, 2022 –January 31, 2023,” Salesforce, 2023. On an annual basis, we procure renewable energy equivalent to the amount of electricity we have used globally. We also purchase high-quality and high-integrity carbon credits, equivalent to our remaining emissions, every year.

Each of us must play a role in the collective journey to limit warming to 1.5°C. Governments, businesses, investors, civil society, and individuals need to take bold climate actions while together building momentum. Companies have an important role to play in advocating for climate policies that align with the pace of change needed to limit the impacts of climate change and nature loss.

Tim Christophersen is the vice president, climate action at Salesforce. Tony Hansen is director, Natural Capital and Nature in McKinsey’s Seattle office.

Comments and opinions expressed by interviewees are their own and do not represent or reflect the opinions, policies, or positions of McKinsey & Company or have its endorsement.

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How Alation Enables Trusted Data Discovery at Salesforce

average monthly analyst queries

users securely access data

place for Snowflake data discovery

Challenge: Tame sprawling, siloed data

Rapid growth at Salesforce resulted in a complex, sprawling data environment across multiple clouds and systems. Analysts found it difficult to find, trust, and collaborate on data across business units.  

The company also lacked consistent, updated data policies, which led to a lack of trust in data. Salesforce needed to identify data owners, create consistent enterprise-wide data definitions, and encourage self-service data access while mitigating risk. 

To address these challenges, Salesforce sought an enterprise-grade data catalog solution . This platform would allow business teams to explore data within a secure framework and serve as a one-stop shop for data discovery. 

“We take pride in our trust-first mindset and build security into everything we do,” says Pavan Tumu, director of product management at Salesforce. The chosen solution would need to offer a high level of security and performance to enforce trust in data at all levels of the business.

As an industry leader ourselves, we choose to partner with companies like Alation that have the same innovative fabric, and who also enjoy the same industry recognition that we do.

Director of Product Management, Salesforce

Objectives 

Salesforce set out to empower people to trust and collaborate around data, driving innovation, while at the same time giving them critical guidance to maintain security and compliance. This meant they needed to:

Create an enterprise view of data

Provide governed self-service data access

Ease data migration to Snowflake

Implementation

Enabling self-service data discovery .

In 2015, the Data Science Team at Salesforce began using Alation and in 2018, Salesforce deployed Alation to the enterprise. Today, the data catalog enables more than 4,600 data users across the business to discover, understand, consume, and collaborate around data.

The partnership was a natural pairing. “As an industry leader ourselves, we choose to partner with companies like Alation that have the same innovative fabric, and who also enjoy the same industry recognition that we do,” says Tumu.

In Alation, Salesforce users can access trusted data (with business context) instantly. Machine learning features guide people to the most relevant information within their business flows. “This allows our communities to scale to work faster and achieve more, but do so in a smart way,” says Tumu. Alation’s collaboration features lower barriers to knowledge sharing and make the analytics environment more transparent.

Migrating to the Snowflake Data Cloud

That transparency was critical when it came time for Salesforce to migrate from their Oracle data warehouse landscape to the Snowflake Data Cloud. To prepare, Salesforce used Alation to identify what data to migrate and whom to tap for help, creating a map with the key players who would shepherd the migration and become stewards in the new system. Salesforce also used cataloged metadata to create data access rules to protect private information and scale their system. 

Cataloging their metadata before migration offered several benefits: Salesforce aligned business to data metrics, set policies, and added tribal knowledge to the cloud platform. Using metadata to inform migration enabled self-service for future users, and helped Salesforce leaders set their data warehouse up for success. 

Alation absorbed the technical metadata, which Salesforce then augmented with descriptions, classifications, owners, and stewards. “I would highly recommend [implementing] Alation before starting your Snowflake migration,” states Vikas Sangwan, global head of data platform, engineering, and AI at Salesforce. 

I would highly recommend [implementing] Alation before starting your Snowflake migration.

Vikas Sangwan

Global Head of Data Platform, Engineering and AI, Salesforce

Results: 4,600 people running 280,000 monthly queries

Today, Alation is a core data discovery platform for analytics, security, and compliance teams across Salesforce. It provides a one-stop shop for Snowflake data discovery across the enterprise. 

Salesforce uses Alation to tap into the collective intellect of the company to make their data more usable, promote curated content, and drive the trust that encourages further adoption of the data catalog. Certified, curated content instills confidence and a “data for all” mindset within the organization.

The result? Analysts and engineers now spend their time using instead of searching for data. More than 4,600 folks at Salesforce run an average of 280,000 queries monthly in Alation. “Alation is the preferred big data interactive query tool for our data engineers, data scientists, and analysts alike,” says Tumu. 

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