Salesforce is the world’s most popular customer relationship management (CRM) platform, which helps your marketing, sales, commerce, service, and IT teams work as one from anywhere — so you can keep your customers happy everywhere. The software has become the number one for customer success and helps businesses track customer activity, market to customers, and many other services.
Stratiform, a Salesforce Partner, is a dynamic Salesforce implementation consultancy that provides strategic business solutions, business consulting, Salesforce implementations, Salesforce enhancement/development/re-development, and personal training for your highly skilled sales and management teams. Mark Wheeler, the Founder and Director of Stratiform, has over three decades of experience in Sales, Management, and Marketing in a wide breadth of industries. Working with Salesforce since 2008, he has hands-on knowledge of what Salesforce and the AppExchange can do for a company. We interviewed him to know more about the company and its services. Here are a few excerpts of the interview:
Q. How does Stratiform do business different from the traditional ways?
Stratiform prides itself on becoming a long-term trusted partner of our clients. During these trying times, companies are making exaggerated promises regarding their services. We are not exaggerating when we say we can help their business. Whether implementing, enhancing, or integrating your CRM or building custom apps or websites, we will be improving the clients’ processes, enhancing data segmentation, and then taking the time to properly train the staff to use these new or improved tools.
Q. How do you help your customers efficiently connect to their clients in real-time?
A business’s website is only the face of the company. Once the site captures the leads, it’s the system behind it that can fail and lead to prospects falling through the cracks. We build the systems that the staff can easily use, ensuring every lead counts and follows that lead through the conversion stages, capturing all the touchpoints along the journey.
Q. Why is integrating your systems important?
Aligning and integrating your CRM and the backend system can solidify the data. For a sales team, it takes the responsibility of closing an opportunity out of their hands. A closed opportunity is a true representation of a sealed deal since it equals a signed PO or a paid invoice. Recently Stratiform connected Salesforce and Xero for a large not-for-profit here in Melbourne. This has led to insights of the true cost and revenue of an event.
Now reportable on the event:
- Date of event
- Location of the event
- What activity did it take to facilitate this event? (Emails, Calls, Meetings)
- Whom did we work with to make this event happen? (Sponsors, Venue, Caterers)
- The actual cost via the related invoices (Sent to Xero via the event)
- The status of those invoices (Are they paid or outstanding?)
- Did we make any money on this event? (Actual Revenue from Xero)
This allows the client to make REAL business decisions based on REAL data making those determinations educated.
Q. Off-site work eases employees in many ways. How does Stratiform contribute to this cause?
Stratiform has always supported a 100% remote working staff. With technology like Salesforce, Zoom, Quip, and G-Suite, the staff can work from anywhere. No commuting, no traffic, no office expense. We find everyone is happier, staff and clients alike.
Q. Why is the proper implementation partner crucial?
It doesn’t matter if Salesforce is the number one CRM in the world if the partner chosen to implement doesn’t work closely and coherently with the business. We understand the client:
- How they do business
- Their current processes
- Their customer journey
- Their products
- Management Goals
These are all vital and take time to understand. With a disconnected implementation the CRM won’t align to the business, users are confused and not engaged, typical signs of a bad implementation partner. For Salesforce to be the tool expected, it needs to be configured correctly, so you have users happily adding data and managers seeing the results on dashboards.
Q. Why do you advise a review processes with the existing technology before implementing new technology?
Understanding a business’s current processes, where the pain points are, what systems are currently being used, what the outcomes are, all help us understand and flush out areas that need focus. If we want to ease the stresses of the day-to-day business, we need to see what the staff are currently dealing with. Then we can concentrate on how we are going to make their jobs easier. Our biggest joy is seeing the dashboard light up and the client seeing the data in real-time for the first time.
Q. Elaborate on your service offerings. Apart from offering Salesforce services, what else do you offer?
Our Salesforce services include: Implementations: Stratiform works closely with the business to make sure the configuration of the new CRM is completed using best practices and allows for business growth.
Customizations/Development: Enhancements that continue to keep the business aligned to the system will keep the users engaged, the data integrity, and the report accurate.
Integrations: Having your systems talking is the best way to ensure you can report on the full spectrum of the business.
Training: From the everyday users right up to the executives, we believe keeping the users trained will get the best results from the CRM and keep the users engaged. Face to face or Zoom training is available, one on one or group.
Support: We offer off-site administration. To keep the CRM aligned with the business, a System Administrator is a must, but another staff member is a significant cost. We off this alternative that includes all the admin tasks consulting, face-to-face conferring, and even training for the team.
Our business services include:
- Custom Websites
- Business Consulting
- Custom Apps
- SEO Services
Meet the Founder and Director
Mark Wheeler, the Founder and Director at Stratiform, has been a business owner/operator on and off since the age of 21. In 2008, while working for a large industrial supply company in Los Angeles, Mark found himself searching for a solution that would take the sales team away from spreadsheets and onto a platform that would allow for a full view of the customer. Mark undertook the task of developing, implementing, and administering Salesforce for the business as well as their sister company. During this time, he developed an affinity for working with Salesforce and finding innovative ways, making the system work for his businesses. After having built considerable expertise in Salesforce, he relocated to Australia and continued to apply his passion for finding system-driven end-to-end solutions for business. Mark started Stratiform in 2016, allowing him the freedom to build long-term partnerships with his clients.
