ALW

Advisory Services, Change Management, Implementation

The company felt its Salesforce Partner Portal was impacting its agency network’s perception of doing business with ALW. Agents felt the platform was not user friendly, required too many steps (i.e. clicks), and was not tailored to their use case. ALW also recognized the need for better data maintenance and tracking capabilities. Poor data consistency and a hard-to-manage process for reps limited the ability to extract valuable data-driven insights needed to manage the business and drive strategy. ALW began searching for both a solution and a partner that could provide a complete, holistic process and data visibility for the entire customer lifecycle, from quote inception to order entry. Additionally, ALW began to recognize that a lack of deep Salesforce technical expertise was slowing day-to-day processes. ALW did not have a system admin or other form of dedicated Salesforce resource for ongoing internal improvement. With Salesforce accounting for up to 75 percent of some team members’ time on a daily basis, proper management of technical enhancements and requests was a necessity. However, developing this expertise internally would take significant time, and previous third-party partners were not meeting support expectations.

How Simplus Helped Simplus worked closely with ALW’s operations team to gather internal and external user feedback in order to develop and execute a Partner Portal reoptimization plan that comprehensively addressed all key pain points. The reoptimized implementation was very well-received by ALW’s partner users, who were pleased to see their feedback directly addressed with new improvements. Simplus Managed Services and Advisory Services were also utilized to maintain Salesforce operational continuity and roadmap the best path forward for the Partner Portal reoptimization. The Simplus Change Management practice worked extensively on this project to guide user adoption, develop curriculum, and provide professional training. Results, ROI, and Future Plans Post go-live surveys of the ALW Partner Portal came back overwhelmingly positive. Both the training deployment and the reoptimization requirements ALW asked of Simplus were well-received and adopted by end users. As opposed to previous Salesforce projects, ALW found this go-live was guided by strong sponsorship, proactive preparation, and exemplary change management, making overall adoption and success rates high. ALW is excited for the future and is enjoying a more streamlined quote management process with its partners – a process that has already yielded great results in both end user satisfaction and dollar value.