Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Jennifer Cole, Director of Business Intelligence and Automation at 908 Devices.


Join us as we chat about why understanding and documenting your business processes is critical for collecting quality data in your org.


You should subscribe (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/b...) for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jennifer Cole.
Admins connect the dots

Jen recently co-presented at World Tour Boston about business processes and data strategy, and I wanted to get her on the pod to tell you all about it. “Data isn’t helpful if you don’t know your process,” she says, “it’s just interesting facts on a screen that maybe make pretty graphs but what does it tell you if you don’t know what questions you’re answering?”


I think a common misconception is that it’s the people not doing the day-to-day work who don’t understand the business process. As Jen points out, it’s often the folks actually doing the process who don’t understand why they need to log data a certain way.


As we’ll get into, that’s not necessarily their fault—there’s an information gap. So it’s up to us as Salesforce Admins to connect those dots and spell out why accurate data is so important.
How inaccurate data gets in your org

Jen often supports sales teams and it’s a great example of how inaccurate data can end up in your org. Now it might sound obvious, but sales teams want to sell things. They don’t understand why they need to log an email into Salesforce or create the next step on an opportunity because they don’t know how that information will be used. So you see a lot of rushing through fields or just filling in a random date because it doesn’t matter anyway, right?


And that’s where the problems creep in. Inaccurate data creates inaccurate business decisions. AI tools like Einstein Copilot or Next Best Action turn into useless, expensive toys without accurate data.


So the first step is to figure out what questions you need to answer with data. If you can get to the Why behind the business process, you can build bridges across your organization and bring people together.
Business processes and getting to why

The next step is to explain the Why to the people involved in the business process. For example, “If you log your follow-up calls accurately, we can look at all that data and tell you the best time to make those calls,” or, “Sue from marketing will use this to send a targeted drip campaign that we know makes them more likely to buy from you.” Suddenly, you’ve created a feedback loop that gets the people entering data invested in data quality.


Training is the best time to get started with explaining why. When they fill in this field, who else will use that information and how will it help the business as a whole? You need to get them invested in the process and help them see the broader picture.


There’s so much more great stuff from Jen about how to look at your business processes and data strategy, so be sure to listen to the full episode. And don’t forget to subscribe to hear more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast.


Podcast swag


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Salesforce Admins on the Trailhead Store (https://trailheadstoreamer.com/catego...)

Learn more

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Podcast: Solving Business Problems with Composer and Flow with Jennifer Cole (https://admin.salesforce.com/blog/202...)


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Blog: How to Use Salesforce to Manage Your Documentation (https://admin.salesforce.com/blog/202...)


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Blog: How to Write Great Documentation to Help with Future Problem Solving (https://admin.salesforce.com/blog/202...)


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Podcast: Understanding the Importance of Data Health in Salesforce (https://admin.salesforce.com/blog/202...)



 


Admin Trailblazers Group


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Admin Trailblazers Community Group (https://sforce.co/4977GHH)



Social


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Connect with Jen:   / jcole-trailblazer  


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Salesforce Admins: @SalesforceAdmns  (  / salesforceadmns  )


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Mike on Threads: https://www.threads.net/@mikegerholdt/


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Mike on Tiktok:   / salesforce.mike  


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Mike on X: @MikeGerholdt (  / mikegerholdt  )



 


Full show transcript


Mike: This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we're talking with Jennifer Cole about data strateg...