What to Look for in a Salesforce Partner
Salesforce Commerce Cloud is an eCommerce solution known for its industry-leading products and services, and it’s used by some of the most successful brands on the planet — including Amazon, Toyota, and Adidas.
For businesses switching to Salesforce from their existing eCommerce platform, working with a third-party eCommerce partner is crucial.
The right eCommerce partner can meet the requirements of their client at every turn, and help clients implement the software seamlessly. The wrong partner can lead to an overly complex, expensive, and difficult to maintain implementation. This can be disastrous for running a long-term and scalable software solution.
Finding a suitable partner can be difficult if you don’t know what to look for. Here are a few crucial qualities that clients should consider when searching for the right SFCC implementation partner.
Industry Experience
Perhaps the most important quality to look for in a partner is that they have expertise specific to your industry. This is especially important when it comes to getting the most out of Salesforce’s product suite.
Salesforce features hold incredible potential. Unfortunately, brands often buy tools and underutilize them, or end up paying for features they don’t use.
Einstein, for example, offers advanced AI capabilities to every app in the Salesforce suite. It’s incredibly easy to use, but it’s one feature of Salesforce that is often underutilized.
The right eCommerce partner knows exactly how businesses in the client’s industry use each Salesforce product. They have the industry experience required to ensure that every tool is being used to its full capabilities.
Salesforce Credentials
Salesforce certification validates that a partner has the Salesforce knowledge and experience necessary to handle a client’s implementation and to ensure that they’re getting the most out of the platform. It’s also a great way to verify that the team is up-to-date on the most recent Salesforce releases.
Melon is a certified Salesforce Commerce Cloud partner. Being connected to Salesforce allows the team to venture into various services like Marketing Cloud, and to even create mobile apps.
Ultimately, that partnership puts Melon in a position to leverage Salesforce’s resources to ensure that the team is constantly learning and innovating — which truly benefits clients.
Efficient Approach
When selecting an eCommerce partner, businesses should be careful of overcomplication. A simple path with proven results will always save clients time, frustration, and money.
Larger agencies will often have bloated budgets and over-engineered solutions to build their revenue and profitability. For the client, this process leads to unnecessary overhead and extended delivery timelines.
The team at Melon left some of the largest agencies in the world because we believed that there is a simpler way to deliver great work and sustained value to clients.
At Melon, we are laser-focused on how to measure results and what clients consider a win. For example, we recently had one client that received a 30% decrease in abandonment rate during the checkout process. Those kinds of results are what we hang our hat on.
Competitive Pricing and Timeline
A great partner offers highly flexible support at a respectable price, without requiring long-term contracts that hold you to a support plan you only need short-term.
Businesses should find out which partners can help them not only with the implementation but with ongoing support as well — like product road mapping.
Melon’s clients are presented with a radically honest price, adaptable packages, and help with strategy, UX/Design, and implementation long term. We provide same-day no-nonsense pricing on our site, so you know what to expect from the beginning. For more information, click here.
Don’t start from scratch
Your eCommerce store already comes with various core functionalities. If you choose a partner that offers an accelerator program, you can use these functionalities instead of starting from scratch. An accelerator package decreases total costs and enables you to focus your dollars on valuable customizations that meet the needs of your business. They also allow you to launch faster, and reach the market quicker than your basic site.
Melon Punch
Melon offers a Salesforce Commerce Cloud accelerator package called Melon Punch. The package provides all of the essentials that a business needs to get started. From there, customizations and functionalities are added on as business needs them. Melon Punch has delivered our client’s proven results — such as a 125% increased conversion rate, a 30% decrease in cart abandonment, and a 25% increase in site speed and performance.
For example, Georgia Xtracts’ is an online retailer that provides CBD products and hand sanitizers. Their entry into the U.S. market was rapidly successful, and they needed an eCommerce solution that could keep up with the growth as soon as possible.
Using Melon’s SFCC accelerator package, GA Xtracts was able to successfully launch an online store within a record-breaking four-week timeline, and start processing orders within the same month of kickoff.
The diverse set of features Melon offered allowed GA Xtracts to focus on the launch of a new product line as well as rapid B2B and B2C sales growth, rather than getting bogged in unnecessary development cycles and lengthy timelines.
Conclusion
Salesforce is an incredible eCommerce platform, but a significant amount of any user’s success will come down to the partner they choose to work with. There are various qualities to look out for that we haven’t touched on in this article, but these are definitely some of the most important.
Do your research, and remember that the right partner will always sit down with you and discuss your questions with transparency.