Salesforce Admins Podcast

This week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we’ve got Jeff Berger, Salesforce Admin at Academy Bank and co-leader of the Kansas City Salesforce User Group. We learn how he built a Salesforce app in just five hours.

Join us as we talk about how he works to create transparency between his customers and his organization, how he got executive buy-in so quickly, and the importance of communication.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Jeff Berger.

Building an application in 5 hours.

So without burying the lede, we felt like we needed to bring Jeff on the podcast after he built an app from start to finish in five hours. “Like many banks over the past couple of weeks, we were scrambling to get something done for the Paycheck Protections Programs that was part of the CARES Act,” Jeff says, which meant he got a call from his boss asking for help on reporting. He needed to turn that process into a new app as quickly as possible to help them figure out how to allocate their resources in an all-hands-on-deck situation.

“The number one thing you can do, when you’re demoing a new process, is don’t focus so much on the process,” Jeff says, “an executive wants to see the output, they want to see the data right away.” Seeing a live readout of the information they cared about the most really sold the value of the app to the stakeholders involved. “Amazing things happen when you have executive buy-in,” he says, and with the support of leadership and the organizational focus that comes with it, he was able to turn the app around incredibly quickly.

A big need for Jeff’s organization was a way for the tellers who speak to customers every day to be able to tell what the status of someone’s application is. The initial ask was for Jeff to periodically publish a spreadsheet on a web portal for people to check, “but I like to replace spreadsheets with Salesforce,” Jeff says. He figured he could create a list view in Salesforce, drop that onto a community page, and share it publicly with the guest user functionality to give people up-to-to-the-minute information about their application.

The power of communication.

“If I have a favorite Salesforce features, it’s reports and dashboards,” Jeff says, “the value in Salesforce is the ability to immediately, as soon as you stand up a new object, start reporting on it.” Getting everyone trained on an app in such a short amount of time wouldn’t be possible without Chatter. Jeff could respond immediately to any tech support needs right on the platform.

“There’s no secret sauce,” Jeff says, “when I get questions in Salesforce, only 25-30% are Salesforce technical questions, the rest of them are really business process questions.” Jeff also emphasized the importance of getting on the same page with other departments about how things work and what the message is. Staying aligned and communicating was critical to turning around an app so quickly. Be sure to listen to the full episode for more, as there are tons of great tips about rapid development and deployment.

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Direct download: From_Idea_to_App_in_5_Hours_with_Jeff_Berger.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:00pm PDT