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DataTools Pro Beta3 is Here for the Holidays

Posted on 2023-12-18 - 12:53 pm by
DataTools for the Holidays

Just in time for the holidays, we hit our final beta release milestone before we officially launch DataTools Pro in early 2024! Our approach to product is release early and often so we can get feedback and incorporate it into our roadmap. DataTools Pro milestone to exit beta is our release into the Salesforce App exchange. We look forward to formally delivering a webinar in January to celebrate our launch. We have a jam packed roadmap to deliver in 2024. We can’t wait to help connect your Salesforce, data, and analytics teams and accelerate your data cloud initiatives.

Dec LinkedIn Newsletter: DataTools Pro Holiday Special

Salesforce Entity Relationship Views

A simple and effective tool to classify your Salesforce objects, our new views features allows you to organize objects and create custom entity prelateship diagrams aligned to business topics, organizations, and initiatives.

Data Tools Object and ERD Views

ARTICLE: Salesforce Entity Relationship Diagrams Makes Visual Storytelling Simple

Metrics Enhancements

We have continued to button up our metrics glossary tools to simplify the the process for managing metrics and KPI glossaries and their lineage to Salesforce dashboards and reports. We added support for custom links.

Improved Metrics Bulk Batch Import

Bulk Editing Metrics Records

Fine Grained User Permissions and Sharing

In preparation for team-based work in DataTools Pro, we added fine grained permissions. Next, we are working to refine the experience and standardize roles to make permissions and sharing simple.

Managing User Permissions and Sharing

DataTools Metrics API

An impotent aspect of DataTools Pro is not only automating most aspects of metrics glossary creation and management, but also securely distributing it across your enterprise. We have been quietly experimenting with our own DataTools API to build new integrations. Those will come in the form of add-ons, open source projects, and direct integrations in 2024.

ARTICLE: Using DataTools Pro to Create New Microsoft Copilot Studio Custom Actions

Support and User Onboarding Resources

We have added contextual help, more documentation, and new support engagement options to work with our team. This is just the start as we work on guided onboarding videos to help deliver best practices from our team and other users.

New Community and Social Resources

DataTools Pro Flash Newsletter
Join our monthly newsletter on LinkedIn

Join us on Reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/datatoolspro/

New DataTools LinkedIn Page
https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/datatools-pro/

Coming in January!

Our development is razor focused on self-service onboarding. Additionally, we have some very exciting, novel features for our metrics glossary that will go into private preview. Our first webinar to officially launch DataToolsPro and DataToolsPro.com is also planned for January. We look forward working with our early adopter beta users to deliver overwhelming incremental value to your Salesforce data cloud initiatives for 2024!

Salesforce Entity Relationship Diagrams Makes Visual Storytelling Simple

Posted on 2023-12-16 - 6:02 pm by
Salesforce ERD

One of the most useful tools in the admin or data professional’s toolkit are Salesforce entity relationship diagrams. Understanding conceptual and physical data models is difficult enough. A business stakeholder responsible for sales, marketing, and revenue typically has little interest in the Salesforce data model. When information coming out of Salesforce is incorrect, sometimes you need to revisit your existing data model.

Bringing Salesforce admin, data and business professionals together, sometimes a conceptual entity relationship diagram is very useful to algin to the same level of understanding to make the right forward decision. To help explain and prioritize data work for a client, I recently used our entity relationship diagram to pinpoint and explain the root cause of reporting problems.

Salesforce entity relationship diagrams

Real World Lead Attribution Use Case with Salesforce ERD

Lead attribution is one of the most important and challenging aspects of running your “got to market” stack. To do so requires attention to data consistency and quality. One of our customers had an ambitious and practical approach to connects Leads, Accounts, and Opportunities with a junction object called “Vintage”. The ability to automatically track a lead vintage (when the lead enters the funnel), is very useful to report funnel conversion and lifetime value. Reports for revenue and lifetime value by lead source is important for planning and budgeting independent of campaign activity.

To communicate the issue, I used the following DataTools Pro ERD Diagram to demonstrate the additional data relationships that were maintained. Additionally, I explained how existing reporting requirements could easily be achieved without the vintage object. The following is the exact picture I painted to describe the specific linkage that was effectively broken in the Lead Attribution Funnel.

Salesforce Attribution Diagram

Resolution with Empirical Proof

There were some objections to remove the Vintage object. During the meeting, I clicked to demonstrate where those data relationships are maintained. It was very effective to satisfy most objections in real time.

There was one objection we had to clear to deprecate the Vintage object. Using historical data analysis I discovered the Vintage objection use case occurred 1 in every 500 opportunities which made it a true edge case. Sometimes you engineer a solution to account for anticipated scenarios that rarely occur in real life; this was one of those cases.

The consensus was the vintage object and all of the processes needed to maintain it could be deprecated. Rather than trying to accomplish detailed lead attribution from the lead object, campaign and campaign members are used to capture clients that enter the funnel multiple times from multiple channels.

How to Build a Salesforce entity relationship diagrams for Free

Salesforce provides an out of the entity diagram for Salesforce administrators to visualize and manage the Salesforce data model. I find them useful for administration but not for sharing and distribution.

Build better, easier to visualize ERDs with DataTools Pro: Our desire to build a better ERD for Salesforce led us to create ERDs. Here are some of reasons you may want to check out the free diagraming capabilities we offer:

  • Simpler, minimal design
  • Exportable to single page document (SVG)
  • Connected directly to Salesforce
  • Custom views aligned to business topics and tech modules.
Get Started
Learn More

New Microsoft Copilot Studio Custom Actions

Posted on 2023-12-04 - 4:52 am by
Azure CoPilot Studio

New Azure Copilot Studio custom actions have opened the door for us to connect live, connected Salesforce metric and data dictionaries into the MS Copilot experience. Over the weekend I jumped into Azure and setup a functioning Azure Copilot, trained on our website data, that is available for you to try out below. A little bit of work and reading landed us in the same place we found ourselves a few weeks ago while testing OpenAI’s GPT actions for the first time. In a similar process, I embedded our DataTools Pro app as an action, in the same time it took to finish a cup of tea.

Unlike OpenAI, Azure OpenAI and now Azure Copilot are designed with enterprise in mind with the full suite of Azure services behind it.

DataTools as a GPT

Microsoft Copilot Bot Live Demo

This weekend, I dug in and with only a few clicks, built a co-pilot built a co-pilot based on the DataTools Pro website. With a little more work, we were security connecting in real time to DataTools Pro API and surfacing Salesforce metrics as context to Copilot our own business. We will continue to update this live demo below with our DataTools API demo account connected to Salesforce Essential Metrics.

Ask Questions about DataTools

Azure OpenAI and Copilot won’t fix your data

We are in unprecedented times with the speed that these AI advancements are rolling out and evolving. The real benefit of a Copilot is:

  1. Increasing speed and ease for consuming large bodies of information
  2. Improving the level and depth of understanding (for people who are inquisitive)
  3. Translating and communicating information (text and visual).

While the innovation and art of the possible is very exciting, a sobering reality is you still need to double down on the same data and metadata management and governance.

The path is clear with Azure AI services.

Microsoft has done an incredible job weaving AI into the existing suite of data services and tools..

As we officially roll out new and novel solutions with our DataTools App for Salesforce, we will continue to integrate our APIs throughout the Azure Open AI and Copilot stack. Schedule a call to learn how we can help bring fully trained co-pilots to your organization!

Check out Microsoft Marketing on Copilot Studio

Learn about our DataTools Pro API

DataTools Pro API

Your 2024 Tableau Salesforce Integration Guide

Posted on 2023-10-15 - 5:58 pm by
Tableau Salesforce

In this guide, we will walk you through the process of setting up Tableau Salesforce Cloud using the latest and greatest native integrations. Tableau Cloud natively integrates with Salesforce for enhanced security and access as the two clouds have become tightly knit together. In addition to the nuts and bolts, we will focus on key use cases how Tableau can provide valuable insights beyond standard Salesforce reports and dashboards. Tableau’s capabilities for deeper analysis, data manipulation, end-user ad-hoc analysis, and access to diverse data sources make it a powerful complement to Salesforce’s offerings.

Tableau Salesforce

Tableau Cloud Setup

Setting up Tableau cloud is as simple as signing up and provisioning an account through the online setup form. Once provisioned you can immediately start connecting and building.

Salesforce SSO for Tableau: Security and Access

Salesforce cloud natively supports Salesforce for user access and authentication. This allows you to extend your user management and access into Tableau so you are not needing to duplicate work.

Simply check “Salesforce” so when you invite users they will need to utilize their Salesforce username and password. If you use Multi-Factor Authentication MFA with the Salesforce authenticator app, you do not need to perform any additional configuration for it to work.

Embedding Tableau inside of Salesforce

For Salesforce organizations, Tableau should be a seamless experience that resides side by side with standard Salesforce.com dashboards. To accomplish this goal, we typically utilize the Tableau lightning component. With Tableau cloud, you can utilize the “Default Authentication type for Embedded Views”, ensuring a secure and seamless experience for end users.

The best user experience is one that reduces friction. We typically embed dashboards inside of Lightning pages and also make use of tabs to isolate Salesforce dashboards and Tableau dashboards side by side based on topic.

To allow embedding of Tableau inside of Salesforce as of Winter 24, simply go to Setup and enable Tableau embedding.

Tableau for Salesforce Use Cases

Before embarking on a Tableau Salesforce its important to understand key uses cases where implementing Tableau makes sense above and beyond standard Salesforce reports and Dashboards.

Deeper analysis

When we refer to “depth of analysis” we mean taking a single subject and exploring history, relationships, and paterns that impact the subject.

For example, if you see that yur lead to opportunity conversion rate is lower than expected, you may ask questions related to sales rep activity including speed to lead, number of calls, number of reps to leads and other ratios. When building Tableau dashboards and supporting reports, you can drill and explore these relationships over time with greater ease and relate them together.

More flexibility to slice and dice data

Slicing and dicing data in many cases requires analysts or in the world of Salesforce reports saving data to Excel. Tableau was born and designed for visual exploration of data where you can filter, drill and modify the subject of your analysis with.

End User Ad-hoc analysis

Salesforce provides an amazing ad-hoc reporting capability, granting business professionals with the power to produce powerful reports. While the report developer has a full fledge reporting solution, end consumers of the report are limited to basic filtering. Tableau on the other hand provides end user ad-hoc analysis for changing dimensions, drilling, and constraining information.

Access to more data sources for analysis

Salesforce reports and dashboards are limited to the data available inside of Salesforce. Tableau on the other hand opens the door to connect more data sources with Salesforce.

Connecting Tableau to Salesforce Data

Tableau provides a native Salesforce data connector, allowing direct access to Salesforce data objects. This is quite useful for real-time access to Salesforce data, or static extracts that harness the full power of Tableau data.

Native Salesforce Connector

Unfortunately, the Tableau integration with Salesforce data is imperfect. Using the standard Tableau connector for Salesforce prevents Salesforce formulas in the results. This limitation has long existed as an enhancement but is not obvious.

Working with Data Time Fields

Small variances in metrics can occur when using DateTime fields as a result of data extractions rendering in UTC instead of your local time zone.

Connecting Tableau to Salesforce Data Cloud

With the recent release of Salesforce Data Cloud, Tableau has a new modern approach to data access that bypasses some of the traditional limitations. We will cover this topic in detail with an upcoming post!

Plan your Salesforce Tableau Initiative

Need help planning and validating Tableau is the right fit for your Salesforce based analytics or simply need an “Analytics First” perspective on your Salesforce org? Setup a free consultation with our team and ask about our rapid adoption blueprint.

Essential Salesforce Metrics & KPIs Guide

Posted on 2023-09-25 - 12:32 am by
Futuristic Salesforce Metrics and KPIs Dashboard

Salesforce metrics and KPIs are important tools to define how you will manage and monitor your Sales and Marketing efforts. Metrics and KPIs playing a crucial role in aligning strategies with business goals. In this article, we dive into vital Salesforce Lead and Opportunity Pipeline Metrics, emphasizing the importance of consistency and clear definitions. Whether a stakeholder, Salesforce admin, or a member of a data analytics team, here, you’ll gain insights, answers to common questions and examples.

5 Salesforce Lead Metrics you Should be Tracking

While different organizations and industries have varying definitions for leads, prospects, and customers, the following metrics are designed for organizations where lead generation and handoff occurs inside of Salesforce.

  1. Qualified Leads Generated – How many qualified leads are delivered to sales? The qualification definition will vary per organization, as some use MQL (marketing qualified leads) and others use SQL (sales qualified leads). Having the qualification definition also helps identify un-workable leads which creates a feedback loop to improve lead generation channels.
  2. Lead Generation to Response Time – How fast are you making contact with leads after a prospect is delivered to your sales organization? Turn time for some businesses are measured in hours but for some they are measured in minutes.
  3. Lead Conversion Rate – How many leads need to be worked to generate a deal with revenue potential? Many organizations convert leads and create opportunities different stages of the Sales cycle. We recommend measuring from a key, well defined the point in your Sales funnel that is unlikely to change over a long period of time.
  4. Lead to Close Win Ratio – How many leads do you need to generate to close deals?
  5. Cost per Lead and Closed Won – What are your marketing campaign costs relative to lead generation and deal closure? For organizations that track their marketing campaigns and spend inside of Salesforce, this metric can be tracked using Salesforce campaigns. Not all organizations track marketing spend inside of Salesforce unfortunately.

5 Salesforce Opportunity Pipeline Metrics you Should be Tracking

It goes without saying the count of won opportunities, revenue and margin are important and common sales metrics. Here are 5 additional metrics that you can look to for inspiration.

  1. Deal Win Rate – How many fully qualified Sales opportunities are closed? This metric is used to measure the effectiveness of your sales team.
  2. Outbound Activities to Close – Measuring how many phone calls, emails, and SMS are required to close deals is effective at aggregate to measure top and bottom performers and understand globally what it will take to move customers through each stage to a win.
  3. Average Deal Size – Understanding your average and potential median deal size are important to understand market shifts, targeting, sales effectiveness and is typically a driver for forecasting and predicting future deals.
  4. Lifetime Value $ – For every customer, what is the total average value over time?
  5. Churn Rate – For customers that are won, how many of them churn at the end of their service period or no longer make second purchases within a specified timeframe?

3 Salesforce Metric Tips for Success

  1. Consistency of your metrics and KPIs are measured over time is most important. If the definitions change often, your ability to effectively use the metrics diminishes. Ensure you use clear definitions for points in your sales process.
  2. Clear and concise metric definitions will ensure your business stakeholders, Salesforce admins, and your data and analytics team are aligned.
  3. Ownership of every metric helps ensure accountability not only for monitoring. This also helps ensure changes in definitions and assumptions have a point person for approval.

Common Salesforce Metric and KPI Questions

What is a Salesforce Metric

A Salesforce metric measures performance over time where Salesforce is typically the system of record where the business process and transaction occurs. Salesforce metrics like sales revenue or lead conversion rate are created, calculated and measured with reporting inside of Salesforce or using 3rd party reporting and dashboard tools directly integrated with Salesforce.

What is a Salesforce Metric vs KPI?

A Salesforce metric tracks measurements over time while a KPI or Key Performance Indicator typically has not only a definitive target, but also a timeline and linkage to business goals and objectives.

A KPI should indicate the current and historical performance (Sales revenue is a common KPI for sales), while metric could help identify the leading indicators that influences sales (outbound calls, talk time).

How do I manage Salesforce metrics?

Many organizations simply manage Salesforce in Excel or word, which is fast and easy but requires a tremendous effort and cross functional ownership. There are a number of free solutions that help automate and streamline collecting, organizing and sharing metrics and tracking changes over time.

How do I ensure consistent Salesforce metrics?

Consistency in naming and consistency in measurement are two very common challenges within Salesforce. Tracking and managing aliases or synonyms for metrics over time is important but the measurements and application of metrics in reports needs to be consistent.

How do I design Salesforce KPIs?

The best advice is to ask your business leadership first what is the objective or goal that is most important? From there what are the top 3 things we should do to reach that goal? That is the framework for your KPIs. Setting a target and timeline to achieve the target in many sales organizations are monthly or quarterly. The most important thing is not to get hung up on terminology. If you are setting and agreeing to measurable goals and outcomes, that is most important. Consistency in terminology and approach is most important.

What is DataTools for Salesforce Metrics?

We built DataTools Pro to help inventory, manage, and track implementation of metrics and reporting inside of Salesforce. Bringing the same techniques we use for large scale enterprise Business Intelligence solutions, we have paired it down to make it very simple for Salesforce users.

  • Inventory metrics
  • Track aliases / synonyms for metrics
  • Align dashboards and reports to metrics
  • Detailed definitions and ownership
  • Align metrics to topics and lines of business

How do I create Salesforce Metric and KPI Dashboards?

Salesforce provides powerful and flexibility reporting and dashboard tools that ship standard with Salesforce. As the sophistication of your reporting and tracking requirements grow or complexity of calculations increase you may need a solution like Tableau (owned by Salesforce) or one of the many powerful point solutions.

Exciting New Native Salesforce Snowflake Integration

Posted on 2023-09-11 - 8:38 pm by
Salesforce and Snowflake Integration

When it comes to optimizing your business processes and data analytics, Salesforce and Snowflake stand as two potent platforms, each with its own ecosystem of developers, stakeholders, and users. The Salesforce Snowflake Integration is an essential conduit that amplifies the bond between these two cloud platforms.

Salesforce and Snowflake Integration

Native Salesforce Snowflake Integration: A Milestone in Native Data Sharing

Earlier this week, Salesforce and Snowflake made a groundbreaking announcement: the general availability of native Salesforce data sharing for Snowflake,  via what is colloquially referred to as “BYOL” (Bring Your Own License). This is a significant advancement, especially for Snowflake users familiar with the benefits of zero-copy sharing, a core Snowflake feature. With this integration, gone are the days when you needed layers of additional software, services, and complex processes to bridge the two platforms. This is where the Salesforce Snowflake Connector comes into play, simplifying data access and queries between Salesforce and Snowflake.

Skill Enhancement through Certification Paths

Salesforce Data Cloud serves as a data hub orchestrating a wide range of business activities—be it CRM, marketing, or or any web/mobile activities. To encourage this, Salesforce recently launched its Certified-Data-Cloud-Consultant learning path. This will help Salesforce organizations readily find skilled professionals adept in Salesforce Snowflake Integration.

Salesforce Runs on Snowflake: Following the Leader

In a revelation that should add credibility and assurance to the Salesforce Snowflake Integration, Salesforce’s internal data and analytics have migrated to run on Snowflake. This shows Salesforce is not just advocating for the technology but using it themselves, setting the stage for rapid advancements in Salesforce and Snowflake connectivity.

Transforming AI/ML Workloads

The Salesforce and Snowflake partnership holds tremendous promise for accelerating the time-to-value from your Salesforce data assets. From curating data to deploying ML models, the integration, facilitated by the Salesforce Snowflake Connector, will enable enterprises to leverage their data in novel ways, including the utilization of advanced AI features. There are many first and third party powered solutions to weave your model deployment efforts.

Need Help Navigating these Waters?

We have been in front of Salesforce and Snowflake integrating analytics apps for years. We recreantly wrote the  Salesforce data synchronization to Snowflake Guide and can’t wait to extend this into DataCloud. We have an incredible partner network that can help you implement any Salesforce or Snowflake Cloud components (CDP, MarketingCloud, Tableau).

Schedule a meeting to learn more

Unlocking the Full Potential of MLOps with Snowflake and Predactica

Posted on 2023-09-09 - 11:59 pm by
Machine Learning Network

The Evolution of Machine Learning Platforms

Snowflake has rapidly emerged as the go-to platform for data-centric enterprises. Its ability to centralize and harmonize diverse data types makes it an exceptional foundation for any data strategy. Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) have matured significantly over the years, thanks to Platform as a Service providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, who have developed comprehensive solutions that span the entire model lifecycle. However, a plethora of platforms and tools exist in a very crowded and confusing marketplace. So, what should a customer with Snowflake, a data and analytics team, and a desire to get models to production quickly and practically do?

Predactica: The is a Glimpse of the Future of MLOps in a Snowflake-Centric World

One name that should be on your list is Predactica.. This innovative solution is engineered to fit seamlessly with Snowflake. Predactica elevates MLOps by offering a natively integrated, end-to-end machine learning solution within Snowflake. Unlike other platforms that require disparate workflows and additional data pipelines, Predactica unifies these operations, making it the ideal companion for Snowflake-centric enterprises.

The result is a unified, agile, and compliant system that dramatically reduces the time-to-market for new models while ensuring their long-term reliability. Risk modelers and data scientists can now focus on the nuances of data, feature engineering, explanation and fine tuning.

Snowflake as Center of Gravity for Enterprise Data

With the introduction of Snowpark, Snowflake has also paved the way for native model deployment, allowing organizations to manage the entire model lifecycle within the data platform. This is done using the same tools, Python libraries, and workflows that data scientists, data engineers, and DevOps professionals already use. However, the rapid evolution of MLOps calls for a more streamlined, low-code solution that can natively integrate with Snowflake. This is where Predactica comes in to compliment or potentially replace external ML platforms and expand aspects of your MLOps to more contributors.

The Competitive Edge: Agility, Compliance, and Real-Time Monitoring

Another often-overlooked aspect of the machine learning lifecycle is monitoring model performance over time. Models, especially in credit risk, are not “set and forget.” They require ongoing attention to ensure they do not degrade and continue to make accurate predictions as market conditions and customer behaviors change. Predactica addresses this crucial need by offering built-in performance monitoring features. These tools enable teams to catch performance drift early, allowing for timely model adjustments and ensuring that your decision-making remains both agile and accurate.

Conclusion

The collaboration between Snowflake and Predactica represents a leap forward for organizations looking to democratize model development and accelerate speed to value.. Don’t take our word for it, setup a meeting or sign up for a trial and let us know what you think! Sign up for a Predactica Trial