The secret ingredient to a successful financial services cloud implementation?

It’s a critical success factor that is independent of the tools and technology being implemented: organizational change management.

When you implement a new system like Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, your team needs more support. Even though it’s likely making your team’s life significantly easier — eliminating manual tasks, spreadsheets, or constant tab-switching — it still takes some getting used to. 

Because when you’ve put all that time, money, and effort into creating a new system, the last thing you want to hear is: “But that’s not how we’ve always done it!”

With a robust change management strategy, you can get ahead of new processes to help your team understand why you’re implementing a new system and changing the customer experience for the better. Change management has three parts: preparation, enablement, and reinforcement. I’ll walk you through each one:

Preparing for Financial Services Cloud

You already know that Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC) is the platform that can help your financial services team build stronger, more personal relationships with customers and prospects and better manage customers and accounts. It’s a platform proven to provide real-time access to critical data, visibility into unique customer journeys, and meaningful insights at every stage of the customer lifecycle. 

But does your team know? The more financial services firms understand up front who is impacted by the change in operating model, the better you can prepare. Effective change management starts well before any new Salesforce features are implemented by:

• Conducting a change assessment: What are you changing? Why are you changing it? What stakeholders are involved?
• Conducting a risk assessment: What are the risks involved, and how will you mitigate them? Do you have any sensitive data that needs special attention?
• Developing a holistic change management strategy: Be sure to include communications and training strategies, and start building the foundations for your enablement plans in the next phase

Enabling Financial Services Cloud

Salesforce is so highly configurable that your FSC implementation can meet your exact financial services organization’s needs. Whether that’s a 360-degree-view of your customers so you can more easily understand their needs, or implementing a robust CRM system that can reduce deal origination time and increase pipeline — this phase is all about bringing the details to light for your team.

While you’re working on that implementation, you’ll start acting on your change management strategy as well. This means creating and sending communications, applying strategies to leverage areas of success, and mitigating resistance by:

• Conducting a change impact assessment. It’s here you’ll want to think ahead to objections, resistance, and roadblocks that can prevent user adoption to your cloud solution.
• Developing a more detailed communication plan and training curriculum, outlining exactly what each stakeholder needs to know and when.
• Creating a network of change champions, a cross-functional network individuals who help drive the progress and assess the impact of Salesforce, as well as establish a 360-degree feedback loop. 

Reinforcement for Financial Services Cloud

Change management is an ongoing process. You need sustained momentum so that your team feels engaged, supported, and heard as they embark upon using a new system. Much of the reinforcement work involves showing, rather than telling, how easy FSC is to use — and how much time it saves your team. 

Once you’ve successfully launched Financial Services Cloud, you’ll need to reinforce the change with members of your team by:

• Monitoring quantitative outcomes with comprehensive dashboards
• Gathering and responding to qualitative feedback from your team
• Supporting your team with ongoing training, coaching, and answering questions
• Publishing a roadmap for repeatable success
• Continuing education with myTrailhead and In-app Guidance
• Celebrating! This step often gets overlooked but is critical to maintaining morale and getting the team excited about the possibilities FSC can offer the organization

Increase adoption of Financial Services Cloud with Silverline

It takes time, effort, and dedication to do the “soft skills” type of work that ensures successful adoption of your digital transformation initiative. A successful cloud computing implementation incorporates change management early and often, rather than as an afterthought. 

The financial services landscape is constantly evolving toward more personalized experiences, real-time internal and external collaboration, predictive analytics, and the elimination of paper processes. Financial Services Cloud is at the forefront of this movement, and Silverline is uniquely positioned to help you reap the benefits.

But it only works as well as your teams adopting it.We leverage best practices acquired through more than a thousand implementations, with a core financial services team that possesses deep financial services industry knowledge across all lines of business. We know cloud offerings like Financial Services Cloud, and we’re ready to combine your needs with the power of the platform. We’ll help you with every step of the way — including the change management you need to increase FSC adoption and hit the ground running. Reach out today to help your financial institution thrive.