During this holiday season, our team likes to spend time focusing on gratitude – what are you thankful for? There’s so much for us, but when it comes to every day in the office (since we basically live in our Salesforce environment), we’re thankful for Salesforce apps that make our lives easier and improve our operational efficiency!

How to Evaluate Operational Efficiency

Do you regularly measure your operational efficiency? Whether you’re just starting your business or looking to boost business growth, measuring operational efficiency is one great way to evaluate your return on investment. One of the best ways to measure operational efficiency is to use a formula for Units of Output/Units of Input. This base formula can be built upon for more complex situations, and you can read all about it in this Harvard Business Review article.

Especially when it comes to marketing and sales, there are a number of ways to measure success, so operational efficiency should not be your only metric. But we see a lot of value in evaluating most of our technology investments in part by improvements to operational efficiency. After all, good technology should make your life easier, more informed, and more efficient.

Our 9 Favorite Salesforce Apps to Improve Operational Efficiency

1. Amazingly simple scheduling software – AcuScheduler
   Our Kadence Collective developers built AcuScheduler to be the best solution for Salesforce users. Because AcuScheduler is a native Salesforce app (meaning the software is built specifically for Salesforce, not just a connection), all the functionality is designed to work perfectly within your environment. It can be utilized by sales teams, marketing teams, customer service teams, support teams, advisors, consultants, and more. AcuScheduler cuts down the time spent scheduling appointments and meetings, which allows for more time to focus on real work!
2. Secure and easy e-signature software – eSignLive
   eSignLive is our favorite e-signature software. And you may have never heard of it. That’s because even though eSignLive is used by some of the biggest worldwide companies, they don’t put their branding all over your documents – they allow you to white-label their product, which is really cool. From simple signing transactions to the most complex and regulated workflows, eSignLive integrates within your existing applications, automates processes and offers plenty of solutions to free up time from mundane tasks.
3. Data-driven mapping software – GeoPointe
   GeoPointe is amazing because it integrates mapping software with data from your Salesforce environment. It uses your CRM data from existing customers and prospects and automatically creates map layouts that can be used for more creating efficient sales routes, marketing geotargeting, territory management and much more.
4. Point-and-click quoting – Salesforce CPQ
   Salesforce CPQ – or Configure, Price, Quote – is a great sales tool that allows you to efficiently and easily manage the entire sales process from configuring orders, generating quotes, to even collecting payments. It’s available as part of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform. There is even an eSignLive CPQ connector that comes in at the last step of the quoting process, making it easy to sign documents securely and speedily from any device – directly from Salesforce CPQ.
5. Intelligent email marketing – Salesforce Email Studio
   From simple marketing emails to 1-1 communication, Salesforce Email Studio uses cross-departmental data to strengthen your email strategy and efficiency. A part of Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Email Studio allows you to segment your email strategy, schedule messages, recommend the best content, and more, all based on Salesforce data. There’s no way this amount of logic and customization could be done manually without a huge email-focused team – so, Salesforce Email Studio makes a big impact for operational efficiency and ROI overall!
6. Emails, calendars and CRM data in one – Ebsta
   Another native Salesforce app, Ebsta provides all the email integration capabilities you need. From the most basic functionality (syncing calendars and emails) to more complex needs (mining email data for high quality leads and customizable reporting), Ebsta is the best solution for improving email data access and efficiency through Salesforce email integration.
7. Transparent, shared to-do lists – TaskRay
   TaskRay is another native Salesforce app for efficient and transparent project management. You can easily Embed TaskRay’s capabilities in Salesforce with Lightning Components, and you can even use TaskRay with employees, customers, and partners who aren’t running Salesforce, through Salesforce Communities.
8. Project-specific collaboration – Salesforce Chatter
   Salesforce Chatter makes it easy to chat, and share files and data across the company, so everyone’s on the same page. What we like the most about Chatter is the integration on every object (project, lead, opportunity) – so conversations and information can stay super specific and relevant.
9. Easy Salesforce walkthrus – WalkMe
   One of the biggest challenges after implementing Salesforce is user onboarding/proficiency. We recommend seeking an administrative support team, and also using WalkMe for step-by-step guidance through the user onboarding process. WalkMe not only helps your user adoption rate, which improves your ROI, but also ensures data integrity – because if employees know how to enter data, they can enter it correctly!

What other Salesforce apps have helped improve your operational efficiency? Let us know in the comments or tweet us!