SalesForce Service Compliance
Case Study: Transforming Salesforce SLA Management and Reducing Operational Costs
Client Overview:
Our client, a global retail organisation operating more than 40 brands worldwide, relies heavily on Salesforce to manage its core product fulfilment processes and corporate customer service via call centres.
However, they faced significant challenges with Salesforce transaction times, which were impacting sales volumes and operational efficiency across their global call centres.
Challenges:
- Increased Salesforce Transaction Times: The client observed that Salesforce transaction times were slowing down, leading to a 30% increase in call processing times across their call centres. This directly impacted sales volumes and required additional staffing to meet KPIs.
- Siloed IT Operations: The client’s IT operations were siloed and focused on monitoring availability rather than performance, making it difficult to identify the root cause of the slow transaction times.
- Lack of Benchmarking: There were no pre-existing transaction time benchmarks across the IT service catalog to explicitly support Salesforce performance, leaving the client unable to pinpoint which service elements were underperforming.
Solution:
To address these challenges, the client partnered with Ikara to implement the Service Compliance platform for Salesforce. This solution focused on establishing service level KPIs and automating SLA reporting, leading to significant operational improvements:
- Automating SLA Reporting:
- The client signed an agreement with Salesforce to automate SLA reporting globally using Ikara’s Service Compliance platform. This provided operational visibility and clear separation between infrastructure, cloud, and application service delivery.
- Establishing Service Level KPIs:
- Ikara deployed service level KPIs for Salesforce, benchmarking the expected time to transact core business functions across the infrastructure and Salesforce environment. This allowed the client to gain immediate clarity about service provider adherence to operational KPIs and SLAs.
- Identifying and Remediating Performance Issues:
- Ikara’s Salesforce service compliance reporting enabled the client to identify and address service elements that were operating outside KPI compliance. The specific issues uncovered included:
- Misconfiguration of an in-cloud proxy that had not been deployed according to the vendor’s best practices.
- Empty DNS records replicating globally.
- A global infrastructure vendor’s product not meeting core functional specifications in operations.
- Ikara’s Salesforce service compliance reporting enabled the client to identify and address service elements that were operating outside KPI compliance. The specific issues uncovered included:
- Reducing Salesforce Incidents and MTTR:
- The automated detection of Salesforce incidents led to a 60% reduction in incident occurrences and an 88% reduction in Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). This dramatic improvement saved the client millions of dollars in lost revenue and productivity annually.
- Automating SLA Reporting:
Results:
The implementation of Ikara’s Service Compliance platform led to a significant reduction in Salesforce transaction times, improving business process transaction times globally by 30%. The automated incident detection and reduced MTTR significantly minimized operational disruptions, saving millions of dollars annually in lost revenue and productivity. The clear separation of service level KPIs provided the client with the necessary visibility to maintain and optimize Salesforce performance, ensuring their call centers operated at peak efficiency.
Conclusion:
By partnering with Ikara, our client was able to transform their Salesforce SLA management and achieve significant operational savings. The proactive approach to service compliance not only improved Salesforce transaction times but also enhanced the overall efficiency of the client’s global call center operations. This case study demonstrates the power of service compliance in optimizing cloud-based applications and achieving substantial business value.