# Practice Case Studies
# Purpose
This section provides students with a set of case studies in order to familiarise them with the Salesforce.com applications. The case studies provided here are targeted at beginner SFDC developers. They will include –
Problems Expose students to real-world problems. The problems may be documented in business or technical language. Later case studies have user stories that the students need to implement.
Solution hints Help students move towards determining possible solutions, design solutions, and implement them.
Activities and tasks Series of activities and tasks that the case studies demand.
References Occasionally, point students to resources in the training materials or on the web.
Guidance by Instructors It is recommended to have instructors handy to answer any queries! You can use standard templates to document solutions, design a solution, and document/present it to an audience (typically other learners).
# Instructions
- Case studies are typically attempted at the end of the course
- Discuss solutions with your instructors and other groups. Do not copy solutions to maximise learning
- Bring your unique perspective to the problem, and solutions
- Your approach to problem solving is more important than the final solution
- Plan to present options, design and implemented solution to the assessment panel and a select audience
On the technical front -
- Create a distinct developer org for case studies (unless it is a Trailhead project, in which case a Trailhead-only environment should suffice)
# Case Studies
1. Recruitment App for AW Computing
# Scenario
Provided in individual trailhead projects!
# Prepare
Install unmanaged package in your org as per Trailhead instructions.
# Develop
Do the following Trailhead projects. This can overlap with other case studies.
- Build a discount calculator
- Build a conference management app
- Lightning Override standard action, Lightning app
# Present
- Present your application
- Highlight anything unique you have done
- Discuss concepts and your understanding
2. Sales Enhancements for WatchDawg Business Expansion
# Scenario
WatchDawg Inc. has been in the professional security business for more than five years. They specialise in providing security cams for businesses and homes. WatchDawg does business only in Canada, but has future expansion plans for the US and Mexico.
Recently, WatchDawg has entered into an agreement with Google Inc. to provide Nest Hello device. They also have had some success in representing security agencies in the past, and they want to take this opportunity to offer security guard services for both office and domestic customers.
WatchDawg uses Salesforce.com Sales Cloud for the country wide sales tracking, and are looking up to you to advise them and quickly implement changes for the two new LoBs. Key business objectives are –
Offer the new product and service to existing and new customers
Capture orders and make them distinct from opportunities. The current model is not efficient enough for tracking
Acquire leads through the small office directory of Canada
Capture key additional attributes from customers
- Is there manned security currently?
- If yes, name of security agency
- Number of floors
- Number of doors monitored by security cams vs. no. of doors on premise
- Square area
- Capture whether the house owner/ decision maker is a friendly
Enable reps to start selling quickly. Track leads and opportunities more closely. Increase volume of high value customers by offering larger discounts, that need to be approved by regional managers
Provide automated sales reports to MDs for new products and services
# Prepare
- Analyse the findings from your discussion with the manager to determine the changes.
- Create high-level design
# Develop
- Create the app in your existing Salesforce org.
- Create at least 10 sample data points for the presentation.
- Refer to any product web page on Internet and reproduce that in Lightning for Nest Hello
# Present
- Present your application
- Discuss concepts and your understanding
- Discuss technology options that you chose for validation and automation
3. Sales Implementation for MD & Company
# Scenario
MD & Company is headquartered in Bangalore. It is known for its packaged foods including –
- Good Potato Chips
- Better Tapioca
- Good Noodles
- Good Coco Cookies
MD has generated moderate interest in South India with its products, but a lot of its operations are in Karnataka alone. MD operates through a chain of distributors, large retail and wholesale chains including Big Bazaar, Nilgiris, and Metro.
MD wants to improve its prospects in South India in the next one year. It has drawn up an aggressive plan to recruit more sales reps in four Southern states, revitalize the IT systems to provide a good base for future country expansion, and grow top-line revenue by at least 20% YoY.
The Sales Director has asked for your assistance to create a Salesforce based system for their sales reps and managers. He has laid down the following high-level objectives for you to think through and suggest future course of action.
- Implement a common system for sales reps and managers (internal) and distributors
- Create a sales organization that starts from Chief Sales Officer, Sales Director, State Sales Leads, Zone Sales Leads and Sales Reps.
- Reps should be able to access past and future business prospects of large retail and wholesale chains, but are not interested in seeing Distributors who are local to specific zones
- Reps should be able to create and manage opportunities, create leads, accounts and contacts, and track their activities on a calendar. Managers should be able to see their subordinate calendars, and customer records to back them up in case of non-availability
- Distributors can create request orders for new inventory, transfer requests to other distributors, return orders for damaged goods. Distributors do not see sales information from other distributors
- Capture orders from all types of customers and capture value. Tag inventory to orders
- Calculate pricing for all orders
- Inventory (in boxes) are transferred to Distributor. Distributor maintains inventory directed to dealers, and returned.
- Retail returns, damaged goods must be summed up to form ‘Bad Goods’ - updated against Distributor on a quarterly basis. Historical information is required to be maintained
- Similarly, goods sold should be summed up to form ‘Sold Value’
- If distributor has 120% of capacity of inventory, place orders on hold and send email to distributor and Sales Manager
- If Goods at distributor have not been moved/sold even after 12 weeks of transfer, place new products of similar type on hold and send email to distributor and Sales Manager
- If Sold Value in a quarter is more than $1 Cr., create special pricing for distributor that offers an additional 0.2% discount on orders in the next 3 months
- Enable Sales Manager to check performance of reps vs. distributors in the application – sold value, bad goods etc. Ability to capture activities and lessons learnt
# Prepare
- Prepare a chart of users of application and the hierarchy and data visibility requirements
- List the processes and map them to stakeholders
- Create high-level design
- Identify the Salesforce components and customization
# Develop
Create the app in your existing Salesforce org. Create at least 10 sample data points for the presentation.
# Present
- Choice of automation and validation rules
- User interface – OOB vs configured through Lightning or Visualforce
- Batch jobs vs. performing calculations/automation in real-time
4. Service Implementation for Groot Life
# Scenario
Groot Life is in the business of medicinal research and manufacture for two years. They are head-quartered in New Delhi and have operations in Southern Asia.
Groot has two products in the market currently –
- Grutol – acetaminophen base (think paracetamol)
- Kipirin – an acetylsalicylic acid-based drug (think aspirin)
Groot currently has well-invested system in SAP for its sales and back-end operations. Although they have a functioning, operational system, they are looking at optimizing existing business processes and bring customer centricity in their support processes.
The CTO has decided to use Salesforce to revitalize customer services for Groot. The customer services mainly take care of –
- Operating call centres in India and Bangladesh. They have toll-free numbers in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar
- Operate a support website where health care professionals and consumers can check on any existing issues in Groot products, provide feedback and log complaints.
- Collate inquiries, feedback and complaints from their call centre, the support website and the main website of the company. These requests typically have a product associated with them, and
- Service Rep will evaluate the inbound request and determine whether they need quality attention. She will assign request to Quality dept. for further investigation
- Any sales inquiries are passed on to sales dept, which work on SAP
- For the rest, Service Rep provides schedule calls with the requester if needed, discusses the issue with internal departments, document and share answers to requester and close tickets
- Service department has the following structure a. Service Lead (Country) b. Service Manager c. Service Rep d. Country Service Lead reports to COO, who in turn reports to CEO
The key objectives for the Service implementation are -
- Create and track service requests. Notify the requester whenever there is a change in status
- Fully auditable actions. Meeting records, any activities and updates must be logged and traceable to the support personnel
- If there are more than 5 complaints raised on same batch, send email to Service Manager and Service Lead (Country) for further action
- Ability to capture inquiries, feedback from an embedded form that can change as per product attributes
- Create a guided interview to receive complaints including –
- Inquiry or complaint - Nature of call not mentioned, needs to be determined
- Complaint - product issues, side-effects, issues with dealers, packaging issues, manufacturing issues
- Inquiry - product inquiries
- For guided interview of a complaint, capture/consider -
- Nature of complaint
- Is there Death or disability (Sev 1)?
- If no Sev 1: cause and effect
- Attach report from a health care professional
- Route complaint to Quality Department queue. Route all inquiries to Inquiry Mgt. Team
- Create a complaint debugging checklist and activity with target dates and owners as per template provided at the country / product combination. Country / product / activity types should be configurable – get from a table / static file
- Ability for rep to quickly check last 5 complaints of a product along with provided solutions – real-time on customer call
- Ability to anonymously create complaints for internal employees using a quick complaint form
# Prepare
- List the processes (preferably in a process flow) and map them to stakeholders
- Create high-level design
- Identify the Salesforce components that you need to use
# Develop
Create the app in your existing Salesforce org. Create at least 10 sample data points for the presentation.
Test results should match records in the app – do not modify records once tested.
# Present
- Your design and process flow
- Choice of options for automation and validation rules
5. SchoolIt - School Management App
# Scenario
IABD Inc is a technology company that develops Salesforce apps. With a recent partnership with IIM-M, IABD is developing the next generation school platform called SchoolIt, which brings students, parents, teachers and management on a unified system. You are responsible to develop user stories, implement them in a product to get the MVP out. At a high level: SchoolIt will have –
- Web application that is accessible via a browser on any device
- Students, and internal employees will also be able to use Salesforce mobile app
System will enable following functions for management / administrators –
- Register interest in admissions
- Issue applications for subsequent academic year - collect an application processing fee, collect prospecting student details & educational background through forms on the website
- Review form data, qualify students
- Automatically filter prospects based on min. qualifications set for the future admissions (this can change depending on Admission Type, Nature of Course, etc).
- Send emails and setup calls with students to counsel them on alternative courses available to them in same college if they don’t qualify
- Send emails and setup calls with qualifying students to interview them for admissions
- Automatically send reminders to complete incomplete forms and pay fees
- Register new students
- Assign students to class based on course, capacity
- Assign a Class Teacher to the class for the academic year
- Collect fees from new and existing students
- Automatic reminders for fees payment
- Track attendance and identify outliers
- Track resources – classrooms, projection equipment, labs, etc. Schedule maintenance on resources
- Enable a form to collect any inquiries, feedback and complaints from students and parents
For the school faculty, the system will enable following functions –
- Take attendance of students on a daily basis
- System will automatically generate attendance reports and send summary to class teacher and admin
- Assign monthly projects to students – beyond their class material
- Track status of projects against deadlines set automatically by the system for various activities
- Assign Home Work to students. Collect typed notes against home work
- Evaluate homework, log feedback
- Track all historical evaluation / marks
- View system generated reports on overall performance For students:
- Collaborate with professors / class teacher and other students on their own projects
- See assigned home work and submit completed work
- Submit complaints, feedback and view status
- Pay fees
- View system reports on overall performance
For parents / guardians:
- See homework assigned to students, and evaluation /feedback
- Submit complaints /feedback and track status of complaints submitted by self or ward
- Pay fees
- View system reports on overall performance
# Prepare
- Who are the stakeholders, what are the functions required in the app, and what is the process flow?
- Map any functions to existing Salesforce functions or create new
- Identify your tasks, and create an Excel sheet, Kanban board or a simple project plan
# Develop
- Create user stories
- Create process diagram for various user groups and high-level design
- Create the app on Salesforce
- Test the application and document results
Create the app in your existing Salesforce org. Create at least 10 sample data points for the presentation.
Test results should match records in the app – do not modify records once tested.
# Present
Present your application.
- Presentation should call out the in and out of scope items
- How did you plan to build this out? What went right and what could have gone well?
- Your design, process flow, and parties with access to your systems
- Your view of support from AppExchange for the given business problem
- Role of salesforce in enabling a system that is outside the “normal” CRM flow