Salesforce audit 101: Why it matters and how to get it right

Introduction

Is your Salesforce working for you, or against you? 

Salesforce consultants highly recommend an audit of your instance, to uncover hidden inefficiencies, data gaps, and missed business opportunities. 

A salesforce audit is key to optimizing your CRM for efficiency and growth by identifying automation gaps and data inconsistencies. 

Why is a Salesforce audit important?

Data Hygiene 

Salesforce audit revamps your data quality by helping identify duplicate & missing records, updating outdated information, and enhancing data security.

For instance, Salesforce Data Detect (earlier known as Einstein Data Detect) can be leveraged to identify sensitive information.

Source: help.salesforce.com

Similarly, the Salesforce Audit trail gives administrators a view of modifications made to your organization's configuration.

Workflow optimization

An audit enables you to streamline data processes by identifying inefficiencies and recommending improvements for your CRM framework.

It analyzes automation rules and workflows to make sure they’re optimized. As a result, manual intervention is minimized.

Enhanced system performance  

It identifies the performance bottlenecks. For instance, it evaluates custom codes to find inefficiencies and recommend improvements.

This improves performance and user experience.

Audit also enhances the Salesforce integration framework, making it more compatible with third-party tools and APIs.

Strategic Insights

The strategic insights gained from the audit unlock the door for business growth and scalability.

Better insights bolster data-driven decision-making, risk mitigation, and budget management, and help businesses align their KPIs.

Cost Savings and better compliance

The custom code evaluation not only improves system performance but also reduces maintenance costs. Furthermore, the fixing of outdated processes reduces operational costs. This ultimately contributes to the reduction in technical debt.

The audit also identifies any unnecessary or underutilized licenses that could be downgraded or even eliminated. It paves the way for choosing cost-effective licensing plans based on actual usage and needs. 

Here are the top tips for a successful Salesforce implementation.

How to conduct a Salesforce audit?

Define goals

• You should have a clear understanding of the organizational goals to be achieved through the audit.
  
  
• The goals could be enhancing system performance, improving data quality, strengthening security, improving user adoption, or optimizing resource allocation.

Identify tools 

Some of the tools that can be used to aid a comprehensive Salesforce audit are:

✅ Field Trip: It helps track field usage and improve performance by identifying the underutilized fields. 

Apart from field analysis, it’s also useful for improving data quality, and efficiency, generating accurate reports, and even cost savings by freeing up space.

You can install it from the Salesforce AppExchange.

Source: Salesforce AppExchange

✅ Salesforce Optimizer: It helps you with detailed data on metrics and is pivotal for workflow optimization, system performance, and data quality enhancement.

Source: Salesforceben

✅ Perm Comparator: As the name suggests, it enables admins to effortlessly compare profiles and permission sets, improving security and access control.

The best part is, that it can be set up in minutes.

Source: Salesforceben

Analyze data quality

• Before jumping to the actual audit, analyzing field usage, identifying data discrepancies, and reviewing the validation rules are crucial.
  
  
• If your data is incomplete or inaccurate, the audit report can be misleading as well.

Review security settings

• This prevents you from unauthorized access and security breaches.
  
  
• You should deactivate the inactive users, re-review the login policies, and keep track of the users bypassing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).
  
  
• You can leverage the Salesforce authenticator app to make MFA convenient for the users.

• This is crucial for keeping automation scalable and efficient.
  
  
• Ensure that there’s only one primary automation for each process to avoid conflicts.
  
  
• Review the existing workflows to outline the redundant or outdated workflows that can be optimized or removed.

Audit integration and API usage

• Mismanaged APIs can result in unexpected costs and performance degradation. Reviewing integration & API usage ensures optimal performance and the system’s harmony with the best practices.
  
  
• Timely review of the connected Apps should be done regularly along with the third-party platforms that consume the Salesforce data.

Monitor reports and dashboards

• Unhygienic data can skew business insights. Ensure the reports have data accuracy with correct filters & date ranges.
  
  
• Validate the KPIs against the business performance data and ensure that the reports align with business goals.
  
  
• Incorporate the key takeaways into the strategy revamp.

It’s a wrap

The secret of running your Salesforce engine smoothly is regular audits. It helps scale business through cost savings, workflow optimization, automation evaluation, security compliance, and enhanced system performance.

But the large data sets, tracking changes, customizations, integrations, security & compliance risks make the process challenging. 

This is where our RevOps experts chip in to make sure that your Salesforce audit is not only a seamless process but also the doorway to your key business goals.