Sequoia Financial Group, LLC is a client-centered financial planning and wealth management company, with services including asset management, retirement planning, and fiduciary consulting. To modernize its CRM and serve more clients at scale, Sequoia turned to Salesforce for a variety of solutions — including Salesforce Pardot, which the company uses for marketing.
Salesforce solutions have centralized data and simplified the IT environment at Sequoia Financial Group. Now, users spend less time searching for data and more time delivering value to clients.
Here’s how Sequoia Financial Group implemented Salesforce, what they learned, and what they achieved.
IMPLEMENTING SOLUTIONS STRATEGICALLY
Implementation of new technology doesn’t happen overnight, and it requires strategic planning. In total, it took Sequoia Financial Group about nine months to fully implement its new Salesforce solutions.
This included Salesforce Pardot, Einstein, Financial Services Cloud, Quip, and more. During implementation, internal teams worked with implementation specialists, and system maintenance is now supported by a group of IT agents. This consists of handling feature requests, troubleshooting problems, and making sure that cross-platform integrations are working right.
Training is another important part of implementation strategy. Sixty-five people at Sequoia Financial Group were trained in the new Salesforce solutions. While some training took place through pre-recorded online sessions, much of it was also live, classroom-style.
Since the system went live, Sequoia Financial Group has already added dozens of new users, and plans to keep adding more in future.
RECOGNIZING KEY BENEFITS
There are many different ways improved technology can benefit an organization. For Sequoia Financial Group, the key benefit areas were:
Time Savings
Salesforce solutions saved Sequoia Financial Group approximately 700 hours annually per user, and helped reduce headcount.
Productivity
Salesforce solutions, including Pardot, surface contextual data and automate repetitive tasks like data entry. This gives associates more time to focus on higher value work for clients.
Streamlined Tech
Salesforce solutions replaced most of Sequoia Financial Group’s old technology platforms, which reduced IT complexity and streamlined operations.
REFLECTING ON LESSONS LEARNED
After implementing so many Salesforce products, Sequoia Financial Group saw that solutions but on the same infrastructure really do allow companies to bypass expensive integration and custom development.
The tightly-integrated Salesforce ecosystem is also highly secure and performant, which has proven perfect for Sequoia Financial Group’s work in the financial services sector, where data management and security is of paramount importance.
Thanks to the centralized Salesforce system where data is recorded and stored across all solutions, Sequoia Financial Group’s agents are always equipped with the latest client information. This allows them to deliver more compelling experiences for clients and improve business results.
As a result, Sequoia Financial Group saw 361% ROI less than 5 months after implementing Salesforce solutions, including Pardot.
To learn more about the results of Sequoia Financial Group’s Salesforce implementation, download our case study.