Cloud Creations Making Strategy Happen with SalesForce
Investments in digital tech have come a long way in the healthcare sector. What lingered as an afterthought in the prior years and before the COVID-19 pandemic, now witnesses an overwhelming response. Medical practices are rampantly hiring technology support staff and roles around telehealth solutions that make storage and access to patient data much easier. From scheduling appointments to making provisions to pay invoices online, digitization has accelerated, influencing nearly 55 percent of the projects involving the development of e-healthcare applications. “We have seen a big uptick in the willingness among the healthcare companies to integrate Salesforce with their electronic medical records and existing systems to make patient care and experience a priority,” says Felicia Duarte, COO of Cloud Creations, a California-based, consulting firm offering Salesforce strategy, implementation and support services for clients of all sizes across industries. The company’s most sought after Salesforce implementation services includes data import, integration, documentation, reports, and training to help clients do businesses faster. Additionally, Cloud Creations offers setup services for Salesforce Products such as the sales cloud, marketing cloud, community cloud, Pardot, health cloud, and more.
With virtual transformations, the client was not only able to scale quickly with more number of physical centers across the state, but also grow their practice outside of Colorado!
Giving Clients Exactly What They Want!
Cloud Creations, in partnership with Nick Fedotoff, Vice President at Salesforce Health & Life Sciences, helped the firm take great strides into the healthtech industry. “We owe it to our clients to include experts that are trained in medical industry best-practices, utilizing Salesforce consultants with medical backgrounds, and first-hand knowledge of the medical practitioner environments,” adds Duarte. She also highlights that they have an all-HIPPA certified staff overseeing the health and life sciences part of the Salesforce ecosystem. Cloud Creations’ consultants are also adept at understanding what the clients are looking for. For instance, the company implemented a specialty clinic in Colorado that had to shut down their offices completely and moved the entire patient management process online. “We implemented an online scheduling tool, community portal, email and text message reminder system, and telehealth record-keeping all within Salesforce,” explains Duarte.
Further, the company rolled out a text message feature that allowed the clinic’s past customers to communicate with their licensed care provider via texts. With virtual transformations, the client was not only able to scale quickly with more number of physical centers across the state, but also grow their practice outside of Colorado!
A Dream Team, Salesforce and Strategy
Businesses rely on Cloud Creations’ Salesforce solutions for their unique implementation services based on the agile and waterfall projects depending upon their requirements. Unlike their industry peers, Cloud Creations believes in fixed bid pricing for the proposals to allow the clients to choose services they ultimately want to move forward with. The warranty on all the fixed bid projects stretches out about a year after the project completion. The project status tracking on the last date and time worked on the client’s project available on Cloud Creations’ website allows for maximum transparency. “With ‘Next-day Kick Off’ where we commit to starting the projects within 24 hours of signing the project, it helps our client know that we are ready whenever they are. Our fast proposal turnaround and publicly accessible scheduling bring our partners on board to set up calls with potential clients,” expresses Duarte.
Cloud Creations’ Salesforce consultants assigned as a part of the projects include project managers and developers with deep industry acumen to ensure there are no lags in the deliverables. “Our expert business analysts, project managers, project coordinators, developers, and trainers are the major reason we have great client testimonials and transformations who work on delivery teams in one form or another,” beams Duarte. At a time, the Salesforce consultants from Cloud Creations support anywhere between two to four project managers, and each project manager will delegate to three to four developers. This unique working methodology ensures none of the team members work in silos which helps avoid oversights in projects and encourages teams to work in cohesion, allowing them to commit to faster timelines. “This way, our clients’ businesses are transformed because they’re able to attract better talent internally, as well as achieve a larger client base with their technology-first strategy. To sum up, we are the team that makes that strategy happen,” adds Duarte.
Adhering to its employee-first philosophy, Cloud Creations recently decided to turn to remote operations to keep up with the new working norm due to the pandemic. The company has made a point to ensure they check in on all the employees on a regular basis, to ensure everyone is doing fine during this very challenging time. “Without our employees, we would have no clients. While we make sure we are delivering top-notch services, we work equally hard to eliminate all possible barriers to make sure we are fully equipped to meet clients’ expectations and continue working with them in the long-run,” says Duarte. Cloud Creations actively hosted events and conferences to connect with the Salesforce partners and community. The company hopes to resume its participation and host events post the pandemic.
Businesses and other CEOs need to outweigh the risks and cost of hiring internally or outsourcing to a consulting firm to handle Salesforce requests.
A Look into the Future
With the world being at the precipice of change, tech and business leaders will eventually shift towards a more flexible and risk-taking mindset. As the need for digital disruptions continues to surface in the healthcare segment, businesses would increase their reliance on Salesforce technologies. “Businesses and other CEOs need to outweigh the risks and cost of hiring internally or outsourcing to a consulting firm to handle Salesforce requests,” advises Duarte. “We’ve had clients very frustrated hiring a Salesforce administrator only to realize they don’t have all the skills necessary to configure the system properly.” Building a custom solution requires a person to have business analysis skills to gather requirements, a project manager to manage the implementation of those requirements, and a developer to make it happen. “Some clients try to hire developers hoping they can perform the other two categories, but we generally find developers are not interested in facilitating requirements-gathering and will quickly move on to another work opportunity when the chance arises. Our advice—be sure to evaluate and not go with the first consultant you are recommended.”
For the future, Cloud Creations plans to launch an informational video channel to offer helpful tips, tricks, insights, and general training videos on Salesforce. The company is also set to roll out its referral program targeting the non-Salesforce technology consultants to amass projects and opportunities with the high scope for leveraging Salesforce as a technology initiative. “For example, if a state government wants to overhaul its driver licensing portal, we’d build out the constituent-facing portal that perhaps integrates with some other back-end application,” reveals Duarte.
