Salesforce Transformation

Before the transformation, different parts of the business relied on a mixture of Zoho, Alto and spreadsheets. Information was fragmented, processes varied between teams and understanding the full journey from an enquiry to a commercial outcome could require significant manual work.

The existing setup limited visibility and made it harder to build consistent workflows across departments. A larger, more connected operating system was needed.

I proposed Salesforce as the solution, helped select the direction, recruited the people required to implement it and led the overall project. My contribution was in business requirements, prioritisation, coordination, process thinking and overseeing delivery.

I did not personally configure or code the entire Salesforce implementation. Specialist team members handled much of the platform build, while I worked to ensure the system addressed the operational and commercial problems it was intended to solve.

The transformation took place in phases over approximately 12 months, spanning marketing, finance, sales, client care, progression, selling and investor-related functions, among other areas.

Rather than treating CRM as a single-team tool, the work involved understanding the hand-offs between departments and creating more consistent records, statuses and workflows. The goal was to reduce gaps between teams and make business information more reliable throughout the customer and transaction lifecycle.

The result was a live, company-wide CRM environment supporting multiple departments and improving the consistency of operational information. The biggest benefit was clearer, more timely visibility of commercial outcomes, alongside better-connected processes and reporting.

The transformation was a substantial cross-functional effort. Its success depended on specialist implementation work as well as business leadership, coordination and ongoing adoption.

A CRM migration is fundamentally a business-change project. Technology matters, but the real challenge is understanding how departments operate, agreeing consistent processes and helping teams adopt a shared way of working. This project broadened my experience well beyond marketing into operational transformation.