What Does the Future Hold for Salesforce Administration with AI Enhancements?

Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Lizz Hellinga, Consultant and Salesforce MVP.

Join us as we chat about why product management principles Salesforce are crucial if you want to take advantage of new AI tools.

You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lizz Hellinga.

AI enhancements and what they mean for admins

The last time I had Lizz on the pod, we talked about why clean data is crucial for AI tools. But with everything that Einstein Copilot and Prompt Builder make possible, I wanted to bring her back to help us understand how to approach AI enhancements.

The big thing to get your head around is that these tools make it easier than ever to implement changes to your org. However, as Lizz points out, that means it’s even more important to think through how Salesforce fits with your business processes. How you gather requirements and communicate with your stakeholders is more important than ever before.

Apply project management principles to your Salesforce org

To get the most out of everything that’s possible with AI enhancements, Salesforce Admins need to brush up on product management. “It’s kind of like the operations around your operations of Salesforce,” Lizz says. She wants everyone to think through three questions:

1. How are you taking in change requests?

2. How are you working with your stakeholders to determine if those requests are aligned?

3. And, finally, how do you go through the process of enabling that change and then extending it for adoption?

As Lizz points out, what you need to do hasn’t changed. You might be able to do things faster with AI tools, but big-picture thinking is even more essential so you can deliver the right solutions at the right time.

Communication with stakeholders is a two-way street

So how do you get started? For one thing, you need to figure who you’re trying to talk to. As Lizz puts it, “it’s never too late to run a report and do a stakeholder analysis.” You can look at profiles or roles to determine who the main people are in your organization and what they need from Salesforce.

You need to build trust with your stakeholders, and that means establishing two-way communication about requests and what you’re working on. Lizz recommends creating a transparent system for tracking requests, whether that’s using case objects or custom objects in Salesforce, or even (gasp!) creating a shared spreadsheet.

It can often feel like there’s a lot of heat on you to get everything done as quickly as possible, but that’s why bringing stakeholders into the conversation around enhancements is so important. If people understand why bumping something up on the roadmap will push other changes back, it can really turn the temperature down. It’s all about creating a feedback loop that turns stakeholders into collaborators.

Be sure to listen to the full episode for more from Lizz, and don’t forget to subscribe for more from the Salesforce Admins Podcast.

 

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Full show transcript

Mike: So we're talking about product management this week on the Salesforce Admins Podcast with returning guest Liz Hellinga. You may remember she was on in December and really focused us on getting data cleaned up to get ready for AI. Well, now it's, how do we manage Salesforce as a product manager and also take into consideration all of the things that we've got going on with AI? And really all of the tools that AI can provide us, like Einstein Copilot, Prompt Builder. What can we do? Before we get into that episode, I just want to point out if you're getting ready for all of the content that we've got lined up this month... So last week we had Tom Leddy on the podcast, check out that episode. Next week is Skip Solves. We're going to talk about Data Cloud updates. Skip was on last year. And then at the end of the month on the 25th, we're launching a new style of episode. It's going to happen at the end of every month, and it's... We called it Deep Dive and it's with a fellow evangelist, Josh Burke. He's going to deep dive into a topic a little bit more than I do. We're going to kick it off with our Katie Holmes, who is on our design team and talk about design and AI. It's going to be a really cool conversation. But for now, let's talk about product management and AI and helping Salesforce admins be good stewards of the platform. So let's get Liz on the podcast. So Liz, welcome back to the podcast.

Liz: Thank you, Mike. I'm happy to be here.

Mike: Last time you were here, we talked about how clean data is non-negotiable in the era of AI, and I still think it is. So let's pick up our discussion from there. What have you learned about cleaning data in the last four months?

Liz: That it's still essential and it's ongoing. And that I really do love a good data dictionary that helps you define data and make sure that you're using it correctly aligned to your processes. But in this age of AI, it's even more crucial as we talked about before, because people are going to be making decisions on that. And we're all able to make more decisions based on AI, whether it's around our data or whether it's around how we build in our Salesforce org.

Mike: Yeah, I think that's the thing that's changed since I started doing podcasts around AI last year is, last year we really focused a lot of the episodes on, well, how does this affect data? What can it do? Now... And I ran into you at Trailblazer DX. Now we've seen things around Einstein Copilot, Einstein Prompt Builder, which yes can do things around the data. But also a lot of the promise that we're seeing with Copilot is this will be a tool to help admins not only generate information or help users generate information, but also potentially configure organizations as well.

Liz: Yes. And it increases the rate that we're able to make change because-

Mike: Very true.

Liz: ... you're shortening some of that cycle to produce for those outputs. You still... Just like data, you still need to have some of these core foundations in place to make sure that you're making the best decisions for your Salesforce instance based on the output. But the scale of change is going to continue to increase, and it's going to be back to the basics for some of those things like around product management, the Salesforce, product management.

Mike: Yeah. Well, and that's really one of the key things that admins work on because I remember way back in the days... I want to just outdate myself. I believe it was Shell Black, for those of you that are as old as me. Remember, he coined a phrase, "Order taker admin." And I think that's kind of relevant to what we're talking about because we've always talked about, "Wow, with every new innovation that Salesforce comes out with, it's easier and easier to make change." Now, we're also have the ability to ask AI to start making change for us or to show us various flows, right?

Liz: Right.

Mike: And that affects our ability to manage the product because essentially the way that we're perceived potentially from our users is, "Well, it's just a field. Why can't you add it?" Or, "It's just a flow, why can't you add it?"

Liz: Yes. And they're not always familiar with all the behind the scenes stuff that it takes. But ultimately, with your Salesforce instance, you always need to be enabling change based on what you're gathering from your end users and your stakeholders and aligning it to business objectives. And so that still hasn't changed. You may be able to do it a little bit faster with the help of some of these things like Copilot. But you still need to understand and have a lens for that decision making. Because just because you can add a flow or just because you can do something, doesn't mean that you always should. You still need to think through it from a process lens, from a stakeholder lens.

Mike: So maybe we jumped in too quick, but to level set, I'd love to hear from you. What is your definition of product management that a Salesforce admin would do for the platform?

Liz: Yes. Gosh, I have such a strong opinion on this, Mike.

Mike: I know that's why I'm having to move on.

Liz: Well, with... Product management is really sort of like the operations that you wrap around your Salesforce instance. How are you taking in change requests? How are you working with your stakeholders to determine if those requests are aligned? And then how do you go through that process of enabling that change and then extending it for adoption? So it's kind of like the operations around your operations of Salesforce a little bit. But it's just a way to bring structure and I would say consistency and continuity around how you iterate on your Salesforce org.

Mike: So product management is not just a ticketing system and doing what the users ask.

Liz: Correct. There needs to be thought around it. And I've been in orgs, right, where... We've been in those shoes where there's pressure to do something and you do it because you're just like, "Well, I don't know. I don't have enough to stop this." Or, "We're under a time crunch. We've got to get it done." But that's why it's not easy. But admins have to spend time building relationships with their stakeholders and being thoughtful about how they take in change requests. And it could be something as simple as even just... Not that I want people to use spreadsheets and things like that, but sometimes just at least capturing that information even in a typical requirements document or building that out within Salesforce. I've seen a lot of people, and I've done this myself too, use the case object to help manage that and then review it with key stakeholders, determine what changes do we need to implement and how? What is the best method for it? 'Cause that's the beauty of Salesforce, there is usually more than one way to do something.

Mike: Yeah, no and beauty and part where you have to really contemplate. What I'm hearing, and I'd love to know your thought on this 'cause this is something that even I struggled with as an admin. I think everybody does. The short-term change versus the long-term. And I mean that in respect of... I almost think of you know when you get a scratch on your car? Well, the long-term change is, I'm going to get it in the body shop. But the short-term is I'm just going to shoot it with a can of spray paint really quick to prevent it from rusting out. How do you balance that? I mean, what can we do to think through product management to say like, "Okay, cool. I totally hear you need this and it's on my six month roadmap." As opposed to maybe I just invest time now and build a little bit of it to turn the heat down knowing we're going to invest in it later. What's the balance there?

Liz: Yeah, the balance comes from understanding your stakeholders and the processes that you're using, that you're building out in your Salesforce system. So for example, if you know on the roadmap that something's coming in six months, but there's heat to get that taken care of sooner. I mean, being able to have conversations around, "Well, this is what's on the roadmap. If we pull this forward, something else is going to have to be pushed. How might we make that decision so that we can meet this business need sooner rather than later?" And it's not always an easy conversation for admins to have because it takes relationship building initially and trust building.

Mike: What are some of the most important things that you feel should be communicated to stakeholders in order to keep that constant level of trust high?

Liz: Yep. Great question. So there's a couple things that you can do. So initially... And it's never too late to do this, so you could be in an org for three days, or you could be in an org for three years. It's never too late to just start to do a stakeholder analysis. You can just run a report, group people by either their profile, their roles and determine who are the main people. You may be in an org where you can't talk to all 1000 users, but you may be able to get to a subset for relationship building. And that is crucial, especially with the pace of change that we're encountering now because of generative AI. And then I tried to get a system down for gathering enhancements. Some of those enhancements may honestly never get built, but at least you're documenting them and those as request and keeping a... Excuse me, keeping a log or a history of that. Sometimes you just build it in the case object. Some people do custom objects. You can do integrations for those or a spreadsheet depending on how big your org is. Just giving a place for that and then creating some transparency around that list is helpful. And then including those stakeholders in discussions around how do you prioritize those things? And I would start small, especially if your org is larger. If you're dealing with a lot of stakeholders, you want to start small maybe with one group. But as you can expand that, then I would probably start to do... And this is what I do in one of my orgs currently is, I do a bi-weekly update. And we don't work on a regular sprint cycle per se. We're not as hardcore with the Agile methodology, but we share every two weeks what we've accomplished, if it has a significant impact on the end users. And then we also share in that notification projects that are in flight and their status. So if we're working on maybe implementing something from the app exchange that maybe take us a month or two to implement, we include that and we provide status. So it's creating that visibility because sometimes people... You'll be surprised that people will respond and say, "Hey, I'm interested in this," or "I have an idea, or I have a thought on this." It creates that two-way communication that is required for admins and their end users.

Mike: Yeah, I think a lot of... And I experienced this too. A lot of the requests, I was able to dial the heat down and dial the request down when I started sharing very transparently the roadmap on what was coming and features that were coming. Because, to be frank, a ton of users, over 500, and they don't know. And when an absence of knowledge happens, they feel, well, maybe nobody's thinking of this, so I better raise my hand and put in a request when in fact it is on the roadmap.

Liz: And then sometimes too, just getting that visibility into the roadmap, end users will kind of do a groundswell like, "Hey, we actually need this sooner." And it helps when you've got a list of 10 people, individuals, that are asking for something and you're like, you can then go to leadership and say, "Hey, this is becoming a real need. How can we prioritize this? What can we put further down the backlog so that we can push this forward and get this really great feature out that could help make the team more productive?" So creating that path for feedback is essential. And I know sometimes there's this... People think, "Oh, we're going to just get inundated with complaints or things like that." But I'm like, "Bring it," 'cause I want to know. I'd rather have people log a case with me around something that they is annoying them so that I can analyze it and determine, can I fix this? Is this a part of something else that we're working on so that we can keep iterating?

Mike: Yeah, I agree. I would rather them be publicly vocal than privately angry.

Liz: Yes. Plus, when things come in the written format, it allows me to use the written format back to them versus sometimes when you're maybe on a group call, a meeting and it's hard to be eloquent. So I will say one other area that the LLMs have helped me significantly is crafting more clear and concise messages back to my end users and stakeholders.

Mike: Yeah, I was just going to ask you about that. Because I think that's one of the things where for a long time, creating training and stuff, people can look at, "Well, I'm just not a good writer," or "I'm just not a good communicator." And I was going to ask you what specifically maybe some of the tips that you have for admins to get out there and experiment with AI and absent of some of the products that Salesforce has, because AI seems to be everywhere now. I feel like pretty soon my toothbrush is going to have AI, it's going to start talking to me while I'm brushing my teeth.

Liz: Well, hopefully it'll tell you if it has a cavity.

Mike: Yeah, I don't... But do you want to know that? You got a cavity here. I just might throw you away now.

Liz: I know, right?

Mike: No, you're lying at me. But I feel like that could be one avenue that could help admins both understand how to write good prompts and understand AI while benefiting us back.

Liz: So for example, I can be quite verbose and long-winded, and so I will sometimes ask something like ChatGPT or Gemini to make... I'll just draft something. This is the one thing. It's like you can draft something and your tone could be maybe terse or it could just be long-winded or filled with jargon. And I can pop it into ChatGPT and sometimes I'll use it like explain this like you're explaining it to an eighteen-year-old. Oddly, the eighteen-year-old or sixteen-year-old sort of prompt kind of helps me because it takes out some of that technical jargon, but also softens the tone a little bit for me. That's been quite helpful. I have ideas in how I want to communicate. ChatGPT helps me kind of put a little bit of structure around it so that it's not so all over the place.

Mike: Yeah. I also really like it. I'll ask it for different tones.

Liz: Yes.

Mike: That was always a... A friend of mine told me this trick, which now it feels like trying to teach somebody how to use a rotary phone. But if you need to write a difficult email, pay attention to your tongue because you're probably nervous and your tongue's on the roof of your mouth, so you need to lower that. That'll also help lower your stress, but also pay attention to your eyebrows. And it was always referred to me as eyebrows up, because it's really hard to write something angry if you have your eyebrows up.

Liz: Oh, I never knew that.

Mike: Yeah, I mean, you can of course, but if you're trying to not write something terse per se, eyebrows up because it kind of pulls your whole face into that happy smiley. And it's very non-verbal and it's telling your brain, "No, we're happy. Let's write this in a non-confrontational way." But the AI can do that.

Liz: Where was that advice pre-ChatGPT, Mike-

Mike: Sorry.

Liz: ... when my brow is furrowed and I'm thinking I've reset your password 10 times in the last week.

Mike: Yeah. Well, there are some things you can write with your eyebrows up that still come off terse, but that was always the trick that I was told.

Liz: Well, it helps too, 'cause sometimes you can play around with formatting using ChatGPT. It's like how would you format this for a Slack message versus an email? And it is helpful. It even adds an emoji sometimes, which to me, it could be a little bit of overkill. And sometimes when I ask it to write in a friendly tone, it's a little too much. So I like balance between professional and friendly. And then obviously, I'm going to still make changes to it, but it just gets me closer to... It saves me a significant amount of time. It gets me closer to communicating effectively, and it allows me to continue the positive relationships that I do care about and that I want with my stakeholders. But sometimes in the moment, emotions can get the best of you.

Mike: Well, and you bring up a good point, and I can always edit it. And I think that's very relevant to a discussion we had last week with Tom Leddy on decision-making and throwing things at Copilot and Prompt Builder and then just taking what it gives you. One of the ways you can always think about that as a product manager is, "Okay, so is this thinking of ideas that maybe I didn't come up with?" And I think for me, a lot of times Copilot if it can build me a flow that I didn't think about or in a way I didn't think about, that gives me another option as a product manager for how best to manage all of the platform.

Liz: Yes. Well, and if it's giving you an option that you didn't think about, you still need to spend time thinking about it before you select that as your option, right, to solve that problem or to solve that request. What's nice about is it shortens your learning time. You're not having to build and fail, build and fail as much, but you can't take the human assessment out of it.

Mike: Right, right. There's no one right way to product manage. And I say that and then oof, somebody's going to be like, "No, there is," because the internet. But I think from your perspective, having worked with a lot of admins and seen orgs and seeing various different ways of product managing, rather than asking you, "What's your preface for product management?" What are attributes that admins should think about when creating a system like a ticketing system, regardless of what it looks like, that would be a good attribute to help them manage Salesforce as a product in their organization?

Liz: Yeah. So I mean, you think fields that you would ask?

Mike: Happy with fields or outcomes or... I've definitely... We've discussed using, you said, service cloud and cases. That's one way.

Liz: I mean, I love a good Kanban view, right?

Mike: Sure. I mean, we can have that.

Liz: That is one of my favorites, and it's a great screenshot for a slide if you have to.

Mike: Not that you've done that before.

Liz: But for me, it's the level of detail that you're willing to ask your end users to put in. I mean, I would say for about every couple of tickets, most of the time I still need to have an additional conversation to understand. And this is purely around enhancements. I mean, definitely if there's fixes that need to happen, there's conversations automatically. But I love that it creates this opportunity for me to reach out to people and continue to build that rapport. So it's never just like, "Oh, I get this request in from a case for an enhancement." And, "Okay, I am just going to do this." It's never that. I always want to understand a little bit more context. So I try not to create too many field requests on that enhancement request, but I do want to understand what process is this supporting? What is this hindering you from doing? How will this help you? Things like that. I try to get a little bit of what I would say, just contextual information if I can. But sometimes people just put stuff in. It's like, "I want this field so that I can do this reporting." And that's their enhancement request.

Mike: Yes. I need six check boxes, one for every color of the product that we sell.

Liz: Yes. Or they want five multi-selects.

Mike: Oh.

Liz: But it's also too... The one other thing that I like about creating the space for people to submit enhancements, it allows me to create groupings. And that's one of the key things that I look for when I'm building the system is, can I group... Well, for lack of a better term, tickets or requests together to form a mini project? Because then you're really thinking through the process and how it relates to Salesforce beyond just a field. And so typically when things are going on at the company and people are all of a sudden you're getting all these kind of related asks, that means there's like, is there an initiative that I haven't been informed upon? Do I need to know more than I know? Because maybe I can build a better solution if I get more looped into these internal initiatives or objectives.

Mike: Yeah, I really like that idea. I mean, I think that's something that I would love to see in a future roadmap for some of the Einstein products is helping if you set up a ticketing system, using cases, helping you kind of clump, for lack of a better term, those cases together into these kind of... It's almost like, do you play connections in the New York Times?

Liz: I do.

Mike: Okay. So don't get started on that. But it would be like, what are these all have to do together with each other kind of a thing?

Liz: Oh, that would be awesome.

Mike: I know, right?

Liz: It'll be here before-

Mike: And then purple would be like-

Liz: ...we know it.

Mike: ... here's the craziest cases that we've found a through thread. I can't figure out what the through thread is.

Liz: That would be incredible. I'm sure that will be here before we know it. I

Mike: I mean, next year maybe we'll be on the podcast together. I'll be like, "Liz, hey, remember we had that podcast we talked about? Now it works."

Liz: Yes, that would be a dream because I think I do spend a bit of time grouping things together and trying to figure out like, "Okay, is this related to something? And maybe I need to look more." But that's the beauty of it 'cause sometimes you get the cases in and then you're like, "Oh my gosh, we may have something that we may need to fix or we may need to re-engineer," and that's okay. You want that. And again, the more you can get that and iterate on it, the more your stakeholders and your end users are going to trust what you're building and doing in the system.

Mike: So one thing I want to touch on, and unfortunately we're doing it at the end, but a lot of this we talked about product management in terms of what users want and what's being requested of you, absent of the release schedule that Salesforce has. What is your philosophy or how do you think about adding that as... Because that's an additional layer that we have to consider, right? Three times a year there's a brand new release, there's new features, and they may or may not be on any roadmap.

Liz: Well, if you're in your org and you know what's going on with it, you're usually waiting for those features. I usually get pretty excited about some of the things that come out. So usually I feel that I'm always eager. And I love all the stuff that the, admins blog and the Salesforce plus sessions that you all do for release readiness. That's so incredibly helpful because I sometimes listen to and have an 'aha' moment like, "Oh wait, we were just talking about this and this could help me solve it." And it's just being aware. I think having that rigor around your enhancement list and then reviewing it on a regular basis helps you when you're starting to review the release notes or attend release readiness live, you'll get those light bulb moments. And you'll just be like, "Okay, well this is coming, but it's going to have to now wait until the summer release." Or should I say fall? Just joking.

Mike: Yeah, right. That's always a quiz question to get wrong is what's the season that's not a release?

Liz: Right.

Mike: Or I guess I always think of it, here's a feature that's coming that I don't have to build.

Liz: Yes, yes. It saves time.

Mike: Which used to be the case a lot. So thanks for coming on and refreshing us on product management because I feel this is a core responsibility that admins focus on, and especially given the speed of innovation now that we're thrust into with AI.

Liz: Yes. And it's even more important for them to flex these types of skills around product management.

Mike: Oh, absolutely. I mean, product management skills as an admin will translate to other skills across the organization and within technology.

Liz: Yes, exactly. And it's a great way for them to build their career and trust.

Mike: Absolutely. Thanks for being on.

Liz: Thanks so much. It's always a pleasure to be here.

Mike: Of course, that was a great discussion with Liz. I love having her back. I'll also link to that previous episode down in the show notes so you can check it out because clean data with AI is super important. But love some of the points that she had to bring up, especially around thinking through different features and really managing all of the requests and roadmap. I hope that's something that you're thinking about, too. Now, if you enjoyed this episode... I hope you did. I had a lot of fun recording it. I would love for you to share the episode. And if you're listening on iTunes or really any platform, it's usually super easy. You hit like an up arrow or in iTunes, you hit three dots and you can click share episode, and that'll allow you to post it to social or text to a friend. Maybe you got a friend that's getting started as a Salesforce admin and they want to learn how to manage the product. And of course, as always, I appreciate you listening. So until next week, we'll see you in the cloud.