Salesforce Lightning is the new UI with added features

Over the last year, more and more of our clients have approached us for more information about the Salesforce Classic vs Lightning experience. Companies are trying to understand whether the Lightning experience is something that they really need or can pass over for the time being. As with every technology developed to boost productivity, there is no standard answer to that question. Each company uses Salesforce differently – right from the customizations on Sales cadences to their use of Sales Cloud Einstein.

To start out with, let us look at the key components of the lightning experience that make it definitely a force to contend with. 

What is the Salesforce Lightning experience 

The Salesforce lightning experience promises to help enable anyone build apps faster using simple drag and drop tools and extend the use of your CRM system to allow the Sales team perform more efficiently. 

Salesforce lightning has offered many new cloud-based features and a new user-interface with this release. With a visually effective re-alignment of the user panel, it aims to make the tools easily accessible to Sales representatives freeing their time from routine tasks and focus on achieving better sales results

As per the 2017 Lightning Adoption Survey, productivity for users has increased by 41%- this is mainly because of multiple benefits that are available in the lightning mode which were previously not available in Salesforce Classic.

Better visual look and feel

The Salesforce lightning experience now offers a new and improved look and feel of data. There is a drastic reduction in white space and better information density and contrast allowing you to see more of what you need without scrolling. Improved contrast between foreground and background as well as splashes of color makes it easier to scan and scroll through data without being overwhelmed by data.

Salesforce Einstein (Wave Analytics)

Salesforce Einstein gives you the power of advanced AI capabilities to power your sales, service and marketing functions. With the advantage of AI-powered apps, each interaction enables smarter and better results for everyone. Einstein empowers business users with unbiased answers and recommendations to help you understand the data and also offers suggestions on ways in which you can act on it for better results.

Einstein Analytics also offers an effective format for automating contact additions. This will help you track how many contacts Einstein has added to Salesforce. In addition, the power of Einstein Activity Capture frees up your Sales team from manually logging supporting quotes and contracts, events and emails. All of these are automatically added to the records and used by Einstein to generate actionable insights.

Smarter dashboards 

Lightning’s real-time dashboards features takes data interpretation to a whole new level. It enables you to create a report for a specific metric and allow you to create a dashboard with components using the Einstein-powered Search function. With this function, smart utilization of data is taken to a whole new level.

Global search features connect to the enterprise index allowing you to access data in any feed or database and saving on the time you would otherwise need to locate the information manually.

The Lightning experience also allows you to create combination charts that plot two or more sets of data on a single chart. For ex: show the average probability and number of opportunities by stage. This feature did not exist in the Classic version.

Secure Lightning experience

Lightning Locker promises new security features that also score big. Users would not be able to change their assurance levels from standard to high while they are logged on. Such users would have to log out of their lightning sessions and log in again using a higher assurance level authentication method. This allows you to control access to the data by adding in a double layer of verification.

The long road to adoption 

The new Salesforce While the lightning mode promises to rejuvenate the Sales experience and allow them to reduce their routine activities and free them for more customer interaction. However, as with every new functionality, user adoption needs to be mapped and planned for a seamless switch.

Three keys steps to an easy lightning adoption 

1. Know your users 

It is important to understand how the new features and functionality will impact all the users. Analyze your use cases to understand the benefits for each user and map how they can start using the data more effectively to their advantage with lightning. 

2. Connect with an experienced lightning expert 

With the help of a seasoned expert, you will have the advantage of avoiding common pitfalls that the admin and development teams would need to prepare for without affecting the flow of business. You could take advantage of their recommendations as well as specific next steps that would not only help you manage the change effectively along with your specific customization but also reduce the workload in half by knowing how to analyze your technical readiness for the switch. 

3. Team up

Ensuring that everyone is on the same page is key to an effective switch. Collaboration with the Salesforce Trailblazer Community as well as local user groups are a great resource for your technical team and can help them discuss best practices and questions as they deal with key issues and stay on target.