CRM Community of Practice: Bringing the Community Together

Constituent Relationship Management (CRM) software plays an increasingly important role across the University of Michigan, from helping to manage tens of thousands of student applications to tracking student and alumni engagement with the university and many related institutions so units can provide more personalized and higher-quality service. The great flexibility of CRM software, which allows it to be adapted to many custom uses, also requires growing expertise to manage these systems. 

The CRM Community of Practice (CoP) founders were standing up their own instances of Salesforce, and they quickly realized that they couldn’t operate as islands. To manage their CRMs effectively, they needed to share knowledge and help each other. They also knew the growing number of CRM administrators across campus faced similar challenges. 

In this hybrid-remote environment, we’ve lost a lot of relationships, and our CoP is working on building relationships and bringing the community together.

Ann Tuttle, CRM Community of Practice facilitator

To Ann Tuttle, the CRM Community of Practice facilitator, the value of the CRM CoP today is how it brings the community together to get to know each other. She sees the presentations and knowledge sharing that happen at CoP meetings as wonderful, but even more important is bringing people together to talk to each other, go into breakout rooms, and chit-chat. 

Ann says, “In this hybrid-remote environment, we’ve lost a lot of relationships, and our CoP is working on building relationships and bringing the community together. When members get to know each other, they have people they can reach out to if their job requires them to learn something they don’t know.”

Jeanine O’Brien, the Salesforce Team Lead at Ross IT, echoes Ann’s thoughts, saying, “One of the greatest aspects of the CoP is the community itself.”

She deeply appreciates the quarterly Salesforce release summaries at the CoP meetings and the presentations that highlight upcoming changes she hasn’t yet circled in on. Even more, her involvement in the CRM CoP has put her in contact with other Salesforce administrators on campus, giving her a group of people she can reach out to, whether it’s exploring a new product or functionality or investigating a strange error. She likes to reach out to the CoP Slack channel to validate if others are having the same issue, and finds it gives her guidance on how to work toward a resolution. “If Ross is the only group, then we need to engage directly with SF Support. If multiple groups are experiencing the same issue, then it might be a local U-M issue or a wider Salesforce issue.”

Kristina (KB) Bee, a Salesforce Administrator for Student Life Technology Solutions, found her dream job through the CoP, performing Salesforce administration work supporting an organization that does work that is close to her passions and interests. 

Her previous department was implementing Salesforce, and she volunteered to learn how to administer it. She quickly realized that she needed to connect with more experienced Salesforce Administrators. She joined the CoP and met Scott Berkely, one of the co-founders, and he told her about the position at SL Technology Solutions. She loves the camaraderie of the U-M Salesforce community. “People post questions in the CoP Slack channel and there’s almost always someone with an answer, often volunteering to help you work through the issue.”

Learn more on the Michigan CRM website, and join the CRM MCommunity Group to stay informed about their events. You can also join the #cop-salesforce Slack channel in the Michigan Technology Community workspace.