Sweep was created by its founders to provide a no-code solution to manage updates in Salesforce. It uses a drag-and-drop builder that can, on a single screen, update record types, picklist values, flows, and validation rules while avoiding conflicting rules. Plus it creates documentation. And the supporting reports. It even makes funnel velocity reporting simple (which we'll get to in more detail). Seriously. We got a little giddy.
This new approach to managing Salesforce customizations is the brainchild of a group of developers at Wix–a drag-and-drop, no-code website builder. Once Wix hired a sales team and needed to use a CRM, they found that managing all of the customizations in Salesforce became difficult as the company scaled. Each time they added a vertical to target or a different product to sell, things ground to a halt because of all the interdependent configuration changes, documentation updates, and report overhauls.
These smart people asked: if people can drag and drop a website into existence, why can’t we do the same with our CRM? Right question, great product, and after seeing the demo, we’re beginning to think the only thing it can’t do is make a cup of coffee.
Sweep is for any organization that values documentation, clean processes, and saving very expensive resources (I’m looking at you, Salesforce magicians) time to focus on more strategic initiatives instead of wasting hours on tedious maintenance. While we’re not sure how it would handle a fifteen-year-old Salesforce instance with 40 integrations, we see a tremendous amount of utility for organizations that rely heavily on standard objects – although it will work with your custom fields and objects too.
While we know that change is hard, particularly for people who think that code and secret Visualforce tricks give them job security, even administrators who are very comfortable with the complex logic used by flows and coding can benefit from Sweep.
Because we’re dealing with a single screen for multiple kinds of updates and automation, we save a great deal of time. No more clicking into objects and fields and record types and validation rules and page layouts and flows and and and… Plus, it does the documentation for you and generates the dashboards and reports.
Administrators must understand how every change impacts the end user and the business's reporting needs. It's not a threat. It's a gift that takes the time-sucking tasks off your plate.
From this writer's perspective, the user interface is the most impressive aspect of Sweep. They've managed to use terminology that all Salesforce administrators are familiar with but structure the interface to make building logic and processes much less complicated than the traditional Salesforce UI. The other features are great, but the UI is sexy.
At an upper-management level, people lack visibility into what goes into managing Salesforce. They don't understand what kind of automations exist, where there are gaps, and where there are interdependencies that will slow down additional customizations. This makes it difficult for them to understand how the system works, the difficulty of a project, or what impacts a change request can trigger–domino-style.
Sweep no-code workflows are straightforward to understand by non-technical people. If your CMO wants to know how team hand-offs in your funnel occur, you can pull up your Sweep workflow and use it as a simple visual to illustrate your process in a meeting.
A major gap in many RevOps departments is documentation.
Most of us see the value in documenting how we've customized our systems that are unique to our organization.
The problem is how freaking time-consuming it is to develop and, even worse, maintain documentation. As a result, even the critical stuff like Funnel definitions and workflows don't exist or need to be updated two months later.
Sweep provides documentation without any additional effort from the operations team. It also updates that documentation automatically as changes are made.
The documentation is also much more granular than even the biggest fans of writing things up are willing to go. For example, Sweep automatically generates explanations of what validation rules do.
Sweep helps less technical users do automation in a much simpler way. Without worrying about the code, people can put processes in place without worrying about inefficiencies in their code (or even coding). Instead, they can use workflow visualization and drag and drop steps in a sequence without worrying about breaking a different automation on the same object.
Examples of this no-code process builder include managing multiple funnels. For example, you can build a no-code workflow that stamps fields when specific actions occur, kick-off field updates, and alert users.
As changes are made in the workflow, field picklists are updated, page layouts are updated, fields are created, and validation rules are spun up. It limits where an administrator must go in the user interface to a single screen instead of clicking into multiple objects, process builders (or flows), and validation rules.
As much as our C-Suite wants to believe that your company is a special exception to every rule, there are some best practices that we can (and should) base our processes on, like sales-led funnels or PLG funnels or sales methodologies.
Sweep has a repository of common workflows. They also have Funnel Velocity dashboards that actually set up the field benchmarking structure you need in the background. All you have to do is hit the "deploy" button.
Holy smokes, sign us up!
Older Salesforce instances are special. They’ve seen a lot. And it’s not their fault marketing wanted to integrate a new tool every three months.
Page layouts get cluttered fast. When you use Sweep, there's a Visualforce section for your page layouts that only elevates the fields your team needs to interact with once a process is kicked off. For example, if a qualified lead comes in, your salesperson only sees the fields that they need to, and those fields change as they move through the process.
Nope. While the interface simplifies updating Salesforce configuration and processes, you still need to understand how databases are structured and how your changes will impact the user experience. We see this platform as a really slick augmentation to make your system administrator's lives easier, cut down on project timelines, and solve for documentation gaps that exist in every organization.
So, while Sweep is so easy that a salesperson or marketer could use it, we still need to stop and recognize that not everyone is a rockstar when it comes to predicting shortcomings and frustrations caused by a faulty process.
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