Hi all, I'm very new to Gainsight so guess I'm looking for pointers to good resources to learn more about the practical side of seting up the various elements of gainsight. The organisation I'm joining is new to the CSM role but is investing heavely in the process. I've turned up and have done various Gainsight courses to become familiar with the concepts and screens then I've logged into our Salesforce/Gainsight platform to find very little there.....
Can anyone point me to any resources where I can get better ideas about how best to approach getting gainsight implemented in a efficient manner. For example is it better to get our house in order with Salesforce first (i.e ensure data such as account managers, oppertunties, contacts etc are up to date). After I get to a certain level I can hopefully ask more sensible specific questions of the community.
Sorry if this has been asked a lot. Currently on a steep learning curve 🙂 I know what I want to do and what it takes to keep a customer happy, just figuring out how best to make gainsight a fantastic resource rather than a burden
Thanks
+4Hi Matt - welcome to the club! 🙂 All of us have been where you are - it can be overwhelming for sure.
Getting started in Gainsight can be rather tricky, because it really all depends on what your goals are and what your business needs to drive towards those goals.
Did you have a Gainsight services engagement to help get your basic environment set up? If not, my suggestion would be to start by getting your C360 pages set up and organized for the core data elements that your end users would want/need at their fingertips. This is particularly valuable for data that doesn't live in Salesforce - you can import it (via S3 connector, for one) and store your own data tables in Gainsight Data Management. Then build reports based on that data that you can attach to C360 pages.
Then you might focus on trying to automate some of the items that your end users do for customers that take them a lot of time/manual effort to accomplish, either via Rules Engine, Journey Orchestrator or a combination of both. Focus on the items that deliver real value, first to customers, then to end users. That's a good way to get some quick wins/establish confidence with your end users.
Others may have different suggestions but that's my recommendation to get you started and get you hands on working with the features in Gainsight. As you start to gain confidence in using the tool, you'll start to think of other areas that you can tackle.
As far as data is concerned, it's always great if the data is pristine - but no one ever has clean data to work with. If you wait for it to get cleaned up, you'll never get anywhere, so I say just get started!
Getting started in Gainsight can be rather tricky, because it really all depends on what your goals are and what your business needs to drive towards those goals.
Did you have a Gainsight services engagement to help get your basic environment set up? If not, my suggestion would be to start by getting your C360 pages set up and organized for the core data elements that your end users would want/need at their fingertips. This is particularly valuable for data that doesn't live in Salesforce - you can import it (via S3 connector, for one) and store your own data tables in Gainsight Data Management. Then build reports based on that data that you can attach to C360 pages.
Then you might focus on trying to automate some of the items that your end users do for customers that take them a lot of time/manual effort to accomplish, either via Rules Engine, Journey Orchestrator or a combination of both. Focus on the items that deliver real value, first to customers, then to end users. That's a good way to get some quick wins/establish confidence with your end users.
Others may have different suggestions but that's my recommendation to get you started and get you hands on working with the features in Gainsight. As you start to gain confidence in using the tool, you'll start to think of other areas that you can tackle.
As far as data is concerned, it's always great if the data is pristine - but no one ever has clean data to work with. If you wait for it to get cleaned up, you'll never get anywhere, so I say just get started!
Jeff Kirkpatrick
+2Welcome to the community Matt!
Jeff provided some great insights (as usual).
In case you haven't come across it yet, this page brings together online resources for new admins: https://support.gainsight.com/Getting_Started_for_Admins/Administrator_Resources/01_Introduction_to_the_Administrator_Role
I'd also fully leverage your Gainsight CSM to discuss best practices and how to "crawl, walk, run" effectively. Some new admins I've worked with have benefitting from bringing on Gainsight services for a "Managed Services" temporary engagement to help them build out some configurations and to "learn by doing" with that Gainsight expert. Your CSM can get you more details on the options there.
And of course, don't hesitate to ask your questions here on community as well! We're all here to help out.
Jeff provided some great insights (as usual).
In case you haven't come across it yet, this page brings together online resources for new admins: https://support.gainsight.com/Getting_Started_for_Admins/Administrator_Resources/01_Introduction_to_the_Administrator_Role
I'd also fully leverage your Gainsight CSM to discuss best practices and how to "crawl, walk, run" effectively. Some new admins I've worked with have benefitting from bringing on Gainsight services for a "Managed Services" temporary engagement to help them build out some configurations and to "learn by doing" with that Gainsight expert. Your CSM can get you more details on the options there.
And of course, don't hesitate to ask your questions here on community as well! We're all here to help out.
Thanks for all the advice. I guess I should make clear I'm not an administrator I'm effectively a CSM however, as an organisation we've bought into using Gainsight with SalesForce but the shape of how it fits together is all new and the various process and best practices we are developing. I guess when I'm looking for advise around implementation is more around the process side rather so I can give someone some actual requirements to implement. As an example one of my first tasks is that I have been given cutomer X. now as is typical with SF in an organisation that's spread around the world and aquired other organistions a customer might be in SF 30+ under different names and for various political and commercial reasons they can't be merged. but as a CSM I'm above that and really just want one view of that customer. I have no idea if that kind of consolidation is possible or if you have to have 1 to 1 relationships with SF accounts. So I guess I'm kind of looking for repositories where I can get insight (as based on the number of SF entities I've working with at various organisations this senario is really common 🙂 )
+4Hi Matt - I strongly advise you talk to Gainsight about getting some sort of services engagement. Gainsight needs to be customized to your environment's needs, but without guidance (your first time, anyway) it's very difficult to configure and certainly not based on a few posts on the community. You would benefit greatly from having them help you through it.
+2Hi Matt,
To your question on how to manage distinct organizations that are related, there are essentially two main ways to manage that. One way is if your organization uses Hierarchies in Salesforce where they identify the parent/child relationship between distinct account entities. Here's info on that feature: https://support.gainsight.com/Relationships_and_Account_Hierarchy/Admin_Guides/Configure_and_View_Account_Hierarchy_in_C360
Gainsight also has a feature called Relationships which is useful when the child organizations are not distinct Salesforce accounts, but represent teams or business units that are below an Account level. Here's info on that feature: https://support.gainsight.com/Relationships_and_Account_Hierarchy/About/Relationships_Overview
As Jeff mentioned, we recommend some professional services help to identify the right structure to use (it could be one, the other, or both) and the right way to configure the settings so that it meets your use cases.
To your question on how to manage distinct organizations that are related, there are essentially two main ways to manage that. One way is if your organization uses Hierarchies in Salesforce where they identify the parent/child relationship between distinct account entities. Here's info on that feature: https://support.gainsight.com/Relationships_and_Account_Hierarchy/Admin_Guides/Configure_and_View_Account_Hierarchy_in_C360
Gainsight also has a feature called Relationships which is useful when the child organizations are not distinct Salesforce accounts, but represent teams or business units that are below an Account level. Here's info on that feature: https://support.gainsight.com/Relationships_and_Account_Hierarchy/About/Relationships_Overview
As Jeff mentioned, we recommend some professional services help to identify the right structure to use (it could be one, the other, or both) and the right way to configure the settings so that it meets your use cases.
VP of Customer Success at Forcepoint
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