No one likes confusing business jargon.
But sometimes, when you are new to something (particularly with business software), it is inevitable.
So, whether you’re just getting started, or you’re a seasoned admin, you may find yourself scratching your head — or turning to Google — every time you hear terms like “org,” “instance,” and “new business.”
Here’s a quick list of common Salentica Elements terms to bring you up to speed fast.
- Org
- This is short for “organization” and you’ll hear this term quite frequently. Each Salesforce customer has their own unique org environment. This is where you log in, where your records are stored, and where your unique configuration lives.
- Instance
- While an org contains your unique data, code, objects, and configuration, an instance is the server that your org lives on.
- Records
- Are individual Relationships, Contacts, and other objects or entities on your CRM. A record is the complete set of information or details for each item in your CRM.
- Families
- Within your CRM Famlies are used to relate and aggregate multiple Relationships together. Families will include Relationships and Contacts, allowing users to see the overall highest level of connections among all records.
- Relationships
- The center of information in your CRM, representing a group of Portfolios, a list of Financial Accounts, or a Household. Relationships can also represent an institution, client, or business that is a center of influence. A Relationship usually has details like addresses and contact information for the Relationship, Contacts, an internal Team (who manages the actual relationship), and needed compliance and service information about the Relationship. Relationships centralize in one location all the important interactions with your clients, like Events, Emails, Calls, and Task Activities.
- Contacts
- Individual people with whom your business interacts. Information that is tracked on the Contact object is going to be specific to the individual, with such details as contact information, communication preferences, personal information, address information, and employment details. At this time, all information on a Contact is loaded, or manually entered, by your firm.
- Task
- An item that must be completed by a certain due date. While this definition probably doesn’t blow your mind, an Elements user can create tasks connected to certain objects (like follow up with a prospect or send a contract), set a due date, and even assign them to other members of their team. Reports can be pulled on overdue tasks to see where items may have fallen through the cracks.
- Requests
- Multistep, repeatable processes you and your firm want to track. They can be for just about anything you do within your firm that is repeatable and involves steps that do not change. Requests are not Activities. Requests house Activities as steps that happen within the process.
- Business Development
- Focused on new prospects and organic growth, Business Development uses child records -- Outreach, New Business, and Sponsorships (further defined below) to track information as it relates to your sales opportunity and marketing efforts.
- Outreach
- Allows firms to track Outreach events for Prospects, Clients, and COIs. As a top-level object in the Elements Business Development app, it consists of multiple objects -- Outreach Member, New Business, and Sponsorships.
- Outreach Members
- A list of Contacts that are associated with an Outreach event.
- New Business
- An object with a predefined process, requiring users to enter specific data points depending on the sales cycle. From qualification, discovery, proposal, and hopefully closed/won.
- Sponsorships
- Allow you to share the effort, cost, and credit of Outreach. Helpful when attributing New Business to Outreach efforts and partners.
Within Elements, you can also track other things that are pertinent to your financial advising business such as Legal Entities, Portfolios, Financial Accounts, Assets & Liabilities, New Business, and more!