Calbright created a program to help adult students become Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platform Administrators because it’s a fast-growing job that doesn’t require any programming or prior technical skills. Companies of all kinds and sizes, in every industry, are hiring CRM Administrators. But Customer Relationship Management technology is still new enough that many people who haven’t worked with it before haven’t heard of it.
So people see the high salaries (Salesforce Administrators have a median salary, nationwide, of $86,000) and the many opportunities (148% job growth over the past five years, with more predicted), and the possibility of remote, flexible work, and like the idea of a Salesforce career a lot. But they also still frequently ask: that sounds great, but what is a CRM administrator? What does a CRM Administrator do?
CRM Platform Administrators Manage A Vital Database
A CRM program like Salesforce is a database companies use to keep track of their important relationships: relationships with customers, relationships with vendors, even relationships with employees. A CRM platform is such a powerful tool because it can be customized to meet a company’s specific needs, keep track of every interaction the company has with a customer, or track orders made by a vendor.
The CRM administrator’s role is to customize their company’s system, so that a program like Salesforce meets the company’s goals and needs.. The administrator ensures that data goes in and out of the system properly and empowers colleagues to harness the information they need and use it to accomplish tasks and priorities.
Salesforce lists the “core responsibilities” of a Salesforce administrator as:
- Maintaining the platform
- Making it as easy as possible for everyone at the company to use Salesforce, and
- Staying current on the platform’s new tools, capabilities, and updates
CRM Administrators Know How The System Works
Calbright’s faculty say that Salesforce administrators help companies, and teams within an organization, by optimizing and configuring the program to meet specific needs.
“In a small company, a CRM admin could wear many hats and be responsible for process, design, UX design, automation, user management, data management, security, and continuous improvement,” says Lisa Caroselli, who teaches CRM Platform Administration at Calbright. “At a larger organization, an admin would likely have more in-depth focus in one or a few of these areas.”
Generally, she says, there are three primary aspects of a company that CRM Administrators work with: sales, service, and marketing.
So, a CRM Administrator might help a company’s sales department by setting up personalized dashboards for every member of the team and creating alerts that track sales leads and keep the information up to date.
A CRM Administrator might help a company’s customer service department by setting the database up so that there is an easily accessible record of every customer who calls for help and an organized way of keeping track of their needs.
A CRM Administrator might help the marketing team by designing the system to keep track of subscriber data and keeping it secure so that people don’t accidentally see sensitive information.
The flexibility and power of the program is why companies around California, and the world, are using programs like Salesforce – and why they have plenty of jobs for people who know how the system works.
A Salesforce administrator is a perfect job for people who are looking to transition their career into technology, but have no prior technical experience.
This is where Calbright College comes in. You can learn CRM platforms, on your own schedule and currently at no cost to Californians. While Calbright students learn at their own pace, the program can be completed in just six months if a student is able to commit 8-10 hours to their studies each week.
