Boost your Brand with Trifecta's Managed Services

Gemline engaged Trifecta in an ongoing Managed Services contract to enhance and maintain Gemline’s Salesforce instance and drive ROI, meaning Gemline’s team can focus on what they do best: being the premier supplier of high-quality, trend-right promotional products.

The Story

Background

Gemline® is an award-winning supplier of high-quality promotional goods, such as gourmet food and lifestyle gifts, electronics, bags, coolers, drinkware, stationery and writing instruments. In addition to its strong portfolio of house brands, and Gemline-branded products, the Company offers other high-quality retail brands including CORKCICLE®, Cuisinart® Outdoor Grilling, Igloo®, Moleskine®, Osprey®, Samsonite®, Sharpie® and many others.

Challenge

In 2020, Gemline made the decision to replace their eCommerce site with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and selected Trifecta as their partner. On the heels of this successful implementation, Gemline recognized the importance of maintaining the integrity of their Org, particularly because they were targeting future implementations of Sales and Service Clouds to unleash the power of Salesforce Customer 360. Gemline’s in-house IT team did not have the bandwidth to manage the day-to-day administration, however, they also did not want to rely solely on a consulting partner to drive success. Trifecta’s challenge was identifying the proper balance of break-fix support, strategic Salesforce consultation, and enablement to ensure stability and maximize Gemline’s ROI.

Gemline worked with Trifecta to launch their portfolio of promotional products using Salesforce Commerce Cloud on Lightning Experience.

“When we decided to partner with Trifecta on the implementation of Commerce Cloud, we knew they could support us as we built out Sales and Service Cloud. Trifecta earned our trust during the Commerce Cloud implementation, so it was an easy decision to engage them to help us with the rest of the Salesforce 360 implementation process.”

Our Work

Strategy

Prior to the implementation of Commerce Cloud, Gemline had not been a Salesforce customer – meaning Trifecta, as the Commerce implementation partner, had a complete understanding of Gemline’s Salesforce Org from day one. This put our team in the perfect position to provide Gemline with the support they needed post launch. Managed Services contracts are not a one-size-fits-all engagement. While some clients prefer a dedicated team member to manage 100% of their Salesforce Org’s administration, issues, and enhancements, Gemline preferred a more hands-on approach. Trifecta’s team developed a multi-tiered strategy to accommodate their specific needs and set them up for future success.

Our approach first leveraged the expertise of Gemline’s in-house staff to address their needs. If an issue or enhancement exceeds their team’s bandwidth or capabilities, Trifecta’s Managed Services team acts as their next level of support. Gemline’s team uses issue tracking software to submit tickets, which are then assigned to an appropriate Trifecta team member based on skill sets and availability. While this support is primarily focused on Salesforce work, it has evolved to include apps and integrations they use to support their Salesforce Org as well as more general IT needs. Gemline has also leveraged Trifecta’s team of analysts to export and review business data housed in ancillary, non-integrated systems for issues with data quality, data gaps, etc. Due to Gemline’s wide range of potential needs, it is essential that Trifecta assembles and retains an agile team with diverse skill sets.

“The Trifecta team has been a great resource for us to leverage. They effectively work as extended team members allowing us to accomplish more than we would otherwise be able to if we had only our internal resources to draw upon.”

The second key piece of Trifecta’s Managed Services approach is the ongoing training and enablement of Gemline’s staff. Following the launch of Commerce Cloud, Trifecta’s staff collaborated with Gemline to understand the responsibilities they wanted our team to manage versus capabilities they’d like to build in-house to become more self-sufficient. Then, Trifecta’s Salesforce Consultants provided one-on-one and small group training sessions to current staff, focused on these key areas and features. In addition, our team video demonstrations and developed documentation for ongoing reference and to use when onboarding new team members.

“Having the Trifecta team conduct Service Cloud training was a time saver for us. Not only was it efficient to have the experts provide in-house, in-person training, but this, in combination with the video and written training tools have proven invaluable.”

One example of a function Trifecta trained Gemline on is the ability to edit and update product information in real time.

Our current MAS work is heavily focused on Pardot, Salesforce’s marketing automation platform. Gemline’s in-house marketing team has been working closely with Trifecta’s MAS staff ahead of their digital campaigns to share their vision and content, so our team can build the required templates, graphics, landing pages, and workflows required to support their needs. It is anticipated that once Trifecta has built a sufficient library of assets for Gemline, we will be able to transition most of the Pardot functions over to their marketing team through ongoing training and enablement. In addition, Trifecta anticipates working with Gemline’s marketing team to explore opportunities for leveraging Pardot’s capabilities for analytics, creating custom dashboards, reports, and workflows to align with Gemline’s marketing strategy and KPIs.

A general example of Pardot analytics capabilities. Trifecta’s MAS team is working to enable Gemline to design, build, and manage their own campaigns using Pardot.

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What's Next

Future Work:

Our Managed Services work with Gemline is ongoing, and we anticipate a long-term partnership to help them maximize their investment in the Salesforce Platform. Our implementation work has continued alongside our MAS work, with a dedicated agile project team managing large-scale projects. Together, we recently launched Gemline on Sales Cloud and are planning to launch Service Cloud before the end of 2022. As a result, we anticipate our primary MAS focus will shift to the maintenance and enablement of these new clouds.

The final piece of Trifecta Managed Services approach for Gemline is to incorporate more proactive measures. One of these tactics is the establishment of office hours, where our Managed Services team holds a standing meeting with Gemline to allow their staff to come forward with concerns or ideas and work through them in real time. This overall strategy and balance of proactive and reactive measures allows Gemline to focus on what they do best, while Trifecta prioritizes driving ROI to maximize Gemline’s Salesforce investment.

“Trifecta continues to be a great partner. Their approach to managed services allows for flexibility, and enables them to adapt alongside of our evolving business needs. We are constantly collaborating on what is working as well as where there are opportunities. Whether assisting with administrative tasks, consulting on best practices or helping to strategize on customer experiences, Trifecta always makes us feel like our business is a priority for them and puts in the time and effort to ensure we’re successful.”