DemandTools: Every Salesforce Admin's Fix-It tool!
June 29, 2020
DemandTools: Every Salesforce Admin's Fix-It tool!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- DupeBlocker
- PeopleImport
- MassEffect
- MassImpact
- ReassignOwnership
- Single Table Deduplicator
- Find / Report ID's
- PowerGrid
Overall Satisfaction with DemandTools
Currently, DemandTools is being used only by our Business Intelligence department. We have 4 members of our department who use DemandTools for daily deduping of records, mass impact and job builder for name and address maintenance using Fuzzy Logic and proper case to fix all of those all caps or all lowercase entries, and PowerGrid to globally mass delete fields that aren't needed, make adjustments to fields that need to be changed or any type of global change needed based on the object. We have 2 Salesforce orgs and DemandTools enables us to make daily or even weekly adjustments to data as changes are deemed necessary.
- Single Table Dedupe is used daily by our department. The purpose of using it is for the Admissions office where applications are entered by prospects as well as are imported from a variety of application sources. Utilizing fuzzy logic enables us to find the same person whether they entered their name as Tim or Timothy. This enables us to keep our records cleaner than relying upon matching rules within Salesforce.
- Mass Impact is used daily utilizing the normalize addresses feature so that all addresses in Salesforce are within the same format guidelines. I use Mass Impact, in conjunction with Job Builder to have these features run on an hourly basis. Global name adjustments to normalize all caps or all lowercase entries is vital and Mass Impact definitely makes this process run more smoothly.
- PowerGrid is one of my favorite features because it enables me to make global changes to any object. I can mass delete, which I do several times weekly, and it's much faster and more user-friendly than any Salesforce native tool because it enables you to see what changes you're making and you can reference the record being changed right within the view to make sure the change you're making is what you were intending.
- Mass Effect is a feature that is used several times a week. We use it to update records already in Salesforce by adding on missing information that we'd like to incorporate into the record. Using the Find Id's function enables you to verify that the records you're planning to upload are accurate and then using the Mass Effect function uploads the data. Replacing data is also available with Mass Effect, but we do not use that as frequently.
- I would like to see the Find Id's function and Mass Effect functions as one cohesive function. The Mass Effect function doesn't give you a view before updating or changing data and I have to use Find Id's first to make sure all of the data is how it needs to be translated before I use Mass Effect. If these features could be combined into one then that would be a big time saver.
- I know this is a bit of a stretch, but I would like the ability to duplicate a report for multiple objects on PowerGrid. I use the contact and enrollment objects the most and both of these objects contain much of the same information, but I have to duplicate my report for both the contact and application object just to delete or mass edit fields on a specific object. I would love it if there were a multi-object view where I could pull up both the contact and application objects with Demand Tools so that I could globally change whatever fields I need. As an example, Contact has a contact owner and the Enrollment object has both an app owner and app owner user. If I want to globally change these to a new person I have to create both a contact and enrollment object report to change these to the same person. If I had both objects combined, then I could just pull all three of these fields in one report and make my changes right there. I know there's the reassign ownership function for my specific case, but PowerGrid is my go-to for almost all global type changes.
- The dedupe function would be great if it could house multi objects such as both contact and enrollment objects. Since we have to dedupe on the contact and then application objects it would be ideal to do this process in one screen rather than having to do it in multiple instances.
- A positive impact that I see from using DemandTools is that we have less of a need for man-power. Before DemandTools, I deduped records and changed records using native Salesforce products. I just deleted 100,000 records in 5 minutes with DemandTools and to duplicate that function in Salesforce would take much longer and would actually be a more troublesome task to complete.
- A negative impact that I see is that there are several bundled products that come with the package that we do not need. When we first signed on with DemandTools several years ago, the price was much more reasonable. Since being bought by Validity, DemandTools is now bundled into a larger package with other products and the price more than doubled. We've expressed that we have no need for additional products at this time, but everything is within a bundle. I've utilized multiple packages where those add-on functions can be purchased for an additional price and that's what I think Validity should go back to for their customers.
- All-in-all, I'm a big advocate of DemandTools and I think it is a vital package for our institution. I personally could not do my job as efficiently as I do without this product.
I have used many of the native Salesforce functions and they just aren't as user-friendly or quick as DemandTools. There are limitations to how many records you see or change at a time with Salesforce, but with DemandTools, I can easily change 1 million records. I actually just deleted about 4 million records using PowerGrid and trying to accomplish a feat like that in Salesforce would have been frustrating and taken more than twice the time.