Labor First is a full-service Retiree Benefit Manager, providing customized health benefit solutions and member advocacy services to the retirees of multi-employer group benefit plans. Since 2005, Labor First is the only Medicare Benefit Manager that solely services the union retiree healthcare marketplace.

Labor First offers unique Medicare benefit plans that enhances existing benefits for current retirees while offering savings for plan sponsors. But beyond this, they offer a team of Retiree Advocates that assist members through the complex world of retirement benefits; creating a truly holistic experience for the lifecycle of the relationship.

Relay has been a long standing partner of Labor First helping them innovate and grow on the Salesforce platform. We are sharing a chat with Kimberly Lundgren, Labor First's Vice President of Information Technology, about the company, challenges, and of course, Salesforce.

What are some of Labor First's biggest challenges in the next year?

Labor First is growing rapidly, and with growth comes change. We are working hard at figuring out how to scale our current technology stack to accommodate this growth.

‍What has been the biggest benefit you have seen from your Salesforce investment?

Having the ability to modify Salesforce to support current and future needs, has proven to be invaluable. Our Salesforce org has been built out to support the business processes used by every department.

What advice would you give to companies thinking about whether they should implement Salesforce into their workflow?

Don't try to re-create a legacy system in Salesforce. Take the time to understand how Salesforce works and all that can be done with a well thought out, outstanding implementation. Salesforce is extremely agile, and with proper planning, can break down silos, support business processes for multiple departments, thus providing better visibility into company operations.

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If you are interested in learning more about how Salesforce custom apps and integrations can help you run your business processes more efficiently and unlock insights into your operations, schedule a 30 minute consultation with one of our Salesforce Architects today or send us a message!

When you are looking to automate your business processes, you have a few different options to consider. We at Relay highly suggest a custom solution to ensure that your apps are talking to each other in the exact manner in which you envision. But we understand there are times when you may have a smaller, less critical need to connect your apps. That's where a solution such as Zapier can revamp the way your company operates.

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What is Zapier?

Usually, if you were looking to connect two apps, you would need a developer to sift through the application's APIs and code a custom program. But Zapier brings this ability to everyone, connecting thousands of apps using a no-code interface. This means that a team member in Marketing could build an automation for their department or another colleague in HR can build one for their department. This not only frees up your developers, but it allows everyone to get creative with automations that serve their business needs.

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How does Zapier Work?

So say you want to find a way to celebrate your sales team's success in Salesforce and announce it to everyone within Slack. Using Zapier, this can be done within a matter of minutes. Once you have connected both your Salesforce and Slack accounts, you can start creating your first "zap."

Each "zap" starts with a trigger step. This is what initiates the automation. For this case, our trigger step would be updating an opportunity's stage field to "Closed Won"

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We select the Object (Opportunity), Field (Stage), and then input what we want the field to be updated to continue (Closed Won) Finally, we can test the trigger to make sure it brings in the correct records.

Once Zapier finds the right record, we can create our action step; which in this case will be Slack. Choose Slack and then we can choose the action event we want to occur. For this scenario, this would be "Send a Channel Message" since we want everyone to see a new deal has been closed.
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Choose your channel and then let's build the message to be sent to the team. Here is where we will want to format it well to make sure your team only sees the details that are relevant to them.

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Let's include the company name and the sales amount. You can choose whether to send the message as a bot, which we will in this scenario and if you want to give the bot a name. Fill in any relevant fields that are important to your organization and then click continue. Here is where you can send a test message to your selected Slack channel. Send a test to make sure it looks right to you and then you're nearly there.
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Turn on your Zap and sit back and wait. Next time your sales rep marks an opportunity as "Closed Won", your whole team should get a message automatically.

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The Power of Zapier

What we just did was build the simplest of Zapier scenarios, but you can see how easy and powerful it can be where the only limits are your imagination. There are filter steps, A/B paths, formatting and so much more that you can do within Zapier to make your automation scenarios as unique as your business needs.

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For your more complex business needs and automations, feel free to reach out to the team at Relay where will tailor your apps to do everything you need and nothing you don't.