INTRODUCTION
Technology teams in many organizations are under more pressure and scrutiny than ever before. The demands for innovation and complete digital transformation have caused IT organizations to scramble for a means to scale and become more nimble. The demand for success is evident in CRM, which has become dominant in the global software market.
Salesforce is one example of a platform that has expanded its offerings to be comparable with full-scale ERP systems. As more firms acquire Salesforce products, they will realize a competitive advantage from their ability to maximize CRM product’s best features while minimizing costs.
Many organizations continue to face challenges with CRM initiatives, including: compromised ease of use, cumbersome code bases, and endless regression testing cycles. To address this rapidly changing and challenging environment, companies must ensure they are in control, have focus, and are recruiting effectively.
PART 1: CONTROL
Salesforce deploys three releases a year. The effort required to accommodate those releases increases with each customization.
Over time, companies leveraging Salesforce for CRM will need to devote more time accommodating mandatory upgrades and will find it more challenging to take on more pressing priorities.
With SaaS vendors such as Salesforce controlling updates to cloud services and user device operating systems, current IT processes must adapt. Agile approaches that emphasize responsiveness and “fast fixes,” rather than preventing problems in the first place, become the overarching paradigm.
Diagnosing the impacts of Salesforce updates and changes to service before they become a high-profile problem will require greater use of business intelligence (BI) style analytics tools to look for patterns and do root-cause analysis.
All in all, consulting/implementation firms may think they’re better off delivering every requirement regardless of customization load, but it comes at the cost of diminishing long-term returns for their customers.
Which brings us to the next consideration: Focus.
