Sixteen years ago I was hired to launch a small Salesforce practice at a national consulting firm. Salesforce was then a company beginning its international expansion with just two employees in Spain.
After more than 15 years working with Salesforce, I have seen all manner of implementations, some more successful than others, but looking back I can pick out a common pattern: the more seniority a team has, the greater the guarantee of success.
Seniority is gained through experience and experience is gained through exposure to a high number of complex situations. Experience enables a team to anticipate risks and design a solution that maximises value within the contracted scope and therefore project ROI.
It all starts from the design, which requires an understanding of the processes of the customer’s business and the approach to the solution in Salesforce. Team seniority delivers business consulting capabilities and capitalises understanding of the Salesforce data model and the in-depth command of its functionality to propose the best solution. Sounds simple, right? But it’s not always.
“…but looking back, I can pick out a common pattern: the more seniority a team has, the greater the guarantee of success.”
In many cases the pressure of deadlines for faster implementation makes it difficult to agree on the best solution in the medium and long term.
To counter that pressure, there is one question that matters most: you have to ask yourself “Is it possible to fully or partially solve the need using the Salesforce standard?”
The standard has many advantages which you must know how to defend against anything thrown at it:
Innovation:
Salesforce, according to Forbes, is one of the three most innovative companies in the world. It provides dozens of new functionalities three times a year, mainly for its standard objects. The further away from the standard you go, the more value in the tool’s evolution you lose.
Understanding:
Salesforce has been implemented for tens of thousands of customers. Hundreds of partners know the standard functionality in detail, as do the thousands of managers on the market. They will all deliver value faster and more efficiently the more faithful you are to the standard.
Maintenance:
Maintenance costs increase the further from the standard you go. Obviously, code maintenance has a cost and there are also hidden expenses in custom objects, both at the administration and implementation level.
“The seniority of a Salesforce S4G implementation team has a differentiating asset, which is indepth knowledge of the tool”
All of our senior consultants have multiple Salesforce certifications and dozens of implementations behind them. They have across-the-board knowledge of Sales and Service Cloud and most know Community Cloud. We also have specialists in all other Salesforce clouds and functionalities (Marketing Cloud, Pardot, CPQ, Field Service, NPSP, HEDA, Analytics….).
“…In many cases the pressure of deadlines for faster implementation makes it difficult to agree on the best solution in the medium and long term.”
This in-depth knowledge of the application also allows for good solution design to take on an implementation with the greatest guarantees.
The experience built up by the S4G consultants has allowed us to adapt the agile methodology (scrum) to harness the benefits of Salesforce flexibility.
The goal is to bring down deployment times while maintaining the quality that customers expect.
The team’s expertise is focused on the quality of the final project phases (UAT and Deployment).
However, one factor that our senior consultants have in common is an unwavering commitment to project success.
S4G probably has the team with the most seniority in Salesforce implementation in Spain, collectively bringing over 17 years of experience to the table.
From our offices in Madrid and Barcelona we carry out implementations for customers not only in Spain but also major international enterprises.
Over 400 successfully implemented projects are the direct upshot of the seniority of the S4G team.
