When a company makes the decision to invest in Salesforce, it’s because there is a gap between the business’ needs and the existing technology stack. A lot of time, money, and energy is spent designing and implementing Salesforce to close that gap. Once you’re live, users are trained, and Salesforce has streamlined your core processes, that business/technology alignment naturally starts to shift, and slowly the gap will widen.
Often, companies will have a single administrator to answer user questions, troubleshoot issues, and implement feature requests for new fields, reports, and basic automation. This administrator is a necessary and vital part of the team, but they are becoming increasingly harder to find, more expensive, and forced to wear multiple hats. What we see happen is your business and the capabilities of the Salesforce platform both grow and change much faster than your in-house staff can keep up with. The result is the same type of gap that led you to Salesforce in the first place–technology that is stale and unable to provide the necessary insights and efficiencies. Now it will cost a lot more time, money, and energy just to get your business and technology realigned.
So how do you keep that gap closed and enable your business and technology to be drivers of each other’s growth? There are three main approaches you can take. Depending on your company’s size, you may utilize a combination of two or even all three.
You can invest in an in-house Salesforce team. There are definitely some pros to this approach. You’ll have onsite, full-time, dedicated resources. These team members will develop in-depth knowledge of your business, Salesforce org, and the rest of your technology stack. However, there are also many cons. Quality resources can be expensive and hard to find. Turnover is also very common among Salesforce administrators and developers. Your investment in their training and development may not provide much of a return in the long run.
You can work with individual freelancers. Freelancers help you fill a specific need. You can choose someone well-suited to a particular task or application, often at comparatively low rates. However, it’s very difficult to adequately screen freelancers and assess their experience and skill levels. Once you find them, good freelancers also tend to have more limited availability and higher turnover.
You can work with a registered consulting partner that provides Managed Services. The benefits of this approach are numerous. While you may have only one assigned resource, you will benefit from the experience and expertise of the entire team. You don’t have the same level of effort in finding and evaluating each consultant. When that person is out of the office, you will typically have someone else ready and waiting to fill in as needed. Instead of paying for full-time resources with limited skill sets, you get more flexibility and pay only for the hours you need.
One key point to make is that there is a huge difference between support and Managed Services. Support is a transactional relationship where tasks are outsourced rather than utilizing an in-house admin. Managed Services involve deeper partnership between you and your external consultants, who provide guidance on Salesforce governance, architecture, integration, data management, and other important but frequently overlooked components of a successful business application management strategy. This ensures your business and technology remain aligned.
In short, when you partner with DoubleTrack, we don’t seek to replace your admin. In fact, achieving success requires that we work closely with them. Our role is to add a layer of deep and broad technical expertise as well as strategic understanding of the role Salesforce plays in your business’ success. This enables us to develop a roadmap that addresses specific, identifiable needs in the near term and sets you up for smoother transitions and enhancements as you grow. Our team drives this effort so that you’re able to focus more of your time, money, and energy on what you do best.