Today’s fluid economic landscape is prompting enterprises to optimize their IT investments and spending practices in favor of greater efficiency, reduced costs and better performance. This blog explains what relevance Salesforce Org Strategy has to such goals, how enterprises can choose the best operating model for their needs, and what benefits Salesforce Org optimization can offer.
Salesforce is one of the world’s most widely-used Enterprise CRM platforms, offering a network of cloud and instance products for organizations of all sizes.
Companies may use multiple Salesforce instances/Orgs for a number reasons, including:
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Goals of supporting organic and inorganic growth (e.g. when multiple business units combine)
- Differences in the way business units operate across countries, products, or teams.
- Varying innovation speeds among business functions.
Maintaining multiple Salesforce Orgs can be challenging for enterprises in many ways. Below are just a few of the most difficult hurdles.
Data Inconsistency: It can be difficult to keep data consistent across all Orgs. Inconsistencies in integration may cause discrepancies/duplicity, creating a fractured and non-unified view of customer data across different Orgs.
User Management: Managing access and permissions while ensuring that each user has the appropriate and consistent level of access that they need to each Org can be challenging.
Integration Complexity: In most cases, each Org will have different integrations or require different data flows, leading to redundancy in efforts for system integration.
Higher Costs: Maintaining multiple Orgs can be expensive; purchasing additional licenses for users needing to access more than one Org, setting up similar processes across multiple Orgs, and costs for third-party apps can add up.
Governance Issues: Governance Issues: Additional governance efforts are required to ensure changes are made consistently across all Orgs without inconsistencies or errors.
Maintenance Challenges: Maintaining multiple Orgs can be time-consuming, especially if each Org requires different levels of maintenance or customization to run smoothly.
To address these challenges, it's important to have a clear strategy and plan in place. When choosing a Salesforce Org strategy model, enterprise decision-makers should consider their organization’s primary and unique needs and goals, as well as the resources and expertise available to manage the consolidation process.
Companies may choose one of the following Org Management models as part of their larger Org strategy:
| Model | Relevance | Business Process Integration | Business Process Standardization | Number of Salesforce Orgs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coordination (Hybrid Model) | Required in cases where multiple unique business units need to know about each other’s transactions. BUs collaborate and communicate more frequently as compared to other models, accessing shared data through Enterprise Integrations. | High | Low | Single preferred. Multiple Orgs (One for each BU). |
| Unification |
Suitable for organizations that have a single or multiple lines of business where units share standard processes and common data globally. | High | High | Single Master Org |
| Replication |
Ideal for companies that have similar but independent business units (e.g., across different countries). Processes are defined in the parent Org and propagated to child Orgs. This model works well in organizations that have a mix of centralized and decentralized operations with the need to maintain a high level of data security and privacy. | Low | High | Single Parent Org (With few separate child orgs for BUs) |
| Diversification (Multi Org Model) | Adopted by companies that have independent business units with different processes, products, sales models, customers and areas of expertise. | Low | Low | Multiple Orgs |
Organizations should also consider using tools and technologies that can help streamline the management process, such as automation tools and/or third-party integration platforms. In cases where companies plan to consolidate multiple Salesforce Orgs into a single central Org, several key tenets may influence the consolidation process:
Process - Is there potential for sales process rationalization? Can approvals, workflows and customer interactions be consolidated? How do changes impact the user experience? How can aspects of regulatory compliance remain controlled?
Products - Decisions regarding how new product structure/service capabilities can be formulated; considering whether merging products are complementing or competing in nature.
Data - Ensuring that the new data model is scalable and optimized with appropriate considerations for updated relationships and governor limits taken into account. Enhancing overall data quality (in terms of data duplicity, correctness, completeness, and redundancy). Potentially considering buying extra data storage while reassessing efficient combined data reporting.
People - Enabling efficient sales training, enablement and collaboration across the organization (including sales, marketing, and admin teams), while keeping cultural and operating differences in perspective. Managing partners and distributors between merging Orgs.
Platform - Choosing the right common platform and integration strategy as merging orgs may have been leveraging different platforms and third-party tools; keeping license optimization and technical limitations in mind.
Once the business decision to optimize the processes and data has been made, one of the following implementation approaches can be adopted.
Phased Optimization: Core/ MVP features are optimized and delivered first. Other non-core features can be delivered in subsequent phases. The goal should be to make the new Org and its business processes as efficient as possible.
Big Bang Implementation: All functionality is delivered at once, and the older Org is retired.
Following are the key benefits of a Single Unified Org:
However, there may be reasons why organizations may still want to continue with multiple Salesforce Orgs:
Coforge partners with its customers in recommending optimal Salesforce Org Strategies that:
- Align business and IT goals while managing the organizational Salesforce landscape.
- Identify the optimal share of production Salesforce Orgs that should align to set business and IT goals.
- Recommend what appropriate Org consolidation option(s) should be taken; consolidation on a “preferred” Org (Org Merge) or greenfield approach (Org Reset).
- Define tailored strategy prioritization and implementation roadmaps.
Yogesh is a seasoned Salesforce professional with 17+yrs experience of working on cutting-edge digital transformation projects. He currently is the Salesforce Presales Lead in the Salesforce CoE, at Coforge. He is an emerging technologies enthusiast who constantly looks out for creative and innovative solutions. He is focused on helping medium to large-scale enterprises reimagine their digital transformational problems by leveraging the Salesforce Ecosystem.
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About Coforge.
We are a global digital services and solutions provider, who leverage emerging technologies and deep domain expertise to deliver real-world business impact for our clients. A focus on very select industries, a detailed understanding of the underlying processes of those industries, and partnerships with leading platforms provide us with a distinct perspective. We lead with our product engineering approach and leverage Cloud, Data, Integration, and Automation technologies to transform client businesses into intelligent, high-growth enterprises. Our proprietary platforms power critical business processes across our core verticals. We are located in 23 countries with 30 delivery centers across nine countries.