Glancing through Salesforce customer reviews, you may have noticed how often companies are surprised - and even shocked - about what comes after Salesforce implementation. Salesforce sales representatives claim their products are all out-of-the-box and ready to use immediately after adoption, but this statement often fails to match the reality. The reason is that Salesforce covers enormous amounts of requirements, but mainly those you would call standard. Any time a business or its particular department needs to step out of standard flows and common practices, they have to accept the fact Salesforce needs custom software coding and design. For Salesforce-using companies, this means searching for or growing a brand-new expertise in Salesforce development. But is this an excellent managerial decision?
Before you hire salesforce developers in-house - ask yourself these questions
Are you ready to master the new internal expertise?
No more, no less, Salesforce is a whole universe with plenty of products and technology behind each of them. And, what can be an unexpected opening for a new adopter, choosing a limited bundle does not eliminate the necessity to cover lots of knowledge base to use your Salesforce tools. This is caused by Salesforce products being tightly interconnected and meant to be rather Lego blocks than stand-alone units for separate products. Such logic allows users to be flexible and not limited by their CRM capabilities, but also makes them continuously learn about new technology in Salesforce. It’s a great addition to an IT company’s competencies or bigger companies of any domain, but how about SMEs in FinTech, Retail, Healthcare, or Manufacturing? Being experts in producing semiconductors or selling fresh fruits does not include skils in managing software developers' teams - or even establishing tasks for a few administrators. Launching a whole new - especially tech - expertise means diving deep into it.
Do you have managerial and BA resources to compose the team and ensure their smooth interaction with other departments?
As for our experience, only a few companies fulfill their requests by hiring just one developer or administrator. For most cases, the knowledge and skills needed to accomplish the scope of work require hiring several Salesforce people. And it becomes your responsibility to turn strangers into a team that achieves and prospers. Yet another managerial challenge is more complicated: if you are a non-IT company, your internal Salesforce users and stakeholders like Sales and Marketing have little or no experience collaborating with software developer teams. The developer team does not understand your business context and different departments’ goals and, therefore, can fail to process their requests. Obviously, someone should take on the responsibility of aligning stakeholders' goals with developers' capacities and turning them into relevant results.
Have you calculated the actual Salesforce implementation cost?
If you are reading this article, you may already know Salesforce has all the capacities to keep up with your market strategy, but it requires additional development to do so. To obtain all the benefits of #1 CRM in the world, you must make continuous investments any time you need to diversify your product lines, launch new products or services, upgrade customer service, or test a new business hypothesis. As for hiring Salesforce developers in-house, the cost structure is as follows:
Salaries, of course. The average salary for a Salesforce developer ranges from $120,000 to $150,000 per year, depending on the location, experience, etc.
Recruitment expenditures. Hiring a proper teammate who would fit in your work ethos requires effort.
Management cost. As written above, it becomes your responsibility (or BA, or a manager) to integrate the new team into your organization as a system.
Work supplies & software licenses. Salesforce products and features are costly.
Social packages and insurance. It is an integral part of any hiring process.
Education plans, certifications. Yes, regular Salesforce certifications for the team are vital if you want them to ensure your Salesforce stays resilient, scalable, and secure. And by the way…have you ever wondered how much Salesforce certifications cost?
Do you have Salesforce implementation project plan?
By Salesforce implementation, we mean its continuous development pipeline, which starts from adoption and serves your Sales, Marketing, Service, and other departments as the company pursues its market strategy. For some time, ad-hoc development would be enough, but as your customer base grows and new product or service lines get launched, you’d have something more solid than day-to-day tasks for feature adoption or fixes. By “something solid,” we mean a technology strategy based on your digital strategy and market knowledge.
What’s the alternative? Outsourcing Salesforce development
If hiring Salesforce developers seems not worth the effort, outsourcing Salesforce development is a great alternative. And here is why:
Outsourcing development means outsourcing operational risks. Your Salesforce partner does all the recruitment, hiring, team composition, and even some management (if you prefer them to). This means you only place the order for the resources you need and don’t get bothered by the way they are found on the market.
Outsourcing Salesforce development is getting more expertise at a lower cost (and faster!). Instead of hiring the whole in-house team to manage your bundle of Salesforce products, you can work with Partner’s staff ad-hoc, on a project base, and on-demand wherever you need a specific skill set. And once more - you spend no penny on staffing & recruitment.
An outsourced team takes on operational burden and thus helps you focus on strategy. Delegating staffing, recruitment, team alignment, certification, and management allows you to focus more on revenue streams, customer relationships and strategy,
All these factors directly form a cost-saving approach when a part or the whole team of Salesforce consultants and developers is outsourced. The last question here is: where to start to benefit from outsourcing?
Where to start? Find Salesforce Partner and go for Salesforce Advisory
The best way of outsourcing Salesforce development is finding a Salesforce Partner. By partner, we mean an organization that specializes in Salesforce advisory, development, and team composition.
As the Salesforce universe is big itself, it created a whole industry of independent companies doing Salesforce consulting, development, customization, administration, and more.
Either you browse listing platforms like Clutch and The Manifest or go to Salesforce Partner Community, you will see agencies of various specializations. Some focus on narrow domain-specific solutions, some cover the defined range of tech stack or Salesforce products, and some offer an end-to-end approach, from strategy to team composition.
It’s easy to get lost in such a variety of services and offerings, and things get more complicated as you may be even not sure what exact services or team members you need.
But there is the hint that will save you tonnes of time and effort in the first stages and help move on with the right solution, service, or team. The hint is Salesforce advisory.
Roughly saying, Salesforce advisory focuses on diving deep into your goals, actual processes, limitations, and the definitions of success, and only then proceeds to the solution. It also may include a strategy session and due diligence that will help you define the starting point of your Salesforce journey and make it smooth and effective.
Salesforce advisory will definitely help with understanding how to adjust Salesforce to your market strategy, prepare MVP, move from legacy software, diversify product lines, upgrade customer service or price management - and much more. With the help of Salesforce advisory, you will understand what Salesforce skill set you need, which technology to focus on, and how to choose, deploy, and scale the most fitting Salesforce product bundle for your particular needs.
Ready to challenge us?
Be welcome to reach out and share your ideas and requests. We are here to help you with all the Salesforce-related challenges.