Why Creating A Salesforce Centre Of Excellence Is So Valuable

As I highlighted in an earlier post this week, I’ve had a variety of conversations with connections, colleagues & clients (old & new) where the has been a profound emphasis from Salesforce customers on scaling their internal capabilities. Now, there’s a variety of reasons such a trend has gained great traction, such as:?

• Wider macroeconomic data impacting IT spend, reducing customers' ability to spend on external SI partners, meaning that without strong in-house expertise, they may fall adrift in the sea of their competitors.?
• The increased number of Salesforce’s acquisitions and product suite enhancements has made it more challenging for customers to keep abreast of all these new products, so understanding and strategizing how these new products and features can be leveraged most effectively to contribute to the business’s wider strategic/operational goals like revenue growth, marketing performance, customer satisfaction, etc, is more challenging than ever. ?

An organization’s ability to leverage the Salesforce platform most effectively is dictated by much more than a simple license purchase and a relationship with Salesforce and their respective partners; it is rooted in an internal understanding of the platform’s capabilities in combination with a clear alignment with the company's strategic roadmap to ensure that you are investing, enhancing and maintaining a Salesforce org that is not only effective in the immediate future, but for years to come. ?

First & Foremost, What Is A Salesforce Centre of Excellence??

In short, it’s an organization’s internal team that has complete oversight and responsibility for the maintenance, enhancement and optimization of their Salesforce platform. Depending on the organization, it will consist of a variety of skillsets with individual specialisms depending on their Salesforce product suite. A typical set up with consist of a:?

• Salesforce Administrator to maintain the platform, make the platform as user-friendly as possible for the organization, and tackle declarative bugs and issues. ?
• Salesforce Developer to create custom apps to solve a specific business problem that the ‘Out-the-box' capabilities of Salesforce cannot. This typically involves programmatic tools like Apex, LWC, JavaScript, etc. ?
• Salesforce Business Analyst to help an organization optimize business processes and opportunities for improved efficiency in Salesforce.?
• Salesforce Product Owner that takes much of the responsibility for the delivery of the product roadmap, product backlog, and general day-to-day management of the platform. ?

As your organization grows and your platform evolves, you may also introduce Solution Architects, Technical Architects, Programme Managers, Testers, or product-specific specialists. It all depends on the scale and complexity of your org.

The Foundations Of A Salesforce Centre of Excellence

The key foundation upon which a successful Salesforce CoE's success is built is its ability to understand the role it plays amongst the wider organization and the value it provides to the business. This ensures that each individual that sits within this time has a clear focus for their efforts and are effective in delivering the desired results and benefits from the platform.

Ultimately, regardless of how you build your Centre of Excellence, it must be focused on delivering wider business value through key, measurable metrics like Lead Conversion, Marketing Engagement or Customer Acquisition/Retention.

Now, Why Create?a Salesforce Centre of Excellence??

Scalability – For me, this is the most impactful benefit of creating a CoE. The Salesforce platform seems to be evolving at a greater rate than ever, with acquisitions of the likes of Spiff this year and the introduction of products like Data Cloud and Einstein AI, the former of which is Salesforce’s fastest growing product at the moment. Your CoE can help identify these emerging products, identify opportunities for these to be leveraged and ensure that the platform is scalable, adaptable and adoptable as the platform evolves, and your organization grows. ?

Enhancement – The value of a Salesforce Partner cannot be questioned. They are truly Salesforce SMEs and can ensure the smooth implementation of an effective platform, from inception to completion. However, a common pain point for customers is the cost of a continued reliance on SI Partners post-implementation, especially when you put these alongside the 9% increase in license costs in August of last year. By investing in scaling your internal capability and creating a specialist CoE that is aligned on your organization’s specific use-case for the platform, they are able to proactively identify opportunities for improvement and enhancements that are tailored solely to your organization and ensure that Salesforce remains a highly effective tool as you grow. ??

Creating and Maintaining Best Practice – The Salesforce platform is so flexible that it can be customized extensively to fit the needs of almost any organization/industry, especially when leveraging products like Salesforce Industries, where the likes of Financial Services Cloud, Energy & Utilities Cloud or Media Cloud are perfectly tailored to the customer’s needs. That said, technical debt can quickly accumulate if the configuration and customization of the platform is not guided by the right forethought and organizational strategies, as well as best practices. Your Salesforce CoE can align on a consistent approach to enhancement to have a clear strategy and roadmap in mind that is effective in delivering the most impactful, effective Salesforce platform possible. ?

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How Cloud4 Solutions Can Help You Create an Ecosystem-Leading Centre of Excellence:

Cloud4 Solutions have helped a variety of both start-up and enterprise Salesforce customers to create ecosystem-leading Centers of Excellence, enabling them to deliver their Salesforce transformations efficiently and cost-effectively, whether that be alongside a Salesforce partner, or via a time & materials model. ?

Our approach is centred around delivering maximum value to our clients by understanding the wider business benefits you are looking to achieve from the platform, identifying the specialist skillsets needed to deliver these outcomes and then leveraging our extensive networks to locate & deliver these resources efficiently, on a global scale. All of this is centred around a bespoke service tailored to your hiring strategy and the relevant transformation agenda(s).?

We understand that each business has its own talent acquisition strategies, and our intention is not to replace these. Our service augments your organization’s ability to identify specialist Salesforce talent in line with your strategic roadmap, and grants you access to an exclusive candidate pool that you otherwise may not access. ?

So, if you are looking to scale your internal Salesforce capabilities and create an ecosystem-leading Salesforce CoE, please fire me an email ([email protected]) or ping me a LinkedIn message, and I would love to discuss further!?