Scope creep and change requests can be major budget-busters in any Salesforce implementation. They often occur when additional features or changes are requested after the project has started, leading to increased costs and extended timelines. While it’s natural for requirements to evolve, managing these changes effectively is crucial to maintaining control over your project budget.

I once worked on a Salesforce project where the client’s needs evolved significantly after the initial planning phase. What began as a focused implementation quickly became a sprawling project with numerous additional features and integrations. Each new request required extra time for development, testing, and implementation, ballooning the budget and stretching the project timeline far beyond the original estimate.

Here’s how to manage scope creep and handle change requests without derailing your budget:
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• Define a Clear Scope Upfront: Establish a detailed project scope at the outset, including specific deliverables, timelines, and budget constraints. Ensure all stakeholders agree on this scope and understand that changes may impact costs and timelines.
• Implement a Change Management Process: Create a formal process for managing change requests. This process should include a system for submitting, reviewing, and approving changes. Ensure that all changes are documented and assessed for their impact on the project’s scope, timeline, and budget.
• Evaluate Change Requests Thoroughly: Before approving any changes, evaluate their impact on the project. Consider factors such as the additional development work required, the effect on the overall timeline, and the potential costs involved. Communicate these impacts to stakeholders so they can make informed decisions.
• Prioritise Changes: Not all changes are equally important. Work with stakeholders to prioritise changes based on their impact and value. Focus on high-priority changes that align with the project’s goals and provide the most significant benefit.
• Manage Expectations: Set realistic expectations with stakeholders about the potential impact of changes. Ensure they understand that adding new features or modifying may result in additional costs and extend the project timeline.
• Monitor and Control Scope: Regularly review the project scope and track any changes to ensure they are being managed effectively. Keep a close eye on project milestones and budget to identify any deviations early and address them promptly.

In another project, I helped the client navigate scope creep by setting up regular review meetings to discuss potential changes. These structured discussions allowed us to assess the impact of each request and adjust in a controlled manner. This proactive approach helped keep the project on track and within budget.

​By implementing effective scope and change management practices, you can better control your Salesforce implementation project, avoid unnecessary costs, and ensure that your project stays aligned with its original goals. Managing scope creep effectively allows you to focus on delivering the core objectives while accommodating necessary changes in a structured and budget-conscious manner.

With Salesforce projects, the risk and cost of changing the scope increases rapidly with the size and complexity of the overall solution. All proposed changes MUST be assessed for impact: design, permissions, layouts, licences, integrations, testing, data migration, and training.​ Good luck!

You’ve likely heard the saying, "Failing to plan is planning to fail," and this couldn’t be more accurate when it comes to Salesforce implementation. Inadequate planning and requirements gathering can lead to unexpected costs and delays that wreak havoc on your budget.

I recall working with a company that was eager to implement Salesforce quickly. They had a rough idea of what they wanted. Still, they didn’t invest the time to thoroughly define their requirements or envision how Salesforce would fit into their future operating model. Their project became a technology lead initiative and as the project progressed, new business needs and changes kept cropping up, leading to a significant change in scope (‘scope creep’). Every additional feature and adjustment meant more time and more money spent.

​To avoid this pitfall, consider these strategies:
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• Envisioning the Future Operating Model: Take the time to develop a future operating model that illustrates how your business will use Salesforce soon. This involves mapping out workflows, processes, and interactions within Salesforce. Visualising how Salesforce will integrate into your daily operations can help you better identify necessary features and potential challenges.

 

• Stakeholder Involvement: Engage all key stakeholders from the beginning. This ensures that the system will meet the needs of everyone using it and reduces the likelihood of significant changes later. Hold workshops and meetings to gather comprehensive input and reach a consensus on priorities. Encourage stakeholders to think about how Salesforce will support their roles in the future.

 

• Detailed Initial Planning: Spend ample time upfront to clearly define the project scope. This includes identifying business goals, necessary features, and user requirements. A well-defined project scope acts as a roadmap, guiding the project and keeping it on track.

 

• Document Everything: Document all requirements, decisions, and changes. This creates a reference that can be used to manage scope and expectations throughout the project and helps hold all parties accountable.

 

• Plan for Flexibility: While sticking to the plan is important, allow some flexibility for inevitable changes. Set aside a portion of your budget as a contingency for unexpected requirements or changes.

I had another client who approached their Salesforce implementation with a more forward-thinking mindset. They spent nearly two months in the planning phase, developing a comprehensive future operating model and hashing out every detail. While it seemed slow progress at first, this thorough approach saved them from costly mid-project changes and kept their implementation within budget and on schedule.

By investing time in meticulous planning, requirements gathering, and envisioning your future operating model, you can prevent scope creep and ensure that your Salesforce implementation proceeds smoothly, avoiding unexpected expenses that can derail your budget. See Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of Salesforce Success Scorecard. ​

Defining a robust architecture for your Salesforce implementation is critical to delivering a successful business solution. Over time, business users will demand new capabilities from the platform, and there could also be external demands from customers, partners and technological advances. The Well-Architected Framework (WAF) is emerging as a widespread best practice for cloud-based products like Salesforce. AWS developed WAF to help cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient application infrastructure. The principles of WAF can be effectively applied to Salesforce solutions, offering invaluable guidance for architects and developers aiming to create robust and scalable solutions on the Salesforce platform.

The WAF comprises six key pillars:

1. Operational Excellence: Focuses on running and monitoring systems and continually improving processes and procedures. Key topics include automating changes, responding to events, and defining standards to manage daily operations. In the context of Salesforce solutions, operational excellence entails effective platform management, including deployment processes, monitoring, and automation. This pillar encourages continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), proactive monitoring of system health and performance, and automation of routine tasks to streamline operations and enhance agility
2. Security: Focuses on protecting information and systems. Key topics include confidentiality and integrity of data, managing user permissions and establishing controls to detect security events. For Salesforce, security is paramount in any implementation dealing with sensitive customer data. Applying the security pillar involves enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (required by Salesforce), enforcing strict access controls through profiles & permissions, encrypting sensitive data at rest (built-in) and in transit, and regularly running security assessments to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities.
3. Reliability: This topic focuses on workloads performing their intended functions and how to recover quickly from failure to meet demands. Key topics include distributed system design, recovery planning, and adapting to changing requirements. Salesforce already ensures high platform availability and built-in disaster recovery to a second data centre. Furthermore, Salesforce architecture must include reliability measures such as data backup, automated re-deployment from code repository, meaningful error messages from integrations, designs for fault tolerance, and testing of recovery procedures to ensure resilience in the face of disruptions.
4. Performance Efficiency: This pillar concerns properly allocating IT and computing resource types and sizes optimised for workload requirements, monitoring performance, and maintaining efficiency as business needs evolve. For Salesforce, this could involve optimising data model design, using built-in features instead of custom code, leveraging composite APIs, and employing asynchronous integrations for long-running tasks.
5. Cost Optimisation: To avoid unnecessary costs, WAF advocates understanding business needs over time and deploying the right type and quantity of resources as the business grows. As with most SaaS products, cost optimisation involves choosing the Salesforce licenses based on forecast demands (time & volume) and periodically reviewing licenses to avoid waste. (See https://www.caleidoscope.co.uk/licensing-checklist.html and the forthcoming Salesforce License Strategy webinar.)
6. Sustainability: This area focuses on minimising the environmental impacts of cloud infrastructure. By using the Salesforce platform as a strategic component in your overall IT architecture, you already support a high degree of sustainability.

In conclusion, the Well-Architected Framework provides a comprehensive and structured approach to designing and optimising cloud-based solutions, offering valuable insights and best practices across key areas such as operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimisation.

By applying the framework's principles to Salesforce solutions, architects and developers can create robust, scalable, and cost-effective systems that meet their organisations' evolving needs and deliver exceptional user experiences. For further information on how to apply WAF to your Salesforce architecture, please contact Caleidoscope Associates at [email protected]

Resources:

• 8-Factor Success Model™ for Salesforce implementations
• AWS WAF Whitepaper 

Implementing Salesforce solutions is a complex undertaking that requires a blend of information technology and business skills. The endeavour's success hinges on coordinating highly skilled people to perform critical tasks in the correct order to achieve the project outcomes. The project's planning, resource engagement, and risk mitigation are all contingent on the project manager's experience and expertise and the sponsor's ability to set the direction and overcome obstacles. Without the requisite experience, the project plan will lack a good foundation, potentially leading to time and cost overruns, ultimately failing to deliver the intended benefits.

​Each project is unique, and delays can be caused by many things, from poor planning and inaccurate estimates to ineffective task execution and resource conflicts. Many Salesforce projects avoid the traditional waterfall planning approach because the project appears to take too long. Instead, some organisations take an agile approach to deliver working Salesforce solutions faster. Both methodologies have their strengths and weaknesses, but they will only work if they are set up and managed correctly.

The Critical Chain approach, rooted in constraints theory, is valuable in project environments. It focuses on identifying and eliminating obstacles and limitations that impede project progress. This methodology, developed by Eliyahu Goldratt (refer to 'Theory of Constraint'), requires the same planning rigour as waterfall projects. However, it differentiates itself from the waterfall approach by employing buffers to safeguard the critical path. While the Critical Chain approach offers similar vigour as the agile methodology, it mitigates the confusion that you often find on larger agile projects.

There isn't a one-method-fits-all project approach for Salesforce projects; any of the three approaches discussed can work well for a Salesforce implementation. It is crucial to consider which methodology the project team is most comfortable and experienced with. If working with other project teams and third parties, agree to use the same methodology to avoid the added overhead and risks of working with multiple methods.

Do not let jargon like 'out-of-the-box' features, custom configurations and declarative tools like Flow Builder lure you into thinking that implementing Salesforce is easy. In fact, due to the vast array of features and configuration options available in the Salesforce platform, your project team will need the rigour and discipline of traditional software projects to implement Salesforce solutions as specified, on time and within budget. Ensure the approach is applied correctly and governed by whichever project methodology you choose.

To find out more about delivering Salesforce projects effectively and with fewer risks, contact us at Caleidoscope Associates.

Understanding Your Business Needs:
Before embarking on your Salesforce journey, take a step back to clearly define your business objectives and pain points. Are you looking to streamline your sales processes, enhance customer support, or achieve a step-change in your marketing results? Identifying your specific needs will guide your decision regarding feasibility, scope, customization, and implementation strategy.

Examples:

• A global e-commerce giant saw a 20% increase in conversion rates after implementing Salesforce to streamline their customer data and personalize their marketing campaigns.
• A multinational finance company, leveraging the expertise of a Salesforce consultant, developed a customized Contact Centre solution to consolidate four legacy CRM systems and customer service teams into a centralized operation improving NPS whilst reducing operating costs. ​​

Evaluating Customization Capabilities:

Salesforce offers a fast-track route for those who can leverage standard capabilities for lead management, customer management, case management, etc. Customization should only be considered where strictly necessary. If your objectives are transformational results, you should re-engineer business processes before deciding on your solution. It's important to scrutinize critical integrations with existing business processes and IT systems. Striking the right balance between customization and out-of-the-box features is vital, as over-customization can result in a convoluted system that proves challenging to maintain. This is where an experienced Salesforce consultant is worth his weight in gold.

Examples:
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• A manufacturing company achieved operational efficiency by customizing Salesforce to match their unique supply chain workflows, resulting in a 30% reduction in order processing time.
• A national automotive repair company built a service appointment booking system with bespoke development to ensure the online customer experience was smooth and responsive.

Delving into the Total Cost of Ownership:
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Salesforce undoubtedly brings immense potential value, benefit analysis must look beyond the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) license cost. Whilst Salesforce user licenses include basic features and usage allowances, you will face additional charges as soon as you want more advanced features and capabilities. This is a common trait across SaaS vendors.

​Adding custom development to the bill can rapidly increase the total cost of ownership (TCO). Customization of Salesforce will push up the total cost by increasing the time and effort for implementation design, system configuration, testing, user training, and support. Once live, your Salesforce solution will require regular maintenance and updates – more if your solution involves custom development and integrations. By gaining a comprehensive understanding of the total cost of ownership, you can avoid unexpected implementation costs and unwelcome surprises when the bills arrive after going live. Your TCO also needs to consider data and transaction volumes, test environments, software tools for development and testing, security features, and operational capabilities such as monitoring and backup.

Examples:
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• A study by Nucleus Research found that for every dollar spent on Salesforce, businesses gained $8.71 in revenue.
• One finance company had four different systems integrators working on their Salesforce platform over time, adding significant technical debt to the business case due to complex refactoring and data migrations.

Planning for Scale:
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As your business expands, so should your digital platform capabilities. While the Salesforce platform offers easy scalability to accommodate linear growth in the number of customers and volume of sales, other transactional records and processes requiring real-time interactions can suffer as your business expands. End-users will likely demand more from your Salesforce solution as they become more sophisticated, e.g. cross-functional reports and dashboards and deeper integration with other business systems.

Examples:

• A tech startup seamlessly scaled its operations by leveraging Salesforce, accommodating a 300% growth in customer base without compromising performance.
• The Salesforce ordering solution for a leading chemicals company was so successful that they had to start archiving transactional data daily to protect system performance.

Protecting Sensitive Data:
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Security is non-negotiable, especially when dealing with sensitive customer information.
In its internal processes, Salesforce encrypts data at rest and holds industry-standard certifications such as ISO 27001 and SOC 2. These compliances instill confidence in businesses operating in regulated sectors with their Salesforce platform.
Evaluate Salesforce's security features, including role-based access controls, encryption, and compliance certifications. Understanding these measures ensures the confidentiality and integrity of your data. Business stakeholders must be faster in clarifying non-functional requirements for data protection, security, and controls, leading to complications later in the implementation project. Adding such capabilities late in the project can also be expensive as they are foundational to the design. Detailed audit history and data encryption typically add a percentage cost to your license agreement.

Examples:

• A European automotive retail network built a shared solution to manage customer preferences and marketing consent for its Marketing, Sales, and Service teams.
• A service organization spent a long time analyzing customer data to ensure the new Salesforce would comply with GDPR regulations. This thorough requirement analysis is saving more than €500k annually in additional license fees.

Core Salesforce Competencies:

Even with a user-friendly platform like Salesforce, questions and challenges are inevitable. Experienced guides are necessary to ensure your Salesforce solution is built on a solid foundation, guiding you through the initial business case, solution design, Salesforce development, and ongoing maintenance. Your stakeholders will face many decisions along the way, requiring considered options and informed choices. Having independent advisors on your side is essential to navigate the challenges along the way and to hold your Salesforce Partners accountable. Even the most prominent enterprises would benefit from engaging independent Salesforce experts with broad experience from different industries and transformation programs.
After going live, your Salesforce platform will need ongoing support and regular maintenance. Your end-users will need help with training, queries, and new features. Will your organization have the technical competencies to provide in-house support and maintenance? If you already have these generic functions in-house, additional Salesforce experts could complement your existing teams. Only consider outsourcing Salesforce maintenance to a trusted partner that allows you complete control of changes and transparency of maintenance work.

Examples:

• A healthcare organization overcame implementation challenges by tapping into the extensive Salesforce Trailblazer Community, gaining insights and solutions from experienced users.
• The global publisher hired an in-house core team of Salesforce experts complemented by a flexible pool of contractors to manage Salesforce platform maintenance and variable business requirements.

Introduction
Within the forefront of cutting-edge CRM solutions, Salesforce reigns supreme, promising unprecedented efficiency, scalability, and customer-centric features. However, pitfalls can hinder realising its full potential, as with any powerful tool. In this short article, we'll delve into the five common mistakes that users often encounter when using Salesforce and equip you with strategies to avoid them. Make sure you get Salesforce help from your Salesforce consultant or Partner to understand how they propose to avoid mistakes like these right from the initial project strategy and planning phase.

I. Customisation Overload
While Salesforce offers extensive customisation capabilities, it's easy to fall into the trap of over-customisation. Too many customisations can lead to a complex and unwieldy system that is challenging to maintain and may hinder future upgrades. A survey by IBM Bluewolf found that 63% of companies believe over-customisation is a significant challenge.

Fact: 27% of Salesforce users report needing the total value from their Salesforce implementations. (IBM/Bluewolf)

Strike a balance between customisation and out-of-the-box features, regularly review and optimise customisations to align them with evolving business requirements, and consider the long-term implications of each customisation to maintain a streamlined and efficient Salesforce instance to avoid this mistake. Assess each new Salesforce function or capability that requires custom fields, custom objects, code development or custom integration. Use tools such as our Technical Debt Model™ to evaluate the cost-benefits to make informed decisions and avoid customisations that lead to unintended complications.

II. Neglecting Information Security Best Practices
The security of sensitive business data is paramount as using Salesforce typically involves customer data. Neglecting security best practices can expose your organisation to data breaches and compromise the trust of your customers and business partners. According to the 2021 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 61% of breaches involved credential data. If your Salesforce solution will process data received from or behalf of third parties, make sure the contractual obligations are considered in the business requirements. These kinds of business requirements can be very expensive to add late in the project or to comply with retrospectively. Security requirements can impact Salesforce licenses, too.

Implement robust security controls, including two-factor authentication and role-based access, to avoid this mistake. Engage your organisation's Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Data Protection Officer (DPO) at the requirements phase of the implementation project. If sensitive data is needed for testing or data migration rehearsal, these activities will lead to information security requirements during the implementation project. Regularly conduct security audits and stay informed about the latest security updates from Salesforce to fortify your defences against evolving cyber threats. Use tools such as User Access and Permissions Assistant and Config Work Book to apply Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP) for users (see resources below).

​III. Overlooking Data Quality
One of the most common pitfalls is underestimating the importance of data quality for the individual who uses Salesforce. More accurate and consistent data can lead to better insights, affecting decision-making and hindering the overall effectiveness of your Salesforce implementation. According to a report by Gartner, poor data quality costs organisations an average of $15 million per year.

Requirements for business intelligence, reports, and KPIs, often surface late in projects, potentially limiting an organisation's ability to leverage the value of its data. The importance of good data quality will increase significantly as organisations start to harness the power of generative AI.

Fact: 88% of companies believe their data needs to be more accurate. (Experian)

To steer clear of this mistake, start with the end in mind: define data driven outcomes early in the project so that the target data model is clearly defined. Establish rigorous data governance practices. Implement data cleansing processes before migrating to Salesforce, and regularly audit and clean your data to maintain its accuracy and relevance. Help end-users capturing data correctly and make it easy to update data by providing suitable layouts for the task in hand.

IV. Scalability Considerations
The design of Salesforce is to grow your business. However, overlooking scalability considerations can lead to performance issues and hinder your ability to leverage Salesforce to its full potential. As your business expands, so does the need for a scalable Salesforce architecture. This is especially important for group companies or business units expecting to share a common data model, common Salesforce applications, or Salesforce platform. A one-size approach rarely works in organisations comprised of semi-autonomous businesses or have widely different operational practices and IT systems.

Work closely with Salesforce architects during the initial setup to avoid this mistake and ensure your architecture is scalable and flexible enough to adapt to each business unit/subsidiary. If you intend to bring together customer data, product catalogues and other common reference data, this must be thoroughly analysed and understood before a solution can be designed. Also, consider critical external systems and data. The 3rd parties responsible for those external systems may not be willing or able to change their systems or integrations to fit your plans with Salesforce.

Make sure non-functional requirements for system response time and performance are considered. As the solution scales in size and capabilities, regularly reassess your system's performance and adjust to accommodate growth and evolving business needs.

V. Neglecting Comprehensive User Training
Salesforce's robust features and customisable nature can be a double-edged sword. Without proper user training, the potential for misuse and underutilisation is significant. According to a survey by Salesforce, companies that invest in comprehensive user training experience a 42% higher user adoption rate than those that do not. Training for and recruitment of Salesforce Administrators, Product Owners, Platform Managers, and Technical Support, cannot be left to the last minute before go-live.

To avoid these mistakes, allocate ample resources to training and Salesforce certification programs. Utilise Salesforce Trailhead, an interactive learning platform, and conduct regular training sessions to empower your team with the skills needed for efficient  adoption operations and support of Salesforce. You need a core team of Salesforce Trailblazers, not laggards.

Start training the Product Owner before gathering business requirements; otherwise, the Product Owner may not know what Salesforce is capable of, and you could end up with a costly replacement for an out-of-date legacy system. Ensure you have allocated an environment for training purposes (which may include integration with other systems.)

Conclusion
​Salesforce is a powerful tool that can revolutionise how businesses manage customer relationships and drive growth. However, navigating its complexities requires strategic planning and a keen awareness of potential pitfalls. By avoiding common mistakes such as neglecting user training, overlooking data quality, ignoring scalability considerations, neglecting security best practices, and succumbing to customisation overload, you can unlock the full potential of Salesforce for your organisation. A great place to start your Salesforce journey is by assessing the organisation’s readiness to implement Salesforce against our 8-Factor Success Model™ for Salesforce implementations. This model is also relevant for Salesforce Product Owners and Administrators to ascertain the organisation’s maturity and Business Growth Plan™.​​