FAQs
Number 350 on Inc.’s 2022 Fastest Growing
Private Companies in America
CloudQnect is a Salesforce Consulting Partner that focuses on four areas that help users of Salesforce implement, customize and/or optimize their use of the platform so they can maximize their Salesforce investment. CloudQnect’s four areas of focus are:
- Salesforce DevOps
- Salesforce DX
- Custom Salesforce Development
- Salesforce Implementations
CloudQnect’s clients range from Fortune 100 clients to government agencies/departments, to non-profits, and small businesses. Specifically:
- Organizations that need DevOps support and training to speed up and mitigate errors in their Salesforce releases and integration of existing or new applications and tools to their Salesforce instance. We’ll start with our DevOps Assessment which will provide us the details on your current DevOps maturity and where you want to get to with regards to your DevOps practices. Next, we will provide you a detailed plan on how to get to your desired future state. Our DevOps Assessments normally take 2 – 4 weeks depending on the availability of your team members.
- For those needing DX support: You are fully vested in Salesforce, and you’ve likely integrated it with numerous other systems. As a result, most of your codebase is in a huge container of unmanaged metadata (also known as Happy Soup). You need someone who can work with your team to ensure all DX migrations and services not only make your Salesforce development teams more efficient but that also does not disrupt your ongoing business operations. CloudQnect takes a 5-step approach to support your DX needs: Assess, Plan, Train, Migrate, Support.
- As organizations use Salesforce, they often want to integrate their other technology stacks to their Salesforce instance. This enables users to seamlessly work in one system and have the data shared across all integrated platforms to create “one source of truth.” Some examples include integrating accounting, ERP, HR, to name a few.
- For Salesforce implementations: Any organization that has recently purchased, added to their existing Salesforce services, or plans to purchase Salesforce, can use us.
- We will first ask you several questions (Discovery) to help us understand your business, the current state of technology you use, the skills of your team, issues you’re facing, and your overall goals
- Clarify your business objectives to determine why and how to utilize Salesforce
- Understand your current processes to identify gaps and opportunities
- Show you best practices and methods that will enhance your existing processes and build your next-step roadmap
- Help you work with the platform, train your team, and build in additional functionality
- Provide you and your team the ongoing support they need
What drives my costs up?
- For companies that just assume Salesforce will automatically solve all your problems, this is not the case. If you do not have set processes already, your costs can rise because we’ll need to take the time to help you map that process out. The technology should be configured to an existing process, not define a process for you.
- If you already have Salesforce but it was implemented incorrectly, you can expect some added costs for us to help clean the implementation up to ensure it’ll function properly for your team.
- The amount of custom development work and administrative requests can also start to add up. We work with you from the beginning to build a roadmap that sets expectations. But if we deviate too far from the original plan, costs may rise.
What drives my costs down?
- The more planning that goes into the front-end, the better prepared your team will be for investment forecasting. The roadmap we build together at the very beginning is a critical plan to hold both parties accountable.
- Pace yourself. Do not try to do too much at once. This will help to both keep costs under control and not overwhelm your team (ultimately helping with user adoption).
- This helps to ensure we can anticipate potential custom development needs, as well as understanding when certain aspects of Salesforce will be enabled. The less surprises, the lower the cost.
- The more defined your processes are, the easier it is to configure Salesforce to serve those processes.
The initial call will be with our Sales team and possibly a tech team or sales engineer. They will ask you a series of questions that will give us an idea of your current state, some of the issues you might be facing, and your goals. That info will be shared with our client engagement team who will outline possible solutions and estimated pricing. Those proposed solutions will then be brought to you for review. Once we review them with you and you give the go-ahead, we will send you our Master Services Agreement (MSA) and a specific Statement of Work (SOW) for the tasks and outcomes agreed to.
How can I determine the right path for us?
- Hire an internal Salesforce administrator and/or developer. This is a great resource to have, if your company is large enough to warrant this resource. On average, companies with less than 225 employees probably don’t yet need an internal administrator – but we’ll caveat that with the fact that companies are using Salesforce to varying degrees. If you’re not sure, call us and speak with a few other consultants first to gauge their opinions.
- Hire a different Salesforce consultant. There are a lot out there. Talk to a few of them and see who inspires the most confidence. Keep in mind, the technical capability is easier to find than the ability to connect Salesforce to your unique business processes. The best consultant will first take the time to understand your business, before any discussion of technology occurs. Only after understanding your business expectations could any smart consultant reasonably guide your next steps.
- “Wing it” with your current internal team. I’ll again mention that having the internal capacity and knowledge to execute technical tasks is great to have, but you need to ensure that you’re implementing the right resource for your business. Tech supports your business, not the other way around. Do not implement Salesforce as a cure-all to internal challenges. Utilize Salesforce when you have a clear vision of why you need it how to use it to simplify your business.
Our clients and partners like to tell us that while CloudQnect does some of the most complex Salesforce development work, we first seek to understand our client’s business, processes, the other technologies in use, and how they operate. Second, we would want to know our client’s needs and what they initially expected Salesforce to help you accomplish. Next, we would want to know how they currently use Salesforce, and we may conduct a “health check” on their current Salesforce instance. Once we have this data, we can start to recommend the next steps to get you moving towards your goals.
That depends on how badly things are messed up. Once we understand the issues and you help us rank them in terms of priority, we can then provide an estimated completion timetable.
We can’t tell you that without knowing how you’re using your current system, what your needs are now and what your future expectations are.
Reach out today by either completing this assessment to help organize where you are today and where you’d like to be ideally or form or by sending an email to info@cloudqnect.com. We’ll schedule a consultation with your team to allow us to introduce ourselves and get to know your situation.