Lightning is the future, the future starts TODAY!!

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Home » Blog » Lightning is the future, the future starts TODAY!!

Originally posted on SalesforceBen.com – Migrating to Lightning; take a business led approach    

Why now?

LIghtninq Q

The correct answer is 2. If you answered 4, then you’re clearly a huge Salesforce evangelist. But your executives will only allocate investment to projects that drive “better business outcomes” – answer 2.

Migrating to Lighting will require investment from you, your team and your users. The benefits need to be compelling to make the move because we all know hard it is to drive any sustainable change, no matter how small it seems. But you can build a strong business case for migration.

Salesforce is investing massively to make the Lightning experience (functionality, UI, configuration tools) compelling and the migration an easy business decision. They are not committing thousands of man-years of development and marketing just for fun. They passionately believe that customers who move to Lightning can operate more effectively; great results, faster, at lower cost.

Lightning benefits

Better business results will necessarily not come from simply migrating your existing Org to Lightning. Your users operating the same way with ‘cooler’ screen layouts may get you some incremental benefits, but you are missing a huge opportunity. You should use this as an opportunity to take a small step back to “re-implement” Salesforce as part of the Lightning migration. There are 3 reasons for taking time:

  1. The Lightning capabilities (like Kanban or Compact Layouts) enable you to rethink how your users could interact with Salesforce, which could drive a step change in performance.
  2. You can improve / eliminate some of the inconsistent or poor working practices which waste time and effort. You know that they have built up over time across your user base.
  3. Finally, you can revisit the changes that you wanted to lock-in when Salesforce was first implemented, but you didn’t have time in the rush to get it up and running.

The Director’s Cut

There is a great ebook that Accenture wrote a while back called The Director’s Cut. The thrust behind it is:

How do movie directors create new value with their previously released films? They issue a “director’s cut”— a revised, updated version of a previously released movie over which the director has complete artistic control. In issuing an original film, directors battle against deadlines, budgets, resource constraints and movie studio executives who sometimes demand a different product than the director’s original vision. But with the advent of new technologies, new marketing opportunities and newly available funds and resources, a director has the opportunity to revisit his original idea and deliver a new and stronger film.

How does this apply to Salesforce? The initial implementation project is the struggle to configure, build integrations and convert data. Engaging end users, redesigning processes, training and driving adoption are all chopped out of the plan in the scramble to go live within budget. And sure, Salesforce is great for ongoing incremental improvement, but the initial ‘implementation’ often constrains and defines what comes after. The second attempt at the implementation – The Director’s Cut – gives you a chance to addresses all these softer factors.

“Enter Lightning, stage left, riding a white stallion.”

Lighting – the catalyst

You probably know the areas of the operation that could be improved. You see them every day and your inbox is full of suggested improvements. And you are making incremental changes as quickly as you can. But you know that with a dedicated project you could give your users a step change in performance. The Lightning migration is the perfect catalyst to get executive level attention. You can get the budget and resources to run a project which has a larger potential impact.

This time you can drive a business-led project. One that first analyzes the business processes and then considers how the new Lighting capabilities can be exploited. This will require strong business analysis skills and an understanding of what is available in Lightning. Luckily there is a ton of great support; we’ve written a free ebook on Business Analysis for #AwesomeAdmins; Trailhead has Lightning training materials; And there is a dedicated team inside Salesforce who will run Lightning consultations to talk you through the features and migration.

But it all starts with you, your business users and their business processes.

A simple, achievable repeatable approach

We see everything as a process, project or methodology. That’s what 20 years in the industry does for you. So we have put that experience to use, and have created an implementation roadmap; a step by step guide to maximizing the benefits of Lightning implementation. The top level of the hierarchical process map is below. Underneath every step is a lower level diagram with more information.

The map is freely available to copy and modify for your use. It is developed in Elements.cloud (free business analysis app for Salesforce – register). It is in the Public Space called “Example Process Maps”

But in summary, here are the key steps

– ASSESS; what areas of the business could benefit, what areas of our Org can easily migrate, build a business case
– DISCOVER; business analysis of the target areas, prototype new apps
– IMPLEMENT; migrate Lightning, changes to related systems, document your Org, run User Acceptance Test, train users, go live.
– OPERATE; track adoption, get feedback, drive incremental business improvements
– MANAGE; project and risk management

Lightning methodology

The future is here, just unevenly distributed

Every day there are customers who are migrating areas of the business to Lightning and are seeing the benefits. At the same time many customers are delaying as they mistakenly think that they need to wait until they can migrate their entire Org as a big bang implementation.

Clearly not every customer can build a case for migration right now. There are very good strategic or tactical reasons; the level of change they are already driving through the business; a shortage of internal business analysis or Salesforce configuration resource; other strategic changes such as M&A or reinventing the business as a digital company.

There will never be the perfect time. Taking a more tactical or pilot approach to migrating Lightning means you could piggy-back on existing change initiatives within the company and get started. And once you have done, it let’s share the WWW & EBI stories with the other Salesforce Admins.: WWW (What Went Well) and EBI (Even Better If)

Small scope & big impact > Get visible success > Rinse & repeat

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