Having a Salesforce Center of Excellence (CoE) correlates to higher ROI.
91% of respondents who report very high ROI say they have a way to manage best practices and roadmaps.
However, nearly 40% of organizations don’t follow that practice.
10K ADVISORS
The scope of a Center of Excellence
Every organization’s Center of Excellence is different, but there are some common aspects. No matter what size project, these need to be in place. These are activities, not roles. The smaller the project, the lighter the touch.
Scope of a COE:
Vision: strategic vision and direction for Salesforce for both the business and IT
Leadership: Steering Committee and key sponsors in business and IT
Governance: overall control of strategic direction, business cases, investment and risk management
Change control: management of changes to all aspects of the project
Methodology: the implementation methodology covering people, process and technology
Standards: includes standards for analysis, documentation, metadata naming, coding, testing, communication, change management and training
Metadata management: control of the Salesforce metadata across the deployment pipeline
Architecture: technical architecture of Salesforce and how it relates to the integrated systems and InfoSec
Change management: communications, organizational change and training to get Salesforce adopted
PMO: the Project Management Office that manages the COE activities
Tooling: platforms / apps / tools used to support the project
Prototyping: innovation hub that builds out Salesforce prototypes to show the “art of the possible”
10K Advisors Research
The Project to Program research identified that 91% of customers with a very high ROI and 82% of customers who felt they were A players had a Center of Excellence.
Elements.cloud
Elements.cloud is one of the key tools that underpins the Center of Excellence. Here is how:
Methodology: The implementation lifecycle can be clearly documented, clearly understood and easily accessible as a process map. Mapping the methodology will streamline it, driving out waste, eliminating bottlenecks and breaking down organizational silos
Standards: Attaching documented standards to the related steps in the methodology ensures they can be consistently applied
Governance: Project risks are reduced in 3 areas; a consistently applied methodology, better business analysis of the changes required, and technology impact analysis.
Change control: Managing the business requirements, metadata and associated documentation
Metadata management: Control of the Salesforce metadata and integrated apps across the deployment pipeline
Architecture: ERDs can be drawn as process maps connected to metadata items and technical specifications
Change management: Process maps are used as training materials with attached documentation. In-app popup help is inside Salesforce with rating and tracking. Feedback can be captured from end users “in the moment” inside Salesforce. Training records are created when user sign-off compliant processes.
Accelerating the implementation lifecycle
Accelerating the implementation lifecycle is critical to increasing ROI
Running an effective Salesforce Org is different. Unlike an ERP or HRMS system, or even other CRM systems, Salesforce is constantly evolving. This means enhancements and changes are coming daily, not annually, monthly, or even weekly.
Which brings an entirely unique set of complexities to the Salesforce Center of Excellence that do not necessarily exist in other COEs. The COE Lounge is a safe environment where the evolution of COEs can be discussed:
KPI’s for the CoE
DevOps and CI/CD
Citizen/declarative development
Vanilla vs. highly customized Orgs
Tech debt and how to deal with it
Overall best practices for Salesforce
These sessions are not recorded due to the open and potentially sensitive nature of the information discussed.
