10

tips for
Mastering
changes in
Salesforce
Ephrat Geisler
Director of Product Management
Panaya
 The Challenges of
Salesforce Change
Over 150,000 companies of all sizes and Implementing necessary changes in your
industries use Salesforce. If you are one of Salesforce org then becomes very time-
them, then you are aware of the importance consuming and risky, making it harder to
of maintaining a Salesforce org that helps meet business needs or innovate. The fact
drive results and success for your business that there is often limited documentation of
teams. One of the greatest benefits is the fact the legacy implementations, makes it even
that Salesforce allows you to easily customize harder for you to manage. There are too
it to fit your unique business needs, making many unknowns, or “Pandora’s boxes”, due
it agile and dynamic enough to meet the to unclear dependencies and relationships.
changing needs of your organization. When you cannot understand, in advance,
exactly how and what will be impacted by
Yet, as your Org grows in size and complexity, a planned change, unexpected errors and
there is a constant need to keep processes complications cause delays, frustrations
predictably stable and data reliably and backtracking.
consistent. Otherwise, it becomes very
difficult to lead any change or innovation
within the Org. Preserving that balance is It may make you
one of the biggest challenges in maintaining
a healthy and innovative Salesforce org in feel like you are
the long run.
losing control
As your business evolves, your Salesforce
org becomes increasingly complex. Over of the system.
time – you may realize that multiple changes,
legacy implementations and hotfixes
have filled your Salesforce org with many
unused and unassigned components, a
plethora of automations, duplications, and
technical bugs.

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 Change
Intelligence
In order to maintain a healthy and innovative
Salesforce org and ensure successful releases - you
must have a great change management process in place.

Change Intelligence is what will lead you to successfully

plan, design, develop and deliver changes within your
Salesforce Org. It ensures that you match up the technical
implementation with the actual business process that
has been defined, and that you are not going to “break”
something by deploying a new change.

By implementing Change Intelligence practices, you can manage

a Salesforce Org that works smoothly, innovates, and consistently
provides value to the business teams.

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1
Start with a ‘Discovery’
Business teams may often approach you, as the
Salesforce org manager, with very specific change
requests (ex: “Please build a new Field, or create a new
process”). However, they are, in effect, coming to you with the
solution before they have defined the problem. Your job is to
look deeper and ask the right questions to understand their
goal and the business objectives, so you can be sure to address
the right issue and design the right solution.

Is the business
Can the defined Or perhaps a
team simply unaware
need be met with an deeper change is
of an existing option,
improvement to the needed? You may
feature or capability in
current build? The next need to develop
your Salesforce org?
step is designing an a new build from
Then all that is needed
enhancement. scratch.
is training.

Make sure you are solving the right problem and picking
the right solution that will help the business teams do
their jobs better – this is what will ultimately ensure
the success of your planned change.

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2
Plan It Right
Having defined your goal, the next step is to
accurately define the scope of the change
to be made. Try to prioritize the high-value
must-have elements over the other, less-
urgent items.
Absolutely critical to your success is having
a map of your Salesforce landscape, as well
as a clear view of the relationships and
dependencies among all components (e.g.,
Apex classes, Process Builders, Flows, Fields
and more). This will help you understand,
in advance, the direct and indirect impact
of any planned change, so you can decide
what should be built from scratch, updated
or deleted.
Try to select the right tools to help you avoid
the risks. Panaya’s ForeSight provides a clear
visualization of the dependencies within
your Org so you can foresee the potential
risk before going live:
5 10 Tips for Mastering Changes in Salesforce
Such tools will help you stay in control,
save time and avoid the unexpected errors
and frustrations – as you continuously
make  changes and innovation in your
Salesforce Org.
Once the scope is defined, you can more
accurately estimate the resources and time
needed for your project. Don’t forget to add a
buffer – there are almost always unexpected
developments.
Then, recruit your stakeholders and
ambassadors. In each team, office or region,
select champions who will follow-up with
their peers and can provide highly targeted
mini-training sessions for specific user
groups. Work with them on quality assurance
testing, too, as they will have the most
practical insights about the intuitiveness of
the process you are designing and whether
it provides the value users will expect. Their
feedback can be gold.
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3
Document
Everything
Documentation is critical to sustainable success in your
Salesforce org. This includes both technical documentation
(for the Salesforce team) and user-facing documentation
and guides (for the Salesforce business users).

Technical Documentation will help you and your colleagues be

up-to-date on the recent and planned implementations, and allow
you to provide ongoing and professional services to the business
users. Some examples of such documentation could be: Populating the
Description in Salesforce Fields for proper documentation of the Field’s
purpose, or setting a naming convention for Validation Rules so it is easy
for all Admins to keep track.

Business Documentation will improve adoption and make Salesforce easier

for the business teams. Don’t leave them guessing or having to remember a
series of actions to achieve what they want. You can populate help texts on Fields
or create go-to-guides for them.

Regardless of where, how or what you document, always make sure it is simple
and intuitive. Keep the documentation short and to the point, and make sure it is
findable, organized, readable, and up to date.

But note: There is a fine line here, and you do not want to overdo it with documentation.

For the Technical documentation - Make it part of the ongoing process but not the
majority of the time. The Salesforce team needs that time to actually build and
develop in Salesforce.

For the Business documentation – Keep in mind that sometimes less is more.
Do not overdo it with too many required fields, lengthy help texts, and too many
instructions. Keep it simple for them follow.

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4
Train Well, Train Early
Plan user training sessions as early in the process as possible. You
will avoid dropping a sudden change on the sales teams, and instead
promote trust, visibility and communication.

Be creative with training, and make sure it is productive.

Here are some ideas:

Let users know what’s in it for them

They need to see the value and benefits that they will gain from this upcoming
change in order to be willing to adopt it. Even if the new process will require
them to spend time or do more in Salesforce, they will follow it if they see
its value.
―
Provide clear action items and timelines.
Be sure trainees know exactly what they are expected to do and how they
will be measured.
―
Make it easy to follow the new processes
This can include sharing step-by-step guides and cheat-sheets, or any other
innovative method that will help produce results.
―
Use gamification
To encourage solving problems and updating behaviors, you can motivate
the users by creating performance dashboards, noting ‘Winners of the Week’
or using Salesforce Celebrations.
Let users know that Salesforce has a wealth of options they can take advantage
of. Drive home the idea, “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.”

Finally, collect feedback and leave room for Q&A. This improves communication
and visibility by letting your colleagues know they are being listened to. It also
tends to positively influence user adoption. The feedback can serve as a sanity
check for you, as well, as it indicates if your planned change is, in fact, built correctly
for the purposes it was intended.

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5
Prepare a Deployment
Checklist
Each change or development project in your Salesforce org
comes with a risk. Whether making a small tweak to a Field, or
creating a new automation - Something might break, and users
may get stuck. If you plan properly, you can minimize and mitigate
those risks.

Create a ‘checklist for success’ for your release date, so you leave
no loose ends:

Know exactly what is going to be deployed

―
Prepare in advance what is needed for Change Sets or Packages
―
List the actions that need to be done manually in production,
such as activating a Process Builder - Be mindful of these actions
and ensure you allocate time on the release day
―
Make sure everyone needed for the project is available - Whether
it be developers or remote teams/contractors, make sure they
are on-call in case needed

And here is a bonus tip: Pick the least-busy day for a release
(in most cases, this is Sunday).

On the morning of the release, you will know exactly

what needs to be done – Just follow the steps and stick
to the plan, and you will be able to lead a seamless
and  successful release.

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6 C ommunication
is Key
Some of the tips thus far have included
suggestions aimed at increasing
communication with the sales teams
and other members of your organization.
As a general rule, do not surprise anyone
with any Salesforce change and be sure
to communicate every change - new
features, enhancements to existing
functionality, and bug fixes. Make it a
habit to provide the relevant stakeholders
with status updates along the way,
including risks, possible delays, and
successes.

This approach creates a high level of trust

and increases visibility. Members of the
organization who are involved early on
will feel more committed and engaged
and this will ultimately translate into
successful user adoption.

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7 Measure, Measure, Measure
It is important to track performance and adoption in your Salesforce
org, so you can ensure it is running smoothly and determine if additional
training or implementation are needed. Measuring and monitoring
your Org allows you to proactively identify inefficiencies within your
org, before the business users even raise any flags. Keeping track of
your Org will help you recognize components that are not being used,
for example, or even discover repetitive tasks that can be automated.

In addition, make sure to periodically revisit the implementations

within your org - As Salesforce constantly evolves, new and
enhanced solutions become available. What you built back
then, may no longer be the best solution now.

Most importantly, encourage your team to share knowledge and

lessons learned. Sometimes implementations may not work
as expected, teams might complain, and bugs might appear.
Create a positive space for the team to share their experiences
and of course, celebrate the successes together.

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8 Managing
Change Requests:
Keep It Simple
Another key element of a successful change
management process in Salesforce is the ability to
efficiently manage the inbound requests. Make it
easy for business teams to submit requests for new
features or queries regarding functionality issues. Try
to gather all mandatory details in the first submission,
to prevent any additional back-and-forths to collect
more information. Once the request is submitted,
quickly categorize and prioritize it, and then assign
to the relevant team.

No matter which tool you select for the process, just

make sure to define a clear process that is easy for
the teams to use, and easy for you to maintain. And
most importantly, make sure to create full visibility
into the status and progress. The teams should know
what is in development, what is out of scope, and
what is scheduled for the upcoming releases.

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9 Don’t Work in Production
Business teams are often quite demanding and expect aggressive
delivery timelines. This leads to frequent releases and raises a
classic dilemma: Do you make a change fast (and risk potential
errors in production)? Or do you make a change right (and spend
a bit more time preparing and testing it)?

The customizations and complexity in your Salesforce Org could

be a great source for unexpected troubles (i.e. those ‘Pandora
Boxes’ we mentioned above). What looks like ‘just a small tweak’
can easily lead to an unexpected ripple effect that will disrupt
your Salesforce org. And so, whatever you do, do not work in
production.

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10 Deliver Quick Wins
A good way to constantly deliver value for your
organization is by delivering quick wins as often as
possible. Constantly create momentum and prioritize
the high-value, low-effort deliverables.

The quick wins ensure the business teams are not

kept waiting needlessly, and help the Salesforce
team demonstrate fast delivery and capability. By
delivering quick wins, the business teams are happy
with the results and your team stays motivated.
This creates relationships that are based on trust,
commitment and delivery.

And, do not forget to celebrate those quick wins

and milestones. Acknowledge excellency and
achievements, and keep the teams engaged. This will
make the Salesforce change management process
more innovative and fun for all the teams that are
involved.

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 The Benefits
of a Healthy
Salesforce Change
The success of your Salesforce org project is
measured in three main aspects:

Technical Implementation
A seamless deployment with no bugs
―
Business Implementation
Successful user adoption
―
Positive ROI
The solution you created somehow reduced
costs, saved time, increased revenues or
improved efficiency

Those outcomes are the result of identifying exactly

what needs to be done and its impact, understanding
the potential risks, and quickly scoping development
to ensure a high-quality release.

Use the 10 tips and tricks shared here to achieve

those results, and become a master of Salesforce
change.

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 The
platform
for Success
As you implement the Change Intelligence best
practices, success will heavily depend on using the
right tools. That is where the advanced technology
of Panaya comes in. From an interactive graphic
visualization of the dependencies in your Salesforce
org to automatic impact analysis reports, Panaya
ForeSight provides the real-time visibility and risk-
based analysis needed for informed development
decisions. With a clear, in-depth understanding
of your org, you can implement changes faster,
avoid errors, and easily investigate inefficiencies
in your org.

Best practices need the best technologies.

Panaya is your partner for effective Salesforce org
management, so you can meet your goals, achieve
your business objectives, and lead successful
releases, every time!

Get Your Personalized Demo

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Panaya enables organizations to
accelerate application change and
continuously deliver innovation with
its Change Intelligence Platform.

Panaya provides cloud-based application

delivery and testing solutions that ensure
collaboration between Business and IT.

Enabling enterprise agility with faster

release velocity and uncompromising
quality, Panaya delivers an optimized user
experience with end-to-end visibility of the
application lifecycle.
Since 2008, 3,000 companies in 62 countries,
including a third of the Fortune 500, have
been turning Panaya to deliver quick quality
change to enterprise applications.

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