10 Tips for working successfully with a Salesforce Partner

In Salesforce experts by David BowkerLeave a Comment

With more Salesforce Partners in the Australian market than ever before, how do you ensure you pick the right one for your next project?  When you have picked your partner, how do you manage/oversee their work to ensure that you are getting the most value from your investment and ultimately make sure the project is delivered successfully?

A lot of our clients are asking themselves these questions, so we spoke with existing Salesforce leaders from a number of end users along with several Salesforce Partners in our network to find out their insights and advice on how to choose, manage and work with Salesforce Partners.

Understand the Salesforce Partners specialism

Partners are not all equal and often have different specialisms.   Doing an initial implementation project which only uses Salesforce is very different to doing subsequent projects in an environment where Salesforce is integrated with web front ends and back office systems.  Clients should have a realistic understanding of how complex their environment is and select a partner with suitable proven capability.

What are the options for engagement?

There are a number of different options available for how you can engage a Salesforce partner and it is important that you chose the one that works best for your business/project. The most popular are:
– Open Time & Material
– Time & Material with a best guess estimate based on high level requirements (sometimes with an upper limit on time/cost)
– Fixed price
– Retainer (monthly fee for a capped amount of effort)

Environment Management  

Be clear about expectations for environment management (deployment steps), acceptance criteria, automated testing and warranty support.  The effort required from a partner is very different between an initial implementation where there are no live users and no data and changes can be done directly in production, compared to a live enterprise environment where there are multiple tiers of environments through which changes have to be deployed and tested.  Automated testing can be the minimum required by the platform (75% code coverage with no real testing at all other than test methods must pass) through to extensive automated testing which simulates real business scenarios and required outcomes.

Pay for the value you are getting

Avoid a one-size fits all daily rate which lets the partner assign a senior expert for the same price as a new graduate, pay for value not days.

Where are the resources you are paying for?

If you want an on-premise resource, or someone in your city, be specific in the contract wording.  Otherwise you might be charged local market rates and have the work sub-contracted to cheaper off-shore resources working in a different time zone with possible language/culture challenges.  If you don’t want the work sub-contracting or sent off-shore then specifically state that.

 Warranty Period

Be clear about expectations for a warranty period and whether any post-implementation support is on a time & material basis or expected for “free” within what has been paid to date.

Who will actually be doing the work?

If your project is complex and not a fixed price engagement get clear about who exactly will do the work and their certificate currency and experience and references.  Richard Clarke at Artisan Consulting summarised it well with “the person in the seat is more important than the brand on the letterhead”.  Be careful when dealing with partners who wheel out the local experts during the pre-sales negotiation then assign the work to junior or off-shore resources once the deal is signed.

Keeping the Salesforce Partner Honest

For complex projects have someone internally who is capable to monitor the quality of work – if you don’t have this person within your business engage an independent contractor or an expert (Salesforce PM or Salesforce Architect) from another partner to keep the main delivery partner honest.

Are you Lightning ready?

If the project includes development of custom user interface using VisualForce be specific as to whether you require this to be compatible (and tested) with Lighting Experience.

Do your own Due Diligence

Salesforce don’t recommend partners, at best they will provide introductions.  Don’t take introductions from Account Executives as recommendations or endorsements that the partner has the experience or available resources to do the work.

 

 

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