Building the business case for outsourcing Salesforce product development

The need to deliver brand new products and services on the Salesforce platform is never going to stop for your business. The expectation from your internal teams and customers is that the technology they work on must keep up with the competition.

That’s a lot of pressure on your resources.

We work with teams all the time that are looking to handover some (sometimes the majority) of this workload to an external Salesforce delivery partner.

If you are in charge of these innovation projects in your organisation – maybe you are a Salesforce Product VP, Head of Salesforce Development or a Salesforce Product Owner –  then you have probably spent time considering whether or not you should work with an external delivery partner.

You might even be about to put together a business case to make it happen.

The fact is that even if you have an existing team of skilled, technical experts in house, there are a number of very compelling reasons why partnering with an external Salesforce team will be very often be the right route and will bring in the best results and project success.

From our experience, here are some good reasons why you would choose to partner.

• Benefit from the breadth of additional experience and up to date platform knowledge a partner can bring, when you are handling challenges that are entirely new to your team.

“For us, one of the biggest benefits of engaging with a Salesforce technical delivery partner has been using their expertise to stay on top of frequent changes to the Salesforce Platform.”

Ross Crooke, Head of Global Operations Development,  BTS

• Access additional resources when you are up against tight deadlines and timelines
• Gain deep new technical capabilities that aren’t held within your current team

“Moorhouse prides itself on providing specialist expertise to its clients – so it made sense that we follow the same approach with business support. We don’t have volume of Salesforce activity that warrants dedicated internal resources. So, naturally, we partnered with experts who know the platform best.”

Jon Russell, Finance & Operations Director, Moorhouse Consulting

• To be sure that the advice you are receiving is free of bias. Your Salesforce partner will have the development of a great product as their goal, free of the constraints of any internal politics or widely held assumptions.

“It’s easy for us to get impartial advice and talk through our ideas with an expert whenever we need to.”

Gerard Hutchings, Head of Business Strategy Operations & Development, Bluebay Asset Management

• Bring in some fresh sets of eyes for an innovation project that requires a unique perspective on your operations
• Gain the benefits of Agile approaches that your existing team may be too large to fully embrace itself
• Generate greater enthusiasm for a major new project internally, and have a partner help drive it forwards
• Help change the culture of development in the business by adding new approaches and perspectives to your team
• Tackle specific technical challenges with Salesforce that require expert input and assistance

“First and foremost, a partner needs rock solid knowledge of the Salesforce platform – so accreditation is key.”

Julian Herbert, Vice President, Everest Group

• Expedite the development process and find a faster alternative to relying solely on your internal teams.

“We immediately identified the value we could deliver for each other’s’ businesses, and augmented our teams to help us work together as effectively as possible. Smaller partners are often more invested in your outcomes, and able deliver very quickly.”

Rob Hingston, Vice President of Products at Sigma Systems

Of course all of the above assumes that you make the right choice of partner. But we will get on to that in our next post!

If you would like to find out more about how to make your partnership with an external technical team to deliver Salesforce Product in your organisation, please access our free ebook ‘Partnering for Success’.