Salesforce Roadmap FAQs
As a leader in a SaaS organization, it can be challenging to stay focused on revenue growth strategy while also running your company’s daily operations. A Salesforce Roadmap is a document that outlines your organization’s instance of Salesforce and its related systems, process, data, reporting and governance. The Roadmap clarifies the current state and lays out the plan to achieve your desired future state, based on your vision and our best practices based on our extensive experience with SaaS companies. We’ll identify areas for improvement to reach that future state—including the complexity, urgency, and potential cost for those improvements.
We’ve written in great detail about what to expect from the Salesforce OpFocus Roadmap and when it may be right for you. You can find those articles right here.
However, you may still have questions about the particulars of a Salesforce Roadmap. Here are answers to some of the most common questions we receive about working with OpFocus for your roadmap engagement.
Our tech stack is complete, so why would we need OpFocus’ help?
OpFocus can help you identify which products will improve your tech stack as your organization matures. We also build a roadmap so you can optimize these new technologies. While your tech stack may be sufficient as you read this article today, over the next few quarters, you may need to incorporate new technology quickly as you scale. Our roadmap helps you prepare for that reality.
One of the most common benefits our clients experience is the ability to implement and strengthen business intelligence (BI) tools that allow them to squeeze more juice out of their data.
How much time will I need to devote to managing this initiative in addition to my day job?
To successfully manage a roadmap, you’ll need an executive leader and 1-3 functional leads from your team. The executive will spend 1-3 hours per week on standups, executive alignment calls, and interactions with stakeholders.
The functional leads are typically operations experts who report to the CRO or COO and are deeply involved in the business’s revenue operations (RevOps). These experts will need to allocate 15-20 hours per week (total, across all team leads) on the roadmap engagement for approximately 3 months.
You’ll also need a project manager to ensure effective communication with all stakeholders and the OpFocus team.
What commitment is required from my team?
The short answer is anyone in your organization who interacts with Salesforce will likely be involved to some extent in the roadmap engagement. In addition to leaders from sales, marketing, product, and customer service (your RevOps team), even legal and finance teams are usually involved to some degree.
Each team member can expect 4-8 hours of discovery meetings and 8-12 hours of collaborative solutioning during the roadmap development. They will likely spend 2-3 hours attending final presentations toward the end of the engagement.
How quickly will I be able to see results?
Immediately! Simply surfacing concerns and challenges during discovery can already bring critical issues to light, building awareness that will help your organization. Early on, we also analyze Salesforce data, and the results of this analysis often help clients take action before our Growth Advisors even deliver the complete roadmap documentation.
Subsequent results depend on which projects your business determines are high-priority. Common examples include CPQ implementation, NetSuite integration, and specific marketing initiatives.
Depending on how your company chooses to take next steps, you can expect to see meaningful results within 3 months of receiving your roadmap.
How long does a roadmap take for a company my size?
The length of the roadmap engagement typically takes longer for larger organizations. For a 50-person organization, the roadmap could take approximately 2 months, while for a 150-person organization, the roadmap could take approximately 4 months.
What is the difference between a Salesforce Roadmap and Business Solution Design (BSD)?
A Salesforce Roadmap focuses on high-level user stories and recommendations. You’ll describe the problems with your operations and systems related to scaling, and we’ll prescribe the optimal initiatives .
Each set of initiatives is then prioritized and planned with a timeline. These solutions span the entire organization at a macro level.
Business solution design (BSD), on the other hand, implies actual solutioning at a more micro level, including field-level detail and object-level scoping, such as automation wireframes or report mockups. Each BSD is for one segment of one workstream/functionality covered in a roadmap.
Many organizations benefit from a roadmap with specific BSDs done almost simultaneously. For some roadmap use cases, configuration-level details are required to achieve the best results.
Is a consultant cheaper than hiring in-house?
Not only is a consultant less expensive than hiring in-house to complete your roadmap, they are also far more likely to succeed with the project. It’s extremely difficult to allocate the necessary resources to complete a roadmap project in addition to doing your day job.
Additional benefits of working with a consultant include:
- Objectivity. Hiring a consultant prevents unnecessary organizational friction that can occur during times of change. Consultants avoid organizational politics while providing a level of detachment and objectivity.
- Experience. Most internal hires haven’t done hundreds of roadmaps like a consultant has. In the end, a consultant will likely cost half as much as a team of new hires and give you superior results.
What experience do you have working with companies like mine?
Great question! OpFocus has 15 years of experience helping companies like yours run their businesses better. Feel free to check out our case studies.
How do I know that OpFocus will deliver on the promises of a Salesforce Roadmap?
Check out this case study to see how our Salesforce Roadmap can help clients.
It’s important to understand that the success of a roadmap does depend on the client’s participation. We need access for discovery, team involvement, and executive buy-in. At OpFocus, we do everything we can to prepare our clients for a successful roadmap engagement.
When should we fix our existing Salesforce organization or start from scratch with a new Salesforce Roadmap?
Great question! Salesforce offers assessments to grade the health of your Salesforce organization. There’s a threshold at which we can help you decide whether it’s easier to fix the current organization or start over.
Some common triggers for starting a new organization are bloated/bad data or pivoting to a new account model.
In many cases, it will take longer to fix your existing organization in Salesforce than to build a new one. If we project that it will take 6 months or more to create a roadmap and refine your existing instance, we may recommend that you start from scratch with a new organization.
We evaluate each of our clients’ situations on a case-by-case basis.
How often should my team refresh our Salesforce Roadmap? Should I update our roadmap each time we introduce a new product?
In general, your roadmap will likely need an update every 2-3 years. After this amount of time, your organization has matured, and your tech stack has likely evolved, to the point where you need to set a new course for how you’ll continue your growth trajectory.
A new roadmap can also be timely when a specific shift occurs in your model, such as introducing a new product line, opening up a new industry segment to sell to, or launching an enterprise sales team. Updating your roadmap to coincide with this type of initiative ensures you have a 30,000 foot view of how your organization will need to adapt to align with your new product or strategy (in fact, the roadmap can be instrumental in fleshing out a strong GTM strategy for a new product by ensuring you have the infrastructure to support it).
With that said, not every new product rollout requires a roadmap refresh, either. If the new initiative can be incorporated fairly easily into your current Salesforce instance, for example, a new roadmap may not be required. The team at OpFocus can help you determine if a new product or shift in strategy would benefit from an updated roadmap.
Will my company become dependent on the consultant if I work with them?
No. The Salesforce Roadmap sets you up for execution by any third party or even internally. You can always rely on OpFocus for guidance, but you won’t need us to handle every detail of configuration, development, and maintenance, especially if your organization has the technical expertise and bandwidth for strategic initiatives.
Our relationship will likely change over time. A SaaS organization rarely outgrows the need for a consultant entirely—but the manner in which a consultant supports them does evolve as the company continues to grow.
Who from my team needs to be involved in this roadmap?
Any leader in your organization who might touch Salesforce should be involved, including sales, customer success, IT, legal, finance, and more.
Can OpFocus cover more than Salesforce in my tech stack?
We’re marketing platform agnostic and can consult from a functionality and configuration perspective on HubSpot, Marketo, and Pardot. We can also assist you in evaluating tools across the Salesforce ecosystem. But our primary focus in terms of implementation, optimization, and development is Salesforce, including Sales, Service, Experience Clouds and Salesforce CPQ. The data, systems, and APIs that directly connect to Salesforce are also within our scope.
Do I need managed services?
Many organizations benefit from managed services. Managed services give you access to a bench of technology experts whose capabilities likely extend beyond what you have on staff. If you need managed services help, there’s a good chance you also need a Salesforce Roadmap.
We often recommend managed services in conjunction with a Salesforce Roadmap because you don’t want to take your foot off the gas while you build your plan for your organization’s future.
Why can’t I do a roadmap inside of my managed services contract?
The reason you’re doing a roadmap is to holistically assess your current tech stack against your growth goals. Managed services allocate a set number of hours based on a monthly budget.
A roadmap, on the other hand, is a time-bound project with specific milestones. We’ve seen from experience that to be successful, roadmap engagements need to be dedicated projects with clear timelines rather than ongoing initiatives.
Answers Lead to Action
A Salesforce Roadmap is an important tool for scaling your company successfully. Hopefully these FAQs have given you the answers you need to take the next step toward establishing a roadmap for your organization.
Our team at OpFocus knows what it takes to get SaaS leaders unstuck from stagnant operational cycles that are limiting their growth. For more information about this topic, check out our recent article, Do I need a Roadmap, Growth Services, or both?
If you’re ready to get going on your Salesforce Roadmap process, feel free to reach out to us today!
