4 Critical Reasons You Need Salesforce Managed Services Yesterday

Committing to a Salesforce Managed Services agreement can feel like a big commitment — and do you even need one anyway? 

Should you hire full-time employees instead? What will you gain from investing in Salesforce Managed Services? And how will those benefits impact the growth of your business?

Let’s find out. In this article, you’ll learn about the key business benefits of avSalesforce Managed Service Partner.

But before we dive in, what is Salesforce Managed Services exactly?

What is Salesforce Managed Services?

Salesforce Managed Services is an ongoing comprehensive solution businesses use to maintain, update, and improve their instance. An effective Salesforce Managed Service provider will help your business cut costs, increase efficiency, enable you to realize the full value of your investment in Salesforce, and ultimately propel growth.

All right, so why do you need Salesforce Managed Services?

1. Expand your team’s capabilities (the smart way)

One of the key benefits of partnering with Salesforce service providers is the ability to obtain critical expertise and people-power quickly, flexibly, and cost-effectively.

Of course, you can continue as is or hire in-house instead.

However, continuing as is typically means living with chronic inefficiencies, most likely massive piles of tech debt, and the inevitability of things breaking. And let’s face it, this isn’t really an option for companies tasked with ambitious targets.

What about hiring in-house?

Well, it’s fair to say that qualified experts are hard to come by these days as supply is greatly outpaced by demand for Salesforce specialists such as Developers, Architects, CPQ Specialists, and MarTech admins. (Plus, we already hired the best of the bunch!)

If you do find ideal candidates, recruiting and onboarding is likely to take months, all while putting additional strain on your team — strain that can lead to things falling through the cracks. And if you’re like most fast-growing SaaS companies, we doubt you’re happy to wait months to address a growing mountain of backlog tickets!

If that’s not enough, hiring costs a lot of money — especially if you need a range of skills and expertise. The cost of sourcing, onboarding and ramping, salaries, and employee benefits for a few critical roles can easily take you into hundreds of thousands of dollars per year per role. And what happens when a team member leaves or something breaks while they’re away? 

Salesforce Managed Services remedies all of these issues in one fell swoop.

Starting at just $10K a month, you can use a Salesforce Managed Services agreement to complement your team with every expert you need, including:

• Salesforce Consultants and Solution Architects
• Salesforce Business Analysts / Salesforce Administrators
• Technical Architects
• Salesforce Developers
• Salesforce CPQ and Q2C Consultants 
• ABM and Marketing Operations Consultants
• Revenue Operations Consultants and Growth Advisors

This will allow you to avoid lengthy sourcing, interviewing, and onboarding processes, and focus on the business problems at hand. Plus, Salesforce Managed Service providers can start working with your team in a matter of weeks. No strain necessary.

Also, because you gain access to an entire team of consultants, you won’t have to worry about something going wrong when your Salesforce Developer is on vacation or your Salesforce Administrator catches Covid.

Need a CPQ Specialist for a few hours a week or a Salesforce Developer for 3 days a month? No problem. You’ll also update your Salesforce Managed Service agreement as your business develops to ensure you always have access to the skills and expertise you need.

In short, a Salesforce Managed Service can quickly swell your team’s capacity with seasoned experts for a fraction of the cost of hiring — all while reducing stress and hassle.

2. Unlock the full potential of your Salesforce

It’s fair to say that Salesforce is far from an out-of-the-box solution. 

Salesforce is a living, breathing organism that requires regular maintenance and optimization — and without this attention, it performs suboptimally and holds the team back. And you can’t scale a SaaS company with a kind-of working system.

We could give you a thousand examples of this in practice_, but let’s explore a couple.

Take data. If your data management isn’t on point, your systems and integrations will be inefficient at best. Plus, your reporting will be limited — or worse, inaccurate. And when you can’t get illuminating and reliable answers from your data, how can you confidently make sound business decisions or report to leadership or the board of directors?

In another example, consider the effects of manual and duplicative processes. Not only do they erode team morale, but they’re also time-consuming and prone to error — which can lead to all manner of problems, including impacting revenue directly.

And what about governance? Sure, it’s not sexy — but the following are all but guaranteed to cause issues and hamper growth:

• A lack of documentation and understanding of your systems
• Fractured ownership of Salesforce with an unclear chain of command
• A lack of release management and quality assurance processes
• A lack of version control (resulting in developers overwriting each other’s code)

These types of chronic issues inevitably lead to system downtime — which is expensive and time-consuming to remedy. Downtime also delays strategic initiatives and can directly impact your revenue. Can you imagine your system breaking and preventing sales from sending out quotes and contracts at month end?

But perhaps most worryingly of all, if you don’t keep up with necessary system maintenance and enhancements, inefficiencies and limitations will grow exponentially — and you’ll spend more and more just to keep the lights on.

Salesforce Managed Services is the answer

How? Let’s explore how our Salesforce Managed Services might address the examples highlighted above.

Firstly, an effective Salesforce Managed Services provider should be able to help you take mountains of impenetrable systems and excel files and turn them into rocket fuel for the business. How? By removing duplicate data, creating proper account hierarchies and structures, resolving migration and mapping issues, implementing proper data governance, and more.

They should also be automation experts and view repetitive manual processes as enemies of scaling. As such, they’ll work to automate everything possible (using Salesforce’s declarative tools, custom coding, etc.) to empower your team to focus on what’s important.

Additionally, governance holds the keys to scaling systems. Your Salesforce services provider should help you to develop custom documentation and implement release management, quality assurance, and version control processes.

In short, a good Salesforce Managed Service provider won’t just keep up with your system’s needs to prevent an exponential growth of issues — they’ll make your systems watertight, dramatically reduce the risk of downtime, and maximize your Salesforce ROI.

3. Become lean, agile, and competitive

When you don’t have the resources you need, it can be challenging to stay afloat — let alone overcome urgent issues or capitalize on timely opportunities at the flick of a switch.

Chronic system issues such as inaccessible or unreliable data, manual processes, integration issues, and poor governance make organizations slow and cumbersome. They also make companies resistant to change, development, and innovation. These issues must be overcome if your organization is to scale effectively.

What’s more, without access to the full range of specialist skills you need, it can be challenging to compete with more mature competitors who have best-in-class Salesforce capabilities.

So, what can you do?

Again, you likely don’t need full-time employees for every skill set. And hiring full-time or part-time specialists when you won’t have enough work to keep them busy is inefficient. Additionally, sourcing and managing freelancers can be challenging. And hiring full-time employees is a relatively inflexible route, as you’re committed to large overheads, and hiring for new skills as your needs progress is a lengthy process.

All in all, none of these options facilitate agility.

Salesforce Managed Services facilitates agility

Salesforce Managed Services can help you trim the fat to become lean and agile in many ways, such as by:

• Overcoming operational deficiencies and automating manual processes
• Consolidating multiple systems and tools on your Salesforce platform and getting rid of unnecessary third-party platforms (and their monthly fees)
• Streamlining your systems and reducing tickets and system risks — which can also reduce the need for multiple admin employees

In other words, Salesforce Managed Services can transform your systems from rocky mountain roads into racetracks.

As mentioned above, you will also gain access to a flexible and interchangeable bench of experts that you can tap into on-demand as your business grows and changes. And they’re always waiting in the wings — ready to hit the ground running at the drop of a hat.

Salesforce Managed Services agreements also provide oversight, control, and flexibility. Months are typically planned and executed in sprints, empowering you to adjust as priorities shift and opportunities arise. And in SaaS, speed and agility matter – which makes Salesforce Managed Services a no-brainer.

4. Gain access to invaluable specialist support and guidance

Even when an established team consists of experienced experts, it’s fair to say that creative and original thinking can fade over time due to a lack of fresh perspectives and ideas. Or, to put it another way, even the best teams can reach a point when they can’t see the forest for the trees. 

What’s more, even the most experienced and skilled internal team members still spend their time working within one Salesforce instance, one organization’s culture, and one business’s established processes. Team members may have specialty expertise, but have little context in another area — for example, you could have an experienced and talented Salesforce Developer with little domain knowledge of SaaS or RevOps strategies, tactics, or best practices.

Bottom line, without essential context, perspective, and a combination of breadth and depth of experience and expertise, it can be challenging to identify and solve issues, capitalize on opportunities, and innovate effectively.

Salesforce Managed Services will supercharge your organization.

A fresh set of eyes can make all the difference, especially when collaborating with seasoned Salesforce, RevOps, and SaaS experts.

Some Salesforce consulting services, like OpFocus, combines a few essential elements needed to propel operational excellence and business growth for clients:

• Salesforce and technology expertise and implementation services
• RevOps expertise and advisory services
• Specialist knowledge and experience in driving the growth of SaaS companies

Let’s take a closer look.

Unlike in-house teams, Salesforce Managed Services providers’ teams wrestle with many SaaS companies’ Salesforce instances. OpFocus’ Managed Services team, for example, is constantly on the front lines of SaaS operational developments and innovation. As a result, they’ve all had extensive exposure to virtually every issue possible.

Not only does this result in a constant flow of fresh ideas and perspectives, but it also breeds the highest levels of technical ability, expertise, and maturity. And, in turn, takes the guesswork out of complex Salesforce, integration, and RevOps projects.

What’s more, seasoned strategists and process architects who specialize in streamlining and growing SaaS revenue operations are an invaluable sounding board. They can help you create winning strategies, plans, and processes using proven operational and SaaS growth best practices.

So far, so good — but here comes the rocket fuel: Some Salesforce Managed Services providers don’t work with any type of company — some will specialize in a particular industry or vertical, such as helping SaaS companies reach their full potential. 

Executive summary: Why invest in Salesforce Managed Services?

Your system issues, inefficient processes, and under-utilized data likely cost you a lot more than a monthly fee for Salesforce Managed Services. So, save yourself some money and a ton of headaches — and supercharge your systems and operations in the process.

In summary, Salesforce Managed Services can:

1. Expand your team’s capabilities in a way that’s cost-effective, flexible, and will likely generate a ROI faster than hiring in-house.
2. Unlock the full potential of your Salesforce instance by removing limitations, streamlining processes, and expanding capabilities.
3. Help you to become lean, agile, and competitive with flexible, best-in-class support.
4. Provide invaluable specialist Salesforce, RevOps, and SaaS expertise and support.

Stop limping and start running with OpFocus Thrive Salesforce Managed Services

Learn more about OpFocus Thrive Salesforce Managed Services, check out our FAQ page, or reach out to discuss your goals and how we can help you achieve them