The Cost Imperative: How Salesforce Managed Services Can Benefit Your Business

Let’s be clear: despite Salesforce being the undisputed leader in CRM, it’s not cheap to manage and optimize Salesforce once implemented. The average all in cost for a single Salesforce admin is approximately $115,000—and even higher in high cost-of-living areas—even before the cost of finding, interviewing, and hiring the individual. Having in-house resources is necessary for several reasons, but staffing every Salesforce role yourself isn’t always the optimal option.

As our clients aim to get the most value out of their Salesforce investment, we receive many questions about whether managed services are the solution. Let’s take a closer look at what exactly managed services can provide for a Salesforce implementation, how to determine if you’ll benefit, and what to think about before you make the decision to retain managed services.

The need for Salesforce managed services

While you probably implemented Salesforce for the first time with the aim of powering up your business, any piece of technology this complex will also bring a host of day-to-day operational issues with it. From simple bug fixes to minor enhancements, if your business relies heavily on Salesforce for its operations, your Salesforce instance will rely on its support team. Immediately following new implementations, when everyone is unfamiliar with the system, this challenge is multiplied. Even large, well-resourced organizations can struggle to field the level of support their teams need.

Consider on top of this the number of different things we talk about when we talk about Salesforce. Service Cloud, CPQ, Health Cloud, Pardot… the list goes on and on. A Salesforce admin may be an expert in a few Salesforce products, or they may be a jack of all trades, but no one can know everything about everything. Having access to both depth and breadth of knowledge in every use case you have implemented is challenging and expensive.

The benefits of Salesforce managed services

In this light, the benefits of Salesforce managed services become clear. By outsourcing the management of Salesforce, businesses can access highly trained and certified experts to provide quick resolutions to issues and offer advice on best practices—without maintaining an overly cumbersome in-house team.

We’ve found that managed services support for Salesforce can be a force multiplier for your existing team and driver of adoption within your business. This option provides businesses with ongoing Salesforce support and advice while helping them maximize the software’s potential.

In addition, according to a recent study, 87% of companies currently have or anticipate having skill gaps in the next three years. Salesforce managed services can be a bridge for that skill gap, ensuring continuity of support and institutional knowledge even if you don’t plan on using them over the long term.

Do you need Salesforce managed services?

The benefits are clear—but how do you know if you’re in a position to benefit? While there are many indicators that managed services will be useful for your organization, the key ones to pay attention to include:

• • Overall Issues with data integrity or system availability. On a fundamental level, you need to be able to trust your data, and you need to be able to access your data. If you don’t have either of these things, it’s a sign that something somewhere in your Salesforce system needs more work.
  • Reporting challenges. If you’re not able to get the reports you need to do your job quickly, maybe your admins need additional help.
  • High turnover or lack of in-house Salesforce expertise. Constantly trying to finds someone on your team who can answer a question or debug a program for you? It may be worth looking externally.
  • Complex workflows or custom processes. Even with a good internal team, there may be pieces of your Salesforce system that need a higher-touch approach—an approach that managed services can provide.
  • Compliance and security requirements. Alternatively, there are many pieces of your system where rigorous compliance with industry-wide best practices is a challenge. Bringing in specialized support who can help keep your Salesforce instance secure and up-to-standard can also help here.
  • System upgrades and/or enhancements. Or perhaps you just have a higher need for system enhancements than your onboard team can provide. If your team can’t keep up with user needs, consider getting them help.

By evaluating these factors, you can determine if bringing in an external team is the best option for your business’s Salesforce needs. Maybe some apply to you, or maybe they all do—once you’ve identified your needs you can determine how to address them.

Filling the Skills Gap: True Benefits of Salesforce managed services

Spaulding Ridge’s Salesforce managed services team offers businesses a valuable solution to managing and optimizing their Salesforce instance. By outsourcing Salesforce management, businesses can save time, reduce costs, and improve their performance while receiving support and guidance from highly trained and certified experts. If this sounds like something that would benefit your organization, we’re here to help—reach out today to learn more.