💃 Here's a $1,000,000 Salesforce Project 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! In 2024, $1 million doesn’t go as far as our parents promised - a house, a car, your credit card and student loan debt, and what’s left is 6-12 months of (comfortable 😊) living expenses 🤷🏻.

Ok, then…if $1 million isn’t a lot, why is delivering a $1 million dollar feel like moving a mountain 🏔️🥵.

First, some quick headlines - Salesforce AI CEO, Clara Shih is now ex-CEO and a Meta minion. Marc has been ramping up his Twitter feed. And Salesforce’s $2BB Own acquisition is in the inevitable business integration phase of “workforce reduction”…ie layoffs.

Ok! Take it away, Dr. Evil ⬇️

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$1,000,000 DELIVERABLES

Deliverables

$1,000,000 implementations aren’t sold out of thin air. So what makes up a deal of this size?

Salesforce projects are like my sense of fashion - painfully unique…

But if there’s a white-T, jeans, and Jordans $1,000,000 project it looks kinda like this-

🗣️ Enterprise marketing app implementation - Marketing Cloud (any of the 3!), Eloqua, Marketo, etc

☁️ Sales Cloud implementation - Rip ‘n’ replace of legacy CRM.

🗂️ ERP integration - Base data, and Product and Financial data

🔀 Data migration - Legacy CRM data to Salesforce with facilitations and accommodations for the marketing and ERP solutions.

BREAKDOWN

Hours and Timeline

How many hours of effort to get to $1,000,000? As previously discussed, not all hours are created equal.

But let’s use a flat, reasonable rate of $200/hr.

$1,000,000 ➗ $200/hr = 5000 hours.

5000hrs is 125 weeks of full-time work for 1 person.

63 weeks for 2 people.

32 weeks for 4 people. That’s 8 straight months of 4 people eating, breathing, sleeping this project.

A real-world resource count is 6-12 people billing against the project at any given time, with at least a couple of them fully utilized (36-40 billable hours) on the project.

For a realistic timeline, there are so many variables for a project of this scope, but a minimum of 10 months should have anyone who’s done it nodding along. When you are reaching 14 months, there better be a change request or 2nd SOW funding the resources, or your wrist will be sore from all the write-downs 🤕.

The Team

At minimum, these are the roles you’ll need to pull off this $1,000,000 project. FYI - one resource can play multiple roles.

Technical Architect

Using a blanket term for a role that needs to be an experienced ERP integrations resouce. This role needs to create and manage to an integration strategy, and have the ability to hands-on write the code, or oversee the development of robust APIs by a team.

Senior Consultant

Another blanket term - this role needs to manage the day-to-day guidance of the client to success. Utilizing their industry and Salesforce knowledge and experience, they will have 90% of the build already mapped out in there well-grooved brain.

This lucky duck will probably be fully utilized to this project and celebrate a birthday or 2 during implementation 🎂🎂!

Project Manager, Business Analyst, QA Analyst

Critical project support roles that organize, fill in the gaps, and ensure the solutions work. And responsible for billing A LOT of hours 🤑.

Engagement Lead

When there’s escalations, or it’s time to talk money with the client, then the Engagement Lead steps in.

This role maintains a warm and fuzzy 🧸 relationship with their senior counterparts on the client side. A good lead will have a reverse bell curve in their utilization - higher hours in the beginning and end of the project, with 5hrs/week in the messy middle.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Takeaway

A $1,000,000 Salesforce implementation is still a Salesforce implementation. Here’s what we mean-

By the end of it - users will expect to have a functioning CRM that they know how to use. Stakeholders will expect their requirements are met. Executives will expect the SOW is satisfied.

There’s more complexity in a $1,000,000 project than a $100,000 project. More (and bigger) deliverables. More resources. More hours. More applications. More integrations. More data.

But it can be tackled just like a $100,000 project - one day at a time, in digestable chunks, constantly moving the needle, staying on top of client decisions and validations.

POLL!!

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Your Salesforce Memes