💃 An Unstoppable Force vs An Immovable Object🕺

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One of the oldest and wisest technology principles is deciding if the software will conform to the business, or the business will conform to the software. In the long term, this decision could be the difference between success or failure, $1 billion in revenue or $1 million in revenue, and being promoted or being fired. Why is this such a critical and impactful decision? What does it even mean? Let's discuss and then see where you stand on this topic!

Agenda for today includes

• An Unstoppable Force vs An Immovable Object

• Daily Principle

• All the Memes

An Unstoppable Force vs An Immovable Object

Let's quickly define the 2 scenarios

The Software Conforms to the Business - This is a highly-customized org where developing solutions for business problems knows no bounds. You don't like how the standard lead conversion works? Create an apex job that does exactly what you want. You have snowflake sales people who need exceptional access? Create a role, profile and/or a permissions set for them.

Takeaway - When the software conforms to the business, the org will become a Frankenstein of exception management. This starts off innocently enough. Over the months and years, it will take on a life of it's own. The org is expected to bend and stretch to manage poor business behavior. Scaling is a challenge.

Business Conforms to the Software - The other end of the spectrum. If there is a snowflake user, then the business de-snowflakes them. No or minimal changes to the software to accommodate them. Reports are used to identify data entry issues, to be resolved by users or a dataload later.

Takeaway - A much less exciting org and a much more disciplined sales team, likely led by exceptional sales leadership. If there is an exceptional process, a dedicated business process will be created to manage it, that will trickle down to the org. This doesn't necessarily minimize the amount of custom work in the org, but it does minimize the role technology plays in managing the exception. The business takes on this role.

Excellent. Let's look at each scenario from the below perspectives and pick a winner!

User Experience

• Software Conform to Business - More automations and less responsibility for users. Corrective actions via Apex jobs. Users get whatever they want! Eventually, changes take a lot of time as the org becomes more complex.

• Business Conform to Software - Users required to follow a defined process, or get their hand slapped by their manager. Users ask for cool shit...they don't get it. Org runs smoothly and has the ability to scale to tens of thousands of users. Users don't care...too many rules and data entry, not enough automations.

Winner - Software Conform to Business. Easy one here. The users love automation, especially when their mistakes are automatically corrected! This is also fun for some Salesforce Professionals who just wanna build cool shit and aren't concerned how scaleable the overall solution is.

Implement and Support/Maintain

• Software Conform to Business - Salesforce can do just about anything, and if you open that door to users, it's like being a Lego Master Builder, but the building instructions are provided by a 3 year old. Then maintaining that, for years on end...no thanks.

• Business Conform to Software - From the Salesforce Professional's perspective, there has to be some mixed feelings. We want to test the limits of our beloved platform, but we don't want to die doing it ☠️😂😅!

Winner - Business Conform to Software. Another easy one. From an implementation perspective, where the Salesforce Professional does most of the heavy lifting, designing and building a streamlined solution is good times. As well, the maintenance and support of a finely-tuned machine is much more enjoyable than tip-toe-ing around a bunch of daisy-chained automations.

Cost

• Software Conform to Business - You will need a well-paid team of people to manage a custom solution. Also, consider the opportunity cost of staffing and paying a team of people who probably roll up under a cost center (IT department).

• Business Conform to Software - For this to even be a realistic scenario, a very talented Sales Leader will have resources in place to ensure their sales teams are conforming to the software. That has the same considerations as the above scenario, but it is reflected differently on the P&L under a profit center.

Winner - Split Decision! When the software conforms to the business, you will need more resources - admins, devs, project managers, etc to support and maintain it. That costs money. On the other hand, when the business conforms to the software, there is likely more sales people/trainers/managers to support the users to use the org as it has been defined. That costs money, too!

Overall Winner - Business Conform to Software🎉🎉! Let's be honest, no sale was ever lost because the CRM didn't do custom things. The cost of maintaining a complex, custom org can increase by multiples over time, AND the user experience decreases as the legacy solutions succumb to complexity.

So what are your thoughts? Do you prefer Software That Conforms to the Business or Business That Conforms to the Software? Leave your in the ChaCha poll below the memes!

Daily Principle

and now....Your Daily Memes