Solution Architecture, my passion!
My aim with this article is to help you gain a better understanding of my Advisory services by explaining Who, How, When, and Why every implementation of new technology requires an evaluation of solution architecture.
Back in the day, as part of the Salesforce ecosystem, the Salesforce community defined a pivotal position to manage the way customers utilized the system's existing features and products. In the beginning, the job was to help customers achieve success with the platform. With time, my job responsibilities increased, like protecting the customers from influencing the system to harm its scalability, performance, and limitations, and ensuring new Salesforce releases are available. This job belonged to the customer success architect/manager. As time went by, the Salesforce community understood that one person could not control huge and complex customers during the whole engagement, nevertheless on project scope and timeframe. Then, it started - New area of Functional / Solution Architect.
Functional / Solution Architect is a vital position that talks the business language (The business ambassador), leads/collaborates with the development team, and knows all platform capabilities for industry/product specific. It takes care of business processes, Best Practices, Scalability, Adoption & Trust. The business ambassador leads the customer to understand system processes and adapt to their strategies with the proper perspective.
When building Solution architecture, as mentioned above, it needs to respect the business needs, but it is not stopping there - Solution Architecture need to view the entire product/program resources, time, and material to find the exemplary architecture to respect all implementations happening parallel with system capabilities to functional and nonfunctional requirements - There isn't a stand-alone system/process (nevertheless when talking about Salesforce).
Who, What, and When companies utilized Solution Architecture Services
Who?
All organizations structure their technical strategy per business and IT goals and agendas. By utilizing technology as the primary key - focusing on achieving quick wins.
Why? (See the above :) )
Need to strengthen your team with an external advisory architecture for achieving one of the following examples -
Technology strategy and planning
Internal alignment and collaboration by all lines of business
MVP Planning and scoping
Industry Innovation
Architecture Design for Scaling, betterment of business processes, and building trust with end-users.
Implementation Assessment
Many successful companies do it as a best practice, to have a dedicated employee/partner (full or part-time) within the organization and, at the same time, hire an external expert to cover and advise on the more complicated and challenging aspects of strategy, architecture, design, Salesforce best practice, and more.
When?
Any phase of implementation - From POC/RFP to UAT/GoLive/Adoption Planning.
There are many types of engagements, one thing that is common to all - 'It should be sooner"...
If you are in the middle of planning your system architecture (first phase) or even detailed design and you need an advisor to navigate with you while you're driving, it is always recommended to start together.
How?
Our process starts with understanding the needs, we continue to envision, and then we work on it to have the most productive engagement.
Basically - Hourly advisory services. As needed for strategic planning and executing.
Where you are today? What's the plan for the future?
It is not simple to find the right advisory, and sometimes all you need is someone to check it up and tell you - you are on the right highway! With ten years of experience, I can help with identifying the areas that lack guidance and clear the obstacles in every Salesforce Implementation - with a guarantee!
Share your vision, and let me help you to transform your business digitally.
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