Yesterday, we spoke about delivering a Salesforce multi-cloud project using Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and CPQ. And we spoke about going deep in a single cloud before shifting focus to another cloud.
Today, let’s talk about the order of things. In an evergreen situation, which cloud should be first?
To make things more interesting, let’s imagine we also have CPQ Billing and Field Service. Yup, five clouds. Note: This isn’t a purely theoretical scenario. I’ve actually designed this for an enterprise client.
Here are our high-level options:
- Start with the cloud at the front of the sales process and move our way “down the chain” to ordering, billing, fulfillment, and then support
- Start at the end, from support back to sales
- Start at the back or front, then jump to the front or back, to eventually meet somewhere in the middle.
If you’re more visual, here ya go!
Unless there are some unusual client requirements (and if there are, you should definitely challenge them), the recommendation is option 1: front to back. This follows a natural path of sales to ordering to fulfillment to support.
Also, to a certain extent, clouds depend on each other. For example, CPQ should always be delivered before or at the same time as CPQ Billing. And once the product catalogue has been decided in CPQ, it’s easier to know how to fulfill them in Field Service.
The takeaway
By understanding the natural flow of data in Salesforce, you can design a well thought out process and roadmap. Don’t try to swim upstream.