A handful of years ago, I was hired as a Salesforce consultant to help a very large organization with their Salesforce implementation. They were overhauling their partner web portal and wanted to have tighter integration with their Salesforce instance.
The project was impressive because it’s not often when an enterprise has the foresight and drive to overhaul a system. Sometimes there are so many moving parts that organizations just build on top of legacy instead of flushing everything and starting anew.
While reviewing the proposed plan, I noticed the external implementation partner recommended using outdated Salesforce technologies. Instead of using Experience Cloud (EC), they wanted to use Partner Portal. They would build “lightning-ish” Visualforce pages and make them mobile friendly.
At the time, Partner Portal was a technology that was deprecated by Salesforce 8 year previous. For the last near-decade, EC was the tool of choice. It was clearly the right choice for this project.
So I raised my hand and mentioned the issue. I prepared various presentations, did demos, and explained the tech differences to several managers. Sadly, I didn’t have the possibility of presenting to senior executives. By the time they heard my message, it was translated into something like, “Hey, this new guy is suggesting we use some shiny new app, which contradicts the advice of our trusted implementation team.”
My approach was promptly shut down. A few weeks later, I left the client.
The takeaway
As a Salesforce consultant, it’s important to choose which battles to fight. When you do, fight hard. Sadly, not all battles will be won, and then it’s up to you to determine your next move. In this case, this meant for me to move on because they didn’t see my value.
The silver lining to this story is, a couple of years ago, this client re-approached me and asked whether I could audit their Salesforce system. The client had lost trust in the external implementation partner and wanted someone experienced to review their work.