What is a Salesforce Center of Excellence?

With more Salesforce staff, orgs, and data to manage, it’s unsurprising that large enterprises need to pay close attention to the processes and tools they’re utilizing to ensure they’re operating as planned. Plus, to continue seeing real ROI from Salesforce as teams continue to scale, looking after and motivating the people behind those processes and tools is key.

This is particularly true when adopting new approaches like DevOps successfully, and larger enterprises might look to implement a Salesforce Center of Excellence (CoE) as they scale to meet these challenges.

What is a Salesforce CoE?

Rolling out a new process or approach is a challenge no matter the size of your organization, but larger enterprises have more moving parts to consider. Plus, no matter the size of your organization, it’s always a good idea to continuously improve when it comes to your Salesforce development and processes.

A CoE is a purpose-built organization within a company that focuses on the effective delivery and management of a specific technology. A Salesforce CoE is designed to address specific challenges and successfully execute objectives related to a Salesforce implementation.

Why is a CoE useful?

If you’re facing issues as your team scales, or don’t have a good handle on your Salesforce orgs, a well-functioning Salesforce CoE can help you get the most out of the platform by addressing these challenges. The primary purpose of a Salesforce CoE is to streamline processes, manage people working on Salesforce, drive successful outcomes for the business with technology, and to make sure that your company is achieving maximum ROI on your Salesforce implementation.

Importantly, implementing DevOps is not just about adopting a set of tools or processes: it requires a cultural shift. Collaboration is at the heart of DevOps culture — and with culture named one of the most critical pillars of DevOps success by Google’s DORA research, it can’t be overlooked in any successful DevOps implementation process.

Staying on top of cultural challenges is harder for larger enterprises, but a CoE can help. By setting an example for the wider business, a CoE will guide and inspire teams to continuously improve their processes, and act as a source of motivation through advocating for best practices. DevOps Advocate Jack McCurdy agrees, saying recently: “As others see a “champion” team that effectively communicates and collaborates, [it gives] them “permission” to operate in the same way. This prosocial modeling reinforces the need for DevOps culture and motivates all to act in this way.”

You can find out more about CoEs, and the benefits of having a set of standards to deliver business objectives, in Jack’s conversation with Ian Gotts (CEO and Co-Founder, elements.cloud) on the DevOps Diaries podcast.

How do you build a Salesforce Center of Excellence?

You’ve come to the right place — our brand new course, Building a Salesforce Center of Excellence, has just landed!

Written by Jack McCurdy and Sean Lague, a former CIO with over 25 years of senior leadership experience who currently leads a Salesforce CoE, the course takes you through everything you need to know about Salesforce CoEs, and how to establish one in your organization.

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