The world of Salesforce applications is super-saturated with what’s known as “integrated applications” – third-party software that pulls data out of Salesforce, crunches some numbers, and puts it back. The companies that create integrated applications are focused on their own tool, and typically don’t know a whole lot about Salesforce itself. Which is a problem.
To understand why this is a problem, imagine taking your car in to a mechanic. Rather than working directly on your car, this is what he tells you:
“Oh, yes, I can upgrade your engine, no problem! I’ll just replicate your engine inside another car, and add the upgrade there. Then, I’ll remove that engine and install it into your car. I’m sure it will work, even though I didn’t actually do any work in your car itself.”
That’s not exactly the kind of thing that instills confidence, is it?
We choose our mechanics carefully, looking for experts with actual hands-on experience to work on our cars. So why should our choice be any different when it comes to Salesforce automation?
Salesforce is complex. It has its limitations, and it requires specific rules and parameters to get it to work right, for any business. Integrated apps come from companies that lack the expertise in Salesforce to be of any real help when things need fixing or optimizing. Just like the imaginary mechanic who “upgrades” your car without working on your car, the vendors who pull your entire Salesforce database and crunch the numbers outside of the Salesforce environment are taking a shortcut and not tackling the challenge head on. Any future changes are difficult or impossible to adapt to, because you now have to deal with two systems of record and an ongoing process of replication.
Unfortunately, many businesses get their Salesforce advice from these non-experts. Simply because these companies built an app that integrates with Salesforce, they assume they know their stuff – but too often they don’t actually do any work within Salesforce itself, and the recommendations they make are superficial, at best, or just plain wrong, at worst.
I witnessed this lack of expertise on a personal level working at Eloqua. While the tool itself is tightly integrated with Salesforce, I was the only certified Salesforce expert on staff. With 90 percent of their customer base being Salesforce users, I noticed a culture of Eloqua staff recommending actions and best practices that they really shouldn’t have, because they lacked the knowledge their customers needed – causing delays, confusion, and unnecessary resource expenditure.
On the other side of the industry are the companies building native Salesforce applications – apps baked right in to Salesforce itself. By their very nature, these companies are forced to be Salesforce experts. They work with the software every day, see its ins and outs, get to know what works and what doesn’t. And these are the companies that you should be turning to for advice.
Lane Four is a native Salesforce application by design. We are certified Salesforce experts, and we bring that knowledge to our product and our customers. Unlike some larger automation tools on the market, we live and breathe Salesforce, and we are dedicated to helping our customers get the most out of Lane Four, and Salesforce as a whole.
Whether you need high-level strategic guidance or just a few pointers for optimizing automation, we have the knowledge and we’re eager to share how a native application is superior.
Just like you’d want a real mechanic rather than a “guy who replicates your engine” to fix your car, you want Salesforce experts rather than “people who know about a single Salesforce tool” to build your automation apps.
Have a Salesforce question? We’re happy to help. And since we know what we’re talking about, our advice will go a long way towards helping your sales team become Salesforce experts themselves.
