The Role of the Salesforce Architect in the Salesforce Org Merge

When two companies come together in a merger or acquisition, if both have their own Salesforce org, they’ll need to figure out whether to merge one org into the other or if it will be most cost-effective to create a new shared Salesforce org, align business processes, and migrate their data to that new location.

In either case, to execute this migration, you’ll need to look at your Salesforce data models, align them, and determine which objects and processes need to be preserved to meet the business requirements of the company post-merger.

If this sounds complicated, that’s because it is, and that’s why it’s crucial to have a Salesforce Architect on hand who deeply understands the requirements for the project. They can help guide your newly formed team through this process and ensure you still get the Salesforce ROI you’re looking for.

With the help of a Salesforce Architect, you can rest assured that the Salesforce org you have on hand at the end of the merge meets your business requirements and is built to grow with your company.

The Big Challenge: Assess and Align Business and Data Models

The two primary challenges in any Salesforce org merge are aligning business processes and determining how to deal with the data in both extant organizations. Typically, a Salesforce Architect will work to assess the state of each of these concerns in tandem with the support of key stakeholders, including process analysts, tech leads, and senior developers.

The quantity of data on hand and the way it’s currently organized will bear greatly on whether it’s most efficient to preserve one org or to create a new org entirely. The Salesforce Architect will determine what approach to take, depending on the business requirements they need to preserve and how both orgs have handled their data up to this point.

These parallel assessments may sound like a relatively straightforward task, but the answers are nuanced and complex enough to require an expert opinion, and a Salesforce Architect is the expert you need to guide this process because they will also design your new Salesforce org. Their involvement in this back-end analysis helps them determine which Salesforce capabilities need to be enabled to achieve the business outcomes you need on the front end, which includes everything from the page layouts to workflows to reports.

A Leader that Understands Business Processes for Both Organizations

Salesforce Architects don’t just know the Salesforce platform – they’re also well versed in business operations and the user experience the platform can deliver.

They know how to help companies achieve their target ROI by thinking through how data objects relate to Salesforce actions, and they can recommend the best way to integrate one Salesforce org into another because they understand the way backend decisions about data organization relate to front end activities.

For example, say you’re migrating data from two separate organizations into a new Salesforce org. Imagine that before both of the companies in question have a major national pharmacy chain as a customer:

• One Salesforce org had a practice of entering each store as its own record and including each store number in the Last Name field for the contact.
• The other Salesforce org used the parent-child functionality native to Salesforce to nest each store under one parent account to track their overall account health on the national level.

How would you resolve this difference when you migrated their data?

This is just one example of a question a Salesforce Architect can address that goes beyond what a typical Salesforce Administrator might advise on. 

In addition to helping address issues with duplicate records, they can also ensure that your new org will have the right security model by working to define profiles and roles in the new org.

Expertise from Experience with Salesforce Org Merges

For all the certifications you can earn at the Salesforce Trailhead, there is no certification available for how to manage a Salesforce org merge. That’s because there’s no way to standardize this process, which varies greatly based on the orgs in play and their needs.

This is why Salesforce Architects are critical players in this transition: their past experience informs their insights as much as any of their formal Salesforce training. While some routine updates to orgs are fairly standardized, the transition from two orgs to one is full of complex challenges:

• Contractual constraints and updates
• Business process alignment
• Data migration and standardization
• Dashboard preservation and creation 

This final bullet point can be particularly sticky for end users: your new org must deliver the reports your team needs, and this can be critical to fulfilling business requirements in the near term. Without expert guidance, this might seem like a detail that can be ironed out most-merge, but Salesforce Architects know that getting everyone access to the data and insights they need to succeed is why company’s invest in Salesforce in the first place.

Lessons from Salesforce Implementations

In the same way that Salesforce Architects play an integral role in the implementation process, they can take lessons from this to bear on the rollout of a new org or a migration between orgs.

From reviewing business processes and requirements to consulting with both orgs, the same skills and business acumen apply.

Salesforce Architects can also help you determine how you’ll govern the new org within your merged organization. While your Salesforce Architect won’t be the decision maker in this process, they can act as the impartial SME and trusted advisor.

To find out how Apexon’s Salesforce practice can support your org merge, contact our team of experts’ today.