Most people see software implementation Partner or system integration partners as a commoditized service. There are over 1500 salesforce consulting partners on the AppExchange that all have the capabilities to implement Salesforce products, but not all of those partners act as subject matter experts on behalf of the product company to implement and install applications.
With Blueprint Advisory, we partner with companies to become an extension of their team that allows them to focus on selling their product and their overall business growth.
There is a tremendous value for companies to find the right partners in the Salesforce Ecosystem. For example, software companies Place Technology and Able have both seen the value of bringing on the right partner to handle the implementation of their products. The right implementation partner allows these companies to execute their product roadmaps while mitigating implementation risk.
Learning the Hard Way at Talent Rover
I’ve learned a lot from what it takes to be a successful implementation partner during my time at Talent Rover. Talent Rover started with an in-house implementation team. Once the product was sold, our clients would get engaged with our implementation team, and we soon ran into many problems that many customers face when attempting to implement their own products.
The main problem we faced was that our implementation team could not keep pace with the growth and demand of our product. We were growing at a tremendous speed on the product side, but we had to delay customers’ project start dates as we were short on resources to manage the overall scale of the business. Slowing down the timeline of customers going live and using the product directly impacted our revenue.
In 2017, we realized that we needed to change the way we were thinking about getting customers live, resulting in the development and onboarding of SI partners with expertise not only in Salesforce but also in the staffing industry. Yet another benefit of our product being built on Salesforce was that we immediately had a huge library of partners to vet in all of the major markets we served.
So began the process of onboarding our new Talent Rover implementation partners, and what that did was two things:
- By involving our partners during the sales process, our customers were able to have a very clear understanding of what the process would be for them to achieve value and identify any potential red flags and;
- Since our team was now working to support the implementation vs. own the implementation, we were now able to allocate more time and energy to delivering our product roadmap.
Going through these real-world experiences and solving actual business problems from an operator’s mindset became a driving force in founding Blueprint Advisory. We’ve seen firsthand what type of impacts you can have on your business when you can focus on your product and give your customers an incredible experience at the same time.
Choosing to partner with an implementation partner can have several benefits to help scale your business by saving time and money. Some of the other benefits can be summarized as:
- Providing ongoing advice, support, and updates as your software changes and evolves.
- Free your team’s resources and time during the implementation process
- Ensure that the software is being configured to meet your business’s standards
- Team of experts to gain knowledge from for future projects
- Expedite the learning process of your software for clients
The next thing you should look for when choosing an implementation partner is if they have the right capabilities and experience for your business. We’ve talked extensively in the past on what it takes to be a good Salesforce implementation partner here in this interview with one of our long-time clients Alex Siegler, GM, RevOPs & Alliances at Place Technology.
Suppose you’re unable to meet your customer’s implementation demands internally. In that case, it’s important that you can partner with a company that you trust and that has your back through the entirety of your product’s life cycle. By leveraging the experience of the implementation partner, you can catapult your business into the next stage of its development.