Independent Salesforce advice means that an adviser looks solely at what moves your organisation forward, without any commercial interest in the outcome. That difference is bigger than it seems: it determines whether you invest in solutions that demonstrably work, or in licences and apps that mainly suit the seller. In this article you will read why independence matters so much, how to recognise an independent partner and how to get started with a free assessment.
What does independent Salesforce advice mean?
Independent Salesforce advice is advice based entirely on your processes, your data and your objectives. The adviser has no interest in licence sales, renewals or unnecessary additional work, and therefore dares to point out what does not work or is superfluous. The only criterion is what demonstrably moves your organisation forward.
Salesforce is an enormous ecosystem. There is always an app, plugin or extension that promises to be the solution to every conceivable problem. But more is not always better: every addition brings cost, maintenance and complexity with it. An independent adviser helps you see through that offering and choose only what fits your situation.
In our audit and consultancy this means, in concrete terms, that recommendations are based on data from your own Salesforce environment, not on assumptions and not on what a vendor would like to sell.
Why is independence so important in the Salesforce ecosystem in particular?
Because the offering is virtually unlimited. For every challenge there are dozens of apps, modules and extensions, and on top of that almost anything can also be solved with custom development. Without an independent guide, the odds are high that you buy too much, build too complexly or invest in functionality your team will never use.
Many organisations use only a fraction of what Salesforce can do. Processes have grown organically, reports no longer add up and nobody quite remembers why the system does what it does. In that situation, adding even more rarely solves anything. The biggest gains often lie in making better use of what is already there: quick wins with low effort and high impact.
A fresh, independent perspective brings that to light. Not by starting from the ecosystem’s offering, but by starting from your processes, your data quality and adoption by your users.
What is the risk of advice with a sales interest?
Parties that also sell licences or products have a stake in what they recommend. That need not be malicious, but it inevitably colours the advice. The result is often an environment that is more expensive and more complex than necessary, and a roadmap that says more about the vendor’s revenue targets than about your growth.
In practice, we regularly see the same patterns recur during audits:
- More licences, or more expensive editions, than the number of active users justifies.
- Apps and plugins that overlap or are barely used.
- Custom development in places where standard functionality is more than sufficient.
- Missing documentation, leaving you dependent on the original builder.
- A roadmap that mainly schedules new purchases instead of improvements to the foundation.
Each of these points costs money, but the biggest risk is strategic: you build up a dependency on a party that has an interest in that dependency continuing to exist. For you, only one thing counts: what works for your organisation?
How do you recognise an independent advisory partner?
You recognise an independent partner by behaviour, not by promises. Pay attention to whether the advice is substantiated with data from your own environment, whether the adviser also dares to advise against things, and whether knowledge transfer is a standard part of the collaboration. Those who want to make you dependent usually do exactly the opposite.
A number of concrete signals to look out for:
- The advice also names what does not work or is superfluous, including things the adviser could supply themselves.
- Recommendations are substantiated with data from your own Salesforce, not with generic sales arguments.
- Documentation and training are part of every delivery, so you are not dependent on the partner.
- You speak directly with the senior consultant who actually carries out the work, with no account manager layer in between.
- After the advice, you are free to take up the recommendations yourself, without a mandatory follow-up engagement.
These points are not chosen at random: they are the principles with which we have completed more than 340 projects since 2019. See our cases for what that looks like in practice.
How does Resolve IT put independent advice into practice?
We start every collaboration with a free assessment and work from there, in four fixed phases, towards a prioritised roadmap. We advise in your interest, not out of a desire to sell licences, and we are equally transparent about that when it concerns our own products.
The four phases look like this:
- Assessment: we start with a free assessment and dive into your configuration, processes, data and user adoption.
- Analysis: we map out bottlenecks and opportunities, from security and data quality to unused functionality.
- Advice: you receive a clear report with quick wins and structural improvements, prioritised by impact.
- Roadmap: together we determine the order, and you take up the improvements yourself or with our help.
Transparency explicitly also applies to our own products. They exist because we kept building the same integration over and over for clients, but we only recommend them when they are demonstrably the best solution for your situation. If a custom integration via the API is a better fit, or if no new integration is needed at all, we say so honestly.
What should you look out for in a Salesforce audit?
A good audit examines the full breadth of your environment: configuration, processes, automations, data quality, security and GDPR, and user adoption. The result should be an understandable report with recommendations prioritised by impact, starting with quick wins you can pick up straight away.
Also make sure the audit is without obligation. Afterwards, you should know exactly where you stand, without any automatic commitment following from it. You can then carry out the recommendations yourself or take them up together with a partner; that choice should be yours, not the adviser’s.
An audit is suitable for growing SMEs, for larger enterprises and for organisations planning a new implementation. In short, for anyone who wants to get the most out of Salesforce without buying more than necessary. Precisely when you are about to invest in new licences, apps or custom work, an independent check beforehand is a small effort that can prevent major misinvestments.
What does independent advice deliver in concrete terms?
Independent advice delivers an environment that is cheaper, simpler and better adopted. You invest only in what works, start with quick wins that produce immediately noticeable results, and then build further in a structured way for the long term, with a roadmap that belongs to you and not to a vendor.
Sometimes the conclusion is that a proven standard solution is sufficient, such as a ready-made connection between Salesforce and Exact Online. Sometimes a unique process calls for custom development instead. And sometimes the best advice is to get the foundation in order first before adding anything new. Precisely that judgement, made without a sales interest and in clear language your whole organisation understands, is what makes independent advice valuable.
On top of that, independent advice contributes to support within your organisation. When employees see that recommendations are substantiated with data from their own daily work, and that things are occasionally advised against, trust grows in both the advice and the system itself. That trust is ultimately the most important condition for a Salesforce environment that is actually used.
Schedule a no-obligation call
Would you like to know where the quick wins and bottlenecks in your Salesforce environment lie? Start with a free assessment via our consultancy page or schedule a call directly. You get an honest picture of where you stand, and you decide for yourself what to do with it.