CLIENT: WEALTH MANAGEMENT FIRM

ABOUT THE CLIENT

A small wealth management firm contacted Port & Starboard for assistance making a few seemingly simple changes to their automated Opportunity Tasks process. The automation implemented by their previous consultant was set to generate tasks for members of their team at each new Opportunity Stage. The client provided us with a detailed list of requirements for changes to the tasks being generated, such as removing and changing the tasks, as well as adding some new ones.

THE CHALLENGE

The client’s previous consultant had written overly complicated code to automate a simple process. It was impossible for the client to make their own changes without a developer on staff.

THE SOLUTION

Port & Starboard re-developed the existing automation using Salesforce’s Process Builder functionality, leaving the client with a simple solution that requires very little long-term maintenance.

At first glance, the Port & Starboard team assumed this was an easy fix that would take an hour or two. The task automation was a perfect use case for the Salesforce Process Builder, which would make quick fixes pretty seamless. However, upon digging into their org, we found that the previous consultant had developed the entire process in Apex. After some further investigation, we found the process was not complex to warrant using custom code to automate it. Deploying code for this particular use case was overcomplicated and had made it nearly impossible for the client to make easy tweaks to the process on their own.

We offered our client two solutions. Option 1 was for us to spend about eight hours updating, testing, and deploying changes to the Apex code. Option 2 was for us to spend about 24 hours rebuilding the automation in the Process Builder. We were able to prove that Option 2 was preferable for this particular client because they expect to make many more changes to this process in the future as they grow.

It’s important to work with an implementation partner that understands all of Salesforce’s out-of-the-box features. Some consultants resort to code when point-and-click features will suffice, often leaving customers with unnecessary complications making changes later.

Port & Starboard rebuilt the Opportunity Task automation in the Salesforce Process Builder with all of the requested changes for our client. During the project, we were also able to provide some additional features to provide a scalable solution for assigning tasks based on sales users’ Opportunity Teams in the future. Upon delivery of the project, we even showed our client how they can easily make their own tweaks going forward (or of course, rely on us for help whenever they need us)!

Our client was thrilled with the simplicity of the replacement task automation. From a user perspective they hardly noticed a change, but they were pleasantly surprised to understand where the automation lives in Salesforce and how they can approach change management as they scale.

Overall, Port & Starboard was able to save this client countless development hours in the future by backing out this code and providing them a point-and-click solution they could maintain internally.