Author: Spinnaker Support

Experience A Year of SAP Third-Party Software Support

The end-of-September deadline for renewing SAP support is drawing ever closer, which likely means you’ve been holding numerous vital discussions regarding your 2024 strategy and budget.

Where can you cut unnecessary expenses? How can you afford new hires or support initiatives, like enhanced security or cloud migration? Are your current SAP products meeting your requirements, and is SAP’s Support prompt and personal, and a value-add to your IT budget?

If you hesitated to answer that last question, then it’s time to seriously consider the alternative of third-party SAP support.

What would next year be like under third-party support?

With every annual renewal, SAP increases your support costs by 2 to 4%. In comparison, Spinnaker Support’s third-party support immediately cuts your SAP Support fees by an average of 62%.

But switching providers isn’t just about cost savings. Spinnaker Support also provides a more responsive and comprehensive service. To catch a glimpse of what quality support is like, read on as we transport you to an alternate timeline – one in which you have just committed to Spinnaker Support.

September-December: Transitioning to Spinnaker Support

From the moment you sign on, Spinnaker Support initiates the onboarding process, helping you smoothly transition to our services. We introduce you to our methodology, help you understand the model, and present the team that will support your SAP landscape. Activities include:

January-February:

By the time the new year begins, your transition to Spinnaker Support is complete. From this point onward, your applications are fully supported by your ASL and the extended Spinnaker Support SAP Team.

March-December

During the remainder of the year, third-party support operates like your former SAP Support, albeit with support for your customizations, far faster response times, and coverage for a wider variety of support issues and needs. The team of engineers we’ve assigned to you have become familiar voices and faces, working closely with you as a natural extension of your in-house team.

Summary – What Your Year Won’t Be like under Spinnaker Support

Poof! Now you’re back to your original timeline, the one where you’re still tied to SAP Support. But now you have a different perspective.

Compared to the standard SAP Support, you’ve learned that switching to Spinnaker Support means:

  • No more time-consuming self-service searches on a support portal
  • No longer waiting unreasonable amounts of time for support responses
  • We will support all customizations within your environment
  • Not having to describe your environment over and over to a random rotation of junior engineers.
  • Customized service and information for your unique SAP applications and technical environment
  • You have more funds to redirect to other projects

Ready for additional detail?

Contact us directly to start a conversation that will transform your support experience.

Top-20 RFP Questions to Ask When Evaluating Third-Party Oracle and SAP Software Support Providers

Lisa Davis | Vice President, Global Sales Enablement

As the industry’s highest-rated support-services provider for Oracle, SAP, and Salesforce enterprise software solutions, Spinnaker Support receives and reviews multiple Requests for Proposals (RFP) each week from potential clients’ procurement departments. Given the number of RFPs we’ve responded to over the years, we’ve developed a solid understanding of which questions organizations should be asking to make an informed decision about their future service provider.

Because no two RFPs ever have the same questions, it’s worth sharing a bit about the variety of inquiries we receive, as well as what we need from a procurement department to quickly provide the most thorough understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of.

RFP Questions to Ask RFP Potential Support Providers

Occasionally, we’ll receive an RFP that’s missing questions that are necessary for differentiating between vendors.

To help you create the best possible RFP, our team has assembled 20 sample questions, including those related to security and vulnerability, that you should ask when beginning your RFP process for third-party Oracle and SAP software support.

The questions below were designed to help you get to the heart of how vendors operate and what kind of service you should expect from them. The questions are grouped into broad categories, including staffing, support response, services, security, compliance, onboarding, contracts, and reputation.

STAFFING

  1. Is your 24/7 support staffed by regionally based support teams in North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East, APAC North, and/or APAC South? Can you describe your global support model in detail? (The answer to this question speaks to vendors’ familiarity with your technology and how it’s typically used in your region and country. This information is especially important in heavily regulated industries, e.g., banking.)
  2. Are reported issues handled by a resource pool, or do you assign specific people to work on them? (A dedicated team will develop familiarity with your specific organization and systems over time. Moreover, it’s far more productive, and less time-consuming, to work with individuals who know your systems well and with whom you’ve built relationships.)
  3. Can you describe the tenure and retention rates of your employees? (This is vital to understanding the vendors’ employees’ experience levels and expertise.)
  4. What spoken/written languages do you support? (Critically important for multinational/global organizations.)

    5. SUPPORT RESPONSE

  5. How quickly does a qualified support resource respond to reported issues? (Time is money!)
  6. What is your escalation process? (It’s crucial for your support provider to not only understand that different support issues require varying levels of expertise, but also that they need to have an escalation process in place, to minimize downtime.)

    7. SERVICES

  7. Can you provide and commit to bug/break fixes
  8. Can you provide and commit to support for customizations? (Not all vendors offer support for customizations, including Oracle. If your vendor refuses to support your customizations, you’ll be on your own whenever you have a support issue with any part of your software that uses customized code.)
  9. Can you provide and commit to legal, regulatory, and tax updates? (Not all vendors provide legal, regulatory, and tax updates, that may be critically important, depending on your industry.)
  10. Can you provide and commit to fixes that are necessary when upgrading my infrastructure? (When it comes time to upgrade your software, you need to know that your support provider will help integrate your existing data and customizations into the upgrade.)
  11. Can you provide advisory services for improvements and upgrades? (This is where experience can make a huge difference. Experienced technicians will know what works in various industries and applications, and can share that knowledge with you.)
  12. Do you offer extended services if we have additional projects or application needs, beyond the standard support contract? (Despite the most rigorous planning, something unplanned and unexpected will inevitably occur.)

    13. SECURITY

  13. Can you describe your security and vulnerability protection solution? (Security is more important than ever before, and the range of existing threats will only continue to increase. Therefore, the importance of robust security capabilities is paramount.)
  14. What is your plan to futureproof my environment?
  15. Do you guarantee a more secure environment?

    16. COMPLIANCE

  16. Can you list your certifications and accreditations? (Software changes constantly. Up-to-date certifications and accreditations demonstrate the vendor’s commitment to keep up with the latest developments.)
  17. How does your company address issues and complaints related to quality?

    18. ONBOARDING

  18. Can you describe your onboarding and archiving process?

    19. CONTRACTS

  19. What are your typical contractual terms and conditions? How flexible are they, should our business conditions change?

    20. REPUTATION

  20.  Is your company the subject of any litigation for the services described in your scope?

Your Next Steps

The 20 questions above are, of course, simply a starting point. There’s no standard RFP-questions template or RFP questionnaire that we know of, and you will likely need to add more questions based on your specific industry, application, region, service requirements, pricing, and so on.

If you’d like to see our answers to these questions, or other sample RFP questions, contact us today.

New State-Of-The-Art Service Technology Can Significantly Elevate Your Enterprise Software Support

Anthony Cefola | Vice President Oracle Global Support Services

In recent years, the rise of customer-focused service delivery has been at the core of IT services, including technical support for software applications. This continued focus lends itself to the introduction of next-generation Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies in this domain. In essence, these technologies can drastically decrease the resolution time for service incidents, while also improving the overall customer experience.

Natural language search is an emerging use case of next-generation technologies that are based on an advanced computer science technique called natural language processing (NLP). This process uses vast amounts of data to run statistical and machine-learning models that infer meaning from complex grammatical sentences. Processing this data has become much more feasible over the past decade, as more and more data has become digitally available and computing power has been growing at an exponential rate. When applied to technical support, a search engine based on natural language search can help experts with the information they need to resolve service incidents faster and more efficiently.

Let’s look at some of the benefits that AI and ML-based research utilities can bring to technical support:

  • Improved expert and customer experience: Improving the technical expert experience directly translates to a better customer experience, and NLP delivers on both by providing relevant information to experts when they need it. Introducing AI and ML–based research in technical support enable experts to have relevant information readily available for augmented decision-making and faster incident resolution.
  • Operational efficiency: Technical expertise is at the core of any support service. However, infusing a search engine with AI and ML capabilities can accelerate decision-making and service response at scale. It should be noted that AI and ML should (and could) never replace human expertise, but they help improve overall incident resolution and make experts’ work easier.
  • Greater consistency and improved service quality: Leveraging an AI and ML-based search engine that derives insights from a common set of data can drive consistency in service response across technologies. As more data feeds into the search engine over time, the engine becomes more robust, delivering more accurate results for better service quality.

Spinnaker Support’s service capabilities span Break/Fix Services, Security and Vulnerability Management, Global Tax, Regulatory & Compliance (GTRC), General Inquiry, and Advisory services for multiple software ecosystems, including Oracle, SAP, and JD Edwards. We bring flexible, extensible services that focus on reducing downtime and disruption.

Our Break/Fix services help ensure that your software system is rapidly restored and functional. Keep your enterprise applications running with swift responses, ISO-certified processes, diagnostic services, product fixes, and processes and procedures for standard and custom code integrations (interoperability).

Coupled with our engineers’ extensive experience and expertise, our new, AI technology, “SAGE,” dramatically improves the support response-resolution time.

SAGE is a search utility that leverages Spinnaker’s many years of service, as well as its significant accumulation of data and various insights to address specific technical support issues. Using AI technology via machine learning and natural language search, SAGE taps into Spinnaker’s massive collection of service data — including our entire services portfolio and all relevant Spinnaker Support data and information, such as service tickets in tools, knowledge articles, technical documents, database sets, and publicly available information — to help our experts find the best solution to a client support issue.

When extended to our Managed Services portfolio, this knowledge and capability can add immense value to our customers with improved service responses. With ongoing investments in next-generation technologies, Spinnaker Support is at the forefront of innovation and service improvement. Spinnaker Support has always delivered world-class support, and SAGE is designed to improve support services even further — now and in the future.

S – Spinnaker
A – AI
G – Global
E – Engine

For more information, please visit us at https://www.spinnakersupport.com/oracle/third-party-support/

Is It Time to Rethink Your Software Support and Maintenance Strategy?

Jon Robison | Chief Marketing Officer

Software applications and systems are at the core of any business. From Enterprise Resource Planning to Supply Chain and Manufacturing, Customer Experience to Human Capital Management, applications and related systems can define the performance and efficiency of any department in any organization or industry.

While investments in applications are critical, it’s equally important to ensure that organizations are deriving maximum value from their applications through effective technical support and maintenance services. So let’s first consider some of the key trends that are reshaping today’s software market.

  • Enterprise Software Transformation
    The past couple of years have accelerated the pace at which companies are embracing digital transformation — which, in turn, has sped up cloud adoption. According to Gartner, by 2024, more than 45% of IT spending on system-infrastructure, infrastructure-software, application-software, and business-process outsourcing will shift from traditional solutions to cloud. This means that organizations across the globe will be at different stages of their digital transformation journey, resulting in hybrid environments that have interoperability support needs.
  • Service Quality and Security
    The need for improved service quality and security has grown exponentially in the recent past as IT leaders have continued focus on to “always-on” and “always-secure” software systems and applications. According to a survey by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), 79% of organizations push vulnerable code to production, either occasionally or regularly. The resulting security vulnerabilities frequently result in breaches, which cause reputational damage and financial loss. Organizations are also seeking improved services to ensure that they can maximize the value of their software applications and systems.
  • Expertise and Budget Constraints
    The technology and software landscape is continually evolving, resulting in complex environments that require specialized skill sets to maintain and manage. According to a report by Global Knowledge, 76% of IT decision-makers experience critical skills gaps on their teams, a 145% increase since 2016. In addition, CIOs and IT departments across the globe are facing unrelenting pressure to do more with less, creating an urgency to streamline costs.

In the face of this new reality, many leaders are asking themselves if in-house support or support from original software providers is actually optimal. Is it time to change the game by adopting a new approach or switching providers?

A third-party service provider with an unbiased approach toward software ecosystem support and maintenance can help you in your transformation on your own terms, as well as in addressing specific pain points with regard to your broader IT needs.

  • Software Ecosystem Transformation
    If organizations are considering a move to the cloud or other vendor migrations that require three to five years of support for existing applications during implementation, considering third-party support might be a good option to pace out migration according to business needs.A trusted provider can also help with software vendor end-of-support announcements, wherein older-version software is no longer supported without a customized support agreement and an additional fee.​
  • Improved Service Quality and Security
    Organizations experiencing a decline in the quality of service and value of sustained software support, along with inconvenient access to expertise, can benefit from third-party support that delivers on pre-determined Service Level Agreements (SLAs).In addition, a third-party support provider can also address the security vulnerabilities that inevitably increase as software versions age, offering flexibility in contracts that enables customers to opt out of new and future versions, as well as releasing the customer from upgrades that prove unnecessary and costly.
  • Cost and Resource Optimization
    A reduced IT budget, specifically where software-maintenance-operating expenses are concerned, is a challenge for most organizations. In a potential recessionary environment, this could mean increased pressure to streamline costs and allocation of budget and expertise toward revenue-generating IT projects. Considering the move to third-party support for cost savings has never been more critical.

Spinnaker Support can be that third-party support partner. Our service capabilities span Break/Fix Services, Security and Vulnerability Management, Global Tax, Regulatory & Compliance (GTRC), General Inquiry, and Advisory services for multiple software ecosystems, including Oracle, SAP, and JD Edwards. Spinnaker Support reliably…

  • Provides enterprise software support and security as organizations move from on-premise to cloud or other vendors, helping maximize the value of existing investments.
  • Offers easy access to assigned best-in-class expertise and solutions for faster incident resolution and robust security, with flexible terms that align with business needs.
  • Results in cost savings, reducing the total cost of ownership, and moving to a more predictable OPEX model.

With the right people, processes, and tools, Spinnaker has successfully served more than 1,300 clients from across 64 industries in more than 100 countries.

To learn more, please visit us at https://www.spinnakersupport.com/oracle/third-party-support/

CIS SecureSuite® Gives Clients More Robust Cyber Defenses

Spinnaker Support is pleased to add our new Center for Internet Security (CIS) SecureSuite membership to our already robust cyber defense toolbox. CIS Benchmarks are recommended as industry-accepted cyber-security standards and are used by organizations to meet strict compliance requirements for FISMA, PCI, HIPAA and other standards.

Our security assessments will now include comparing our clients’ systems to CIS benchmark recommendations on a 0–100 scale. SecureSuite will help us suggest solutions for clients to implement to increase their level of conformance with the benchmarks.

The CIS makes the internet safer and more secure for individuals, businesses, and government entities through collaboration and innovation. It’s a community-driven nonprofit, responsible for CIS Controls® and CIS Benchmarks™ – globally recognized best practices for securing IT systems and data.

CIS benchmarks are not derived from the perspective of any single vendor; they’re created through a unique, consensus-driven development process, with security professionals and technologists worldwide contributing to the development of each CIS benchmark.

The benefits of CIS SecureSuite membership CIS SecureSuite Membership for service providers lets us use the CIS’s membership resources (e.g., CIS benchmarks, CIS-CAT Pro, build kits, and CIS controls) in auditing and securing our clients’ systems. Security consultants worldwide use SecureSuite resources to help their clients assess their security posture, monitor conformance over time, develop configuration policies and reports, and share their compliance status with auditors and business partners.

This CIS leads a global community of IT professionals in evolving its standards continuously, providing products and services to help safeguard companies from new and emerging threats. The CIS’s Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (MS-ISAC®), is a trusted resource for cyber-threat prevention, protection, response, and recovery for U.S. federal, state, and local government entities. The Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (EI-ISAC®) supports the cybersecurity needs of U.S. elections offices.

We’re happy to offer our clients these powerful new benchmarks as part of our services and look forward to helping companies mount the best possible defense against cyber attacks.

JD Edwards Optimizations Checklist: Steps to a Faster, More Stable System

As with any ERP, regular checkups ensure that your system is running optimally. And, as you know, when regular checkups are not performed, chances are you’re going to run into instability and integrity issues.

At Spinnaker Support, we love squeezing out every last drop of ROI we can — and we like to think we’ve perfected the art of optimizing JD Edwards software. Over the years, we’ve developed a process that we use to support JD Edwards users, a comprehensive checklist and scheduled cadence for making JD Edwards’ systems run faster, more effectively, and more stably. As our JDE community seems to be receiving less support than ever before, we’ve decided to share some of these insights for the first time, in the hopes of helping you optimize your instance of the software we all love so much.

  1. CNC
    Have you ever asked yourself how often you need to perform full vs. update packages? Or how often? We’ve worked with customers that have never built a full package before — and when they have a critical fix that needs to be updated, it becomes a nightmare to get that “build of record” completed.
  2. Security
    Check your security setup frequently to avoid vulnerabilities caused by segregations of duties. Internal breaches of your data are not fun and, as we all know, can be catastrophic.
  3. Distribution
    Have you ever booked an order based on item availability, only to learn it was out of stock? If you haven’t conducted a cycle count lately, it’s time to add one to the top of your list. Doing so will correct the available inventory in the system (Inventory Adjustments), so that you’ll know well in advance if you’re running low on any items.
  4. Inventory
    Have you ever come into the office and noticed that all of your inventory was priced incorrectly? There are features in JD Edwards that let you set expiration dates for inventory, and if those aren’t maintained, they can cause huge headaches. So double check that those dates have been entered — and that they’re correct.
  5. Reporting
    Do you run any of the JDE Integrity Reports? These are critical to ensuring that your AP balances to the GL, that your Bill of Materials (BOM) is correct, and so forth. They’re functions that follow JD Edwards’ standards. Run them in Proof mode to understand if there are issues or, if necessary, run them in Final mode to correct them.

When it comes to keeping an ERP, like JD Edwards, humming, these suggestions are just the tip of the iceberg. And if it feels like it takes a village to keep up with regular checkups, remember we’re on your team and here to help — as much or as little as you need us to. For even more tips and tricks check out this infographic.

Is Oracle 12c On Your Mind? It’s on Ours.

Updated on May 15, 2023

Is Oracle 12c On Your Mind? It’s on Ours.

Oracle Database version 12c moved into Sustaining Support on July 31st, 2022. As you know, Sustaining Support is the last and indefinite stop on Oracle’s roadmap for a particular version. The support received under the Sustaining level becomes quite limited, with no bug fixes or new security patches.

But what if you love this very stable version of Oracle Database?

Well, we have an OnDemand webinar that discusses this topic with Martin Biggs, Spinnaker Support’s GM for the EMEA region and one of our customers. His unique view of the enterprise database market comes from many years as a leader in complex IT services organizations. Martin presents 12c customers’ options – including one allowing you to stay on 12c with full support for as long as you like.

Adding to the discussion is Amol Ghadge, the Manager of Storage and Database Services at Danske Bank. Danske Bank has been a customer for over a year, and Amol has quite a few years of experience with databases for several organizations.

Click this link to access the OnDemand webinar and contact us today if you want to speak to someone about the option to stay on 12c indefinitely with full support.

Employee Spot Light Series: Roger Storm, Senior Sybase DBA Consultant

In this installment of our Employee Spotlight series, we’re pleased to introduceRoger Storm Roger Storm, who has specialized in Sybase database administration and design for over 25 years.

Spinnaker Support is proud to be recognized by analysts as one of the largest and most effective global vendors of third-party support, managed services, and consulting. Roger Storm and the rest of our experienced support professionals are the reason. Our team members deliver “follow the sun” service and average almost twenty years of experience.

Let’s get to know Roger!

Hi, Roger. Tell us about your role at Spinnaker Support.

I’m a senior SAP Sybase DBA consultant, which includes a variety of administration work for Sybase products, specifically the Sybase ASE (Adapted Server Enterprise). My job entails installing, setting up, maintenance, and troubleshooting databases. This includes replication server, which is another legacy Sybase product. I also administer Sybase IQ. I’ve been doing this work for more than 25 years. I serve as the primary DBA on our clients’ managed services accounts here at Spinnaker Support, ranging from banking to investments to hospitals to insurance.

What’s your background?

I’ve been working with these product lines for my entire career, since coming out of college in the ‘90s. Before joining Spinnaker Support, I was with Dobler Consulting. Before that, I was with SAP/Sybase. At SAP, I worked on special projects to bring their software onto the Sybase database platform. I’ve also spent a lot of time working as a technical liaison and always in forward facing roles.

When and why did you first get involved with Sybase database technology?

Coming out of college, I worked at an insurance company that was implementing a new general ledger system and a new client server. It was the first client server at that company, and Sybase was the back-end database supported for that general ledger system. Given that I was fresh out of college, everyone relied on me to be up on the latest technologies and the new approaches to this client server design. I just happened to start working on Sybase first, and I never looked back. I’ve had a great career with that product line, but I’ve also worked with SQL server and Oracle database.

What do you most like about working with Spinnaker Support clients?

I’ve always enjoyed working with clients to solve their problems and address new challenges. It’s fun getting to know the people and creating relationships. It’s rewarding for me to help them understand the technology. When I was younger, I wanted to be a teacher and I thought, OK, how can I be a teacher, but still work with technology?

I really like what I do. I make a lot of friends, meet a lot of people, and our clients are great. We solve their problems, which makes them very happy, and that makes for great relationships. Our clients look to us as a source of knowledge, and they trust us to keep their systems running smoothly. We’re very straightforward with what we tell clients we can do and deliver. We get tons of positive feedback.

Do you have a recent example of going “above and beyond” to help a client?

A client needed immediate changes in their database architecture. We found that there were some settings that weren’t right. After a major review of the architecture, we found that there had been some oversights. We corrected them and then worked over the weekend to install the fix.

Honestly, though, I don’t consider this “above and beyond” as this is what we do. But from the client’s perspective, we went the extra mile. It was a limited-hour contract for support that needed us to act quickly to resolve the issue and then get it back in alignment. I’d already had some personal things scheduled for the weekend, but I rescheduled them and made the client a priority.

There are plenty of other examples of working weekends when we’re needed. I see this as part of our responsibility as primary consultants for clients who don’t know how to administer their systems. They rely on us, so I make sure I’m a little more flexible when client problems arise. Plus, Spinnaker Support is great in supporting me when I work weekends, and no one gets upset if I need a little flexibility during the week. From a work environment standpoint, that’s important. It’s all about having a good work ethic, and for an Iowa farm boy like me, that’s a given.

What is one piece of support advice you would give to a Sybase database client?

The thing I see a lot is that clients don’t maintain their databases. They stand them up, they load the data, and then they just let them run and keep loading more data. Eventually the database slows down.

One of my responsibilities is doing performance tuning with the Sybase server. Clients don’t understand a lot of that. An analogy is if you have a car, you need to change the oil, and change the filters and belts. Similarly, companies need to have a quarterly or annual review of their IT environment to make sure that all systems are properly tuned. There are also more users that get added and different connections that change. So, you can’t just let it run and think things will be okay. This is probably the most common shortcoming in database environments.

What do you like to do outside of work?

Family is extremely important to me, along with volunteering at church. I’m also a golf fanatic. I love to compete and spend an afternoon playing with my buddies. I’d say family, serving at church, and golf are my top three activities. I have a 13-year-old daughter and next few years are going to be fun watching her grow up. Supporting her and spending time with my family is of upmost importance to me.

Five Things Enterprises Need to Know About Oracle Support

You buy and deploy core business software to run your systems and pay handsomely to do it. The obvious thing to do to keep those systems running perfectly is to make sure you have a software maintenance contract from the company that sold you the software, right?

Maybe at the beginning of the deployment that may well be the case, but as your systems get a bit older you may find the support you receive from your software vendor is potentially not as good as before and will usually become a lot more expensive.

This is what Oracle customers are finding out, to the detriment of their company’s IT spend and software security.

Vice President and General Manager from EMEA, Martin Biggs, has analysed this topic in detail and has given his rundown of the five things enterprises need to know about Oracle support for Technology Magazine. From support packages and security to cost and the age old topic of being “locked in” – Martin covers all of the elements IT leaders need to consider.

To read Martin’s thoughts on this topic in details, click here for the full article in Technology Magazine.

Winning Strategies to Achieve Salesforce Success, Part 4

John Lange | Senior Manager, Product Marketing 

We’re serious about Salesforce at Spinnaker Support, which is why we commissioned a third-party research project titled, “Winning Strategies to Achieve Salesforce Success.” Our team of Salesforce professionals certainly have time-tested ideas about what it takes to make Salesforce hit on all cylinders. But we also want to hear from other Salesforce decision makers, architects, developers, and administrators about how they approach Salesforce projects. 

In Part One of this blog post series, we reviewed the high-level findings from this report. In Part Two, we drilled down into the first winning strategy: how to kick off major Salesforce projects. In Part Three, we broke down the importance of the second winning strategy: the importance of having an Agile mindset. 

In this post, we review the third winning strategy that highlights the importance of user engagement in the development process. Let’s dive in and review what other professionals recommend for Salesforce project success. 

Winning Strategy #3: Keep Users and Stakeholders Continuously Involved  

Often during an implementation project user input happens at just the beginning or the end of a release cycle. However, the respondents to this market survey were loud and clear that requirements gathering and project communication is a non-stop process. Discovery should not be relegated to just an initial exercise, and feedback is not meant for the time after the solution is in market. Respondents were emphatic: developers and project managers should seek opinions throughout the deployment.  

And the research indicates that multiple users should be involved in every release cycle – don’t just rely on a single point of contact. You should update all parties on the progress, challenges, and delays through frequent engagement. Sharing ideas and innovations on a consistent basis can offset the times when development hits a snag. 

Here’s What Survey Respondents Had to Say: 

“Take your time with users at the beginning and all through the project. Appoint someone who likes talking to them and understanding their challenges and needs. The best of what’s possible with Salesforce comes out of these in-depth discussions.” 

“The more users and stakeholders you include from all levels when planning and executing, the more holistic your solution will be.” 

“Think of every Salesforce project as a business initiative, not a technology or an IT initiative. Involve senior managers and everyday users from the start and respect their feedback. Try to instill this mindset in all Salesforce admins and developers so everyone is paying equal attention to user needs, user feedback, and the end goal.”  

Access the Full Research Report 

This report, “Winning Strategies to Achieve Salesforce Success,” provides you with know-how from Salesforce professionals who are achieving Salesforce success.  

Spinnaker Support sponsored this research to provide the wider market with important insights about how to achieve their Salesforce roadmap and achieve maximum ROI. 

Download the complete research 

Let Us Help You Realize the Full Power of Salesforce 

To learn more about how we help businesses capitalize on their Salesforce investment, check out our managed services offerings and consulting capabilities.