Unlocking and unifying an active ecosystem of implementation and configuration
Salesforce has an ecosystem as broad and dense as their product offerings, and there are a lot of people and a lot of kinds of people who are trying to figure out how to use the platform to its fullest. Skillful implementations and ongoing configurations of Salesforce environments are key to all players in the space, from individuals working on or with Salesforce products, to organizations in the Salesforce ecosystem, to Salesforce itself–trying to get the best results from their products so they can retain and expand their customer base. To help improve the likelihood of a successful customer experience, Salesforce offers exclusive training tools and experiences to those in their Salesforce partner ecosystem; something that is beneficial for partners as well as Salesforce and should ultimately be expanded from both sides.
This is written for non-Salesforce organizations in the ecosystem to convince them of the benefits of partner-exclusive resources, Salesforce’s partner success team to convince them of the program’s merits, and individuals in the ecosystem to expose them to things out there to make them better. You might expect me to start by laying out all the ways Salesforce helps its partners compared to unaffiliated experts and end users, but instead I’m going to start by arguing for the merits of these resources from both partners’ and Salesforce’s perspectives before highlighting the partner-exclusive training resources that I think are the most important. Skip to the end if you’re already convinced or just want to see what partner-exclusive resources are out there.
The Salesforce partner ecosystem (consultants and independent service vendors) represents a significant but not all-encompassing part of people who are paid through some type of service related to Salesforce’s products. These are organizations and individuals who specialize in Salesforce configuration and integration, so why spend time on content Salesforce creates to train them? After all, if you’re an expert in the platform and work to set it up for many different organizations, what could the people who work at a company as large and seemingly disconnected as Salesforce possibly teach you? Hubris, I say. I’m not saying Salesforce will teach you hubris, instead the total opposite. It’s egocentric and absurd to think that any Salesforce ecosystem resource, however talented and proficient, is going to be better than the collective mind of Salesforce’s employees and product teams–the groups literally driving platform improvement and expansion, with access to the best individuals with the answers. As good as you are there is something that someone at Salesforce can teach you, even if it’s only to shed light on the future of the platform and where the organization sees the platform going (though I’m confident there is a whole lot more you can learn from them). Back to the question, why spend time on content Salesforce creates for their partners?
Why should partner organizations invest time and money in these resources?
For Salesforce partners, partner-exclusive resources are the best and cheapest training available for their resources, they offer an amazing networking opportunity with both Salesforce itself as well as other organizations in the ecosystem, and it helps to create a unique value proposition for your organization compared to the rest of the Salesforce ecosystem. It’s the cheapest training because it’s almost all free to partner organizations, and it’s definitely the best because it’s created by the people who are creating platform changes. It’s an amazing way to network with Salesforce employees, who drive a lot of the success or failure of Salesforce ecosystem organizations and individuals. On top of that you’re often networking with other individuals and organizations in the niche ecosystem. With an ecosystem based on a specific other company’s products, a lot of opportunity and career progression is driven by connections you have within the ecosystem. It’s a relatively small world of Salesforce “experts” and partners very often leverage the networks of their existing employees to find new talent. In addition to the training being helpful and allowing you to expand your network, consuming the partner-exclusive training resources also helps partners differentiate themselves from each other. Consuming the partner-exclusive online content and in-person workshops gives a Salesforce partner a unique value proposition compared to the large ecosystem of Salesforce experts. Whether it’s just one or all of these reasons that you’re drawn to, it’s hard to argue against there being some benefit of partner-exclusive training resources for Salesforce partners.
Why does Salesforce invest time and money in these resources?
Salesforce isn’t doing all of this for charity, not by a long shot. This benefits Salesforce as much as, or more than, partners in the ecosystem who consume the content. Salesforce has skin in the game when it comes to implementations and configuration of their products being effective. With a customer base as large as theirs, Salesforce couldn’t possibly act as the configurer for all the organizations who use their products, but at the same time if those companies don’t see a return on their investment in the platform they’re not likely to be customers of Salesforce for long. Salesforce is not cheap for its customers, and while they continue to expand their out of the box functionality many organizations would not continue to use the platform if it couldn’t be customized and expanded to their specific needs. Better customization and general use of their products means a better ROI for Salesforce’s customers, which leads to improved customer retention for Salesforce. They’re helping you to help them by training you and further educating you on the best practices of working with their products–not to say that it isn’t also helpful for you in ways I’ve already stated. In addition to helping those already competent get better, Salesforce is also helping the partners to expand knowledge to new resources, increasing the size of the Salesforce ecosystem. This is also beneficial to Salesforce, since more resources means more projects can be done and more partners means more competitive pricing for Salesforce’s customers.
Salesforce also benefits from a more capable partner ecosystem through adopting or purchasing solutions. Salesforce partners solve a lot of problems that Salesforce itself hasn’t yet added or hasn’t made generally available, and since Salesforce is constantly trying to improve its offerings those ideas and solutions are often at the top of the list. Look back at the history of Salesforce offerings and the ecosystem, and there are countless examples of Salesforce either building a partner-created solution into their products or acquiring the partner altogether to integrate their solutions as new features or entire products (Pardot, Health Cloud, CPQ, forms, etc.). Bringing experienced ecosystem resources into partner-exclusive training allows Salesforce’s product team to see the issues and questions that are currently being faced in the ecosystem and how partners are currently responding to them through custom solutions.
In addition to improving the skill of implementations and giving the product teams an ongoing list of ideas, partner-exclusive training resources help Salesforce evaluate and rank both partner organizations and individuals in the ecosystem based on what they do well. They’re able to see who’s pursuing learning and expanding their capabilities on the platform. There are a lot of Salesforce partners in each size range and specialty, and differentiating any of them from one another is subjective based on the metrics you use. Adding an additional element of Salesforce generated educational resources allows them to see who is buying into the Salesforce way of view and doing things.
What partner-exclusive resources are available?
So you’re convinced of the benefits of these resources, but what’s actually out there available to Salesforce partners and not others in the ecosystem? There are two main training and skill benefits to being a Salesforce partner–exclusive online and in-person training resources created by Salesforce for Salesforce admins, analysts, developers, and architects.
The Partner Learning Camp is an online training library where people who work for Salesforce partners can enroll in courses to improve their skills in all areas of the platform. Partner Learning Camp is like Trailhead Plus, available only to those who work at Salesforce partners. The courses are much more in-depth and professional resource focused than Trailhead, which are usually things that people with less knowledge of the platform can follow.
The in person partner-exclusive training resources Salesforce offers are product- or role-centered workshops. Whether it’s a workshop meant to help a specific role in the ecosystem (ie. analyst, admin, developer, architect, etc), or help bolster knowledge and implementation skills of a specific Salesforce product (ie. Health Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Field Service Lightning, etc.). Salesforce’s own product team and product architects lead pre-planned content and answer questions live, which is an invaluable resource for knowledge of both existing and future features and solutions.
How do I make the most of these resources?
These resources are great for people in the beginning of their learning journey or tenured in the Salesforce ecosystem. It benefits the individuals who consume them, the Salesforce partners they work for, and Salesforce as a company and ecosystem. I’d like to see more partners buying into the benefits of these resources to give their resources better opportunities to improve and align their internal best practices with Salesforce’s established best practices. I’d like to see more people in the ecosystem, myself included, pushing their Salesforce partner employers to allow them and enable them to participate in these valuable partner-exclusive opportunities to improve their skills and move their careers forward. I’d also like to see Salesforce double down on their commitment to partners, and create a more unified ecosystem of implementation and configuration. I don’t want them to take anything away from their efforts to improve generally accessible training resources–I want the exact opposite–but I think they need to realize the full picture of how their partner ecosystem impacts their business and the perception of their products. In short, more learning for all but specifically more partner focused initiatives to further Salesforce’s lead as the ecosystem with the best training resources available.
What arguments or points did you find more helpful? What didn’t line up with your views on the subject? I’m curious to know, so please leave a comment below. If I agree I’ll make an edit to the article and attribute credit of the improvement to you.
The Declarative Architect 