Refactoring your Salesforce instance can be an investment that requires substantial resources. And while continuous refactoring for low hanging fruit is recommended for agile development, larger changes require more planning. The first step is to determine when your business is in a position to make the most out of a refactoring effort. And while there may be signs unique to each individual company, we have compiled a list of common reasons. You may want to consider refactoring if:

Your Organization Is Growing

One of the most common reasons to refactor is to deal with business growth. When businesses are doing well, systems often experience increased users, customers, or data. This leads to a spike in system activity that can cause issues if not dealt with appropriately. When there is more activity in any system, it’s only natural to scale to deal with the increased traffic. Some ways businesses can begin refactoring when they experience growth are by:

• Reevaluating user roles and teams
• Changing organization-level defaults
• Implementing more secure access privileges

Your Data Is Changing

It only makes sense to change the data structure in Salesforce if an organization’s data is changing. A need for more data and visibility can develop over time, and refactoring your Salesforce org’s data model may become necessary. This can come in the form of a full data revamp or smaller changes to objects, fields, and relationships. The driving force behind this sort of refactoring is often the need to scale key performance indicators (KPIs) with new business activities. Once a business begins to rely on new data to operate, it may be necessary to refactor by:

• Creating new Salesforce objects and fields
• Looking at object relationships
• Determining the value of established metrics
• Tracking new and valuable data
• Developing better ways to showcase information

Your Use Cases Are Changing

Ideally, use cases should be evaluated on an ongoing basis. Because systems like Salesforce are configured based on company use cases, any modifications to these driving factors can create a need for refactoring. We recommend that you solicit constant feedback from system stakeholders to understand what changes are needed and when. If you keep clear lines of communication, you can even prepare for these changes ahead of time. In order to keep your Salesforce instance up-to-date with user demands, you can:

• Develop new applications for specific use cases
• Modify existing applications when use cases change
• Edit objects and fields to keep up with changing requirements

Your Users Are Encountering Roadblocks

If your users are encountering roadblocks, chances are that they will let you know. When this happens, it’s important to keep track of system complaints to identify patterns and trends. If certain problems persist over time, it may be time to refactor. No one gets deeper into the Salesforce day-to-day than your users, and they can tell you about issues that an admin may never encounter. And while you cannot address every single grievance, keeping a log of all reports and addressing widespread complaints will improve your system in the long run. Some issues that are commonly discovered by users may be:

• Long loading times for reports based on data structure
• The need for data to be available at different levels and views
• Application shortcomings
• Processes that take too long to complete

Your Budget Is Increasing

Budget increases fall in line with organization growth, and refactoring is easier to do with more resources. If you were to suddenly experience an increased budget, you could hire more Salesforce staff to support the system. More staff means more time to pursue projects, which means that your team can begin to address any of the above problems. With increased resources, your team can begin to address:

• New applications that have been on the backburner
• User problem reports detailing inconveniences that are not huge roadblocks
• Onboarding new departments who have yet to use the system

Work With A Salesforce Partner

Because refactoring your Salesforce instance requires a large amount of foresight, it can be beneficial to bring in a Salesforce partner with years of experience. Ntegro has worked with many different companies, and we know how to refactor Salesforce for different business and growth cycles. When the time to refactor comes around, you want to be sure that you are setting up your Salesforce instance for future success. If you want to learn how we can help, contact us online for a free consultation.

Do you have any stories about refactoring that you’d like to share? How about warnings for companies looking to reevaluate their Salesforce instance? Post any advice you’d like to share in the comments below!