With 10+ years' experience building more than 70 enterprise Salesforce Platform experiences, we've seen firsthand how successful implementations and configurations of Salesforce transform our clients' operations. This transformation empowers sales, marketing, and customer service teams with better performance data, deeper customer insights, better team alignment, and improved service efficiency.

However, we've also heard our fair share of criticism. Typical Salesforce frustrations are its perceived inflexibility, complexity, labor-intensity, and cost.  

Out of the box, the platform might feel generic and not tailored to your business's preferred way of working, resulting in lagging adoption, wasted hours, or simply, an expensive CRM platform that you're only using a fraction of its features.

To overcome these challenges, Salesforce configuration is key. Fortunately, that's what we specialize in - we customize Salesforce to work how you work.

Highly versatile, Salesforce can be tailored to streamline workflows, automate manual tasks, enhance reporting, and improve collaboration. Integrations with third-party systems, and elevating customer experiences can be achieved through both customizations and configurations - similar to your favorite website, portal, and mobile app.  

Would you gain better adoption, efficiency, and ROI if you customized Salesforce?

Our helpful guide weighs the pros and cons of Salesforce customization and Salesforce configuration, providing an actionable checklist to help you decide what's best for your business needs and budget.

Table of Contents

1. What's the Difference Between Salesforce Customization and Salesforce Configuration?
2. Why Should You Customize Salesforce?
3. When You Shouldn't Customize Salesforce
4. Salesforce Transformation Decision Checklist
5. Tips and Tricks for a Successful Salesforce Configuration Process
6. Example of Salesforce Customization

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What's the Difference Between Salesforce Customization and Salesforce Configuration?

Often times we hear Salesforce customization and Salesforce configuration used interchangeably. However, there is a distinct difference between them.

Salesforce customization involves adding new features through custom coding, like integrating third-party systems not available on the AppExchange marketplace and building interactive reports.

On the other hand, Salesforce configurations generally simpler, are modifications to default features, such as adjusting settings, writing a formula or specific rule.

Why Should You Customize Salesforce?

Building or moving your platform to Salesforce is a major investment decision. We’re often asked, is Salesforce easy to customize? In short, it really depends how your organization plans on using the platform. Salesforce can be customized in various ways, from minor tweaks to complete overhauls.

Ask yourself the questions below to determine whether a Salesforce customization is right for your organization.

Data, Workflows, and Reporting

As an enterprise platform, Salesforce is generic to work with widespread, popular business models.

This approach works for many organizations, but equal numbers feel stifled and boxed in.

If generic Salesforce processes, data sets, reports, validations, fields, or objects don’t mimic your preferred way of doing business or accommodate your organization’s needs – it’s time to make Salesforce accommodate you.

When customizing Salesforce, how do you decide between “minor renovations” and a full, fresh rebuild?

Depending on your teams' current processes, frustrations, timelines, and goals it may be faster and more cost-effective to rebuild a custom Salesforce platform rather than try to force a round peg in a square hole.

Ask Yourself:

• Is Salesforce solving our business problems effectively?
• Is the platform a core component of our overall customer experience? Will our brand suffer if the experience is lacking?
• Do our business processes have the flexibility to work around a system?
• Will the new platform maintain and support current processes and workflows?  
• Would our team be more productive with additional functionality, not included in the standard Salesforce?
• Is Salesforce making our employees more or less efficient? Are they relying on workarounds?
• Are we gaining greater visibility, data, and reporting across our organization?

If the answers to these questions are a resounding "Yes", you may be pigeonholed by out-of-the-box Salesforce. Your team will benefit from Salesforce customization to make it easier to complete tasks, gain better visibility and reporting, and deliver a better customer experience.

Skip ahead for tips and considerations for a smooth Salesforce customization project.

In the next chapter, we'll get into scenarios when it might be a good idea to hold off on a Salesforce customization.

When You Shouldn't Customize Salesforce

Deciding to customize Salesforce is a balance between needs, goals, budget, and process.

Here are three instances when customizing Salesforce might be a bad idea.

Your Organization is Going Through a Change  

‍Perhaps, you are a new organization, or your company is in transition – acquiring or being acquired. Maybe, you’ve opened a new product line or are radically changing your processes.

If you’re unclear about how your organization will use or integrate Salesforce within a current or evolving IT infrastructure, we recommend taking a step back and letting the dust settle before making the investment.

That custom report or Lightning app that seemed like the best way to measure success and improve customer loyalty may suddenly not be necessary.

If you can’t yet nail down a business process due to a major change within your organization – first, focus on your business goals and consider how existing technology infrastructure can best serve those goals to avoid redundant efforts.

Changing Business Processes Would be Easier

Frequently, it's easier to change a business process than a technical modification.

Assessing the organizational value of the customization effort against the cost is a critical step.

We work with clients to calculate that value - whether it’s increased process efficiency, aggregated time savings, or increased customer retention.

But, if small changes to your business processes would solve your challenges, we recommend holding off on a customization effort.

Every organization is constantly changing and improving to keep up with their industry and support customers' evolving needs. In light of that, we recommend:

• Keep a log of changes you wish to make to Salesforce for a future phase.
• Talk to your people - they are often the best sources for ideas on how your systems could be better - and in our opinion, enhancements that originate from the user community are categorically more likely to gain adoption.

Eventually, your organization may hit a tipping point where the value of the changes and the costs are better in balance - the ROI will be clear.

Your Salesforce Build is Just Right

‍Sometimes, your needs and Salesforce's functionality matches up perfectly – and that’s great! We’re big fans of not fixing what isn't broken.

Other times, the features or changes you're seeking are scheduled to be released in a forthcoming update. If that’s the case, ask yourself if you can wait, or modify your business processes temporarily to bridge the gap.

If you’re not sure if Salesforce is planning a release that solves your problems, contact us. We keep our finger on the pulse of all-things Salesforce to keep our clients and partners up-to-date.

Salesforce Transformation Decision Checklist

Before proceeding with a Salesforce configuration, document the business processes and workflows that Salesforce will support. Note that not all Salesforce editions offer the same level of customizability. Only Enterprise and Unlimited editions allow for extensive customization, including access to Salesforce Sandboxes.

Now, can you answer "yes" to any of these statements?

• Salesforce lacks out-of-the-box functionality I need to accomplish my goals.
• I’m not willing to compromise my current business processes to fit the generic Salesforce system.
• It is important for Salesforce to embody my company’s branding/aesthetic.
• My employees use workarounds to avoid using Salesforce.
• Salesforce is too manual and labor-intensive.
• I feel like our Salesforce reports are lacking.
• The onboarding process for Salesforce is extensive.

If you said "yes" to any of these statements, it's time to optimize and configure Salesforce to maximize your investment.

However, if you say "yes" to any of the statements below, then you might hold off on any major Salesforce customization efforts until a later date.

• My company is in the process of acquiring or being acquired.
• We anticipate an upcoming Salesforce release will resolve our current challenge(s).

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to one of our Salesforce experts.

Tips for a Successful Salesforce Configuration Process

The backbone of a successful Salesforce implementation (and any development project) is setting business and technical goals and analyzing your data.

You’ll thank yourself and realize time and cost savings later.

Salesforce Modification or Blank Slate

It’s critical to know, upfront, if developers are working on an existing system and if any customizations are taking place.

Sometimes, a blank slate is easier, because they're not interacting with the complexities of an existing system. Other times, a pre-existing system leads developers directly to one solution by the process of elimination.

Audit Your Data

Reports, charts, graphs, and automation are useless without good data.

‍If you put spoiled food into a great recipe, the end result is still garbage. At the heart of your Salesforce customization effort should be the ultimate goal of having pristine and helpful data.

Audit your data to understand:

• What data do you currently have?
• What data do you want?
• What information do you need from your data?
• How is your data collected?
• How clean is your data?
• What is the best way to present your data?
• How will your data be created/input?
• What stakeholders need access?
• How will your data be used?

What Are Your Goals?

Clean data is only as useful as its presentation. The same data, visualized in two different ways, could help make key business decisions or create intense confusion.

Other goal questions to consider:

• What are you trying to achieve?
• Can you tie those goals to specific business outcomes?
• What KPIs are most critical to the success of your organization?
• What is the ideal end state for your business and how can data help move you in that direction?

What is an Example of Customization in Salesforce?

Whereoware has expertise in creating customized Salesforce portals for various sectors, including a notable project for GSA, a U.S. government agency. We transformed their out-of-the-box Salesforce Platform into a specialized portal for commercial real estate partners to submit lease properties to federal managers.

This enhancement streamlined application processing, document uploads, and status reviews, leading to increased user engagement and operational efficiency, while significantly reducing manual labor and form submission errors.

This project demonstrates the impact of an effective Salesforce customization in meeting specific organizational needs. View the full case study here.

Whereoware Can Audit, Optimize, and Customize Salesforce

As a full-service customer experience agency, and Salesforce Partner, Whereoware offers expertise in both Salesforce customization and Salesforce configuration.

What makes us different is how we engage clients to thoroughly understand their industries, business challenges, and goals.

Interested in learning more about our Salesforce customization services? Connect with a Salesforce or custom development expert.