How many Salesforce instances are being used currently? What is the level of customization in each?
How many instances of Salesforce are going to be in the target state?
Which business functions/users will be moved in/out of Salesforce and how the licenses needs to be rationalized?
What is the strategy to continue business-as-usual while implementing the desired future state?
What are the different legacy integrations out there between two organizations, which of those needs to be discontinued, or retrofitted to work with new target systems?
LEADING PRACTICES
Decision of using single or multiple instance(s) of Salesforce needs to taken based on business operational needs, degree of process integration and standardization between merging companies
To integrate instances, map objects (standard to standard, custom to standard, custom to custom) and then continue mapping the fields. Identify the least number of fields necessary for business
Identify technical debts and develop plan to retire it otherwise it will grow
Mapping roles and profile can be a cumbersome process, it is easier to take a persona-based approach and map them to standard roles and profile. Handle exceptions using custom permission sets on as-needed basis e.g., a sales rep for a a specific product line needs extra permissions as the sales rep does a dual role of selling and technical product management
In a phased rollout approach for consolidated Salesforce instances, plan for business continuity (leveraging manual process or legacy instance)
Identify the common parameters (e.g., DUNS #, location for customers; email, phone # for contacts) to merge customer and contact records across multiple systems
Define the list of associated objects to be merged (e.g., opportunities, quotes, orders, products etc.)
Enable customer 360 view by leveraging a single customer definition (record) to sell products & services across all business units
Define the duration of the historical data to be brought over to the new system for regulatory and/or compliance purposes
Retain the snapshots of customer and transactional data (if possible) for a few years in a cost-effective way
Design for product structure that can handle all product variations
LEADING PRACTICES
What is the overlap of customers between the merging orgs?
Do merging orgs define their accounts in similar way (e.g., account hierarchy, bill-to/ship-to entities etc.)
Does it make sense to consolidate the account and contact, what sort of busines disruptions is that going to cause?
What are the different customer facing documents out there? Should those be consolidated and re-branded?
Where is current install base and/or subscription information stored, how different is the data structure between merging orgs?
Can we run consolidated marketing campaigns across the merging orgs?
How is the opportunity lifecycle managed across the merging orgs?
How similar are product configurations and how easily can we create new configurations based on the augmented product line?
Is quoting process tightly integrated (e.g., in CPQ) in merging orgs? Or disparate tools are used?
How do the current orgs manage contracts? Where are contracts created and stored?
How will we approach pricing when integrating the disparate product sets across the merging orgs?
How disparate are support processes across the merging orgs? What support tiers are currently sold by two organizations and how are the entitlements captured?
LEADING PRACTICES
Follow the 80/20 rule, Identify core business processes, align and agree on 80% of processes that are similar before getting into 20% of exceptions
Take M&A as an opportunity to streamline opportunity lifecycle and forecasting and align it to Salesforce out-of-the-box as much as possible
Enable cross-sell / up-sell strategies at business level first before attempting to build it in the CRM systems
Rationalize products to avoid SKU proliferation. Segregate “what” a product is from ”how” it is sold in product definition
Disparate product and pricing structure, quote and contract templates, invoice schedules etc. needs to be aligned and rationalized before the products from multiple organization can be done quoted/contracted in CRM systems
Communicate early with partners on business model and process changes that impact them, the time it takes for them to make changes needs to be considered for planning a rollout
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