Tag Archives: EspoCRM

Web Application Development

How to Reduce Salesforce Licenses Cost

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Motivation:

  • You are using Salesforce for your daily work. It works very well but the cost is too expensive.
  • You want to find  a way to reduce Salesforce licenses cost.

Suggestions:

1. Salesforce cost depends on a selected Edition and number of user licenses.

2. An edition is selected based on features that an ORG needs.

For example, an ORG that needs the API and Flows feature for custom development has to choose Professional or Enterprise edition.

The number Flows are very limited for Professional edition (5 flows).

However the max number of flows of the Enterprise edition is 2000 that may be too many for a small business too.

This may be Salesforce intention that they want customers to use Enterprise edition.

3. A license price depends on the selected edition. For example, an ORG needs to  pay $150 /user/month for the Enterprise edition.

4. A User License may be Salesforce License or Salesforce Platform License. A Profile defines permissions. A Profile with login is attached to one User License (except the case that the Profile is used for Community portal users).

5. Assume that an ORG may use 13 User Licenses: 5 System Administrators (5 Salesforce Licenses) and 8 Platform Users (8 Salesforce Platform Licenses).

In order to reduce the cost the ORG may consider some strategies below.

  • The ORG may use shared account for all the employees who have the same responsibilities (tasks) if possible.
  • The ORG may retain only 2 Salesforce licenses: One is for API access and development, and the other is for administrative tasks.
  • The ORG may change appropriate licenses from Salesforce license to Platform license if they do not use the built-in Leads, Opportunities, Forecasts, Cases, and Solutions.
  • The ORG should disable all unused accounts.
  • The ORG may develop Community portal for some user types and move all these users from Platform license to Community license.
  • If you are using Salesforce development platform then try moving your custom development features to another cheaper development platform, such as Zoho Creator.
  • If you are using Salesforce CRM as is then try moving your business workflows and data to another cheaper provider, such as EspoCRM.

 

    Software Project Management

    Should We Rebuild or Renovate an Outdated System?

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    Motivation

    You have an outdated system and want to rebuild or renovate it. You do not know which path is best for you.

    Guidelines

    Typically you have 2 main options for an outdated system.

    Option 1 – Replacement: You can rebuild the whole system and migrate the existing data to the new system.

    If you follow this approach then you may consider WordPress if your system is just a brochure website. WordPress is very suitable for building a brochure website.

    If you system is a simple software supporting few business processes then you may consider EspoCRM. EspoCRM is very suitable for building simple business processes.

    If your system is a sophisticated software supporting specific business then there may be several things you may need to consider when deciding to rebuild your system.

    1. The effort to migrate the existing data to the new platform. A deep analysis of the existing data is required to create a reasonable estimate for this task.

    2. The effort to integrate the new system with other systems that are integrated with the existing system. An analysis of the existing source code is required to create a reasonable estimate for this task.

    3. The effort to implement all the existing business processes in the new system. A list of all business processes with their concrete steps is required to create a reasonable estimate for this task.

    4. The possible mismatches of the new platform and the existing code base and data. These may require changes of business processes or removal of some existing features or considerable effort for migration.

    5. Are the source code, database and files of the existing website fully available? Some websites might suffer vendor lock-in issue. It may be true that any exported data is unusable without the source code. Therefore no migration tool can help data migration due to specific data structures and constrains.

    For example no one-way encrypted user passwords can be migrated to a new system. The best data that might be available for you is just Excel or CSV files. The contents of these files may be imported to the new system manually or automatically but no business logic can be transferred. In this case, rebuilding the whole system (preferably using WordPress) will require manually copying the contents to the new system and partially importing few tables (e.g. emails, first names, last names, page titles) to the new system.

    Option 2 – Renovation: You may choose to renovate your system if the existing technology stack is not too outdated.

    When choosing this option you may need to consider several things below.

    1. The life cycle of the existing technology stack. The existing technology stack should not be deprecated and is still in active support.

    2. The ecosystem of the existing technology stack. Most of 3rd party components for the existing technology stack should still be in development and support.

    3. The capabilities of the existing technology stack. The existing technology stack should still support your new requirements although the solutions may not be perfect for performance or user experience.

    4. The cost of the existing technology stack. You should still be able to afford the cost of the existing technology stack.