Salesforce Hacks, we all have seen or even implemented Salesforce hacks. During my CTA-Coaching I’m confronted with plenty of hacks from all over the world. Creativity sees no limits.
The longer I think about it, the clearer my opinion becomes: Say No To Hacks!
My definition: A hack is something that works and solves a problem but is not supposed to be used or working as it does. Hacks start tempting, they solve a problem.
The Salesforce community has its share of hacks, some small, small big. Some innocent, some outright illegal.
One of the more commonly used hacks is to bypass Salesforce licensing by creating “shadow Objects”.
Example:
The Head of Sales and you hack out that smart plan: We use Platform License and create an Object Lead__c for Leads instead of full-blown Sales Cloud Licenses. We save so much money!
At first, everyone is super, super happy. Setting up a custom Lead Object only took you a few days, license costs are super cheap.
A few weeks later, one of your salespeople asks: How do I convert my Leads to Accounts and Contacts? Ok, you build Account__c and Contact__c as well as a basic converting flow.
But how do I forecast my Sales? How can I use Einstein Lead Scoring? How can we use Web-To-Lead?
And finally legal asks: Is that actually legal?
That’s the moment you realize: What sounded like a smart hack at first spiraled into a disaster, you “hacked” yourself into a corner.
From my point of view there are a few major downsides of hacks:
1) Not flexible
Hacks are usually not flexible but only work in the specific use-case they have been hacked for.
2) Not scalable
Hacks are never as scalable as a solution built on a solid foundation
3) Risk
Might it be security or legal risk, hacks always have they inherit risk. By definition, you do something that was not intended to be done.
So that’s my opinion on hacks, what do you think?