As a business leader who has decided that building an app on the AppExchange is the best next step for your company, you are faced with a myriad of decisions, and it can be hard to know what the right choices are. To be successful on the AppExchange, it goes much further than porting over features — it must be treated like you are building a brand new product.
We find that it is always helpful to share the questions and thoughts our clients have as they navigate the journey to the AppExchange. I talked with three of our Business Development Managers to understand how companies build apps for the AppExchange, and why many ultimately choose to work with an external development provider as well as keep their core developers developing on their core product.
The Routes to Market
1. Shifting Current Development Resources
Many of the companies we work with are already experiencing unprecedented growth and success on their own product and see the AppExchange as an untapped opportunity for revenue, distribution, and innovation. With that explosive growth on their own product, development teams typically are running at full capacity squashing bugs while finding ways to innovate and drive the product forward. In more than one case, we’ve heard from clients that they worry by shifting developers away from their current product that they’ll lose velocity and thus the success in their market.
Building a product is like pushing a car — it is slow to get started, but as time goes on you gain velocity. When you shift your developers away from working on your core product, it is like pumping the brakes — they have to re-focus and learn a new system. While the learning is happening, your current product is slowing down. More often than not, when you build an app for the AppExchange, it is a secondary stream of growth — that is not to say that it isn’t valuable, but it is important to ensure that your core product is not hindered as you venture into another space.
2. Hiring and Expanding Your Current Development Team
For companies who are experiencing growth, another core challenge is building out your team fast enough to keep up with that growth. As we found in the State of AppExchange Partners Report, hiring qualified engineers is one of the top 3 challenges partners face.
Building out and ramping up a team is not only expensive but also time-consuming. And it is important to understand that there is a difference between the skills required for Salesforce administrators versus developing a product for the AppExchange. The AppExchange requires your developers to think at scale. It is much harder to build an app that can work on thousands of organizations as well as manage large amounts of data and support new customers.
3. Working with an External Development Team
As you can probably guess, we believe that working with an external development team is the best option. The customers that choose to work with us typically see the benefits in 3 key areas: Time to Market, Navigating Salesforce, and Long-Term Enablement.
Time to Market
Getting your product or app to market quickly is one of the most important pieces for any business leader we talk with — and working with an external development team is the quickest path forward. When you shift internal resources or hire, there is always ramp-up time. However, when working with a resource like CodeScience, developers already have the skills and knowledge of what it takes to get your product to market.
Over the past decade, we have developed processes and shared knowledge that stand up effective development teams quickly. Our developers have a synergy that connects all the lessons learned along the way, and when a question arises, there is already a resource who has gone through the situation before.
Navigating Salesforce
In our early conversations with a new customer, there is a lot of education that has to happen — most of which are around how Salesforce works and functions. Due to Salesforce’s size, it can be difficult to know the best people to interface with and what information to provide — especially for those who are launching on the AppExchange for the first time.
Having someone with you to help navigate this process can be immensely helpful. We work more as a business partner. We help you understand the ins and outs of both the technical and business side of Salesforce.
Long-Term Enablement
The final area where an external development team drives value is through our long-term enablement. While we love our clients, we understand that there is a certain lifecycle to working with us. We don’t hold the information and skills in an ivory tower. It is our goal to help our clients grow their skills and their relationships with Salesforce and other partners.
This goes beyond even development. We have helped train sales teams on their new product and helped with positioning. From showcasing the best click-path, to walking through their product to explain the user experience, it is our goal to see our partners succeed. That means your teams get to take advantage of the knowledge and skills we have all while continuing to grow your core product.
Are you heading to Dreamforce ‘18? We’d love to chat. You can find our booth in the Healthcare Life Sciences area of the Industry Lodge or find us in the Partner Lodge. Want to have a more in-depth discussion? Schedule some time to chat.
Are you thinking about building an app on the AppExchange? Get in touch, we’re always happy to talk and provide our insight on how you can succeed.
