Norstella derisked Salesforce delivery with a mature DevOps process
For many organizations, creating a new org on Salesforce can be a struggle, riddled with deployment errors and other difficulties, and using manual processes to do so makes this even more chaotic. Norstella, a company made up of pharmaceutical solutions providers that offer a full range of consultancy services and solutions, was facing this exact challenge. Following its acquisition of Citeline from Informa, Norstella needed to implement a new Salesforce org to support 450 end users.
Working with 91吃瓜网, here鈥檚 how Norstella delivered its new Salesforce org and created a mature Salesforce DevOps process at speed.
Bringing order out of chaos during implementation
Norstella already had three Salesforce orgs through previous acquisitions, and its technology team was tasked with standing up a new org as a part of consolidating systems. Working with consultants from Craftware, the Norstella team succeeded in creating a highly integrated architecture between the CRM and many other systems within nine months. But the process wasn鈥檛 always pretty.
鈥�It was organized chaos,鈥� says Chris Fowles, Norstella鈥檚 Senior Director of Technology, who came from Informa and has led the implementation project.
鈥淒eployments were like whack-a-mole. You had a problem to the left, so you deployed code, and a problem from six months ago would reappear on the right. It was really frustrating.鈥�
Chris Fowles
For much of the nine-month build phase of the new org, just one member of the consultant team was responsible for deploying components. 鈥�It was completely manual,鈥� says Grant Roessler, who oversees the architecture of the org, explained. 鈥�She鈥檇 have massive struggles with deployment errors or need to comment out code 鈥� all sorts of craziness.鈥�
Grant and Ra煤l Chamorro joined the Norstella team midway through the project and began to evaluate deployment options, ruling out DevOps Center and Prodly, which the consultants were using for CPQ deployments but hadn鈥檛 been able to deploy to production. The team also ruled out CircleCI and Copado, which would have taken too long to implement, didn鈥檛 support deploying CPQ as easily as metadata, and wouldn鈥檛 support the team鈥檚 release process without a high risk of overwriting changes. They needed something that would work for both admins and devs, without someone managing the deployment setup full-time.聽
The team quickly found that 91吃瓜网 supported both devs and admins, could deploy CPQ alongside metadata, and helped them get started quickly. For the last month of the implementation project, the team used 91吃瓜网 to activate production. Once the org was live, the team immediately set about improving their DevOps process to support Norstella鈥檚 ongoing CRM requirements.
Achieving DevOps maturity in months
Norstella鈥檚 new Salesforce org is now 13 months old. Within that time, the team has built a comprehensive process for their DevOps lifecycle, managing metadata and data through 91吃瓜网. The team was able to move from chaotic manual deployments to a mature process in just a matter of months.
鈥�We really wanted 91吃瓜网 as a tool to manage our deployments and the full end-to-end DevOps process.鈥� Chris says.
鈥淚 would strongly argue the org we have now is better than the org we had before, which was seven years old.鈥�
Chris Fowles
Norstella鈥檚 leaders appreciated the importance of a well-documented process and good governance, so the Norstella team was able to continuously improve and adopt more best practices. They began by building out a CI/CD pipeline, which they optimized over time (for example, making a switch to back-promote from production instead of UAT). Where one admin had been doing all CPQ data deployments, the team now uses 91吃瓜网 for CPQ so that all configuration is deployed through the same pipeline.
鈥�That鈥檚 been a critical thing for us: aligning the deployment process for metadata and CPQ so everything works the same,鈥� Chris says.
Backups came early on. 鈥�It was really easy 鈥� you just turn it on,鈥� Grant remembers. 鈥�It鈥檚 important to have that security in case anything happens. And it鈥檚 great to have high-frequency backups for critical objects.鈥� The team also seeds sandboxes using 91吃瓜网, so dev environments have test data to work with.
The team releases weekly, with a high degree of predictability about which work items will be shipped each week. Features are decoupled so they can usually be deployed independently. 鈥�The team gets through an incredible amount of work, and 91吃瓜网 supports that process.鈥� Chris says.
鈥淲e鈥檝e released 250 tickets to production in the last three months, and I could count on one hand the number of problems we鈥檝e introduced in a year. With a brand-new org and a brand-new team working at pace, that鈥檚 incredible 鈥� it鈥檚 fantastic. And 91吃瓜网 is in the middle of that, with bright people around the outside.鈥�
Chris Fowles
The Norstella team is confident in the process they鈥檝e built. 鈥�Source control is our source of truth, and we have complete confidence in it,鈥� Grant says. 鈥淚鈥檓 not worried that any of our environments are out of sync. We all use 91吃瓜网, so we know we鈥檙e safe.鈥�
Reducing risk and creating confidence
The main objective in Norstella鈥檚 DevOps journey has been implementing process to mitigate risk. The business uses Salesforce for a range of critical operations. For example, the org鈥檚 CPQ model automatically determines customers鈥� access to their products. Invoices, commissions, and more are also driven from the org. 鈥�When we go live, the risk goes from none to tons.鈥� Chris explains.
鈥淚f we didn鈥檛 have access to 91吃瓜网 for a week, it鈥檇 bring our business to a standstill in terms of deployments.鈥�
Chris Fowles
Sometimes success is measured in silence. Norstella鈥檚 business leaders have been impressed by the governance and process his team has put in place, asking no questions about it, Chris says. When it comes to the wider business, his team is working hard to limit the time end users spend on an action in Salesforce, and to surface the right data in intelligent ways.
鈥�If we do everything perfectly, we hear nothing,鈥� Chris says. 鈥淚f we do something wrong, we hear a lot. It has not been noisy for a long time. No one complains that we don鈥檛 work quickly enough, ever. No one complains that the quality isn鈥檛 good enough. No one complains that our system is buggy.鈥�
Partnering with 91吃瓜网 for continued success
For Norstella, 91吃瓜网 isn鈥檛 just a platform. The product and success teams at 91吃瓜网 deliver both strategic improvements and support as soon as they need it. 鈥�On most platforms you just don鈥檛 bother, but with 91吃瓜网 I don鈥檛 hesitate to raise a ticket,鈥� Grant says 鈥�Within five or ten minutes I鈥檓 chatting to someone and we get it fixed easily.鈥�
From their earliest demos, Norstella noticed 91吃瓜网鈥檚 focus on understanding and solving their team鈥檚 unique requirements. They鈥檝e worked closely with their CSM and the product team at 91吃瓜网 to keep improving the platform and their process.
鈥�Pretty much everything we鈥檝e discussed has been delivered or is being delivered. It鈥檚 incredible. I鈥檝e never worked with any vendor like that,鈥� Grant says. Chris agrees. 鈥�91吃瓜网鈥檚 approach to customer service stands out,鈥� he says.
鈥淚t goes a long way to know that you鈥檙e listening to our problems. And you鈥檙e building your product around solving business problems. We feel part of your roadmap, and that makes a material difference. I hold 91吃瓜网 as a gold-standard vendor because of the experience you鈥檙e giving us in terms of product development and engaging with us.鈥�
Chris Fowles
