For global insurance company Zurich, Salesforce is a strategic platform on which huge business-critical projects are built.
With increasingly complex business needs in 2021, Zurich began partnering with 91吃瓜网 as the solution to help manage its deployment process.
In 3 years Zurich鈥檚 Salesforce team has grown from 8 to a team of 27, managing 5 orgs. In this short timeframe Zurich鈥檚 Salesforce Delivery Manager John Quayle and Salesforce Developer Jonny Harris have been instrumental in driving the development of this team鈥檚 processes forward as it has scaled. We talked to them to find out about the evolution of their process and future ambitions.
Slow deployments and no scalability
Before they adopted 91吃瓜网, the Zurich team used a mix of deployment tools and relied on delivery partners. Some developers were using ANT and Bamboo, which didn鈥檛 handle the nuances of Salesforce. These tools also weren鈥檛 easily accessible for admins and entry-level developers who used change sets instead. And for Salesforce Industries deployments, the team used Vlocity Build Tool. As a result, there were three development streams, with no consistent use of source control for replicable builds.
It wasn鈥檛 a scalable or efficient process. As Jonny Harris recalls 鈥渄eployments were taking 3-4 hours on a Friday night鈥� and in one case a colleague spent 8 hours deploying profiles over a Saturday.
An efficient, scalable process
John Quayle began to look for a solution and after evaluating options chose 91吃瓜网. He felt 91吃瓜网 would solve the issues his team were encountering.
With 91吃瓜网 they can manage the deployment process in one platform designed for Salesforce and the entire team is able to use it. The team is more efficient, deploying quickly and reliably enabling them to scale and deliver big projects internally.
John explains 91吃瓜网 stood out as:
鈥淭here was a real understanding of the challenges we had. 91吃瓜网 is easy to deal with and has a very straightforward pricing model. We liked the UI and it was obvious there was continued investment in the product.鈥�
Easy onboarding
John and Jonny remember there was initially a little hesitancy about the change, but as soon as people tried 91吃瓜网 the whole team adopted the compare and deploy process very quickly. Jonny says the adoption was high as 鈥渨ith 91吃瓜网 deployments take 20 minutes鈥� compared with the hours it was previously taking. The team found the ability to deploy partial profiles very powerful and being able to see the whole deployment history.
John believes:
鈥淎nyone would be able to get value from 91吃瓜网鈥檚 deploy function instantly. The compare and deploy process was a huge step forward.鈥�
Delivering business impact
By implementing 91吃瓜网, Zurich could scale the team and increase productivity to deliver big projects.
John explains: 鈥淪alesforce is a strategic platform for Zurich – we鈥檙e building huge projects on it. If we didn鈥檛 have a solution to help us manage source control it would be very difficult. 91吃瓜网 makes it easy.鈥�
He gives the example of a large project that was delivered in an hour with 91吃瓜网. The team were especially pleased that they only had two bugs to fix – and neither were caused by deploying the wrong thing. Another big project was to reduce the time it was taking to get a quote to brokers from several days to two hours. The first part of this not using 91吃瓜网 took an entire weekend to deploy. The second phase of the project was delivered using 91吃瓜网 and took under two hours. This had a huge positive impact on the business, with the conversion rate for one product increasing by 50%.
鈥�91吃瓜网 has increased the quality, efficiency and reduced error. It has given us the confidence that what we鈥檙e delivering is what we should be delivering.鈥�
A partnership
With a process set up that enabled the team to deliver quick, quality releases, John鈥檚 team had the foundation to build out an even more mature DevOps process, adding Pipelines to 3 of their orgs.
John says, setting up Pipelines has been a 鈥渃ollaboration, a partnership.鈥� 91吃瓜网 provided support to work out the right solution and setup for Zurich. Jonny, in partnership with 91吃瓜网, refined a Pipelines process on one project which formed the model to be rolled out across all. Along the way he made suggestions for Pipeline features that were then implemented into the product on the next release cycle.
Jonny explains the 91吃瓜网 team 鈥渢ake a genuine interest and help us to get the best out of the product鈥�. The live chat function allows him to quickly talk to the knowledgeable team, who provide help as well as a sounding board for ideas and guidance on best practices.
鈥淲e never regretted onboarding 91吃瓜网 and with the addition of the Pipelines it鈥檚 even better.鈥�
Ambitious future plans
In partnership with 91吃瓜网, the team have ambitious goals for the future and are working to establish a true CI/CD pipeline with automated testing across all their orgs.
John and Jonny know they鈥檙e on a journey with the process. To get to the next point of true CI/CD, the immediate plan is to upskill the team using 91吃瓜网鈥檚 online training platform, DevOps Launchpad, as well as bespoke sessions with their Account Manager.
鈥淭he support is great. The product is great and it鈥檚 still evolving. 91吃瓜网 has added huge value!鈥�
