There’s a reason the IT managed services market is up—estimated to be worth over $557 billion at the end of 2028. Businesses are collecting more and more data, and they need help managing and analyzing it. And with 85 percent of companies keeping sensitive data attached to cloud software, sound managed services are more important than ever. Unfortunately, many companies are in the middle of a lackluster experience with their support providers, just churning out the day-to-day and not preparing for the future. 

This article tackles two of the most common complaints about your average support engagement and why they fail to delight customers and improve user experience overall: lack of delivery experience and rigid support structures. We’ll also look at how Simplus Strategic Services contrasts with those legacy providers by taking an innovative approach to the managed services experience. 

Lack of delivery experience and innovation in business transformation

Strategic Services at Simplus was designed to break the mold of what most of us in the Salesforce ecosystem have come to expect from a managed services and support organization. If you’ve spent any time in Salesforce consulting, you know the story: implementations, refactors, and transformations are handled by a project delivery organization, with post-go-live support, defect resolution, and small enhancements reserved for a managed services team after the fact. 

Many consulting companies treat managed services as a farm league for their delivery organization, depending on what services are being offered. However, at Simplus, many consultants in our Strategic Services team previously worked in our project delivery wing. Together, we can think critically and creatively while drawing from a large body of knowledge and industry best practices.

Rigid support structures

Another common concern within the industry is the rigidity of the typical support engagement structure. One of the cornerstones of our model is its flexibility and adaptability. This allows our teams to not only successfully maintain our clients’ Salesforce environments and improve their processes but also to design and implement large-scale business transformations. Below, you will learn about two recent examples of ways we’ve worked to bring business transformation through our engagements.

1. One of our clients, a Fortune 100 manufacturing company, adopted Salesforce CPQ several years ago to enhance their quoting process. They brought in Simplus Strategic Services for general Salesforce administration and maintenance, taking opportunities for small enhancements or bug fixes along the way. In the past year, our relationship has evolved such that we now have regular opportunities to analyze, configure, and deliver larger, more transformational solutions that reach wider within their Salesforce organization. One of our favorite examples of this is what our client calls the “Enhanced Quote” in Salesforce CPQ, which allows sales representatives the ability to stage clusters of hardware and software products for delivery on different dates. The main business motivation for this use case was to avoid the need to proliferate Quotes for each delivery date, of which there could be a dozen or more for a given deal. This will significantly shorten the quote-to-order lifecycle and allow for more accurate reporting.

2. Another client, a SaaS leader in financial technology, recently launched a new product line with tiered pricing, but where the length of the deal defines the tier instead of the quantity sold. We implemented a custom pricing model in Salesforce CPQ to accommodate these products and enable our client to price accurately and competitively, especially while in a period of growth in the international market.

As businesses continue to grow and software needs evolve, having the right people and technology available is more important than ever. Whether we are chasing down an order management solution for a manufacturing giant or a guided selling experience for a boutique software company, Simplus Strategic Services will guide your business transformation to the best solution.