There is one “stage” of a Quote-to-Cash implementation that never truly ends: the ongoing upkeep and maintenance of the entire Salesforce system. Many organizations have in-house Salesforce admins to handle this, and that may work. But it could work better and will you require a more specialized expert after setting up a quote-to-cash workflow? Chances are, yes. 

Let’s take a moment to catch some of the highlights from Gilles’ book, The Definitive Guide to Quote-to-Cash, and its chapter on constant Salesforce maintenance. (Spoiler alert: it’s not as hard as you think.)

1. Maintenance can be a burden on the internal team

“The simple fact is that your business isn’t filled with QTC experts. Now, I firmly believe that anyone can become an expert, so long as they have the time to put in the work and the drive to do so. However, asking your employees to achieve that rank may be asking too much, especially when they’d much rather dedicate time to the work they were hired to do. And paying for the training for enough of your employees to make a difference is an expensive endeavor as well.’” —Gilles Muys 

2. Managed Services mediates the challenge of in-house turnover

“In response to the high level of competition in the Salesforce ecosystem, in-house consultants are highly mobile—they’re always on the lookout for better opportunities and will leave as soon as a better position opens up elsewhere. When they leave, they’re taking all of their tribal knowledge with them. When you hire an outside consultancy, though, you’re never at risk of losing that knowledge, as it’s shared among hundreds of experts.” —Gilles Muys 

3. Save time and money with a flexible outside team doing maintenance

“In-house professionals are a fixed cost. That means that, regardless of the work being done, you’re obligated to pay salary as well as other expenses such as healthcare, taxes, and other benefits. But that may not be reflective of how active they are. For example, one week may be busy, requiring hours of work changing, maintaining, or implementing components or services to keep your users happy. But the next week or weeks could be dead quiet. An outside consultant would then be the preferred option, as they can provide blended rates and adjust their capacity without incurring additional costs.” —Gilles Muys 

Learn more about Managed Services and how they can offload the day-to-day work and drive greater innovation for less cost and with greater expertise than an in-house team by reading the complete book, The Definitive QTC Guide, available on Amazon.