CNet Statistics
- Established 1996
- Privately owned
- Design and deliver technical education programs for the global digital infrastructure industry, comprising the data centre andnetwork infrastructure sectors
- The only industry dedicated education provider to award both official certifications and industry recognised qualifications
- Based in Suffolk, UK
Value added by Performa IT
- Engaged in 2020
- Review Salesforce release updates
- Sandbox preview of update impacts
- Amending, testing and deploying updated custom integrations
CNet’ Background with Salesforce®
As a major provider of professional technical education certifications and qualifications for the digital infrastructure industry, serving the global data centre and network infrastructure sectors, Suffolk-based CNet has relied on Salesforce®technology for most of its history.
Consequently, Salesforce® represents the main IT engine of CNet’s business, with a high degree of functionality integration across sales, marketing, customer bookings, finance and management information.
Moreover, since the Salesforce® database links dynamically to the website to display the global schedule of program dates, any changes and additions created withinSalesforce® reflect automatically online.
Commenting on the power of Salesforce®, CNet’s Marketing Executive Tanya Wright says: “The breadth of Salesforce® functionality and ability to integrate with all our processes means that we can build as we go.
“It’s been important to our organisation to have an IT platform that grows with us.”
CNet’s Challenge: risk to custom Salesforce®integrations from update releases
Given the high level of custom integration that CNet has invested in their Salesforce solution, they were vulnerable to the impact ofSalesforce’s regular update releases.
“The biggest worry, after implementing the website integration with Salesforce, is that we could experience issues with displaying the program dates on our website following update releases that could potentially interfere with the integration,” comments Tanya.
“This is an unacceptable risk in a customer-facing environment that is in global demand 24/7. The business cannot sustain poor system availability that could result in missed enquiries.”
CNet’s requirement
“Clearly we needed to ensure that the business was prepared for future potential impacts of the update releases,” says Tanya.
“The major ones happen three times a year in Spring, Summer and Winter, but there are also critical updates that happen more frequently.
“We needed to be sure that our existing platform was not going to be adversely affected each time a release happens.”
Why Performa IT?
“One of our existing Salesforce consultants introducedus to Performa IT,” says Tanya.
“They have the development knowledge, resource and understanding of our business processes to review our current environment and evaluate the likely impact of each update release.”
Performa IT’s ‘release watchdog’ service
Customer Support Manager for Performa IT Jane Fawcett provides a single point of contact for CNet’s Salesforce administrators.
She says: “Salesforce notify their customer-base of imminent updates well in advance, and typically provide excellent explanatoryarticles about them.
“However many of the updates can be quite complicated – a little more than the point and click changes that admins can be accustomed to.
“For this reason it’s good to have the ability to review the planned updates, evaluate the impact, make the necessary amendments to the integrations and test them thoroughly.
“Performa IT keep on top of the upcoming changes on CNet’s behalf, which gives them peace of mind about the resilience of their org.”
Sandbox Preview
To assist in the impact evaluation process Performa IT have implemented a Sandbox area of the system where updates can be run ahead of implementation.
“This is vital to identify where the impact will happen and target the integrations that need to be addressed,” says Jane.
“Then our team of developers can get to work on the changes that can then be tested in the Sandbox too.”
Benefits of Performa IT’s support
Performa IT’s dedicated eye proved its worth in response to Salesforce’s requirement for all its customers to have their own domain name.
“This could have caused serious issues on our website, since like many others we were using the standard Salesforce domain,” says Tanya.
“But the review process that Performa IT have put in place for us meant that we were ahead of the change and managed to avoid any costly disruption to the business.
“The service that Performa IT provides certainly gives us peace of mind and eliminates all the risks associated with custom integrations.”
New Possibilities
“CNet has got lots of plans for further expansion and improvements in the way we offer customer service, andSalesforce is critical in these,” comments Tanya.
“Not having to worry about what could go wrong with our platform gives us the headspace to focus on improvements and means that we can think more strategically.”
Recommendation
““I would happily recommend Performa IT as a Salesforce update partner,” says Tanya.
“They are very proactive in their communication and are quick to respond to our queries.
“Our Salesforce platform is definitely in good hands with Performa IT!”