Buckle Up! It's Going to Be a Busy Decade

Originally published on LinkedIn, 11 May 2025

The next decade presents enormous opportunities as organisations strive to modernise and optimise SaaS applications developed over the past 15+ years. The Salesforce ecosystem, in particular, is at the forefront, evolving to become the robust business process backbone necessary to serve the needs of both human and AI agents. Now is the time for strategic investments and proactive modernisation initiatives.

Understanding the Current State

Today's Salesforce implementations often carry substantial architectural and technical debt due to extensive custom configurations and complex integrations. These elements increase complexity, limit agility, and create operational risks for ongoing business processes.  I see many examples of legacy customisations which can be updated with a more recent Salesforce platform feature that offer a much simpler solution.  Identifying these and conducting change impact analysis provide a clear picture of priorities.

Core Drivers for Salesforce Modernisation

Organisations typically seek Salesforce modernisation driven by several critical business needs:

• Visibility and Documentation: Clear documentation and visualisation of existing Salesforce configurations, custom code, and integrations to reduce operational risks.

• Change Management and Agility: Robust impact analysis capabilities to predict and manage the effects of changes effectively.

• Risk Management: Incremental adoption of Salesforce-native tools and best practices to manage risk while achieving compliance, security, and performance objectives.

• Continuous Improvement: A structured approach to enable continuous innovation and adaptation within the Salesforce environment.

• Future Vision: Business leaders clearly articulate the future operating model for their organisations to provide readiness and resilience in response to ongoing technological, economic, and political disruptions.

Detailed Modernisation Capabilities

Salesforce modernisation efforts require specialised capabilities:

• Metadata Discovery & Visualisation: Tools that map metadata, dependencies, and document org structures comprehensively.

• Business Logic Extraction & Management: Platforms for documenting, extracting, and refactoring existing Apex code, Flows, and validation rules.

• Impact Analysis & Dependency Mapping: Salesforce-specific DevOps solutions offering detailed dependency mapping and predictive impact assessments.

• Technical Debt Assessment & Quality Analysis: Tools assessing complexity and technical debt to prioritise refactoring.

• Incremental Modernisation Techniques: Salesforce-native methodologies and tools facilitating incremental improvements.

Salesforce Modernisation Ecosystem

I want to create a rich picture of the modernisation ecosystem, and I am engaged directly with some, but not all, of these innovators below. 

• Elements.cloud

• Metazoa

• Salto

• Hubbl

• Strongpoint

• Gearset

• Copado

• Salesforce DevOps Center

• Clayton

• SonarQube

• CodeScan

• Salesforce Optimizer

If you're a vendor reading this and you would like me to know more about your product, or think that you should be on this list, contact me via the comments or direct message.

Strategic Recommendations

To maximise the impact of Salesforce modernisation, organisations should:

• Employ Comprehensive Discovery and Documentation: Leverage advanced metadata-driven tools.  The current definition of how a Salesforce application works exists in the production metadata; anything stored in a spreadsheet or document provides a historical view of how things were at the time of writing.

• Start Strong: Adopt modern Salesforce best practices immediately. If your teams aren't already empowered to efficiently manage requirements, testing, deployment, and data management, now is the moment to address this gap. Utilise established, industry-leading tools rather than crafting custom scripts in-house—it's time to move beyond manual and YAML-driven approaches for good.

• Embed a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Foster continuous improvement through strategic investment in modern tools. Ensure your teams can focus their valuable expertise on innovation and the strategic evolution of your business, rather than becoming mired in routine tasks like sandbox updates or troubleshooting outdated automations.

Conclusion

Salesforce modernisation is a strategic imperative that demands detailed visibility, precise impact analysis, and incremental change strategies. Organisations equipped with the right tools and methodologies, supported by an ecosystem of specialised vendors, can confidently modernise their Salesforce implementations to meet evolving business demands effectively.

Now tell me what you think.

Technical leaders, do my ideas fit with how you see things within your organisation?

Business leaders, are you receiving diverse and innovative technology thought-leadership from both internal experts and external industry influencers?