Businesses globally are leveraging Salesforce to accelerate digital transformation in an ever-changing reality. Configuration and development, alone, is not sufficient to protect the integrity of a Salesforce environment.

What is needed in addition, is an aggregated, connected view of all processes, change impact analysis and documentation within the org, or face significant risks with a lack of visibility for future development. Think of this as a “configuration knowledge platform”.

This configuration knowledge vision is being delivered by Elements.cloud who announced a $20 million investment. The investment, led by Anker AG, is further proof of the importance of impact assessment and the increasingly business-critical status the Salesforce holds for many organizations.

Supporting Salesforce Implementation Excellence

Elements.cloud, a Salesforce AppExchange partner, was built to support Business Analysts, Salesforce Consultants, Salesforce Admins, and Architects. It provides the bigger picture of the knowledge into the opportunities and risks involved in any proposed development which is invaluable before changing any software configuration.

This fulfills the mission of every Salesforce Center of Excellence, a business function that works towards maintaining guardrails for proper Salesforce development and usage, without impeding agility. Business analysis, combined with an in-depth understanding of their specific org configuration, is essential for lasting success.

Elements can support your Salesforce implementation in two main ways:

• Generating documentation automatically: dependency analysis, configuration changes, org impact,
• Creating/connecting documentation: requirements, process maps, ERD, integrations security code scans, DevOps configuration changes, testing, user stories, end-user help documentation.

This is all connected through an org metadata dictionary – whatever the source, and wherever a change occurred.

Striving for Salesforce Documentation Excellence

Elements have the ethos that Salesforce org documentation must be contextual, related to the configuration itself, otherwise, insight into the dependencies is lost. Without Elements.cloud, configuration knowledge is dispersed, siloed, difficult to access and track.

Documentation can have a broader view, encompassing different apps, in different locations, created by different people. Elements recognize this, and that a significant amount of documentation can be created automatically.

The Elements Journey

Having attracted more than 250 paying customers, from small businesses to global blue-chips, Elements intend for the funding to build on their position as the industry’s gold standard for a ‘configuration knowledge’ platform:

“I am delighted that Elements now has access to $20m in funding to capitalize on the rising backlog of demand from customers, consultants and ISVs”, said Ian Gotts, Elements.cloud CEO, “This investment allows us to capitalize not only on the high demand from Salesforce customers but to expand the platform to other software stacks. We are deeply committed to helping our customers and partners ”Get the Power of Configuration Knowledge” which allows organizations to manage their software with confidence”.

“Well-run organizations create value for society and understanding the software used in an organization has become mission-critical”, said Christopher Kingsman, Anker CEO, “Elements.cloud plays a vital role for managing Salesforce implementations. The founders of Elements have a successful track record of building enterprise applications that fit customers’ needs, which is why Anker is pleased to support Ian and the team.”

Final thought

The investment comes at an interesting time. The configuration intelligence/impact analysis/org documentation space is heating up in the Salesforce ecosystem, with multiple funding injections over the past quarter.

Why now? As organizations are tasked with handling increasingly complex Salesforce orgs. As the Salesforce platform grows with an increasing number of products, combined with rising stakeholder demands, these platforms will help development teams sustain speed, Salesforce org integrity, and avoid technical debt.

More about Elements.cloud

Salesforce is becoming the single source of customer data, tightly integrated into the enterprise IT landscape. To maintain the agility and deliver ROI on customer’s Salesforce investment requires an understanding of the impact of changing a Salesforce org. That means an aggregated view of the knowledge of what has been built on the Salesforce platform, how it was built, and why it was built that way. Elements is THE only platform that has the capabilities to deliver tangible, lasting results. “Get the Power of Configuration Knowledge”.

Ian Gotts Salesforce Ben author profile.

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