Salesforce is now strategic in many organizations and tightly integrated into other enterprise systems. The need to change at pace, alongside increasing levels of governance, has highlighted the importance of having a more holistic view of Salesforce implementation, as well as a more rigorous development cycle. Any change – no matter how small – can have a material impact on systems downtime, company reputation, and regulatory compliance.
Used strategically, “change intelligence” can positively impact an organization’s ability to plan, react, and adapt at pace. Estimated to be worth over $1B for Salesforce alone, this article will provide some context around the change intelligence platform market.
Agility vs. Governance
Moving quickly to adapt to changing market conditions requires agility. Agility is a business differentiator as the organizations most likely to dominate the market are those that can master agility and execute flawlessly. Governance can often seem at odds with this, as ‘best practice’ suggests making changes slowly and carefully.
However, organizations do not need to choose between agility and governance if they have intelligence about the risk and impact of the required changes – it’s possible to move forward with caution and speed.
What is Change Intelligence?
Change intelligence is based on an aggregated view of the state of systems’ configurations, as well as the proposed changes and dependencies, risks, and impact. The app to support these change decisions is called a Change Intelligence Platform. By pulling together the business analysis documentation, automatically generated configuration knowledge, and team collaboration, it provides an aggregated and connected view of historical changes, as well as the risks associated with future changes.
The Change Intelligence Platform market is maturing quickly. It was initially formed with home-grown apps, enthusiast-developed utilities, and a few vendors with apps that were still MVP (minimum viable product). At this time, both business needs (and value) were not well understood, and Salesforce implementations were smaller and less risky.
Now business and IT teams are applying more rigorous development practices (such as DevOps) which are becoming more established. Change Intelligence complements DevOps, which has driven increased awareness and understanding of the business value of a Change Intelligence Platform. The total addressable market for Change Intelligence – just for Salesforce – is estimated to be over $1B. It is clearly needed in other SaaS ecosystems.
InVisory’s Research Report
InVisory’s recent research report has investigated the current state of the Change Intelligence Platform market. Whilst the market is still evolving, there is some agreement on the scope of the apps required to support it, and the report gives a definitive view on how any potential customer should evaluate these apps.
This report also sets out the key use cases and expected benefits so that customers can build a business case for purchase. From the research, we can see the strategic drivers that are causing customers to invest in Change Intelligence Platforms: digital transformation, implementing new clouds, and org merger or consolidation. However, there are also tactical changes driving this need: migrating to flow, reducing technical debt, or migrating to Lightning.
Whatever the initiative, the benefits are clear. Customers can reduce rework by up to 80% by gaining real clarity on business requirements and shared agreement across stakeholders. This leads to an acceleration in the value customers are getting from Salesforce. And
it doesn’t get any more important than that!
Summary
The research looked at over 25 vendors with products in the space, with the report shortlisting and evaluating six key vendors. As with any emerging market, vendors are approaching it from different perspectives and providing only a subset of the complete solution. There will be overlaps and gaps, so customers will need to make their own buying decisions based on their own requirements and strategies.
You are invited to access a complimentary copy of the report, which can be downloaded below.
The InVisory Marketplace, free to Salesforce customers, will be launching in September – sign up on the waiting list now.
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