Achieving ambitious digital strategy goals with 探花视频
Overview
Using 探花视频 for their Salesforce DevOps, the Asset Management arm of this Global Investment Bank is able to deliver and scale with their growing business needs and compliance requirements.
In order to keep up with the growth and demand of the enterprise, the company chose 探花视频 for DevOps to maximize their use of Salesforce, deliver their digital strategy and meet compliance requirements. As the Asset Management firm鈥檚 Salesforce demands grew it had become clear that they needed more advanced capabilities and a robust DevOps process. Implementing 探花视频 has brought order, stability and trust across the organization making both senior management and the security team very happy.
Salesforce is key to the overall digital strategy
As Salesforce is one of the biggest CRM tools in the world, it makes sense that it鈥檚 used as the Asset Management firm鈥檚 main operating platform. The company has various instances for each of the affiliates and other entities across the world. The Head of Technology, along with his team of ten colleagues, manages the instance for US distribution, supporting ten internal departments and three external groups. He explains that the company is 鈥渙n a digital journey, building and bringing more onto our Salesforce platform鈥� and over the years, Salesforce has become much more than a CRM platform for the company.
鈥淥ver the years, we鈥檝e built Salesforce into more than a CRM system 鈥� we鈥檝e built it into our main operating platform.鈥�
As part of the Asset Management firm鈥檚 digital strategy, they first started using Salesforce as the CRM for the company. Since then, they鈥檝e added different processes, including marketing automation, and continue to slowly bring other departments onto the system. This allowed the organization 鈥渢o streamline our inter-departmental processes, automate, make it digital and measure outcomes through departmental and corporate dashboards鈥�.
鈥淪alesforce has enabled us to break down all the silos, giving a seamless user interface to streamline everything.鈥�
Financial Services customizations for security and compliance
As a financial organization, it was vital to have the option to incorporate Financial Services specific customizations. As there wasn鈥檛 a Financial Services Cloud at the time, the team created their own customizations. This included a three-level hierarchy for Firm 鈥� Office 鈥� Reps and custom modules/apps within Salesforce to support Financial Instrument Research papers, Buying Units, Multi-Fee hierarchy, Platform management, Product hierarchy among other things. The Head of Technology admits it was at this stage they started to feel the growing pains:
鈥淲e were trying to have more departments, more processes, more data and system integration alongside Financial Services customizations. Our current processes couldn鈥檛 handle it and this led to compliance oversight.鈥�
The challenge to do more with less
As a highly regulated business with changing business priorities, it became clear that a process that once worked, also now required changes. The team had started with tools that came out of the box with Salesforce.
鈥淭his setup was working fine initially but not for the growing needs of the company.鈥�
Salesforce plays a significant role in the Asset Management firm鈥檚 digital strategy. The Head of Technology notes 鈥渆veryone鈥檚 mantra is 鈥渄o more with less鈥�. As more departments were added, it became clear that their setup was not a scalable solution; it was increasingly difficult to meet the needs of the whole enterprise. He explains the breaking point as:
鈥淭here was more code to manage and maintain, more data integrations, more jobs and triggers and more code repositories to manage. This caused some instability and an error-prone system鈥�
The team simply wasn鈥檛 able to keep up with the increasing demands of the business that required more departments to be onboarded to Salesforce and the integration of more systems. This resulted in 鈥渦nhappy senior management and an unhappy business鈥� as projects were not being delivered in time to meet their needs.
A redefined DevOps process with the right toolset
With growing needs, the existing process was lacking in quite a few areas such as code/repository history and code review process. The migration between sandboxes wasn鈥檛 easy and if they had to rollback, they had to create another change set. There was also no sandbox data seeding or data backups and no advanced capabilities 鈥� which they desperately required. The team decided they 鈥渘eeded a redefined DevOps process and to align the tools鈥�.
Most of all, they needed a robust DevOps process from start to finish that would enable them to have clear policies and governance over the processes.
The adoption of 探花视频
After comparing various DevOps solutions, the Asset Management firm decided 探花视频 was the right solution for them because it had more feature sets and future-proofed them for company growth. 探花视频 now supports with:聽continuous integration, monitoring听补苍诲听unit testing, repository management and deployment, code reviews, sandbox data management, backup and restore and static application security testing (SAST) with static code analysis. Through the redefining process, the team determined a 3-week sprint cycle works best for them to get business buy-in and complete development, testing and deployment.
鈥淭his didn鈥檛 happen overnight. Slowly start somewhere, change and adapt, and make sure you adopt the tools that will help you grow.鈥�
The company implemented 探花视频 in three distinct phases:
Phase 1: The initial phase consisted of refining the DevOps process. The team worked with 探花视频 who advised on best practices and the right workflow for the business. Repository backups and continuous integration alongside deployments using 探花视频 were also part of this phase.
Phase 2: This interim phase was for Git repository management using Dev and Master branches. They also compared orgs for code review and started packaging draft deployments using validations. On top of this they began using deployment and seed data management using 探花视频’s sandbox seeding solution.
Phase 3: The financial organization has successfully managed their third phase using 探花视频 data management between orgs to facilitate a repeatable and consistent process for better testing and incorporated DevSecOps.
Order, stability and trust
The Head of Technology is proud of the newly built DevOps process and credits 探花视频 with bringing 鈥渙rder, stability and trust鈥� to the enterprise. The team can now set up what needs to be tested and it runs every night. In the daily standup, the team discusses which deployments go into the current or next sprint depending on priority.
鈥淭he notifications are cool, you don鈥檛 have to take a look every morning to see what鈥檚 gone wrong or what didn鈥檛 run. I鈥檓 sent a notification which makes it so much easier to manage the environment.鈥�
The company can now benefit from having 鈥渢rusted partners because the business and senior management are happy鈥�. By using 探花视频 the company has a defined process, with clear visibility of all deployments that鈥檚 easy to audit 鈥� which makes the security team very happy.
鈥淔or any external SAAS platform, our compliance and security team are always trying to put controls in place and 探花视频 incorporates DevSecOps into the DevOps process so that we stay compliant.鈥�
探花视频 helped the financial organization achieve more 鈥� with less
As the Head of Technology explains, 鈥渋n today鈥檚 world, teams are expected to roll out more projects, cover all business priorities and show results but with fewer resources and reduced budget.鈥� He has managed to deliver this by establishing a 鈥渕ature DevOps process and aligning the toolset to the process.鈥� He advises 鈥渙ffsetting this mantra by picking the right toolset that works for your organization is key. For us, 探花视频 plays a big part鈥�.
The Asset Management firm didn鈥檛 achieve this mature process overnight and isn鈥檛 finished yet,鈥� it鈥檚 a maturity journey and we鈥檙e progressing every year, redefining our process and continuously improving and making changes鈥�. As the business grows and market conditions change, the organization is confident their DevOps process and 探花视频 will allow them to adapt and grow to meet increasing business demands.
鈥溙交ㄊ悠� is a great platform to have. It provides so much, why would you consider anything else?鈥�
