Classic to Lightning Migration: The Powerful Impacts of Partnering with a Salesforce Consulting Firm

It’s hard to look at migrating your Salesforce Classic implementation to Lightning and wonder how you’ll get it done with all of the other projects in front of your team. Up until now, you’ve been able to get along with Salesforce Classic just fine. 

Or, maybe it’s a matter of complexity. You know that your data needs to be cleaned, your integrations and applications refactored, perhaps even your processes re-vamped. The level of work involved is simply overwhelming. 

You think to yourself: Can’t we just stay on Classic? 

The answer to this question is, it depends. It depends on if accelerating sales and improving service with the new Lightning features is important to you. It depends on the amount of opportunity cost. It depends on how long before Salesforce officially announces Classic’s end of life date. 

You CAN wait. But you shouldn’t. 

All of your concerns, though, are real and valid. The good news is that an experienced Salesforce consulting firm can help you get through the process. The better news is that, even if you don’t or can’t use a partner like Six Consulting for your entire Classic to Lightning migration, a consultant can still make a huge impact on getting your migration going or getting it finished. 

What Can a Salesforce Consulting Firm Help With?

A Salesforce partner doesn’t need to take the entire migration process over from you - although we can do that. 

Even if you only need a hand getting the migration across the finish line, a partner can help. Or getting it started. Or any number of spots in between. 

The reality is that a consulting partner can help you fill the gaps that may exist in your internal team or can accelerate migration elements that aren’t in your wheelhouse. It just depends on what your particular pain points are. And that may come from understanding what a partner can do across the three phases of a Salesforce Classic to Lightning migration. 

Discovery

For some organizations, it’s getting the migration started that is the hardest part. Discovery is a time-consuming but necessary part of the migration process. 

Focus Area: Understanding, mapping, and documenting existing processes, roles, users, customizations, and applications. 

Impact: A consulting firm will have the benefit of an outsider’s view of your implementation. They can dig deep to uncover how processes really work, how roles are currently defined, and catalog all customization and 3rd party applications without your team needing to step away from existing projects. 

At the end of the process, you’ll have a complete catalog of how Salesforce Classic is currently being used so that you can begin understanding where Lightning will fit in. 

This phase includes:

• Application inventories
• Integration mapping
• Role definitions and user access documentation
• Documentation of all customizations to the platform
• Process mapping
• Data review

Analysis & Planning

Analyzing how you use Salesforce, your business goals, and what workarounds may be needed goes faster when you’re working with someone already familiar with Lightning. 

Focus Area: Analyze Lightning’s features against business needs. 

Impact: Because a Salesforce partner like Six Consulting has a deep understanding of the new platform - something your team may not have had the opportunity to learn yet - they can bring together your existing processes and the new features, recommend ways to use Lightning to meet business goals and even recommend workarounds for any legacy applications or processes. 

Focus Area: Customizations, code, and application analysis 

Impact: Reduce your migration risk by reviewing your current applications and customizations against Lightning’s features and compatibility. By leveraging a consulting firm's knowledge, you’ll accelerate this process - your team won’t need to first learn the differences and then transition to how they apply to your implementation. Instead, you’ll have a clear view on how to get from point pre to post Lightning migration.