As part of their digital transformation, organizations need to design and build solutions that will meet their current and future needs. Whether an organization is a small business or a large enterprise, understanding the scale and scope of their organization can help them create solutions designed to promote and support future growth.
Understanding Scale
When discussing scale, there are three main classifications: Small Businesses, Mid-Market Enterprises, and Large Enterprises.
- Small businesses have anywhere from 1-100 employees, many of whom wear many hats in order for the business to function. These organizations also traditionally have less than $10 million in revenue annually.
- Mid-market organizations have up to 1000 employees who are much more specialized in nature. From a revenue standpoint, mid-market organizations typically earn between $10 million and $1 billion annually.
- Large enterprises have 1000+ employees who are broken into specialized teams that function on a portion of business. These organizations earn well over $1 billion in revenue annually.
Employee size and revenue are the main, but not only, ways that organizations are categorized. Other factors such as asset size, customer base, industry, and even technology footprints can be taken into account when designing solutions for scale. But no matter the other factors, one thing always holds true—as a company grows, so does the complexity of the solutions required to address the technical challenges they face.
Scaling for the Future
As companies grow, their technology solutions need to grow with them and adjust for the new needs of a larger organization. This guiding principle is critical for any organization preparing to venture into digital transformation. But the main rule for scalable solutions is to design with the future in mind. Map out where you think you’ll be in the next 24-36 months and solve the technical challenges for an organization of that scale rather than where you are currently. That way, you’ll be able to grow into the technology and won’t have to shell out additional funds to restructure it further down the road.
Solutioning for Scale
In addition to designing solutions with the future in mind, you should try to build smarter, not harder. Think of your solutions like fast-growing plants—eventually they’ll outgrow their pots, but that doesn’t mean you have to throw away the plant, you just have to buy a bigger pot. Reusable frameworks follow a similar principle and can be used repeatedly to reduce the time needed for solution development, speeding up delivery and time-to-value.
Complex technology requires time to develop, test and implement, but by starting with reusable frameworks, solution teams can drastically reduce the required time and effort and provide value to the organization in an iterative manner. Common frameworks that are helpful and necessary for organizations of any size include data access, trigger, integration, and testing frameworks.
Success requires growth, and healthy growth requires solutions that can scale to meet current and future needs. Set your business up for success by ensuring that the technology you implement today can grow with you. Establishing these best practices and developing strong reusable frameworks will enable your systems, processes, and employees to be as efficient and productive as possible.
Ready to start building your own reusable frameworks and scalable technology solutions? Get in touch with Zennify’s team of experts for a guided, hands-on approach to innovation or take advantage of our library of custom apps and accelerators on the Salesforce AppExchange to get started.
