Multi-Org Salesforce Architecture vs Single-Org Salesforce Architecture
By: Tracy Surkont
Tags: Salesforce Tools, Salesforce

Nowadays, businesses are confronted with increasing complexity in their IT Landscape as their businesses grow and more often than not, BlueSky is asked to make recommendations on a Single org vs a Multi org strategy.

The simple answer is that there is no simple answer… a thorough investigation is required in order to answer this question and requires a Solutions Architect to help you navigate the journey to find the most optimal solution. An organisation’s strategy should also include a plan to identify the right Salesforce partner to customize your organisation’s architecture for your unique business needs.

When setting up a Salesforce architecture or assessing the performance of an existing org, the single most important decision is to decide between single-org architecture and multi-org architecture.

With new features added regularly by Salesforce, the pros and cons need to be equally considered before a final decision is made. Some of the components that you need to keep in mind are the need for customisation or standardisation, the complexity of integration, cross-business collaboration and costs. A clear strategy needs to be defined to avoid your business incurring unnecessary costs and inefficiencies.

BlueSky’s approach is to investigate the benefits and risks inherent to each Salesforce architecture model and guide you as to what may best suit your organisation.

Multi-Org Salesforce Architecture Vs Single-Org Salesforce Architecture

An argument can be made for a multi-org architecture if you have multiple processes and want to separate business processes for similar business units within the organisation. Considerations should also be made for legal/regulations on data privacy and sharing, and support for different processes by each BU/Region that cannot be standardised.

Benefits of Multi-Org:

Record Sharing and Security model is simplified by non-complex sharing rules

Provides greater BU autonomy through individualised processes and customised functionality

Greatly reduces the risk of exceeding Org limits (Tabs, objects and code lines, Runtime governor and API limits)

Org-wide settings are easier to govern and manage

Lower data volumes within a single Org potentially improves performance

Improved time to market and the freedom to innovate

Fewer teams impacted by shared updates

Reduced complexity within a single Org

Multi-Org Risks:

Harder to get a clear global definition of processes and data

Less reuse of configuration and code

Customisation required to deliver unified reporting across Orgs

Duplicated administration functions required

Increased complexity for SSO

Third-party license costs increase depending on the solution

Salesforce Integration cost increases with process & data integration across Orgs

Single -org strategy can be the best option if you are looking at either of the below 2 key essentials:

Standardise business processes

Merge/Acquire another company using Salesforce

Benefits of Single-Org:

The major benefits you can derive from a single-org are listed below.

Greater Management Visibility — If you are looking to have a clear linear picture of the entire business process, it is facilitated by the availability of:

Roll-up Reporting

Global drill-down into pipeline & activities

Standardised Processes — You can streamline all your processes with organised workflow pattern and this includes:

Lead Management

Opportunity Management

Collaboration — Create transparency in the business process by allowing for the below features:

Know what everyone else is doing

Realise synergy among business units

Avoid duplicate effort & conflicts within accounts

Global Standardisation & Economies of Scale — Easy to setup and follow best practices and global standards:

User Training

Application Release Management

Application Integration

Data Management

Regionally Personalised Configuration — This is achieved through:

Granular security model, multiple profiles, record types, page layouts, sharing groups

Translation Workbench

Single-Org Risks — Org complexity could become a barrier to progress and this includes:

Potential to hit specific Org limits

Org-wide settings (e.g. security and sharing) could become difficult to govern and manage

Runtime processing could be impacted by the volume of code deployed

As more Organisations are adopting the latest Salesforce features like Lightning, it is crucial that you consider the above guidelines when you sit down to make a decision on the type of Salesforce architecture that you need.

Contact us for a free consultation with one of our subject matter experts.

Written by Tracy Surkont