Resolving the Debate: Outsourcing Salesforce Development Services v/s In-House Development Team
Tags: webdev, news, softwaredevelopment
Published: 2023-07-26 14:57:28

Salesforce is a great customer relationship management platform for businesses irrespective of their size or industries as it provides a comprehensive view of the customers. Organizations can automate their marketing workflows, streamline sales operations, offer a seamless experience, drive customer engagement, and pull through the competition using Salesforce CRM. This cloud-based CRM platform can be easily customized according to business-specific needs—whether you’re a global MNC, a medium-sized business, or a small startup.
 
Its expansive range of time-saving automated tools and robust features have made many businesses around the world resort to Salesforce to meet their CRM demands. At the same time, available software applications often become inefficient in addressing unique business objectives as they evolve and grow. Companies can, therefore, opt for customized Salesforce CRM development solutions to accommodate those scaling needs.
 
There are two ways to go for Salesforce development, either using professional [Salesforce development services](https://www.damcogroup.com/salesforce/salesforce-development-services) or hiring an in-house team. You should carefully consider the company’s needs and evaluate all the possibilities to make a better choice, as both options have advantages and limitations. Let’s take a look at these:
 
## Salesforce Development Services

### Advantages

- Cost-Effectiveness

In contrast to keeping an in-house development team, collaborating with trusted Salesforce development companies is a more profitable option as costs related to resource hiring and training, regular employee benefits, infrastructure, etc., are all eliminated.
 
- Time-Saving

Outsourcing development duties to professional Salesforce development providers not only helps you in saving a big deal on time, but also finish projects just in time and produce high-quality results.

- Experience and Expertise

The outsourcing companies have a pool of professionals who are adept in the Salesforce platform. Working on multiple projects of varying subtleties, they possess vast experience, skills, and knowledge needed to accelerate the Salesforce CRM development process, ensure best practices, and deliver reliable solutions quickly.

- Versatility

Depending upon your Salesforce development project needs, external vendors can easily alter their operational approach—upscale or downscale their services. This versatility lets you manage workloads of varying complexities efficiently and add or subtract the resources as required.
 
- On-demand Access to Diversely Skilled Professionals

Professional providers often have diversified teams of Salesforce developers. Their expertise, skills, and information can be used to develop complicated features successfully, add enhancements, or integrate existing workflows with third-party applications. 
 
### Limitations

- Limited Control

Outsourcing Salesforce development tasks implies you can't have complete control over the project and cannot be assured whether the development project is progressing as planned.
 
- Communication Gap

Based on the factors like language, area, culture, etc. there can be communication gaps with a Salesforce development agency, which can lead to confusion and misunderstanding. To avoid this, you can consider setting up meetings and talk about your expectations from the project.
 
- Data Security Risks

You need to grant access to your CRM when offshoring a Salesforce CRM development project. This means that the third-party providers get access to all the information about your organization, as contained in the CRM. You can ask the external vendors to sign an NDA in such a case. This significantly minimizes the chance of data theft, information leaks, or espionage.
 
## Internal Development Team

### Advantages

- Aligning with Business Goals

An in-house Salesforce development team is easy to be aligned with business goals and stays focused on achieving those unique objectives. They can provide tailored solutions as the in-house team has a clear and better understanding of the operational procedures.
 
- Assured Data Security

Establishing an internal team implies better control over the integrity of data integrity as it remains secure and confidential, based on the industry you are dealing with.
 
- Tailored Solutions

An internal development team is a better option if you are looking for highly-customized solutions to meet specific requirements. They can focus completely on your requirements as the in-house team doesn’t have to balance multiple client tasks simultaneously.
 
- Direct Communication and Collaboration

When the team is entirely in-house, you can practice superior control over everything, including process, priorities as well as schedules. Besides, seamless collaboration and direct communication result in improved coordination amongst the team.
 
- Get Assured Returns in Long Run

When you build an in-house Salesforce development team, you assemble a workforce which is committed to your project totally. Starting from scratch, these professionals get a proper understanding of the workflows within your company, leading to better outcomes in the longer run.
 
## Limitations

- Expenditure

Salaries for employees along with technology implementation and infrastructural investments are necessary to set up an internal Salesforce development team. In addition, your developers need to earn a Salesforce certification (paid) if they want to upgrade their skills and information.
 
- Building an Excellent Internal Team

Building a dedicated in-house team for Salesforce development tasks is a time-consuming process. In addition, every developer needs to possess certain experience, expertise, and skills. Given the high-demand for developers, you have to provide a competitive compensation amount along with a healthy working environment if you want the developers to stay long term.
 
- High Employee Attrition Rate

Being high in demand, Salesforce developers often get multiple offers related to working on interesting projects. This means that the in-house team might change any moment, which can also impact certain processes within your organization.
 
## Wrapping Up

Having an in-house team for Salesforce development empowers you keep a track of the process easily. There’s no need to explain your organizational goals and specific requirements over and over as the in-house development team understands the intricacies of your business. Based on the business objectives and culture, the in-house developers suggest enhancements and extensions that work well for you. In contrast, outsourced Salesforce development services offer you access to well-qualified and diversely skilled developers hired from across the globe. These professionals possess the necessary know-how of the development process and deliver exceptional quality results at affordable prices.
 
Narrowing down the selection between in-house development team or outsourced services ultimately depends on your budget, scalability needs, timetable, project complexity, and data security and privacy requirements. Hence, it is advised to consider these factors along with the long-term objectives of your business and consider the pros and cons of each option before deciding the course of action.
 
An in-house development team is a better option if you value complete control over the Salesforce development process, look for seamless integration with internal systems, and have ongoing specific requirements. A good practice before making the final decision is weighing trade-offs as well as considering the budget, project needs, and long-term business objectives.
 
You can also take the midway option under some circumstances, which is leveraging the combination of the two strategies—such as offshoring some development tasks while keeping the core part for in-house team.