Data is the lifeblood of every organization, especially the valuable data you keep in Salesforce. When inevitable data disruptions occur, you want to have peace of mind that your company can recover quickly and minimize any impact to business processes. However, the backup options from Salesforce have several notable limitations. So it’d make sense to start searching for third-party solutions to back up your Salesforce data. But where do you start?
Trusting a new vendor can be hard, especially when it comes to something as important as protecting your company’s Salesforce data. With that in mind, let's take a look at a few things you should consider when evaluating backup and recovery solutions.
Recovery Functionalities
When considering a data protection vendor, you need to make sure you’re getting both a backup AND recovery solution for your Salesforce data. Having a full copy of your data is important to meet the minimum standards of a backup. But the real challenge is the ability to restore the data back into Salesforce exactly how and when you need to.
Many Salesforce native options and DIY backup methods are perfectly serviceable as backup tools, but leave much to be desired when it comes to recovery. Even 3rd party solutions differ considerably in terms of their restore capabilities. It’s important to look beyond backup when choosing a solution.
Customer Support
There are no weekends, holidays or time zones when it comes to data incidents. When the pressure is on, you must have complete trust in the ability of your vendor to help you promptly return to business as usual.
Look into solutions that offer 24/7 customer support with a reasonable response time. Other types of support can include a self-service knowledge base, professional services, or even a dedicated technical account manager. Evaluate which support elements are necessities for your organization, and you will be one step closer to choosing a winning solution.
Vendor Reputation
Of all of the factors to consider when choosing a backup and recovery solution, this might be the most important. Most every software vendor positions itself as the best in the market, the most tailored, the most experienced, etc. But who can you really trust?
Separating fact from hyperbole is not easy but is important as failure to do so runs the risk of you having to replace your new solution as soon as the contract ends - or sooner!
What else should you consider?
These are just a glimpse into the things you should consider when choosing a backup and recovery solution. For the complete list of factors to assess, as well as a downloadable scorecard to rate the solutions you are evaluating, check out our ebook, The Buyers Guide For Backup and Restore
