This article is part ten of a joint blog series with Simplus on things to consider when merging Salesforce orgs after a merger or acquisition.
- Part 1: To Merge or Not To Merge?
- Part 2: Managing Integrations and Applications During Your Org Merge
- Part 3: The Logistics of An Org Merge: Time, Scope, and Team
- Part 4: How To Avoid Downtime When Merging Salesforce Orgs
- Part 5: Merging Salesforce Orgs? Tips To Bring Down Storage Costs
- Part 6: The Business Side of an Org Merge
- Part 7: Just Because Your M&A Deal is Done Doesn't Mean Your Security Risks Are
- Part 8: Change Management: Before, During, and After An Org Merge
- Part 9: 3 Vital Best Practices For Preserving Orgs During A Merge
For the last few weeks, we and our partners at Simplus have been highlighting critical steps in the Salesforce org merge process that are necessary for success. These range from the strategic, (why merge in the first place) to the technical, (how to integrate Salesforce apps) to the practical (how to manage new storage costs). But even if you follow each of these steps diligently, mistakes and errors are unavoidable when moving millions of records. That’s why the final part of our blog series focuses on arguably the most important thing to remember when merging orgs: having a cloud data protection plan in place.
Why It’s Critical To Back Up Your Data Before an Org Merge
Effectively merging critical information and systems is one of the most important parts of a successful merger or acquisition. Why would you not have a safety net in the form of a backup and recovery solution? Salesforce themselves recommend that do a manual point-in-time backup “before proceeding with any major data project within your organization.”
With so many people involved and changes happening so often during the org merge process, something is bound to go wrong. But that doesn’t mean it has to derail the whole project. Having a data protection plan in place will ensure you can recover quickly. But before you rush off to find a tool to do the job, know that not all options are made equal. Here are a few things to think about when choosing a solution:
1. What’s your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO)?
How much data are you willing to lose? And how quickly do you need your data recovered? Your RPO and RTO will go a long way towards determining what backup solution is right for you. Cloud data protection platforms can recover your data in minutes, as opposed to the days or weeks that some out-of-the-box solutions require.
2. Does your current strategy enable you to recover data from any point in time?
The best data recovery solutions allow businesses to put their data back together exactly how it was before a problem occurred, whether that was yesterday or six months ago. In order to recover the precise data required, you need to be able to quickly compare data to historical data.
3. Are you able to recover data AND metadata?
Without metadata, trying to rebuild the relationships between Salesforce data objects can be a painstaking and time-consuming process. And without the ability to maintain these relationships, you’ll only have partial restore capabilities.
4. Does your current backup strategy meet Salesforce standards?
You’ll want to include security controls like role-based access controls (RBAC) for managing who can access backups, IP whitelisting for controlling domain access, and two-factor authentication for ensuring access is limited to authorized users.
5. Is your backup strategy automated?
Look for dynamic solutions that offer automated backups, proactive monitoring, and first-class support. You don’t want to be stuck having to configure your backup to specific fields and objects.
6. Is your data accessible outside of your Salesforce platform?
Being able to access information through a user-friendly, controlled interface outside of Salesforce is important, and backing-up data to an S3 server presents too many access and security issues to be a good solution.
Accelerate Org Merge Projects with Own
Properly integrating acquired company data can be an arduous process. Getting it right is not only critical to the success of your company’s M&A, but your own success- you don’t want to look incompetent after a messy data disruption. Own can support your Salesforce org merge projects prior, during, and after the launch. If something was to go awry during the launch, you can always restore via Own, which you wouldn’t want to have to do via other native backup options and can no longer do via Salesforce’s data recovery service.
We’ve helped numerous companies implement successful projects safely. For example, during the final stages of implementing a multiple-org merge project, Conga began removing duplicate data using a third-party app. The system integrations team started getting complaints from users who had either lost data or had incorrect values. Using Own Compare, the group quickly found 3,000 overwritten records. With Own Recover, Conga was able to recover just the corrupted data by going to the backup from the day before and selectively restoring only those 3,000 corrupted records.
