Data seeding may sound straightforward. Just populate a database with information and let your developers get to work. But it’s rarely that easy.
In reality, manual data seeding can slow down development cycles, as developers spend valuable time creating data sets instead of focusing on innovation. This hands-on approach also leaves room for inconsistencies that can disrupt testing environments.
Own simplifies this process. With Own Accelerate, manual data seeding is a thing of the past. Developers gain access to accurate data seamlessly, allowing them to concentrate on what matters—building new features.
Don't just take our word for it. This case study reveals how two industry leaders —Huntington National Bank and Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG)—leveraged Own Accelerate to transform their Salesforce development, unlocking efficiency and innovation.
As Vandana Bhatia, IT Service Delivery Manager at Huntington National Bank, puts it, "It was just a very time-consuming process without the tool."
Yuri Conrat, Solution Architect at PSEG, echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the drain on developer resources: “I would say that close to 15% to 20% of our developers, and also 20% of technical leads, were dedicated just to preparing the data.” With Own Accelerate, both companies found a better way.
Huntington National Bank: Transforming development with reliable data
Huntington National Bank is a trusted leader in the financial services industry, dedicated to providing exceptional customer experiences.. Their core processes rely heavily on Salesforce, making data security and integrity essential for seamless operations across customer relationship management (CRM) and financial transactions.
The impact of data loss
Initially, Huntington, like many organizations, relied onSalesforce’s out-of-the-box backup features, assuming these would provide adequate protection. However, they encountered a significant data loss incident that affected many records and required months to recover. This experience highlighted the need for a more resilient data management strategy.
As Bhatia aptly points out, this experience "opened up our eyes with respect to how data loss can impact us," underscoring the importance of enhanced backup solutions for protecting sensitive financial information.
Manual data seeding challenges
Following the data loss, Bhatia's team realized that their data seeding approach also needed improvement. . Their data structure was complex, with "objects kind of entangled," Bhatia says. "There are hierarchies of data that are related to each other. And when you're loading data into a certain object and not to another object, it doesn't necessarily provide you the full view of that particular structure.”
Populating sandbox environments, which is crucial for testing new features and updates without jeopardizing production data, became a significant challenge. Manually replicating these intricate relationships and configurations within sandboxes was time-consuming.
The increasing adoption of record-based configurations by their vendors added another layer of complexity. These configurations, often intertwined with data records, could not be easily replicated using traditional data loading methods. For Bhatia's team, this often involved quickly identifying dependencies, coordinating multiple admins with different access levels, and carefully recreating configurations—all while ensuring strict adherence to security protocols and data sensitivity requirements.
Bhatia highlights the challenges of this approach: "Admins had to get involved in pulling the data from production, passing that on to whoever needed to look at that data and say, 'Is that sensitive? Do we need to mask it or not bring that over?'"
Finding Own: A dual solution for data protection and efficiency
After the data incident, Huntington National Bank sought a comprehensive solution that would address both their immediate data security needs and their long-term development goals. They found the answer in Own's suite of data management solutions.
Own Recover was the first step. This robust backup and recovery solution provided Huntington with the peace of mind that their data was truly protected and could be recovered quickly and reliably in any situation.
But the Huntington team found more than just a safety net in Own. They adopted Own Accelerate, a powerful data-seeding tool, to transform their manual processes.
"It is much less time consuming and much less error-prone in making sure that our capabilities are available to the developers who are doing the work in their dev sandboxes," explains Bhatia.
Own Accelerate delivered on its promise, dramatically reshaping Huntington National Bank's development workflows. What previously took multiple days—refreshing a single sandbox with accurate, relationship-intact data—was reduced to mere hours.
The results were undeniable: a significant reduction in development time, improved data accuracy, and a newfound agility to embrace evolving Salesforce development methodologies.
Public Service Enterprise Group: Powering development with data they can trust
PSEG, a leading energy provider , also understands the critical importance of reliable service. Serving millions of customers across a vast network, PSEG relies on a seamless and efficient operation to keep the lights on and homes powered. When they transitioned from a legacy SAP CRM system to Salesforce in 2019, they knew clean, reliable data would be the lifeblood of their new platform.
Clean data as fuel for exceptional customer service
PSEG aimed to build a solid foundation of accurate data within Salesforce. However, early efforts to populate sandboxes often led to inaccurate testing and production issues
As Yuri Conrat, Solution Architect at PSEG, recounts, "We were completely new to Salesforce, and we had no strategy on how to utilize it properly and which tools we need to support our development life cycle."
Early attempts to generate the data they needed for testing and development often fell short. Fabricated data, while expedient, resulted in inaccurate testing outcomes and downstream production issues. Salesforce's out-of-the-box sandbox refresh functionality fell short, providing either outdated data or, as Conrat puts it, "completely out of sync" information that was essentially useless for developers.
The challenge of manual data seeding
In the absence of a reliable data seeding tool, PSEG developers had to rely on manual data creation for testing. This approach was labor-intensive and prone to errors. Conrat describes the situation candidly: "It was a nightmare for our developers as well as for that team lead and UAT team."
The consequences of these data challenges were immediately apparent. Conrat reveals that their initial Salesforce rollout was plagued with issues: "With the initial release, we had like 25 critical issues in production back in 2019." It became evident that a more robust and efficient data seeding solution was essential for PSEG to unlock the full potential of their Salesforce investment.
From 25 critical issues to one
In their search for a solution, PSEG recognized the need for a tool that could seamlessly integrate with their development processes while providing the clean, reliable data they desperately needed. Enter Own Accelerate.
The implementation of Own Accelerate delivered a swift and significant impact on PSEG's Salesforce development. With access to accurate, production-like data in their testing environments, developers could confidently identify and address potential issues before they reached production.
After integrating Own Accelerate into their workflows, PSEG witnessed a dramatic decrease in critical production issues. As Conrat highlights, "With the data seeding and implementing, a number of the templates that issue just disappeared." From a staggering 25 critical production issues following their initial Salesforce launch, they went down to a mere five. With subsequent implementations and refinements, they managed to bring this number down to just one.
This drastic reduction in errors translated into improved software quality, increased developer efficiency, and overall team morale. PSEG had successfully transformed its data seeding process from a source of frustration into a strategic advantage, fueling its ability to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Favorite Own features
Both Huntington and PSEG have found significant value in Own Accelerate's feature set, especially the following:
✅ Data anonymization
Both Huntington National Bank and PSEG must adhere to strict compliance requirements, making data anonymization a non-negotiable aspect of their development and testing processes.
Own Accelerate's data anonymization capabilities provide the control and peace of mind these organizations demand, and significantly lessons the workload of internal developers. With Own Accelerate, sensitive customer information remains protected throughout the development lifecycle.
✅ Automated sandbox refresh and data seeding pipelines
Own Accelerate empowers organizations to create fully automated pipelines for refreshing sandboxes and seeding them with the precise data needed for testing.
"The schedule refresh of the sandbox data settings is a big addition for our developers as well," says Conrat, highlighting how automation streamlines their workflow. This aligns perfectly with modern CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery) practices, allowing for faster, more frequent releases without sacrificing quality or accuracy.
✅ Template-based seeding
Own Accelerate's template-based seeding feature streamlines the creation and reuse of data sets for common testing scenarios, such as regression testing, training, and more. This saves developers time and ensures consistency, reducing the risk of errors.
"We are able to create certain templates that are common regression-related tests that we can do in our environments," explains Bhatia. This allows them to quickly spin up pre-configured data sets for specific testing needs, accelerating their development cycles.
The bottom line: Unlocking Salesforce innovation
For Huntington National Bank and PSEG, implementing Own Accelerate was more than a technical upgrade; it was an investment in their development teams.
Automating and streamlining data seeding has freed developers from tedious tasks, allowing both organizations to focus on building and innovating within their Salesforce environments. The results are clear: faster development cycles, drastically reduced errors, and the confidence to build a better Salesforce experience for everyone.
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