For many businesses, Salesforce has become the backbone of customer relationship management, sales operations, and more. And, as the data that manages these important components grows, so can the challenges with keeping it organized. Every interaction, every email, every record adds to the ever-growing volume of information within Salesforce. As Stephen Mascola, Senior IT Director at Stanley Black & Decker, puts it, "We've accumulated just a lot of data over time." This accumulation, while necessary for business operations, can lead to a common and challenging problem: data sprawl.
Storage limits are pushed, performance slows, and managing sandboxes becomes a headache. In extreme cases, organizations may exceed their allocated storage. Alex Rabey, Tech Lead for Salesforce Infrastructure at ACV Auctions, explains, “We actually went over 100% once. That's when we decided we needed a tool like this [Own Archive]."
By efficiently archiving historical data while maintaining its accessibility, Own Archive helps organizations regain control of their Salesforce data, optimize storage costs, and ensure compliance with data retention policies.
Stanley Black & Decker: A global leader facing data overload
Stanley Black & Decker, the world's largest tool company with 50 manufacturing American facilities and more than 100 worldwide, relies heavily on Salesforce to power its sales, service, and employee experience initiatives. With 11 Salesforce orgs supporting 4,500 CRM users and over 60,000 employees, the company's Salesforce ecosystem is vast and business-critical.
Years of operating on Salesforce led to a predictable challenge—massive data accumulation. This presented Stanley Black & Decker with a difficult dilemma. "We got to a point where we were just running out of storage space," Mascola recalls. "We went to the business and asked them what they're willing to give up, and [they were] never willing to give up as much as we want."
Finding the balance between data retention and storage optimization
Deleting valuable historical data was not an option for Stanley Black & Decker. The business had long data retention requirements, driven by a complex mix of factors. "We've got general industry compliance and then there's data retention compliance," explains Mascola. "And then there's business comfort, right? So even if the company says, 'Hey, you can keep it for seven years,' but you go to the business [and] the business [says], 'I really want to keep it for 10.'"
To make matters worse, exceeding Salesforce storage limits wasn’t just a matter of cost. It meant performance issues and complexities in managing sandboxes—essential components of their Salesforce development and testing processes. "Salesforce will allow you to do it," Mascola explains, referring to going over storage capacity, "but some funky stuff starts to happen. It starts to break." One particular pain point was the impact on their ability to manage and restore sandboxes.
Choosing a trusted partner
When it came to selecting an archiving solution, Stanley Black & Decker turned to a name they already trusted: Own. Already an Own Recover customer, the company had experienced the reliability and effectiveness of Own's solutions. "It really became a very simple process to move to Archive when the need for archiving came up," says Mascola. He adds, "We already had a good relationship. We already had a nice implementation, and things were going well, so it made a lot of sense."
Effortless archiving, improved performance
With Own Archive in place, Stanley Black & Decker gained control over their burgeoning Salesforce data.
A dedicated team now proactively monitors storage levels across their various orgs, using Own Archive to keep storage consumption in check. “It's really 'set it and forget it,'’ says Mascola. “Once it's live, it kind of takes care of itself."
This hands-off approach has freed up valuable IT resources while ensuring that historical data remains readily accessible. Importantly, Own Archive seamlessly blends into the background from a user perspective: "It doesn't look like it's not there [and] doesn't look like it's an archive. It's just in a different spot within Salesforce."
In the rare instances where data recovery was needed, Own Recover delivered, further solidifying the trust Stanley Black & Decker placed in Own. As Mascola says, "A couple of times, we've had one or two incidents where we've had to go in and use the restore side from Recover, and it's worked great. We know that all that data is available to us."
Optimized storage, enhanced performance
By implementing Own Archive, Stanley Black & Decker achieved the following:
- Reduced storage costs: Avoided expensive storage upgrades from Salesforce.
- Improved Salesforce performance: Enhanced system stability and responsiveness.
- Simplified data management: Automated archiving processes reduced administrative burden.
Through a combination of trust, a seamless experience, and tangible results, Own Archive became a core component of Stanley Black & Decker’s Salesforce data management strategy.
ACV Auctions: A fast-growing marketplace navigating data demands
ACV Auctions, a rapidly growing online marketplace for automotive dealerships, depends on Salesforce as the engine of its customer relationship management. With nearly 2,000 users relying on a highly customized Salesforce org, managing data efficiently is critical to ACV Auctions' success.
"We're a relatively new company," says Rabey. "[But] we're getting close to 2,000 Salesforce users now within our org. [Our Salesforce org] has been heavily customized to fit all of our various needs." This rapid growth, coupled with their highly customized Salesforce instance, brought with it the challenge of keeping pace with ever-increasing data storage needs. As Rabey points out, “Our Salesforce org was getting bloated really quickly.”
The pressure of exceeding limits
ACV Auctions was nearing a critical point. "We started creeping up to 95%," recalls Rabey. The company even experienced the disruption of briefly exceeding 100% storage capacity—an event that underscored the need for a proactive solution.
Their complex data ecosystem added another layer of complexity. “Every single one of our business units has their own data source,” explains Rabey. "And we pull real-time data in and out of Salesforce pretty much constantly." Ensuring that any archiving solution integrated seamlessly with this intricate setup was paramount.
Initially, ACV Auctions considered developing a custom solution in-house. However, the potential time investment and complexity made this option less appealing: "We have a knack for building custom solutions for a lot of these kinds of problems," says Rabey, "[But] inevitably, we learned that it would be quite difficult to do that and probably take six months to build something custom."
A functionality-first approach to finding the right solution
To identify the optimal solution, ACV Auctions conducted a thorough evaluation, undertaking a Proof of Concept (POC) with three different backup and archiving providers. Their selection process prioritized real-world functionality. "We did a POC with three separate backup solutions," Rabey explains. Own emerged as the clear frontrunner due to its ease of use and effectiveness.
Immediate impact and customized control
The results were undeniable. "We essentially had through our POC, our storage [brought] down by like 10%," Rabey shares. This immediate impact during the POC showcased Own Archive's ability to deliver rapid, tangible value. "[We] didn't even need to spend any more time outside of our POC to bring our storage down to a level that was acceptable," Rabey states.
Beyond its immediate effectiveness, ACV Auctions valued Own Archive's customizability and granular control. This was particularly important for managing email data—a major contributor to storage consumption—and for complying with PII regulations. Rabey says, "The great thing about email messages is that the only thing anyone ever does is look at them. . [So] being able to archive them and then view them directly in Salesforce in the UI was really useful."
Another key benefit was Own Archive's ability to improve testing processes: "With those end-to-end tests that I was talking about, we create around 10,000 accounts with all of their accompanying child objects, every single day." Rabey explains how they leveraged Own Archive for sandbox management: "So we actually created separate policies that are able to identify those testing accounts and then delete them specifically, so that we can keep those two environments relatively clean as well."
Empowering teams to manage their data
ACV Auctions plans to leverage Own Archive's intuitive interface and documentation to empower individual development teams to manage their archiving policies. "What we're going to do is push all of our developers who are on these different domain teams to look at the storage analyzer themselves and determine the retention policies they can have on the data that they own," says Rabey.
Cost savings, performance gains, and accelerated time to value
By choosing Own Archive, ACV Auctions reaped multiple benefits:
- Significant cost savings: Avoided substantial Salesforce storage costs through efficient archiving.
- Enhanced system performance: Maintained a stable and responsive Salesforce environment.
- Faster time to value: Experienced immediate results, achieving significant storage reduction during the POC.
Own Archive provided ACV Auctions with the tools and control needed to manage their growing data volumes, ultimately enhancing business agility and efficiency.
Favorite Own features
Both Stanley Black & Decker and ACV Auctions found substantial value in Own Archive's ability to manage their ever-growing Salesforce data. Beyond the core benefits of storage optimization and cost savings, several key features stood out for these companies.
✅ Seamless integration
For Stanley Black & Decker, already an Own customer, the transition to Own Archive was seamless. "It really became a very simple process to move to Archive when the need for archiving came up," says Mascola. This easy integration allowed them to quickly address their storage challenges without disrupting existing workflows.
✅ "Set it and forget it" automation
Both companies appreciated the automated nature of Own Archive. Once policies were in place, the solution ran smoothly in the background, requiring minimal intervention. This hands-off approach freed up valuable IT resources to focus on other priorities.
✅ Customizable archiving policies
ACV Auctions highlighted the importance of Own Archive's highly granular controls for setting archiving policies. This flexibility was crucial for addressing their unique data retention needs and complying with specific data privacy regulations, particularly regarding PII.
✅ Storage analyzer tool
Having clear visibility into their data storage was essential for both companies. Own Archive's storage analyzer gave them the insights they needed to make informed decisions about archiving strategies. The ability to quickly see which data types were consuming the most storage allowed for targeted and efficient archiving policies.
✅ Sandbox optimization
Rabey demonstrates a valuable but often overlooked benefit of Own Archive—sandbox optimization. They cleverly used Own Archive to manage their sandbox data, creating policies that automatically purged test data and kept those environments clean.
Optimized Salesforce environments, empowered businesses
When asked to sum up their experience with Own Archive, both Stanley Black & Decker and ACV Auctions emphasize the transformative impact on their Salesforce environments. For Stanley Black & Decker, it's about peace of mind: "We know [the data is] there. We know that all that data is available to us," says Mascola.
For ACV Auctions, the key takeaway is empowerment. "It's really easy just to say, 'Here's this tool, go and use it,'" says Rabey, describing their strategy to give development teams more control over their data management. "You're required to [use it] and drop 5% of data storage that you own." Own Archive's winning combination of automation, customization, and intuitive insights gives businesses the tools they need to tame data sprawl, optimize storage, and unlock the full potential of their Salesforce investment.
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