Backup and Recovery
Data loss can cripple an organization, so a data protection platform for enterprise data is critical.
Challenges
Flowserve was new to Salesforce and the May 2019 Salesforce outage made backup and recovery solutions a priority.
Flowserve’s forecast data is fed via manual opportunities created & maintained by salespeople. Forecast values are further refined via links to quotations and orders and then modified in an iterative review process with sales leadership.
Forecasting review happens on a monthly basis, with weekly exports needed for users in 67 countries. This means updates to the data are made 24/7.
Losing access to this data would jeopardize the sales forecast and prohibit people from doing their jobs; a catastrophic scenario.
There were also real concerns of a lack of an audit trail when a data loss event occurs. The CRM team accelerated certain functionalities to allow the sales organization to move faster and respond to customers. This type of speed brought on more levels of risk
with the data.
Solutions
The CRM team now protects thousands of records for forecasting, keeping sales cycles in flow.
The deciding factor for Flowserve to select Own is that it is not a managed package. Thus, all the data and API connections are on a completely different platform, not running on Salesforce indirectly or directly. Own and Salesforce act as separate heartbeats; it’s fundamental that your backup is on a different platform.
One of the main advantages of Own is the ability to take snapshots of data and metadata prior to big releases or major update events. This allows the team to easily review and quickly roll back metadata or data should any type of complication occur.
Flexible alerts provide the ability to target notifications on specific types of data or actions. For example, the team is notified if anything during a release touches a profile that was not approved, giving them the opportunity to make a correction before the business side is aware or impacted.
Flowserve uses Own on a monthly basis to process the Salesforce monthly currency updates by taking snapshots of metadata and seed the changes in main Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) sandboxes.
Own supports their development velocity, as well as Salesforce releases. When different areas of development are supported, quick action is necessary. Own simplifies DevOps to bring speed and confidence to development and our continuous delivery process.
Own compare tools allow admin users to compare data and metadata changes quickly to understand what changes occurred and take proactive measures if any action is required.
If any corruption is discovered, Own, enables them to restore with the right relationships and maintain the proper data structure.
Real-Life Restore
Within 70 minutes of rolling out the Spring 2021 release, Carmen received Own email alerts regarding a significant change in production metadata and that objects were being deleted.
Thankfully, Carmen had been proactive and used Own to take a snapshot before Spring 2021 was pushed and another snapshot after Spring 2021 released. Having these snapshots was instrumental in the subsequent research and issue identification.
During a follow-up with Salesforce, these before/after snapshots from Own helped the Salesforce team identify a bug in the release and quickly resolve it. Both Flowserve and their Salesforce teams were pleased that they now have a mechanism to detect these types of changes and the capability to expedite the process for root cause analysis.
About Flowserve
Flowserve is one of the world's largest manufacturers of pumps, valves and seals with over 19,000 employees in over 60 countries. Built on more than 50 world-renowned heritage brands, the equity and customer loyalty the company have earned over the past 220 years is the foundation of their leadership position across the globe.
