Pitfalls

Every system comes with do's and don't. These are often ignored as the real effects reveal usually at inconvenient times.

Default users.

Some functionalities within Salesforce are setup with a default user like the detail owner on leads and the default workflow user. Just a few samples where I often see 'regular' business users setup. For leads it is always the best option to use a 'Queue' as the default lead owner, but this option is not available for workflow. For this it would be best to assign a system administrator user (person), making sure there are no restrictions when it comes to access rights. Users assigned as default owners for leads and or workflow cannot be disabled. So when you need to make a business user inactive.... you need to change the default users first.

General SaaS / PaaS pitfalls.

Moving to cloud-based platforms such as Salesforce introduces a category of risks different from traditional on-premise software. Common pitfalls to be aware of:

• Agreeing without reading. Many SaaS providers present an agreement button to sign up. Organisations click through without fully understanding the terms — including data rights, uptime commitments and exit provisions.
• Paying more than you need. Many organisations purchase licenses without involving a subject matter expert to evaluate actual requirements. Unused features and excess capacity quietly drain budget.
• Poorly understood SLAs. What does the provider's SLA actually guarantee? Availability, response times and data recovery objectives should all be clearly understood before committing.
• Hidden costs. Integration, tooling, training, security hardening, data migration and maintaining parallel on-premise systems are rarely reflected in the headline license price.
• Data rights. Understand the implications of data ownership — your right to access and export your own data at any point, and how data can be recovered in a migration or exit scenario.
• Limited control over updates. The provider controls the release schedule. You cannot delay a platform update the same way you could with on-premise software.
• Internet dependency. Availability of all cloud-delivered services is tied to network connectivity. This should factor into business continuity planning.
• Exit costs. Switching away from a SaaS platform carries underestimated costs — data extraction, re-training, re-integration and potential lock-in to proprietary data models.

CRM-specific pitfalls.

Beyond general SaaS risks, Salesforce CRM implementations encounter a recurring set of project-level failure patterns:

• Lack of vision. Implementing Salesforce without a clear organisational vision leads to misaligned configuration and low adoption.
• No dedicated project team. Treating the implementation as a side activity alongside existing roles almost always results in a poorly governed, delayed rollout.
• Lack of clear processes. Salesforce reflects and supports your business processes — if those processes are not well defined before implementation begins, the system will inherit the ambiguity.
• Lack of use case scenarios. Without concrete scenarios tested against the configuration, gaps and mismatches with real-world usage surface only after go-live.
• Lack of proper definitions. Unclear definitions of objects, fields and relationships generate data quality problems that compound over time.
• Not knowing how to measure success. If success criteria are not established upfront, it becomes impossible to demonstrate ROI or identify where the implementation falls short.
• Inadequate training. End-user adoption is the single most common reason CRM implementations underperform. Training is consistently underinvested.
• Poor data quality. Migrating dirty data into a new system does not clean it — it embeds the problem. Data quality assessment and cleansing should precede any migration.
• Not getting help. The Salesforce community is extensive and experienced. Attempting to solve known problems in isolation wastes time and produces inferior outcomes.