Salesforce Scaries 👻

Jenna Trott

5 min read | OCTOBER 28, 2022

The Case of Dr. Frankenstein

Is the Salesforce Implementation Specialist you hired a mad genius? Or…just…mad…? You hired them under the impression that their customizations would create a beautifully cohesive system, but instead there are so many disjointed parts that it can only be described as monstrous. Just because “it’s alive, it’s ALLLIIIVEEEEE,” doesn’t mean it should be!

Confessions from Frankenstein Systems

“There is a consulting firm out there that doesn’t bother with org wide Apex test coverage. I have seen this problem at three different organizations. Instead, they add a massive class consisting of a never ending line of this to boost coverage: i++; i++; i++; i++; i++; i++; i++; i++; And so on…”

“This consultant’s implementation was done at high cost. When I logged into the org I saw that much of the work was done by an offshore user. One object they created 5 Record Types. But all 5 were assigned to the same Page Layout, and none of the picklists were customized.”

“It was a chaotic implementation… half-baked strategy, and like many organizations new to Salesforce, they enthusiastically turned on every integration they could find while also bulk uploading lots of garbage spreadsheets of data into the system….creating a centralized heap of trash data that was impossible to sift through. Side note: They also renamed several standard objects (like Contacts and Opportunities), just because ‘they could.’”

“A consultant created an email alert to send an email if an opp was closed won, but didn’t discount the previously closed opps. Had to do a mass edit to old opps and on insert triggered the automation and crashed our exchange email for a few hours. We were receiving upwards of >20k emails at a time…”

Count Datacula

I vant to suck your…data? Data is in many ways considered to be the blood of any organization, helping to keep it alive. The Salesforce specialist you hired had promised to make sure all of your precious data was safely and securely transitioned to your new system, but now it’s all gone. And the life and blood of your organization has been drained. Does anyone have any garlic? Or maybe like, a qualified specialist?

Confessions from Count Datacula

“This consultant had set up the org with all users with ‘Manage Public List Views’ and a user updated the master list view to show only records they had created and hit save instead of Save As. Which then displayed HIPAA sensitive data to MANY people.”

“A new consultant once told me it was impossible to store all of your data in Salesforce and recommended keeping multiple spreadsheets on the side…”

“We had a consultant that forgot to include Record Type in their import. It resulted in an override of ~12,000 account record types to the imported record type which subsequently triggered automation to revert the account ownership to the ERP integration user and blank all the territory and account teams.”

“This consultant ran data loader and instead of inserting the 500 records from the XLS it inserted 50,000 records and blew up the Dev Org. The only option was to create a new Org and spend days recreating the customizations and data.”

Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?

Implementing Salesforce to your current system can be scary and overwhelming, there’s a lot that can go wrong so it’s important to be dealing with the right professional. The last thing you want is an evil face smoothed by mild manners to disrupt the balance of your Salesforce ecosystem. If you find yourself with a Mr. Hyde, it may be time to seek a new Salesforce Implementation Specialist.

Confessions from the Two-Faced Techy

“Our consultant would straight up lie about having completed steps, would ghost on coming to meetings, etc. The worst part was this consultant was a Salesforce BA who was volunteering because our company is a nonprofit. So embarrassing.”

“This consultant kept adding things, deleting things and turning on features without asking me and I only found out once our org started becoming incredibly hard to use.”

“Our company wanted an org to org migration, the consultant we hired assured us everything went well. They then left for a three week long vacation and our system was essentially broken.”

“We had a 2 hour long conversation with the hired consultant about customizations we wanted, throughout the entire process he never updated us, documented absolutely nothing and then when we saw the final project, it was basically a replication of the system we were sunsetting. When we tried to contact him, it went to voicemail every single time. Yes we already paid *face-palm*.”

Invaders from Mars!

It looks just like them…it sounds just like them…is it? Could it be? Duplicate leads and contacts from a poor implementation have a way of blending into your Salesforce ecosystem, sight unseen. But left undiscovered, they can wreak havoc on data analysis and organization insight. Before you know it, you’ve got dozens of those little imposters masquerading as the original.

Confessions from the Data Disrupters

“Long ago we moved to Salesforce from a different CRM tool and clearly something went wrong with the consultant we hired because it’s been nearly 15 years and we’re still finding duplicate fields on the same object.”

“A very questionable consultant deleted more than 300 account records because they thought they were working in sandbox. When they tried to remedy the issue, we ended up with multiple data loads of duplicative info.”

“We had a consultant who instead of using the “merge” function on duplicate data, they set doubles to “hide” so that no one could see that there were already doubled entries in the system… reporting was a nightmare for a long time and we couldn’t figure out why.”

“Our business decided to implement a property object, so upon lead creation, a property is created from the address details.They also decided that lead duplication was not an issue and that duplication should in fact be encouraged when leads return, without syncing up to our person accounts… I’ve inherited the most cluttered system of duplicate leads and on top of them duplicate properties that can’t be merged….”

Yikes…why don’t we leave the horror storytelling to Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker and Stephen King. Are you being haunted by a past Salesforce project that went terribly wrong? Access Global Group has over 15 years in the industry, are Summit-Level Salesforce partners and have 5-star ratings on G2 and the Salesforce AppExchange. AGG has over 250 Salesforce certifications and have successfully completed 500 Salesforce integrations and over 1,500 Salesforce projects throughout five different countries. Let us turn your nightmare of an implementation into a sweet dream.

Get started with us today – there’s no tricks — only treats!