In today’s time, organizations tend to launch projects and strategies without having a clear idea of its success ratio & business metrics. Moreover, time and resources are invested in activities which give basic additions or at times nothing at all! Due to these factors, companies find it hard to access their current systems as they don’t think from a value realization perspective. Although, no matter what the case is, following the three steps below will enhance business value for your company.

Evaluate, engage, measure
Let us illustrate this process by taking a large technology company (LTC) as our prospect. This is not a tiring description, nor will it cover all the complications involved.

1) Evaluate the potential value
Firstly, we need to start working with the key businessmen who have a clear idea about the LTC’s vision and goals that coordinate with its programs and actions.

• A 2017 report states that only 40% of employees of a large MNC feel strongly connected to the company’s mission.
• Next, we take a step further and implement ‘value realization’ which has a huge impact on the business.
• Now we simultaneously recognize metrics and signals that will help us evaluate the value of each initiative. We classify metrics (cost reduction) and indicate past and future outcomes.
• Now we develop a guideline for short-listed metrics and evaluate its promising value in the next few years. There will be situations, where it will become difficult to identify the actual metrics. You’ll still have to describe success metrics for these actions and make crucial decisions along the course.
• Quality ‘value drivers’ would be a good addition if they meet up with your company’s key goals.

2) Engage through ‘Initiatives’
‘Potential values’ can help you identify the rank of an initiative. Every organization has their unique way of handling investments. In our case of LTC, we used NPV (net present value).

• More than 50% of employees time is spent on work that does not link up with the company’s business strategy.
• LTC’s new updated roadmap focuses on rich-quality projects that symbolize 80% of the expected financial worth- Pareto’s Principle in action.
• This influenced LTC to focus on projects worth of immense impact.

3) Measure by ‘performance’
‘Potential values’ can help you identify the rank of an initiative. Every organization has their unique way of handling investments. In our case of LTC, we used NPV (net present value).

• Measuring and tracking down performances are the key factors for the process of ‘value realization.’
• With the help of LTC, we were able to recognize reporting frequencies and developing dashboards & data to track performances via selected metrics and signals.
• As initiatives take time to give results, we focused on the top indicators to make sure we were on the right track.
• Last but not the least, ‘tracking of performance’ will help you reshape your efforts, as projects usually tend to divert from your initial plan. This would present you with the chance to search for alternative sources that you might have missed out on before or those that were unavailable earlier.

One last point: A lot of complicated things have been excluded from this process, and it has been explained in the simplest of ways possible. For instance, data doesn’t usually exist, but to grab hold of it; one needs to design ideas for it. When no baseline exists, people depend on assumptions to evaluate ‘value realization.’ Hence you should have a profound understanding of business strategies and commitment towards your company for achieving high-quality business value.

Conclusion:
If you focus on your business values, it will help you accomplish your organizational goals with the available resources. Using the above ‘essential’ three steps to boost your business value – evaluate, engage, and measure – will eventually turn out to be the primary factors of your organizational success.

Technical Architect would have wide information over numerous platforms, with the ability to evaluate the environment and business needs to configuration secure, high-performing specialized solutions on the Force.com platform. A Technical Architect would impart specialized solutions for business partners and give a framework that guarantees quality and in-time success. However, it is very much crucial to understand the SaaS model and technologies behind it to get the required ROI. Here are the ten key points to consider during the development life cycle of your application.

Key # 1: Leveraging automatically generated screens
Automatically generated screens by the Force.com platform consumes less time as compared to custom screens designed using visualforce pages. Although designers can design any user interface and still provide the same look and feel as that of an existing application but these pages consumes more time and are expensive as opposed to using the automatically generated screens. Make sure you understand the trade-offs before making choice between custom and automatically generated screens.

Key # 2: Use Force.com configuration where ever possible as compared to Custom Code
Spend more time in understanding the declarative part of the Force.com such as Workflows, Approval Processes, Validation rules, etc than spending time on custom code since custom code will increase development time, testing time and the entire timeframe. With custom code we can implement any kind of functionality, still to save time and money Salesforce advices to use Force.com configuration as much as possible.

Key # 3: Building a Force.com prototype is the primary step before starting the development
Design decisions and Prototypes saves time and cost in building an app. Using Force.com platform we can build a Prototype within days. Also, with prototype we get a feedback on functionality and UI from the users. This saves time and cost and we still have room for making changes at the prototype level.

Key # 4: Never use traditional Database Design techniques over Force.com
The data stored over Force.com is structured in nature and most designers misinterpret this and define a data model like a relational database, thinking the data stored in Force.com can be stored and retrieved through the relationships. Force.com gives the flexibility to create custom objects, relationships, reports, etc. Hence defining data model like a relational database can impact user experience, analytics and performance.

Key # 5: Structure the custom code for future reuse
Before writing a custom code we need to determine how the code must be designed and written so that once deployed we don’t need to redesign it. You can use Visualforce and Apex triggers for composing custom code, contingent upon your need. Visualforce gives the capacity to outline complex UIs utilizing custom controllers which can be reused in other Visualforce pages, including Visualforce segments that can be reused.

Key # 6: Optimizing the Code
Effective utilization of framework assets is critical in Force.com. Spend time upfront to optimize code after advancement, since it will be required even with the most vigorous plan, because of runtime issues. For example, the aggregate number of SOQL queries may surpass the given limit if there are many triggers written on an object. Optimizing such a code may improve performance and gives room for future enhancements.

Reference: http://developer.salesforce.com/page/10_Common_Mistakes_Architects_Make