Salesforce Superstar Bluewolf Launches Digital Framework For Accelerating CRM Deployment

Bluewolf, one of the earliest and largest systems integrators in the Salesforce channel, released a solutions package Thursday aiming to accelerate small-scale deployments of several Salesforce products.

The set of automated tools, go-to-market frameworks and pre-designed templates, called Bluewolf Go, was developed in accord with Salesforce and Bluewolf parent IBM, which acquired the company in March.

Bluewolf CEO Eric Berridge told CRN the digital solution stems from the San Francisco-based consulting partner's 16 years of experience helping large customers on board to the industry's leading CRM platform.

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"We don’t want to lose sight that the power of Salesforce is its time to market and time to value," Berridge said. "It's always on and you can launch initiatives quickly."

Bluewolf Go offers two deployment timelines; customers can go live in 30 days or 60 days. That shortens the average launch time for Salesforce clouds by roughly 50 percent while reducing upfront questions about rates, project scope and go-live dates, Berridge told CRN.

"We use the timeline as the driver that dictates the project and achieves success in a short period of time so organizations can get value out of the platform and keep iterating," he said.

The product doesn't eliminate the need for engaging with the partner, he said, but it incorporates a digital experience that streamlines the consulting process.

"Consulting to some organizations is a necessary evil to get to their end state, and we are trying to minimize as much as that friction possible," Berridge said.

Bluewolf Go is geared for smaller deployments – either SMB customers or larger enterprises with specific departmental needs for a particular Salesforce cloud. That's a market segment that scaled Salesforce adoption by 50 percent last year, Berridge said.

The solution eliminates much of the setup work that's involved in deploying Salesforce with preloaded and prepackaged templates. It essentially gives customers a version of the many Salesforce clouds – Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Field Service Lightning, CPQ and Pardot – that are 40 to 60 percent complete, with the remaining deployment efforts specific to the unique business processes of the customer. Built into those templates are the best practices Bluewolf has developed over the years, and the brand trust and scale of IBM, he said.

Salesforce blessed the templates during the development process, Berridge told CRN. The CRM giant understands the "need to guard against customers that feel like they can do all of the stuff on their own but actually need support and best practices of a real consultancy."

"A lot of the risk moves away from the customer into our hands," Berridge said.

And IBM helped Bluewolf formulate a larger and longer-term vision around the product's delivery, with the potential for similar services to be developed by other Big Blue divisions around other parts of its portfolio.

IBM's involvement creates the potential for unique future capabilities, like one day integrating the Watson platform's cognitive capabilities to further accelerate the deployment track, Berridge said.