Databricks vs Snowflake: 2 Different Approaches to Salesforce

In 2018, both Snowflake and Databricks made strategic moves by hiring GTM (Go-to-Market) Systems Leaders. Bringing in a Leadership hire early is the single best way to establish a strong foundation for your internal Salesforce infrastructure.

Fast forward to today and the teams have scaled in drastically different ways.

Let's take a closer look and compare the approach these Enterprise SaaS giants have taken to scaling the Salesforce team.

Salesforce Team Structure

Databricks: ~1,500 Sales Reps Comprehensive Breakdown of Databricks' Salesforce Team

• 0 Salesforce Administrators

• 3 Salesforce Business Analysts

• 0 Salesforce Product Owners

• 18 Salesforce Engineers

• 0 Salesforce Architects

• 3 Business Systems Leaders

Snowflake: ~2,300 Sales Reps Comprehensive Breakdown of Snowflake's Salesforce Team

• 5 Salesforce Administrators

• 15 Salesforce Business Analysts

• 12 Salesforce Product Owners

• 25 Salesforce Engineers

• 3 Salesforce Architects

• 6 Business Systems Leaders‍

While these snapshots of org structures provide only a glimpse, there are potentially areas for improvement on both teams.

The more glaring instance of it certainly comes at Databricks, though. Primarily the lack of Salesforce Administrators and Product Owners, combined with a relatively lean Business Analyst layer given the horsepower they have on the Engineering side.

Quick Insights

A Salesforce Team with ~20 Engineers gives you a ton of capacity to ship new features.

And that's a great thing assuming you have the structure and team in place to properly plan the roadmap you intend to build (Product Owners) and clearly document requirements and conduct thorough gap analysis (Business Analysts).

Without maturity in those functions, you fall into the trap of building for today without a broader plan of how that will scale in the future.

For more insights on how we view the importance of Salesforce Product Managers, check out our analysis on the Role of Salesforce PMs at Zillow. and the Diverse Background of Block's Salesforce Product Management team.

In general:

• Not Enough Admins = user experience suffers and hurt adoption

• No Architect/Systems Leadership = platform will lack scalability and solutions may not be thoroughly designed

• High Developer:Admin Ratio = overspending for a Developer's skill set only to have them focus on configuration level build work

Key Takeaways:

1. Importance of Early Investment: Investing in GTM Systems early on can make a significant difference. Both Snowflake and Databricks recognized the need for leadership in this area, but their subsequent decisions diverged.

2. 2. Intentional Investment: The number and types of roles in a Salesforce team matter. Being intentional about how to invest in the team ensures a balanced and effective structure.

3. Blended Skill Sets: Databricks' lack of Salesforce Administrators could easily result in lower adoption, based on a challenging user experience that isn't closely monitored, lack of training, and no change management around new releases.

4. Scalability and Leadership: Snowflake's inclusion of Architects and Business Systems Leaders indicates a focus on scalability, which is absolutely essential for long-term success and growth on the platform.