ACV Auctions
Challenge
At the start of our partnership, the objective was twofold.
First and foremost, boost Salesforce Delivery capabilities on a team with rapidly evolving needs.
Simultaneously, ACV was looking to define a longer-term resource model as they began scaling a global Salesforce Org.
Solution
Over the span of 2+ years, FoundHQ has helped ACV Auctions onboard a total of 15 Salesforce Contractors, spanning Administrators, Team Leads, and Engineers.
This involved adopting a global hiring strategy with resources based in North America, South America, and India.
Internal GTM Systems Team
25+ People
Contractors Embedded
15+ Contractors
Contractor Roles:
The Resourcing Blueprint
Strategy Layer
Execution Layer
The Work
ACV's Goals
At the start of our partnership, we focused on clearly defining ACV's goals and the ways they wanted to augment the existing Salesforce team with Contractors.
Rapidly Scale: The 6-7 person Salesforce Development team simply couldn't handle the requests coming in and needed to 2x-3x headcount immediately.
Keep Costs in Check: ACV was nearing their IPO and needed to be conscious of spend, so they specifically wanted to leverage Nearshore and Offshore Salesforce Developers.
Maintain Flexibility in the Contract: Since priorities were shifting, ACV didn't want to get locked into a yearlong contract and needed to structure an engagement that could stop whenever needed.
Fill in the Gaps: While they had an established internal Salesforce team, there were huge gaps that needed to be filled in, specifically around finding a Salesforce Development Lead, an individual focused on Dev Ops (Copado), and several QA Engineers.
Let's dive into the background on how ACV Auctions was leveraging Salesforce, the breakdown of the current Salesforce team, and how FoundHQ helped to rapidly scale a team of Salesforce Engineers across LATAM and India.
Salesforce Product Focus at ACV
The Salesforce footprint within ACV Auctions is significant.
The team sits within the core Product & Engineering team, which is 160+ people in total. In some orgs, this would be an atypical structure and Salesforce would live within a Business Applications or Internal Systems team; however, the platform is used as a primary component of the ACV core product offering.
The Salesforce products implemented at ACV include: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, multiple Experience Clouds, Field Service Lightning, Mulesoft and heavy utilization of Lightning Web Components (LWC).
Some of the ways ACV uses Salesforce is standard: it's their main Call Center Application, it integrates to Netsuite as the main data source feeding Finance etc.
However, their use of Communities and Field Service Lightning is fundamental to the business. These applications have critical touchpoints with B2C users (Buyers), B2B users (Sellers, Distributors), and are a critical element in their overall supply chain.
Salesforce powers inventory and order management across the marketplace and is used by 1,000+ vehicle inspectors throughout the country conducting field inspections of vehicles and tracking everything through Field Service Lightning.
In short, this is a company that has fully evangelized the capabilities of Salesforce and used it as both an Internal Application and as part of their core Product suite.
FoundHQ's Deliverables
Since ACV was looking to move quickly, we outlined the concrete headcount they planned to hire, an hourly budget for each Contractor, and a realistic timeline to begin onboarding Contractors.
Sr. Salesforce Engineers: located in either LATAM or India with a $65/hour maximum hourly budget for each Contractor.
FoundHQ introduced ACV Auctions to 5 Sr. Salesforce Engineers, all Platform Developer II Certified, and all 5 were hired within 10 days of introduction.
Onshore Salesforce Development Lead: since the Salesforce Development team was expanding so quickly, the 1 Engineering Manager was becoming a bottleneck, so we identified an ex-Accenture Lead Salesforce Engineer to join and oversee the work of 5 Salesforce Developers.
Dev Ops: ACV was already using AutoRABIT but lacked a formal Dev Ops process, which would create problems as the team grew 3x and became a global Development organization. We helped onboard a Dev Ops Lead to streamline workflows.
Within the first 2 months, we had added 7 members to the Salesforce Development team at ACV Auctions, while continuing to evaluate capacity needs and scale the team accordingly.
After the first year, our team of Salesforce Contractors at ACV had grown to 15 people globally, including Salesforce Engineers, QA Testers, and Technical Leads working across their multi-Cloud Salesforce org.
Additionally, we have begun supporting ACV as they stand up a dedicated Development Center in Chennai, India.
Hire a Consultant or Build a Team
FoundHQ is the easiest way to get work done in Salesforce.