Stages that mean different things
Two teams move an opportunity at different points for different reasons, so the forecast is an average of two incompatible processes and is trusted by neither.
Salesforce, Inc.
Platform expertise / Salesforce
A CRM records the process you actually have.
Which is why implementing one before agreeing that process produces an expensive, well-configured record of confusion. Aevis works on the operating model first — ownership, stages, definitions and what a number means — and configures Salesforce to serve it.
Salesforce is third-party software selected and licensed by the client from Salesforce, Inc. Aevis provides advisory, configuration, integration and operational services around the client’s org.
Customer workflow layer
Defined · connected · reportable- Platform
- Salesforce
- Starting point
- Org and process review
- Commercial model
- Project, sprint, managed or co-managed
Platform fit
The configuration is downstream of an agreement nobody made.
Almost every difficult Salesforce org we are shown is the record of an unresolved argument: two definitions of a qualified opportunity, three owners of the same account, and a pipeline number each function calculates differently.
A system updated after the fact
The real work happens in conversations and spreadsheets and is entered afterwards to satisfy reporting. The data is therefore always slightly wrong, and everybody knows it.
Customisation nobody can change
Years of triggers, flows and managed packages built by different hands. Each release carries unknown regression risk, so change slowed until it effectively stopped.
Our role is to make the org agreed, operable and reportable in your environment — not to sell an Aevis software product.
Product landscape
Where Salesforce coordinates commercial work.
We shape the engagement around the clouds and editions your organisation has selected. Scope, entitlements and feature availability always depend on your licensing and org.
Sales
Sales Cloud
Accounts, opportunities, forecasting and the stage definitions the forecast actually rests on.
- Opportunity management
- Forecasting
- Territory and quota
Service
Service Cloud
Cases, entitlements, queues and the escalation path when the first team cannot resolve it.
- Case management
- Entitlements and SLAs
- Omni-channel routing
Portals
Experience Cloud
Customer and partner portals, self-service and the knowledge behind them.
- Customer portals
- Partner communities
- Self-service knowledge
Platform
Salesforce Platform
Custom objects, Flow automation and the Apex that should be a last resort rather than a habit.
- Flow automation
- Custom objects
- Apex where warranted
Data
Integration and data
The connections to finance, ERP and service platforms that decide whether the record is authoritative.
- API integration
- MuleSoft
- Data quality and deduplication
Reporting
Reporting and analytics
Reports and dashboards built from the decisions they inform rather than from the fields that exist.
- Report and dashboard design
- CRM Analytics
- Data warehouse integration
Aevis capabilities
From an org to an agreed operating model.
Engage us for a focused intervention or an end-to-end programme. We work within your licensing, data-protection and commercial constraints.
Org and process review
What the org is configured to enforce, what the business actually does, and the size of the gap between them.
- Stage, field and automation inventory against real usage
- Technical-debt assessment across triggers, flows and packages
- Adoption measured from the data rather than from a survey
Operating-model design
The agreement the configuration will encode: stage definitions, ownership, hand-offs and what each reported number means.
- Stage definitions agreed by the teams that move records between them
- Account and case ownership rules with an escalation path
- Metric definitions written down before any dashboard is built
Implementation and configuration
Building it, with a bias towards configuration over code and towards fewer objects rather than more.
- Declarative-first build, with Apex reserved for what genuinely needs it
- Permission, sharing and field-level security designed rather than inherited
- Release process and sandbox strategy that survives seasonal upgrades
Integration and data quality
Deciding what Salesforce should be authoritative for, and making the record trustworthy where it is.
- Integration design with finance, ERP and service platforms
- Deduplication, matching and ongoing data-quality operation
- Migration with reconciliation rather than a one-way load
Technical-debt reduction
Making the org changeable again — which is usually worth more than any single new feature on the backlog.
- Automation consolidated and documented, with regression coverage
- Retirement of customisation the platform now covers natively
- Managed-package review against what is actually used
Managed and co-managed org operations
Running the backlog, the release cadence and the seasonal upgrades, or standing behind an administrator who does.
- Backlog governed with a named owner rather than a request queue
- Seasonal release impact assessed before it arrives, not after
- Data quality and adoption reviewed as standing operational measures
AI in customer operations
A draft is not a decision, and a score is not a commitment.
Salesforce ships genuinely useful assistive capability, and it is also the area where a demonstration is furthest from a deployment. What follows is what the tooling can do, and where the accountable judgement stays with a person.
Drafting and summarisation
Case summaries, email drafts and call notes prepared for a person to review, edit and send.
Predictive scoring
Lead, opportunity and case-priority scoring from your own history, useful exactly to the extent that history is clean.
Self-service and deflection
Answering routine customer questions from approved knowledge, with a clear route to a person the moment it is not routine.
What stays human — without exception
No AI sends a commitment to a customer, commits a forecast, or closes a case on its own. Drafts are reviewed before they leave, scores inform a person’s prioritisation rather than replacing it, and any output with a contractual, financial or customer-commitment consequence is authorised by somebody accountable for it. Scoring trained on a poorly maintained org will confidently reproduce that org’s existing bias, which is a reason to fix the data first rather than a reason to distrust the technique.
How value is measured
- Handling time on cases where a draft was used
- Edit distance between generated drafts and what was sent
- Deflection rate, and satisfaction on deflected contacts
- Score accuracy against outcomes, reviewed per period
- Reviewer override of suggested priority
Entitlement and data
Which AI capabilities are available depends on the client’s Salesforce editions, licences and add-ons, and on what the vendor ships in that release. Customer data is processed under the client’s data-protection terms and the vendor’s trust commitments, for the agreed purpose only.
Connected architecture
Decide what Salesforce should be authoritative for.
A CRM that owns every record becomes a second ERP with worse controls. A CRM that owns none becomes a reporting layer nobody updates. The boundary is the design decision that matters most.
Experiences
Sales and service consoles, portals, mobile and the email integration people genuinely use.
Process and automation
Stages, approvals, assignment, entitlements and the flows that move work between people.
Data and governance
The object model, sharing rules, field-level security, audit history and reporting layer.
Enterprise landscape
ERP, finance, marketing, service management and the data platform that reports across all of them.
Architecture boundaryAvailable objects, automation limits, API allowances and connector options depend on the client’s edition and licensing. We validate entitlement and governor limits before committing to a design.
Delivery model
Agree the process, then configure it.
The order is the whole method. Configuration is fast and reversible; an unresolved argument about what a stage means is neither, and it will be encoded either way.
Review
Establish what the org enforces, what the business does, where they diverge, and what that divergence costs.
Gap and technical-debt assessmentAgree
Settle stage definitions, ownership, hand-offs and metric definitions with the teams who will live inside them.
Written operating modelBuild
Configure declaratively against that model, with permissions, sharing and release process designed rather than inherited.
Configured org with documented designPilot
Run one team on the new model for a full cycle, including a month-end, before extending it.
A proven cycle on a real teamOperate
Run the backlog, the release cadence and the data-quality position as one governed cycle.
Governed operating cycleImprove
Retire customisation the platform now covers, and revisit definitions as the commercial model changes.
Smaller custom estate, current definitions
Use cases
What organisations bring us.
Each of these is a normal starting point rather than a programme. We map the adjacent dependencies so a local fix does not create a hidden failure elsewhere.
A forecast nobody believes
Two teams moving opportunities on different criteria. The fix is a definition agreed between them, not a better report.
Designed outcomeOne forecast both teams stand behind
A system updated after the fact
Work happens elsewhere and is entered to satisfy reporting. Usually a sign the process encoded is not the process performed.
Designed outcomeA system used because it helps
An org nobody dares change
Years of automation from different hands, undocumented. Regression coverage and consolidation before any new feature.
Designed outcomeChange that is safe again
Records that disagree with finance
Two systems each authoritative for the same field. The design decision is which one stops being.
Designed outcomeOne authoritative record per field
Cases that stall between teams
Ownership and entitlement rules that do not describe the escalation people actually use.
Designed outcomeCases owned to closure
A first implementation
A greenfield org, where the cheapest possible moment to agree definitions is before anything is built.
Designed outcomeA build on a written agreement
Engagement shapes
Four ways to start.
Which one fits is usually a question about where accountability should sit rather than about budget.
Org and process review
Best forA forecast or a backlog you do not trust
A bounded assessment of configuration, adoption and technical debt, ending in a prioritised list with an owner and an effort estimate against each item.
Implementation project
Best forA build, a migration or a redesign
Defined scope with acceptance criteria, delivered declaratively where possible and handed over with the design and release process documented.
Managed org operations
Best forNo standing administrator
Aevis runs the backlog, release cadence and seasonal upgrades to an agreed cadence, with the accountability boundary set out in the service agreement.
Co-managed and enablement
Best forAn administrator who should own this
We work alongside your team and hand over deliberately, with the design documented and train-the-trainer where the capability should stay with you.
Designed outcomes
Measure the agreement, not the activity.
Baselines and targets are agreed per engagement. We do not import a vendor benchmark into your organisation and call it a business case.
Definition coverage
Stages and reported metrics with a written, agreed definition.
Adoption in the flow of work
Records updated during the work rather than retrospectively.
Change safety
Automation under regression coverage, and lead time for a routine change.
Data quality
Duplicate rate and completeness on the fields decisions actually use.
What we do not promise
No provider can guarantee a commercial outcome, a revenue result or user adoption. What is contracted is the design, the configuration and the operating practice within an agreed scope; the organisation retains its commercial decisions and its relationship with the vendor.
Governance
The four things that keep an org changeable.
Salesforce orgs do not fail suddenly. They accumulate until change becomes risky, and these are the standing controls that keep that from happening quietly.
Definitions are written down
A stage or a metric without an agreed written definition will acquire two, and the reporting built on it will be argued about rather than used.
Declarative first
Code is reserved for what genuinely needs it, because every trigger is regression effort at each of three seasonal releases a year.
A real release process
Sandboxes, version control and regression coverage, so a change has an author, a test and a way back.
Retirement is on the backlog
The backlog includes removing customisation the platform now covers natively, or the custom estate only ever grows.
Why Aevis
Platform expertise with an operator’s perspective.
We approach Salesforce as a system somebody has to administer after we leave. The work is designed to survive handover, seasonal releases and a change of administrator.
The operating model comes first
Stage definitions and ownership are agreed before anything is configured. An implementation that automates an unresolved argument produces an expensive record of it.
We argue for configuring less
Customisation is regression effort at every seasonal release. The design says what will not be built, and the backlog includes retiring what the platform now covers natively.
Integration-minded
We decide deliberately what Salesforce should be authoritative for, rather than letting it accumulate ownership of records that belong in finance or ERP.
No licence resale
Licences are contracted directly between you and Salesforce. We hold no margin in your user count, which is worth checking for in any competing proposal.
Relationship clarityAevis does not claim ownership of Salesforce products and this page does not state or imply a certified partnership. Product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Testimonials
In their words.
Each testimonial is tied to the service it refers to, so service pages can draw the relevant one automatically.
The change we noticed first was not technical. It was that there was finally one person to call, and that person already knew the history of the problem.
Placeholder NameHead of IT OperationsNorthvale BankManaged Services They rebuilt the service catalogue around how our teams actually work rather than how the platform was shipped. Adoption stopped being an argument.
Placeholder NameDirector, Service ManagementHalden InsuranceIT Service Management We had the security tooling before Aevis arrived. What we did not have was anybody turning what it produced into decisions.
Placeholder NameChief Information Security OfficerCerulean HealthCybersecurity
Frequently asked questions
Questions teams ask early.
The useful answers depend on your org and licensing. These are the principles we use before an assessment establishes the exact scope.
Are you a Salesforce partner?
This page makes no partnership claim. Aevis provides advisory, configuration, integration and operational services around an org the client licenses directly from Salesforce. Where a formal partner relationship is relevant to a procurement, ask us and we will answer it precisely rather than by implication.
Why will you not just configure what we asked for?
We usually will, once we are confident the request is agreed rather than one team’s version of it. The expensive failure in this platform is encoding an unresolved argument: two definitions of a qualified opportunity get configured as one, and the resulting forecast is trusted by neither team. Establishing that takes days, not months, and it is the cheapest part of the engagement.
Our org has years of customisation. Where do we start?
With regression coverage and an inventory, before any new feature. An org where nobody can predict what a change will break has effectively stopped being configurable, and the first return on investment is making change safe again — which is worth more than anything currently on the backlog.
Should Salesforce be our system of record?
For some things, and it matters that the list is explicit. Finance usually should own the invoice and ERP the product master; Salesforce can coordinate work across both without owning either. An org that accumulates authority by default becomes a second ERP with weaker controls, which nobody chose and everybody then has to live with.
Do you write Apex?
Where it is genuinely warranted, and we will argue first for the declarative option. Every trigger and class is regression effort at each of three seasonal releases a year, so the design deliberately states what will not be built. That argument is worth less revenue to us than the alternative.
Can our own administrator take this over?
That is the co-managed shape, and it is the outcome we design for. The operating model, the release process and the configuration rationale are documented as they are built, and train-the-trainer is available through the Corporate Training practice.
Salesforce enquiry
Start with the number nobody agrees on.
Tell us which reported figure gets argued about, and which two teams calculate it differently. That disagreement is almost always the real brief.
- Response
- One working day, Monday to Friday