4 Tips For Effective Collaboration With Contractual Remote Salesforce Developers

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, more and more organizations are leveraging the power of remote work and contractual agreements.

Hiring contractual remote Salesforce developers offers numerous benefits, including enhanced flexibility, cost savings, and access to a global talent pool.

However, collaborating with remote teams, especially those located in different time zones, can be challenging. To ensure a fruitful partnership, it’s important to establish effective collaboration strategies.

In this blog, we share 4 tips to help you effectively collaborate with contractual remote salesforce developers. Let’s get started.

Clarity in Project Requirements

When working with offshore Salesforce developers, having clarity in project requirements ensures that you are working towards a common goal.

You should clearly explain the project objectives, desired outcomes, timelines, and expected deliverables to them.

For instance, say you run a hospital and currently rely on manual processes for managing patient interactions, appointment scheduling, and medical records. You realize the need for a more efficient and streamlined method and consult with a Salesforce consulting firm. After analyzing your requirements, the consulting firm confirms they can assist you with Salesforce implementation by providing a project delivery team consisting of developers, administrators, QA’s, business analysts, and architects.

Although you would have explained your requirements in initial discussions, sharing the same in a document post-hiring is a good idea. Here’s how you can do it:

Project Objective: An efficient solution to improve patient relationships, streamline operations, and consolidate patient data in a single platform.

Requirements:

1. The hospital staff should be able to efficiently capture and maintain patient information, including medical history and insurance details.
2. The solution should integrate with our existing electronic health records (EHR) software (e.g. Epic or NextGen) and billing systems.
3. Patients should be able to access their medical records and schedule appointments easily. In addition, patients should also receive automated appointment reminders.
4. The solution should have reporting and analytics capabilities, allowing our admin staff to study data like patient demographics and service utilization and make informed decisions.

Timelines: We expect the solution to be implemented within 3 months. Please factor in staff training time, as we want to ensure a smooth transition from our existing systems.

Establish Communication & Collaboration Processes

Having established communication and collaboration processes improves coordination and teamwork. When team members clearly understand how feedback will be provided and whom to contact for assistance, project outcomes are likely to be accomplished.

Here are some best practices to follow:

Define communication channels: For real-time discussions, updates, and feedback, use tools like instant messaging platforms (e.g. Slack), project management software (e.g. Jira), and video conferencing tools (e.g. Google Meet).

Additionally, you can share any standard operating procedures (SOPs) you follow during interactions. For instance, our marketing team at Cyntexa has adopted a standardized emoji system when communicating on Slack.

Depending on the intent, our messages begin with an emoji. Take a look at our current system:

Set up regular check-ins: Schedule regular check-in meetings to discuss project progress, address any questions, and provide feedback.

Provide constructive feedback: When providing feedback, highlight areas for improvement rather than expressing dissatisfaction. Also, clarify when and how often feedback will be provided.

Provide Access to Necessary Resources

When developers have access to all necessary resources, they can work on the project efficiently and with increased productivity. You should provide the following resources:

Hardware: If your business deals with sensitive information, you’d want to provide your own laptops. This would allow you to monitor their access to your organization’s resources closely.

In addition, the laptops you provide will meet your desired specifications. High-performance laptops allow developers to run complex tasks without limitations, leading to better productivity.

Software: This includes tools like the integrated development environment (IDE) of your choice, software libraries, and frameworks specific to project requirements.

In addition, provide access to project management and messaging platforms you use.

Establish a Clear Payment Schedule

When hiring Salesforce developers on a contract basis, having a clear payment schedule sets clear expectations for both parties involved. It eliminates confusion regarding when and how much the developer will be paid for their services.

Before engaging a project delivery team, you’d want to discuss the payment terms, including hourly rates and frequency (like weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or milestone-based payments).

You should consider hiring a consulting firm that offers resources (like developers, QA’s, administrators, and architects) on a flexible working model. That way, you can quickly scale up or downsize your team as per your requirements.

Whether you hire an individual contractor or a Salesforce consulting firm, you will certainly pay them for the billable hours. While consulting firms maintain their own time sheets, it’s best that you maintain your own timesheets regardless of whom you hire.

Most project management software allows time tracking; however, you can use dedicated time tracking software like Time Doctor.

Related: Cost of Hiring Salesforce Remote Developers in the USA.

Conclusion

There you have it, four tips on how to effectively collaborate with contractual remote Salesforce developers. By implementing the above-discussed tips, you can ensure a fruitful partnership that results in successful project outcomes.

Do you have any other tips for effectively collaborating with contractual remote Salesforce developers? Any experiences to share? Leave a comment below.

Schedule a call with Cyntexa to discuss your Salesforce hiring needs. We’re a Salesforce Consulting Partner with 300+ in-house professionals and provide talent on-demand.