In the current COVID-19 era every consumer is looking for ways to get the best out of every dime spent. Organizations are no different when it comes to unstable markets and expenses for ruining operations. Many organizations recognized that they will need to make drastic changes in their spending to be able to continue being competitive in this difficult market.
Any organization that currently has a Salesforce CRM license or planning to get in the future would agree that Salesforce license cost is a major expense and will continue to grow as we add more and more users to the system.
Lightning platform (formerly known as Salesforce Platform or Force.com) license can save an organization an average of $1500/user/month. Let’s have a look at what lightning platform license users can or cannot do to evaluate if this can be a good fit for your organization.
If you are a customer of Enterprize, Unlimited, or Performance of any major salesforce cloud you may have the ability to utilize lightning platform license for some of your users if not all. This can help businesses reduce total salesforce licensing costs significantly.
Salesforce CRM licenses are developed for the user who needs that to perform any day-to-day operations. However, not all users need access to full CRM. By switching users who don’t need full access to platform licenses and after carefully designing current or future systems to platform user-friendly, businesses have been saving millions of $ every year.
How much can an organization save by switching to a Lightning platform license?
Let’s have a look at a hypothetical example of a CRM license and Platform license cost. As I am writing this article Salesforce’s website is showing how enterprise license costs $1800/year. Whereas the platform license only costs $300/year. By simply addressing which user needs full access to the system v/s which users can be a good fir for platform license can save your business $1500/user/month.
Which CRM objects do I get access to with Salesforce full CRM license?
Let’s have a look at primary standard objects that CRM (AKA full license) provides user access to
- Accounts
- Contacts
- Leads
- Opportunities
- Case
- Campaigns
- Contracts
- Products
- Order
In many instances, even though users have access to all licenses, they are either not required to open most objects or have very light use of that. From a cost-benefit analysis, the cost to develop similar objects using custom objects on the lightning platform license costs significantly less. Remember that it saves you $1500/month for every user you can migrate to the platform license.
So what does the Lightning platform license provides?
The Salesforce Lightning Platform Starter user can access up to 10 custom objects with the same functionality that is available in Salesforce Enterprise Edition.
User with Salesforce Lightning Platform Starter License can access up to 10 custom objects in addition to some of the standard objects for example Account, Contact, Tasks, Event, Notes, File, etc. They also have similar access to the functionality compared with users with Salesforce enterprise CRM license users. This list includes
- Apex class and Triggers
- Aura Components
- AppExchange Products
- Chatter
- Email Templates
- Files
- API Integration
- Lightning Community Builder
- Lightning Flow Automation (Flow + Process Builder)
- Lightning Web components
- Object Records types
- Reports standard and Lightning
- Salesforce Mobile App
- Validation Rule
- Visualforce
- Workflow and Approvals
What kind of apps can an organization develop or convert to take advantage of this license?
Below is the list of apps that can easily be developed using custom objects and therefore possible that users with only platform licenses can also access and operate this.
- Project management
- Human resources management
- Software development bug tracking
- Attendance tracking
A hypothetical example of platform user license cost savings
For example, Let’s say you have 20 users in the sales management app, if instead of using a standard opportunity object if you utilize custom objects to develop similar functionality assuming that they would not need access to any other standard object they would perfect fir for platform license. This small group of users will save $30,000/year by migrating them to platform users.
Final thoughts on Lightning platform license
Remember that each user in salesforce required 1 license to access the system. So the cost of this license can add up fairly quickly. Instead when making development or admin decisions for your org look for the opportunity to see if any particular group of users can be migrated to a less expensive salesforce license.
Let me know your thoughts in a comment below.