Salesforce Roadmap Planning: What to Prioritize This Year

Salesforce is a powerful ecosystem, but its value multiplies when aligned to evolving business goals. Whether you’re running Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, or a fully customized environment, having a clear roadmap ensures that your Salesforce investment continues to deliver strategic impact.

Here’s how to approach your Salesforce roadmap planning—and what you should prioritize this year.

1. Align Salesforce with Business Objectives

Every roadmap should start with clarity: what are your company’s top priorities this year? Growth? Operational efficiency? Customer retention?

Key actions:

• Conduct stakeholder interviews to capture business needs
• Map these goals to Salesforce capabilities (e.g., CPQ for revenue acceleration)
• Translate objectives into quarterly roadmap items

Example: If scaling customer service is a priority, prioritize setting up omnichannel capabilities and enabling Service Cloud Voice.

2. Strengthen Core Integrations

As Salesforce becomes your system of record, tight integration with ERP, marketing automation, support, and billing platforms is non-negotiable.

Key integrations to review:

• ERP (NetSuite, SAP, etc.) for quote-to-cash
• Marketing tools (Pardot, HubSpot, Marketo)
• Contact center and CTI tools
• Business Intelligence (Power BI, Tableau)

Poor integration leads to siloed data, user frustration, and bad decisions. Make it a roadmap priority to fix or enhance this layer.

3. Adopt Hyperforce-Ready Architecture

Salesforce is transitioning all organizations to Hyperforce, its new public cloud infrastructure. This shift is about compliance, scalability, and performance.

This year, prioritize:

• Running a Hyperforce Readiness Check
• Preparing for regional data residency needs
• Reviewing your deployment pipeline and metadata structure

Even if Salesforce hasn’t scheduled your migration yet, getting ready now will make the shift smoother later.

4. Modernize User Experience

A poor Salesforce UX kills adoption. With tools like Lightning App Builder, Dynamic Forms, and Slack Sales Elevate, this is the year to rethink how your teams interact with CRM.

User experience updates to prioritize:

• Redesign record pages using Dynamic Forms
• Use Lightning Apps tailored by role
• Embed productivity tools like Slack or Einstein Conversation Insights

Result: Less friction, more engagement, and better CRM data hygiene.

5. Focus on Data Governance and Security

As your org grows, so does the complexity of roles, permissions, and compliance risks.

What to tackle:

• Review and optimize sharing rules and permission sets
• Implement field-level encryption if in a regulated industry
• Use Salesforce Shield for audit trails and data monitoring
• Set up data validation and cleanup rules

Don’t wait for an audit or breach to expose gaps. Build governance into your roadmap.

6. Leverage AI and Automation

This year, Salesforce Einstein and automation tools are not just "nice to have."

What to prioritize:

• Einstein Lead Scoring for smarter sales prioritization
• Flow Orchestrator for multi-step, cross-object automation
• Next Best Action to guide reps and agents in real time
• AI-generated field predictions or case classifications

Prioritize one use case first, then scale what works.

7. Measure and Optimize Continuously

A good roadmap is agile. Don’t treat it as fixed—set metrics and adjust based on data.

Set quarterly checkpoints for:

• Adoption metrics (login rates, feature usage)
• Data quality dashboards
• Automation success and failure rates
• Business impact (e.g., reduced sales cycle, CSAT lift)

Tools like Salesforce Optimizer, Lightning Usage App, and custom reports are your allies here.

Final Thoughts: Plan Smart, Execute Smarter

Salesforce isn’t just software—it’s a strategic platform. But it needs structure. This year, make your Salesforce roadmap a reflection of where your business is heading, not just a to-do list of tech upgrades.

Not sure where to start? Get expert Salesforce consultation to define priorities, avoid dead ends, and unlock long-term value.