Salesforce Development Challenges Growing Companies Face

Salesforce dominates the CRM landscape, capturing 20.2% of worldwide market revenue. Growing businesses choose this platform for its unique ability to streamline workflows, improve marketing and sales, and provide actionable analytics to support data-driven business decisions.

While Salesforce is essential for faster deal closing, it also features a wide set of compliance requirements and complex configuration standards. Without proper oversight, implementations can quickly become difficult to manage or turn into a never-ending build, making it hard to keep projects on track. Common Salesforce implementation challenges include inefficient testing, over-customization, integration issues, scope creep, and security risks. Also, many companies that lack in-house expertise turn to offshore Salesforce engineers as a mitigation strategy.

We’ve compiled a list of the most common Salesforce development challenges and proven ways to address them to help you avoid bottlenecks and build a solution on solid ground from the start.

Challenge 1: Over-Customization

Salesforce’s extensive customization options let organizations tailor the Salesforce platform to their needs. However, if not managed carefully, Salesforce customization can lead to a complex, hard-to-maintain system with inefficient workflows, data migration issues, and improper configurations.

Solution

To create a tailored and effective digital solution and solve Salesforce customization challenges, ensure:

You have a clear implementation plan that guarantees every feature you want to implement addresses specific business needs, such as improving user experience or functionality.
You work with certified Salesforce consultants who have a proven track record of overcoming Salesforce adoption challenges and designing scalable solutions that guarantee businesses will achieve long-term success.
You roll out a solution gradually in phases. Start with essential modules, test every customization thoroughly, and then optimize its functionality. After that, implement more complex features.
You document all changes and specify their business and technical value. Clear documentation keeps everyone on the same page, speeds up Salesforce troubleshooting, and makes future updates and scaling far easier.

Challenge 2: Limited In-House Salesforce Expertise

One of the main Salesforce challenges is that growing companies may lack certified Salesforce developers and architects, and their teams usually have only one admin and developer, which is inefficient for building, customizing, and maintaining complex Salesforce solutions. Without the necessary expertise in the Salesforce ecosystem, companies face slow project delivery and quality issues.

Solution

To solve Salesforce deployment challenges, partner with experienced Salesforce professionals who can efficiently fill skill gaps, accelerate Salesforce development for growing companies, and guarantee high-quality deliverables. You can partner with staffing companies that have global reach and extensive expertise in connecting first-class Salesforce developers with growing companies to drive innovation. Also, decide on a region where you want to find Salesforce developers and/or Salesforce administrators. A perfect area should have a strong talent pipeline, a favorable business environment, competitive rates and taxes, cultural compatibility, and time zone alignment to ensure smooth collaboration and long-term success.

Challenge 3: Slow Time-to-Market for New Features

Data migration problems cause delays in 60% of Salesforce implementation initiatives, demonstrating that even basic tasks can require substantial time and effort. Besides, when internal teams are overloaded with various tasks, the rollout of new functionality is postponed. This slows time to market, increases technical debt, and limits the company’s ability to respond quickly to business needs.

Solution

To ensure your internal team is focused on the core Salesforce architecture and deploys new features on time, add external capabilities. With offshore engineers, you can achieve 24/7 development and streamline delivery. You can also offload your internal workforce using AI tools. For instance, you can integrate Agentforce into your CRM to streamline processes and ensure this AI-powered tool strengthens, rather than replaces, the work of your human employees.

Additionally, adopt a phased delivery approach that allows you to implement core features first and efficiently address challenges in the Salesforce implementation as you manage scope and expectations, improve user satisfaction, reduce downstream defects, and guarantee operational continuity.

Challenge 4: Integration Complexity

Salesforce integration challenges can arise from inconsistent data architectures, APIs, and workflows. The lack of compatibility can lead to data silos, inconsistencies, and operational friction.

Solution

Project delays, integration reliability issues, and inefficient workflows are the key challenges that growing companies encounter when working on complex integrations. To mitigate them, include these three aspects in your integration strategy.

Clearly define specific, measurable business goals that provide precise guidance and a clear success standard.
Conduct a comprehensive data audit. Validate all data, deduplicate it, use the right formats, establish naming standards, maintain data accuracy, and conduct regular audits to ensure consistent quality.
Select the right integration pattern. For simple integrations, use a native AppExchange connector that ensures superior security and data accuracy. For complex projects, opt for an iPaaS or middleware platform with pre-built connectors for fast integration. For unique systems, using custom APIs is the preferred solution.

Challenge 5: Security, Compliance, and Data Governance

Salesforce development entails complex systems that handle customer information and require various levels of security. Though Salesforce offers robust data protection measures, security challenges can still arise if the system is integrated with less secure solutions. Besides, during their growth, companies should pay attention to user access controls, data governance policies, and safe integration practices to prevent vulnerabilities and ensure compliance.

Solution

To ensure your solution is secure and highly efficient, follow these tips:

Build your architecture with security in mind from the start to avoid costly surprises down the road. Encrypt sensitive data and integrate role-based access controls to lower the risk of security incidents and data leaks.
Use OWASP Top 10 for penetration testing as it helps you meet regulatory requirements like PCI DSS and ISO 27001, detect and solve common vulnerabilities, and get actionable insights on fixing critical issues.
Monitor all systems to maintain data integrity, prevent issues from becoming recurring outages, and ensure performance stays on track.
Conduct regular compliance audits to protect sensitive information and meet regulatory requirements.

When Companies Should Consider External Salesforce Development Support

Growing companies should explore external help to tackle Salesforce business challenges in 2026, such as complex integrations, data security, and scaling development teams efficiently. Reinforcing your in-house team with external Salesforce expertise ensures you scale faster, tackle complex challenges, and meet project deadlines without straining your internal workforce. Here are specific factors indicating that businesses should seek external assistance:

If your project has intricate integrations and complex requirements, it’s better to add external capabilities to your team.
If your business is expanding rapidly, third-party providers offer flexible resources that can be scaled up or down depending on your requirements.
If you lack specialized in-house expertise, for instance, in AI integrations, professionals with niche skills can bridge the expertise gap and deliver complex Salesforce solutions quickly and reliably.
If you want to optimize your workload and save up to 60% on operational costs, you can partner with offshore developers and free up internal staff for core activities.
If you deal with evolving security standards or need advanced security measures, external Salesforce professionals can strengthen your security posture and keep your Salesforce environment compliant and resilient.

Conclusion

Successful Salesforce development requires continuous adaptation to evolving business processes, data structures, and user needs to stay ahead of delays and inefficiencies. To tackle the most common organizational and technical hurdles, companies should remain flexible, have a clear implementation roadmap, and roll out custom solutions in phases. They should also conduct thorough data and security audits and collaborate with offshore Salesforce developers who bring their skills to the table and drive innovation.

By keeping these Salesforce challenges and solutions in mind, you can navigate the development and implementation process with confidence, avoid unexpected issues, and maintain a competitive edge in a fast-moving market.