Skip to content
Thought Leadership Career Development Consulting Technical

The Best of Both Worlds: Growing as a Salesforce Professional with Technical and Functional Expertise

Introduction

If you’ve ever looked at the Salesforce certifications page, you’ll know there are predefined roles for Salesforce professionals, such as Developer, Administrator, Consultant, and Architect. Some specialise strictly into the technical track – writing Apex code, building Lightning Web Components, and managing Integrations. Others take on what’s called the functional side – gathering requirements, designing solutions, and optimising business processes.

In today’s market, the most valuable Salesforce professionals are the ones who can bridge the gap between the two worlds. Whether you are a Salesforce professional just getting started or you’ve been in the ecosystem for years and want to sharpen your edge, this post is for you. I’ll touch on how nurturing my Functional Skillset has benefitted my career.

My Graduate Journey

Back in 2018, I began my career within the Salesforce ecosystem as a fresh-faced Computer Science graduate. At the time, I was eager to dive in and learn everything I could about Salesforce development. I threw myself into learning Apex, Aura, Lightning Web Components and integrations.

Marking my tickets as ‘Done’ and seeing them move into the last column on the Kanban board felt like a huge sense of accomplishment. I could take a problem and solve it using what I’d learned while also learning something new in the process.. However, this soon stopped being enough for me as I started to ponder the bigger picture. I then began to ask the grand question of… Why?

What Does ‘Functional’ Actually Mean?

Three years in, I started asking myself why I was building what I was building.That question led me to make a shift – stepping into a Functional Consultant role. I wanted to see the bigger picture, be involved in the conversations that result in the decisions being made, and equip myself with the business context of what needs building.

I used to think that a Functional Consultant would be purely focused on the declarative capabilities of Salesforce – making flows, creating reports, updating fields etc. But really, I realised it’s a lot more than that. Everything has a reason and a purpose, and every business has a set of goals to accomplish and challenges to face. I found myself diving into unfamiliar territory of having to understand the business perspective. I began asking questions like:

  • What are your current processes? Why do you do things this way?
  • What are your pain points? Why are they a problem?
  • What is the ideal process? Why will it improve your business?
  • Why?

I realised that getting clear on the ‘why’ behind these questions helped to provide a well-informed “how” – a solution tuned to the business and its goals. After all, no two businesses are the same, even if they use the same stacks and similar business models within the same industries. Getting to the why proved to be the key to building the right solutions for my clients.

Joining Ziipline

And then we come to now. Since joining Ziipline, I’ve stepped back into the technical space as a Technical Lead. But this time,I’m bringing a business-first mindset with me. My time developing a business-oriented mindset has paid off in being able to deliver real impact to our customers. This mindset aligns with one of our core principles at Ziipline – “always start with why.” This attitude allows us to provide transformative guidance across the entirety of the project lifecycle.

We don’t want to be seen as just developers. We aim to understand, recommend, and challenge where appropriate to achieve complete clarity and guide our customers in their Salesforce journey.

Closing Thoughts

Looking back, I’m glad I took the time to build skills on both the technical and business side. If you can, I’d also encourage you to learn skills in an area you’re not comfortable with. Blending these skills not only enhances your career but also enables you to deliver comprehensive, impactful solutions. By always questioning the ‘why’ and understanding the bigger picture, you set yourself up for success within the Salesforce ecosystem.