Gearset has been an invaluable tool on Legal & General America’s Salesforce journey
Heather Shelton, a Salesforce Administrator for Legal & General America (LGA), started working in the Salesforce ecosystem in 2009. Over the years, Heather has seen the CRM platform grow from strength to strength. She’s acquired first-hand experience of the many ways it supports the business. Her path to becoming an administrator is a familiar one for many in the ecosystem. “I started on Trailhead, picked it up, and got my certification. My sales career has transitioned to Salesforce administration.”
“Our mission is to protect more families with life insurance. And we’re supported by leading technology and security solutions.”
When she started at LGA, Salesforce was still new to the business – there were no real DevOps processes in place. Steve Burton, VP of Digital Customer Experience & Marketing, takes pride in the team’s ability to support the wider business. They had a mission to evolve the DevOps process, and needed a more agile process – one that reflected a thoughtful and careful approach to delivering enhancements on the platform.
“Gearset has helped the new structure – Salesforce can now support the business really well.”
Gearset was strongly recommended by a Salesforce Platinum Partner
The transformation began in 2019 when LGA brought Silverline on board as a consulting and development partner. In Heather’s words, “Their people are great. They know Salesforce best practices and partner with outstanding vendors to make them successful” – one such vendor being Gearset.
“We invest time and resources to develop solutions. Why risk the project by not having good tools to complete the delivery?”
Working with Silverline, LGA envisioned improvements to their Salesforce processes for end-users, as well as ongoing customization of their own internal DevOps processes. In Heather’s own words, “trust is an important barometer of a relationship”. Steve and Heather trusted Silverline’s recommendation. They knew they needed the right tools to be successful given their technical and operational requirements.
“Silverline was talking about Gearset like it would be an integral team member.”
Gearset saves time and peace of mind during the DevOps process
Heather is confident in the processes they’ve built and the tools they’re using – that wasn’t the case before. She draws attention to the validation and scheduling features: particularly the ability to package, validate, and schedule changes overnight. As a mother and wife, Heather has commitments outside of work. She loves being a Salesforce Administrator and speeding up business delivery processes, but Gearset has given her back some invaluable time to spend with her family.
“I can schedule a job overnight and wake up the next morning feeling like I’ve already done the day’s work.”
Heather isn’t a developer. Some parts of the process, like validation and testing, caused her concern – particularly when using change sets. Gearset has largely removed unease, with tools like the problem analyzers that alert her to potential issues ahead of time.
“Gearset is like getting into a Maserati – you know it does a lot of cool stuff.”
It’s important to Heather that LGA runs a smooth DevOps process. Every time she runs a deployment with Gearset she learns something and gets more comfortable. Less time spent on this part of her work gives her more time to contribute to other projects that make life easier for users. And the time savings help her drive revenue. As Heather puts it: “I don’t have as many worries now.”
“It has helped me to free myself from fear and to feel awesome about delivering new features and functionality to my end users.”
Gearset provides Legal & General America with certainty for future success
With Gearset, Heather has more confidence in LGA’s DevOps process than ever before. As a Salesforce Administrator, she wants “a great end-to-end experience from development to implementation.” That is something Gearset has delivered.
“Even the most mundane things can be cool if a company takes the time to delight its users. I’m delighted by Gearset.”
From where Legal & General America started to where they are today, it’s a “complete evolution.”
“I would recommend Gearset, without a shadow of a doubt. Once you use it, you sing its praises.”
