A Salesforce team with 2 Admins and 18 Engineers is typically a BAD sign. You should look at that org structure and say, "this is clearly a company that has no idea what they're doing".

But Atlassian makes it work, while supporting 2,500+ users.

They succeed for 4 primary reasons.

1. A Scalable Salesforce Infrastructure
2. Dev Ops & Release Management Process
3. Team Structure
4. Retention
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1 Salesforce Admin per 1,250 users is insanity, especially when you consider the revenue distribution at Atlassian.

• They generate almost $1B in revenue per Quarter.
• They have 200,000 customers that spend less than $10K
• And Customers spending $1m+ is growing 50%+
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This means Salesforce powers PLG and Enterprise Sales motions. At scale.

Any successful Salesforce strategy - but especially one with an atypical team composition - relies on these fundamentals.

A Scalable Salesforce Infrastructure

Building Salesforce correctly means a lower volume of support tickets.Managing the support queue is one of the biggest time sucks for Admins.But it’s all avoidable.Make smart architectural decisions from the start.Continuously invest in the Salesforce product strategy.

Dev Ops & Release Management Process

Most Salesforce teams are highly inefficient.They lack a rigorous QA and Dev Ops process.This leads to low quality solutions. And drives up support tickets.Atlassian streamlines Dev Ops & Release Management with Copado.Quality features get shipped.And continuous releases allow them to do it FAST.

Salesforce Team Structure

Atlassian operates in a centralized, shared services model.This allows for flexibility in how Admin / Developer capacity is allocated.But the structure doesn’t work for everyone.You need a solid product roadmap in place.Then, you can assign resources with clear direction on what to execute.

Retention

55% of Atlassian’s Salesforce team has been there for 2+ years.Nothing can replace the level of efficiency that comes with retaining talent.Period.
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Salesforce Team Snapshot:

• 5 Business Systems Leaders
• 2 Salesforce Administrators
• 10 Salesforce Business Analysts + Product Owners
• 3 Salesforce Architects
• 18 Salesforce Engineers†

†Engineers work on both custom code and configuration level build.
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Check out more insights into the complete Salesforce team at Atlassian.