Salesforce Org Strategy: Consolidation vs. Multi-Org

Introduction: Many large enterprises find themselves managing multiple Salesforce orgs (instances) due to growth and change, whether through mergers and acquisitions, regional expansions, or independent business unit initiatives. A fragmented org landscape can complicate your CRM strategy, raising questions about cost efficiency, governance, and data consistency.

This section of the CIO playbook provides a strategic analysis of Salesforce org strategy, comparing Consolidation vs. Multi-Org approaches.

We explore why multi-organizational environments arise, the licensing and commercial impacts, strategies for contract and organizational consolidation, situations where a multi-organizational setup is justified, and how to negotiate global agreements to optimize costs.

A CIO Action Plan is included to translate these insights into concrete steps.

Read about Salesforce Negotiations.

Why Enterprises End Up with Multiple Orgs

Enterprises rarely plan to have dozens of Salesforce orgs; rather, they accumulate over time due to business realities:

• Mergers & Acquisitions: After M&A activity, each acquired company often brings its own Salesforce org. Immediate consolidation is challenging, so parallel orgs persist.
• Decentralized Business Units: Independent divisions or regional subsidiaries may have implemented Salesforce on their own, tailoring it to local processes. This results in siloed orgs for each unit or geography.
• Diverse Use Cases: Different departments, such as Sales, Service, or Marketing, or product lines, may spin up separate organizations to meet specialized requirements or use specific Salesforce products. For example, a company might maintain one org for CRM sales and another for a customer community or e-commerce integration.
• Regulatory or Data Requirements: Some organizations intentionally keep data isolated. A heavily regulated subsidiary or a region with strict data residency laws (e.g., EU GDPR requirements) might run on a separate organization to comply with local regulations.
• Legacy and IT Governance Gaps: In some cases, multiple orgs exist because historically, there was no centralized IT governance. Various teams adopted Salesforce in parallel, only later discovering overlap and redundancy.

Over time, CIOs inherit this multi-organ sprawl. While it can address short-term needs (autonomy, speed, local compliance), it introduces strategic challenges that must be evaluated against a consolidation strategy.

Licensing & Commercial Implications: Multi-Org vs. Consolidated

One of the biggest considerations for CIOs is how multiple orgs impact Salesforce licensing costs and commercial terms. A fragmented org landscape can lead to inefficiencies and missed savings, whereas a consolidated approach can unlock economies of scale.

The table below summarizes key differences:

Multi-Organizational Inefficiencies: In a multi-organizational scenario, the inability to share licenses or entitlements across environments often leads to waste. For example, one division might have 50 extra CRM user licenses it’s not using.

In contrast, another division has a shortage and must buy more, because under separate org contracts, you cannot transfer or reallocate licenses between them. Similarly, if each org is below enterprise volume thresholds, you miss out on bulk pricing.

Independent licensing advisors warn that these inefficiencies add real costs: you might be paying for duplicate users and functionality. There’s also the soft cost of managing multiple vendor contracts, renewal dates, and true-ups for each org separately.

Consolidation Benefits: By consolidating orgs (or at least consolidating your licensing contracts), a CIO can achieve economies of scale. All users count toward one volume licensing agreement, unlocking higher discount tiers.

The organization can potentially reduce total license counts by eliminating duplicate accounts – for example, a sales VP who previously needed separate logins for each region’s organization would, in a single organization, use one login (one license) to view all relevant data.

Moreover, Salesforce tends to reward larger customers. A bigger, consolidated contract can improve your strategic relationship with Salesforce, often yielding more flexible terms.

License pooling across the company means you buy a single entitlement and share it, rather than buying the same SKU multiple times for different orgs. From a budgeting perspective, a unified contract also provides clarity: one invoice, one renewal, and a global view of Salesforce spend.

However, consolidation is not purely a commercial decision – it has contractual and technical complexities that must be managed carefully.

Merging Salesforce Orgs: Contract and Technical Considerations

Consolidating multiple Salesforce organizations into one is a strategic project that involves both contractual negotiations and technical migrations. CIOs should approach an org merger methodically, balancing cost goals with risk mitigation.

Contractual Strategies – Negotiating Consolidation: Merging orgs typically means merging (or restructuring) your Salesforce contracts.

Engage Salesforce early to negotiate a contract consolidation that reflects your new, combined license needs and secures cost savings from the change:

• Co-Termination of Agreements: If different orgs (or business units) are on separate Salesforce contracts with different end dates, work towards co-terming them. This might involve extending one contract or phasing out others so they all renew at the same time. A unified renewal cycle strengthens your negotiating position and makes future management simpler.
• Consolidated License Agreement: Consider negotiating an enterprise-wide Salesforce agreement that covers all organizations under a single master contract. Salesforce offers Enterprise License Agreements (SELA) for large customers – essentially a single umbrella contract for all your licenses and products. Under such an agreement, licenses can usually be transferred or allocated across multiple orgs or subsidiaries, treating your total licenses as a shared pool. This prevents the scenario where one organization runs out while another has excess. Be sure to negotiate pricing consistency so that any new users in any org draw from the same discounted rate card.
• Ensure Cost Savings are Realized: Simply combining contracts doesn’t guarantee savings – you must push for volume discounts and the elimination of duplicate subscriptions. If you’re consolidating 500 users from Org A and 500 from Org B into a total of 1000 users in one contract, ensure the price per user on the new deal is lower than it would be separately. Leverage the promise of a larger, multi-year commitment to ask for improved discounts or additional value (e.g., extra sandboxes, premium support included). Independent licensing experts, such as Redress Compliance, recommend consolidating fragmented Salesforce spend into a single negotiation to maximize your volume leverage.
• License Transfer & Flexibility Clauses: During negotiations, include provisions that allow flexibility as your organization’s structure changes. For example, negotiate the right to transfer licenses between affiliated entities or orgs without penalty. This is crucial in post-merger scenarios – you want to easily move a license from the old organization to the new consolidated organization. Likewise, if certain users or teams are spun off or divested, seek the right to drop those licenses or reuse them elsewhere in your company. Such clauses future-proof your agreement against organizational change.
• Plan for Contractual True-Ups: If one of your existing org contracts still has time remaining, decide how to handle any overlap period. Salesforce may offer credits or adjustments when you consolidate to avoid double paying. Typically, you might sign a new master agreement and terminate older ones, with any prepaid amounts applied pro rata. These details should be agreed upon to ensure that the merged organization reflects net cost savings, rather than temporary cost increases.

Technical Migration & Risk Mitigation: On the technical side, merging Salesforce orgs is a complex project that requires careful planning to avoid business disruption:

• Data Migration and Quality: Combining organizations means migrating data (such as accounts, contacts, and cases) from source organizations into the target organization. It’s essential to cleanse and de-duplicate data during this process to avoid combining siloed systems into a single, large, and dirty one. Plan incremental migrations and use Salesforce migration tools or third-party data loaders to streamline the process. A pilot migration or parallel run can help identify issues early.
• Process and Customization Alignment: Different orgs often have different custom objects, workflows, automations, and integrations. Consolidation demands governance alignment – you’ll need to reconcile or unify your business processes. CIOs should charter a cross-functional team to decide on common data models and process standards. Some custom features in one org may be redundant or incompatible with those in another. Harmonizing them may require development effort or even re-implementing certain functionalities in the consolidated org. This is an opportunity to eliminate outdated customizations and adopt best-of-breed configurations from each org.
• Data Residency & Compliance: Be mindful of regulatory implications when merging data. If one organization were kept separate for data residency (e.g., European customer data in a EU-only organization), migrating it into a single global organization might violate regulations unless Salesforce can guarantee data storage in specific regions. Salesforce has a multi-region infrastructure, but a single organization resides in one primary region, with backups in other regions. If you consolidate, ensure the target org’s location and Salesforce’s data handling meet all local requirements. In some cases, you might maintain a partial multi-org strategy (e.g. keep EU data in an EU org, consolidate the rest globally) to comply with laws. Also consider privacy and consent records – merging orgs means combining different sets of user consents, which must be handled carefully to remain compliant.
• Security and Access Controls: When separate organizations merge, users from different business units will now coexist in the same system. Governance alignment is key: review roles, profiles, and sharing rules so that, in the consolidated org, people only see what they should. This might involve implementing territory management, divisional segmentation, or record types to segregate data by business unit within the organization. The goal is to maintain any necessary separations (such as one subsidiary’s sales pipeline not being visible to another’s users) through configuration, rather than physical organizational separation. Thoroughly test the security model to ensure that no unintended data exposure occurs after the merge.
• Change Management & Risk Mitigation: Consolidation is effectively a re-implementation of Salesforce for many users. Mitigate risks by investing in change management: communicate early with stakeholders, provide training on the new unified organization, and consider running the old and new systems in parallel for a short period to iron out any issues. Have a rollback or contingency plan in case critical problems arise. It’s wise to consolidate in phases (e.g. merge two orgs at a time) rather than a “big bang” merge of many, if feasible. This limits the blast radius of any issues. Also, maintain backups of the pre-merge orgs until the new environment is stable.
• Maintain Compliance During the Transition: Ensure that data protection policies continue to be enforced during the migration. For instance, when moving data, use secure methods and consider whether any sensitive data, such as customer PII, needs masking or special handling. Keep audit trails of what was migrated. From a license compliance standpoint, you may need to temporarily have users active in both the old and new organizations during the transition. Coordinate with Salesforce so that this doesn’t count as double usage in the short term. Typically, if planned, Salesforce will accommodate a transition period where both organizations run concurrently without extra licensing charges, as long as it is time-bound and for migration purposes.

By addressing both contract and technical aspects, CIOs can merge orgs in a way that realizes the intended cost savings and operational benefits while minimizing business risk.

When a Multi-Org Strategy Still Makes Sense

Consolidation is not a silver bullet for every situation. In certain cases, a multi-org strategy – maintaining separate orgs – may be the better choice or even a necessity.

CIOs should recognize scenarios where the benefits of isolation outweigh the benefits of consolidation:

• Legal Entity or Regulatory Isolation: If different divisions of the company are separate legal entities with strict requirements to keep data segregated (common in financial services, healthcare, or government sectors), multiple orgs provide a clean separation. For example, a subsidiary that deals with government defense contracts might need to keep its data completely isolated from a commercial subsidiary for legal compliance – separate orgs make that easier to demonstrate to auditors.
• Regional Data Residency and Localization: As noted, data residency laws, such as GDPR and data sovereignty laws in countries like Germany, France, or Australia, may dictate that customer data stays within specific geographic boundaries. Salesforce doesn’t offer per-record residency control within a single organization – the organization itself is tied to a data center region. If your company operates in jurisdictions with conflicting data hosting requirements, you might opt for a distinct org per region (e.g. an EMEA org, a North America org, an APAC org) each hosted in-cloud within that region. Similarly, suppose one region requires the CRM UI and data to be managed in a local language or format that is significantly different from others. In that case, a dedicated organization can simplify that localization.
• Drastically Different Business Processes: When business units have very divergent processes or product models, forcing them into one organization could create complexity that outweighs the benefits. A single org would require many customizations, conditional logic, and complex security rules to segregate what are essentially different businesses. In such cases, a multi-org setup lets each unit optimize Salesforce to its needs without compromise. For instance, consider a conglomerate that owns an insurance company and a manufacturing company – the sales processes, objects, and compliance needs are so different that sharing a single configuration would be impractical. Separate orgs allow each to innovate and configure Salesforce independently.
• Performance and Org Limits: Very large deployments might run into Salesforce governor limits or data volume limitations. Splitting workloads across multiple orgs can be a scaling strategy. If a single org would approach limits on custom objects, workflow rules, or data storage, multiple orgs provide more headroom. It also spreads out user and record volume, which can help maintain performance (e.g., search and reporting might run faster on two medium-sized orgs than one gigantic org).
• Autonomy and Agility: Different orgs give regional or product teams the autonomy to deploy new features and changes on their schedules. This can speed up the time to market for enhancements. A global single org demands coordinated releases and governance to avoid conflicts, which can slow things down. If an organization values agility in its independent units (for competitive or innovation reasons), a multi-organization approach can reduce bureaucratic overhead. Example: One region can roll out a new Salesforce workflow or integration without needing global approval, because it won’t affect other orgs.
• Risk Containment: With multiple organizations, an issue in one organization (a deployment failure, data corruption, or security breach) is contained to that organization alone. In a single org, all eggs are in one basket – a major incident could impact the entire enterprise CRM. While strong governance and sandbox testing can mitigate this risk, some CIOs may prefer a segmented approach as a form of operational risk management.
• Transitional Strategy: Sometimes, multi-org is a temporary but necessary strategy. After an acquisition, you might run multiple orgs in parallel for an extended period because immediate integration would disrupt business. Or during a major reimplementation, you might set up a new organization and gradually migrate teams to it (running two organizations in the interim). These phased approaches mean that multi-organ situations aren’t always permanent, but they are used to manage change at a safe pace.

Importantly, maintaining multiple orgs doesn’t have to mean foregoing all the benefits of consolidation. CIOs can implement cross-organizational integration strategies to mitigate the downsides. For example, suppose you keep separate orgs per region. In that case, you might invest in a unified analytics tool or data warehouse that pulls data from all orgs to provide global reporting and insights for HQ.

You could also implement single sign-on (SSO) and identity federation so users have a seamless login experience across orgs (even though licenses are separate, at least the UX is unified). Some companies use middleware or Salesforce’s own Customer 360 integration tools to sync key data, such as global account records or product catalogs, between organizations, achieving a degree of data consistency without full consolidation.

These measures can make a multi-org strategy more tenable by addressing its typical pain points (reporting silos, duplicate data, etc.) while retaining the needed separation.

In summary, a multi-org strategy is justified when structural or regulatory factors require it or when the complexity of merging would outweigh the return on investment (ROI). The key is to optimize licensing and governance in the multi-org model to minimize inefficiencies, which leads to the next point about global agreements.

Global Licensing and Pricing Agreements

Whether you consolidate orgs or choose to remain multi-org, CIOs of large Salesforce customers should negotiate from a position of enterprise-wide strength.

This often means treating your multiple orgs as one when dealing with Salesforce commercially. The goal is to secure a global pricing agreement or enterprise arrangement so that you get the best pricing and flexibility across all environments.

One option is a Salesforce Enterprise License Agreement (SELA) – a long-term contract that bundles your Salesforce products and orgs under a single committed deal.

Under a SELA (or similar enterprise agreement):

• Unified Pricing & Discounts: You negotiate a single set of pricing for your entire license volume (across all organizations, products, and divisions). For example, rather than each country office buying 100 Sales Cloud licenses and paying a medium-tier price, you negotiate for 1000 Sales Cloud licenses at once for a higher discount tier. This ensures consistent unit pricing globally, avoiding situations where a smaller division pays more per license than a larger one. Salesforce’s sales teams often provide significant discounts for enterprise deals; as mentioned, 30%–50% off list price is not uncommon for large commitments. By aggregating demand, you also avoid the “worst-case” pricing you’d get if each piece negotiated alone.
• License Pooling Across Orgs: A well-structured enterprise agreement allows you to flexibly allocate licenses across multiple orgs or business units as needed. In effect, your company buys a pool of Salesforce usage that can be distributed. This eliminates the classic inefficiency of multi-org setups – no more buying extra licenses in Org X while Org Y has unused licenses. For instance, if you have 5,000 total Salesforce user licenses in your SELA, those can be assigned to users in any of your orgs under the company umbrella. If one department shrinks and another grows, you just reassign licenses internally without buying more from Salesforce (as long as you stay within your total). This pooling can also apply to specific product entitlements – for example, you might have a pool of 1 million API calls per day or certain multi-org feature licenses that all organizations share.
• Centralized Governance of Contracts: With a global agreement, the negotiation and management of Salesforce contracts is centralized (often handled by corporate IT or procurement), even if orgs remain separate for technical reasons. This means you can enforce common terms and renewal dates, and have a single Master Service Agreement with Salesforce. Subsidiaries or divisions then often operate under that master agreement through addenda or sub-agreements, but pricing and key terms are established at the top level. It simplifies compliance with contract terms and gives you a single point of contact for any issues with service or support.
• Global Price Protections: CIOs should ensure a global deal includes price protections for future expansions. For example, negotiate rate cards or caps on annual price increases that apply to all orgs. If your company opens a new branch and needs another Salesforce org, the new org should fall under the same pricing umbrella, not be treated as a new customer at potentially higher rates. Similarly, coordinate renewal timing – avoid having different orgs’ subscriptions ending in different quarters that Salesforce could leverage (they might offer a good renewal on one while another is mid-term at a higher price). Align them to prevent being picked off separately by sales tactics.

Negotiation Considerations: While global agreements bring many benefits, approach them with due diligence:

• Avoid Over-Commitment: Salesforce may push a large enterprise deal (they often encourage big customers towards SELA-like agreements). Make sure your committed license quantities and products reflect realistic needs. It can be tempting to sign a “one size fits all” deal covering Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Tableau, Slack, etc., with the promise of a great bundle price. But if you don’t end up deploying some of those products widely, you could be overpaying ~40% or more compared to a usage-based approach. Industry analysis has shown that without careful negotiation, companies in enterprise agreements sometimes pay significantly more than necessary. Protect your organization by including true-down clauses or flex options, such as the ability to reduce some license volumes if certain business units are divested or if adoption is lower than expected.
• Define Usage Caps and Overage Terms: Modern Salesforce enterprise deals are not truly “unlimited” – they come with usage caps (e.g. up to X users of product Y). Ensure you understand these limits and negotiate them high enough to cover growth. Also, negotiate what happens if you exceed them: will you get a fair price for additional licenses? Can you defer the purchase until renewal? The agreement should not penalize success excessively; ideally, it provides headroom and a framework for adding more licenses at pre-agreed rates.
• Include Affiliate Access Rights: If you have multiple legal entities (common in multi-org scenarios), confirm that the contract allows all named affiliates to use the Salesforce licenses under the master agreement. This way, each org (often tied to a specific subsidiary’s account with Salesforce) can draw from the central license pool. If you acquire a new company, the agreement should allow you to add that affiliate and transfer some of your license allocation to their organization without needing to start a new contract from scratch. Many CIOs negotiate a clause that allows any majority-owned affiliate to utilize the licenses and services under the main agreement.
• Enterprise Support and Governance: When negotiating a global deal, also consider securing enterprise-level support and success services. For example, rather than each organization paying for a Premier Support upgrade, you might get Salesforce to include a Premier or Signature support tier that covers all users. Also, ensure that internally, you establish a center of excellence (CoE) to govern the use of Salesforce across organizations – a global agreement often goes hand in hand with global oversight. This CoE can monitor license usage by org, ensure no one exceeds allocations, and drive adoption so you get value for what you’re paying.
• Regular Reviews and Benchmarking: Just because you have a multi-year global deal doesn’t mean you set it and forget it. Assign your team or an independent advisor to review usage on an annual basis. If some licenses are underutilized, you may renegotiate or adjust at renewal. Likewise, keep an eye on Salesforce’s pricing changes or new products – you might want to swap certain product licenses for others if your strategy changes (e.g., trade some unused Marketing Cloud licenses for more Analytics capacity, if the agreement permits). Independent licensing experts (such as Redress Compliance or similar consultancies) can provide valuable benchmarks and help ensure you’re not paying above-market rates over time. They can also advise on structuring the deal, including terms such as swap rights or price holds on additional licenses.

In essence, global licensing agreements enable you to reap many of the benefits of consolidation, such as cost efficiency and flexibility, even if you maintain multiple organizations technically. They treat your relationship with Salesforce holistically.

Many successful CIOs adopt a hybrid approach: they might maintain separate organizations for legitimate reasons, but behind the scenes, they negotiate as one unified customer. This way, each org isn’t an island from a commercial standpoint – you achieve a “one Salesforce” strategy in the eyes of the vendor, which can significantly optimize your spend.

Real-World Examples

To illustrate these concepts, here are two anonymized real-world scenarios – one favoring consolidation and one maintaining multi-org – and how each CIO optimized their Salesforce landscape:

• Case Example – Organizational Consolidation for a Global Manufacturer: A Fortune 500 manufacturing company had grown to six separate Salesforce organizations across North America, Europe, and Asia due to acquisitions and regional autonomy. The CIO initiated an org consolidation program to unify CRM data and cut costs. Over the course of 18 months, they merged these into a single global organization. As a result, they eliminated over 15% of total Salesforce licenses that were previously duplicated. Sales managers who had accounts in multiple regional organizations now only needed one account. They also negotiated a new, consolidated contract. Previously, each region had 300–500 users on separate deals with varying discounts. Now, a single 2,500-user deal was struck, offering a 45% discount off list prices (compared to around 25–30% they had regionally). This delivered significant savings. The unified organization gave them a 360° customer view and streamlined governance through a single global CRM platform. However, the CIO also had to invest in a robust role-based access scheme to ensure regional teams only saw their data, and in change management for process standardization. In the end, the effort paid off: one executive dashboard now shows the global sales pipeline in real-time (instead of manual aggregation from different organizational reports), and annual Salesforce spend is substantially lower than it would have been with six separate organizations.
• Case Example – Deliberate Multi-Org with Optimized Licensing: A multinational financial services firm chose to remain on multiple orgs to meet strict regulatory demands. They have separate orgs for retail banking, insurance, and wealth management divisions, because combining customer data across these divisions raised compliance concerns, and each operates under different regulatory regimes. Recognizing the cost risk of this setup, the CIO negotiated a global licensing agreement with Salesforce to treat all three orgs as one in contract terms. They entered a 5-year enterprise agreement covering 8,000 total users across the orgs, locking in a fixed per-user rate and the right to reallocate licenses among divisions. This meant that if the retail bank unit needed more licenses during a growth phase, it could draw from the unused licenses in the insurance unit’s allocation without needing to buy more. Each division still runs its tailored org with unique customizations, but they share a common pool of entitlements. The firm also established a central Salesforce Center of Excellence that monitors usage in each organization and governs any cross-organizational data integrations. They use a data lake to combine anonymized insights from each organization for group-level analytics. By doing this, the CIO achieved license cost efficiency nearly on par with a single-organization (zero-waste licenses), while still honoring the necessity of separation. In short, they turned a multi-organizational constraint into a manageable strategy: optimized licensing and a unified negotiation stance ensured that no division was left paying a premium due to its smaller organizational size. This case highlights that with the right commercial strategy, multi-organizational environments can be sustained without incurring excessive cost penalties.

CIO Action Plan

For CIOs and IT leaders managing complex Salesforce deployments, the following action plan provides clear steps to optimize your org strategy:

1. Inventory Your Org Landscape: Start with a comprehensive audit of all Salesforce orgs in use across the enterprise. Document who owns them, the purpose (sales, service, region, etc.), number of users, major customizations, and contract details (license counts, renewal dates, costs).
2. Assess Consolidation Opportunities: Evaluate where organizational redundancy exists. Identify orgs that serve similar functions or overlapping user bases, which could be candidates for consolidation. Estimate potential benefits (e.g., unified customer data, license reduction) versus the effort and risk of merging each.
3. Engage Stakeholders Early: If considering consolidation, involve business unit leaders and application owners. Understand their requirements and concerns, such as the need for data separation or unique processes. Gaining buy-in is crucial; present the high-level benefits (cost savings, better analytics, simplified IT support) in terms that matter to them.
4. Consult Independent Licensing Experts: Bring in an independent Salesforce licensing advisor, such as Redress Compliance, to review your contracts. Have them benchmark your pricing and identify inefficiencies. Use their expertise to formulate a negotiation strategy – whether it’s merging contracts, co-terming renewals, or pursuing an enterprise agreement. Their outside perspective can validate the savings potential and highlight any contractual red flags.
5. Plan for Contract Alignment: If you have multiple Salesforce contracts, create a timeline to align renewal dates and terms. For near-term renewals, decide whether to renew as is, go for a short-term option, or negotiate a new structure. Aim to consolidate contracts into one master agreement at the earliest practical opportunity. Ensure this master agreement includes flexible terms, such as affiliate transfer rights, future merger or divestiture clauses, and consistent discounts.
6. Negotiate from a Position of Strength: When engaging with Salesforce on licensing, leverage your full enterprise footprint. Communicate that you view Salesforce as a strategic platform and expect pricing that reflects your total investment. If you’re consolidating organizations, use that fact to ask for cost synergies (“we’re eliminating duplication; we need you to recognize that in the pricing”). Conversely, if staying multi-org, push for an enterprise licensing construct that treats the separate orgs as one customer. Don’t hesitate to negotiate not just on price, but also on contractual flexibility – such as the ability to reduce licenses if necessary or to swap one product for another as needs evolve.
7. Develop a Technical Migration Roadmap: For any org consolidation projects, create a detailed project plan. Prioritize which orgs to merge first (often a smaller one into a larger one to build experience). Allocate resources for data migration, system integration, testing, and user training. Mitigate risks by scheduling migrations during periods with low business impact and having rollback plans. Also, address any required system changes in the surviving organization to accommodate new users or data from the merged organization (for example, adding new fields, adjusting record sharing rules, etc.) ahead of the migration.
8. Address Compliance and Privacy Early: In planning any consolidation, involve your compliance, legal, and data protection teams. Review regulations like GDPR, HIPAA, or industry-specific rules to ensure that the merged organization will still comply. If not, decide if those orgs must remain separate. Also, update privacy notices or consent records if customer data will be combined. Ensuring legal sign-off before a migration avoids nasty surprises later.
9. Optimize Multi-Organization Operations (if applicable): If you determine that multiple organizations are needed (for valid business reasons), establish governance around them. Implement a Salesforce governance board or Center of Excellence that oversees all orgs. This team should track license usage in each organization to avoid overbuying, drive reuse of solutions (so you’re not solving the same problem in siloed ways), and manage any integrations between organizations. Also consider enterprise tools for tasks like global customer ID mapping or cross-organizational analytics to compensate for data separation.
10. Continuous License Management: Treat Salesforce licenses as a valuable asset pool. Conduct periodic (e.g., quarterly) reviews of license utilization across all orgs. Reclaim and reassign unused licenses where possible. Ahead of renewals, right-size your license counts – don’t just rubber-stamp last year’s numbers. If you have an enterprise agreement, monitor consumption against your committed quantities to ensure you’re on track and avoid last-minute panic to deploy licenses just because you’ve paid for them. This proactive management can yield ongoing savings and prevent shelfware.
11. Stay informed about Salesforce Offerings: Salesforce’s product and licensing landscape constantly evolves, with new bundles, new clouds, and changes in pricing models. Continuously educate your team on these developments. Sometimes, Salesforce introduces a new licensing approach that could benefit your organization’s strategy (for instance, a new Unlimited edition or a bundled SKU that might be cost-effective for multi-organization scenarios). An aware CIO can renegotiate mid-cycle or adopt new models that better fit the organization’s structure and avoid unnecessary cost.
12. Benchmark and Reevaluate Strategy: Finally, regularly reevaluate your Salesforce org strategy in light of business changes. If your company acquires another firm, revisit the consolidation question for that new organization. If a major divestiture occurs, adjust your contracts and, if needed, consider splitting the organization. The decision between multi-org vs. single-org is not one-and-done; it should be reviewed as your company grows, regulations change, or Salesforce technology advances (e.g., improved data segregation features might make single-org more viable in the future). Keep an eye on peer organizations, either through user groups or independent research, to see how others are optimizing their Salesforce landscapes.

By following this action plan, CIOs can ensure they are deliberate rather than accidental in their Salesforce org strategy, balancing the needs of the business with commercial efficiency and robust governance.

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