From Change Set Chaos to Admin-Friendly Automation

4X Faster Salesforce Releases for Kenway Consulting

Kenway + Copado: Teaming Up to Unlock FinServ Innovation

The most powerful enterprises in North America rely on Kenway Consulting for cutting-edge management and technology expertise. Based in Chicago, Kenway’s client portfolio covers B2B, financial services, healthcare and telecommunications.

In 2019, one of Kenway’s biggest clients (a public FinServ brand with hundreds of locations) reached out to the consultancy to help them harness the power of their Salesforce implementation. When Kenway’s developers dug into the project, they quickly identified a major roadblock that threatened to freeze digital transformation in its tracks: Change Set Deployments.

Discover how Kenway’s Salesforce practice leverages Copado Essentials and user story-centric development to drive 400% more frequent Salesforce releases and 50% fewer bugs for a major FinServ institution.

Kenway Consulting at a Glance

• 18+ Years of Consulting Expertise
• Vault Consulting 50 for Four Straight Years
• 2021 Best Places to Work in Chicago

Challenge
Replace Change Set chaos and tedious manual processes with easy-to-track user stories and automated deployments.

Solution
Copado Essentials saves hundreds of hours for Kenway Consulting and drives true CI/CD for their FinServ client.

Results with Copado

• 4X Faster Salesforce Releases
• $94,000 Saved Per Year
• 50% Fewer Bugs and Defects

The Challenge

Searching for a Smarter Way to Deploy on the Cloud
Kenway’s client was ready to migrate their homegrown loan management system to the cloud. The FinServ firm wanted to onboard new brokers on Salesforce, automate manual processes and configure four orgs across the platform to serve their customers — all without breaking fair lending laws or other industry regulations. As Kenway’s developers scoped out the specs, they realized that they needed a smarter deployment solution than Salesforce Change Sets to meet their client’s goals.

“It took so much time just to get the data together to pull off Salesforce Change Sets,” recalls Lauren Stone, Client Account Executive at Kenway Consulting. “For each release, the developers would enter all their changes into a manual spreadsheet and we’d meet every two weeks to go over every change.”

Without traceability or a single source of truth, it took ages for Kenway’s developers to confirm that deployments captured everything they needed. Business analysts spent as much as three hours determining which components changed between the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) stage and Production. Even worse, software bugs crept into the code and halted the release cycle — forcing the consultancy to troubleshoot for days after launch.

Key Challenges

• No DevOps Process and Slow Change Set Deployments
• 2-3 Days Spent Troubleshooting Bugs After Release
• Manual Spreadsheets and No Tracking or Traceability
• Long Meetings to Get Developers on the Same Page
• Manual Code-Scan Analysis from UAT to Production

“Team morale definitely went up after we switched to Copado. We don’t dread deployments or worry about what could go wrong. Our team started working better — together — and now deployments are a breeze.”

- Colin Knapp, Salesforce Practice Director, Kenway Consulting

The Solution

Taking the First Step to DevOps Maturity with Copado Essentials
Kenway explored the DevOps marketplace to find a faster and smarter solution than Change Sets. After taking a look at GearSet, the consulting firm decided to go with Copado Essentials for two reasons: Cost and ease of use.

“We were much more comfortable with Copado Essentials,” explains Colin Knapp, Salesforce Practice Director at Kenway Consulting. “Gearset was over-engineered for what we do and we had to jump through hoops to see it from the inside.”

With Copado on board, Kenway’s developers were able to phase out manual rebuilds by cloning and reusing inbound Change Sets. Copado acts as a single source of truth for the development process and unlocks end-to-end pipeline traceability — making it easy to see what was changed, who changed it and when it was last modified. Copado Essentials also helps Kenway roll back changes for production deploy and coordinate everything in real-time with their FinServ client.

“I picked up Copado Essentials in 10 minutes. The native UI is admin-friendly and the learning curve is super low — anyone can learn it.”

- Colin Knapp, Salesforce Practice Director, Kenway Consulting

Driving CI/CD and ROI via Cloud-Native Automation
Thanks to the traceability of user story-centric deployments, Kenway has been able to successfully automate tedious manual steps and turbocharge their Salesforce development cycle. In 30 minutes or less, developers can push changes as needed and business analysts can validate data and determine every single change made from UAT to production. Copado Essentials also helps segment code between internal and external automation and helps Kenway manage additional reviews and quality gates.

What Does Copado Essentials Automate?

• Uploading Data
• Spinning Up Scratch Orgs
• Connecting to New Scratch Org
• Creating New Custom Field
• Adding Permission Set
• Pulling Down Changes
• Committing Changes
• Monitoring the Process

Overall, Copado Essentials helps Kenway save around two hours per release across a biweekly production timeline. Troubleshooting deployments takes minutes instead of hours — and Kenway’s client has enjoyed more rigorous change management, a stronger UAT process and a massive fail rate improvement. The bug rate has been reduced by 50% and developers are able to move onto the next project in no time at all.

The Future

Catapulting Kenway Consulting with Low-Code DevOps
What’s next for Kenway Consulting? DevOps maturity and true CI/CD for their client portfolio. Kenway plans to leverage Copado Essentials for all their clients to support multi-threaded developers as they deploy to production.

“We’re seeing tons of ROI with Copado. We’re able to move faster on projects and our developers can focus on value-add activities instead of tediously tracking everything through deployment.”
- Lauren Stone, Client Account Executive, Kenway Consulting