Mode 01 ~45% of cases
Model collapse
Source of truth is a Confluence page. Identity rules drift the moment go-live ships. Most common.
Path B · Data 360 greenfield
Data 360 will not forgive your first decisions. Get the architecture right before procurement signs.
Three Salesforce clouds, three versions of the same customer, and a license bill that goes up the longer the data model stays unwritten. The engagement designs the data graph, identity rulesets, and activation plan before any code ships. Three weeks. Build-ready.
From €24k
Investment
3 weeks
Duration
1 architect
Team
< 24h
Reply SLA
Why it stalls
Every stalled engagement is one of these four.
The operating theory the assessment runs on. Four failure modes, in order of frequency. You will know which one by Friday of week 2.
Mode 02 ~25% of cases
License inflation
Data Cloud was sized against ingested rows nobody actually needs. The invoice keeps the org awake at night.
Mode 03 ~20% of cases
Activation dead-ends
Segments build cleanly and never reach the channel that triggers revenue. Marketing keeps running yesterday’s campaign.
Mode 04 ~10% of cases
Governance debt
Consent and sharing decisions get deferred to "phase two" and never get made. GDPR risk compounds.
If you do not recognize any of these, the architecture probably is not the bottleneck. The discovery call says so honestly, before any contract gets signed.
What you get
Four written artifacts. Yours.
Documents the engagement leaves behind. No retainer required to keep them. No follow-on dependency by design.
- D1
Canonical data model
Entities, attributes, ownership. The dictionary the rest of the org references for the next three years.
- D2
Identity ruleset
Deterministic plus probabilistic resolution rules, tested against your real source extracts, not against a demo org.
- D3
Procurement-ready scope
Right-sized Data Cloud licensing shape, with rationale for every ingested row. Sized to the model, not to vendor enthusiasm.
- D4
Build-ready architecture document
A 25 to 40 page document a competent integration engineer can implement without re-architecting.
Schedule
Shippable artifact at each milestone.
The timeline below is fixed. If discovery surfaces something that warrants a longer engagement, the SoW gets amended in week 1, not by surprise.
- Wk 1 Source audit
Every system, every owner, every contract. Ingestion priorities ranked by ROI, not by vendor enthusiasm.
→ Source inventory and ROI ranking - Wk 2 Model design
Canonical schema. Identity resolution rulesets. Segmentation and activation strategy.
→ Data graph and identity ruleset - Wk 3 Procurement-ready
Right-sized license scope. Vendor questions. Build-vs-configure calls.
→ Build-ready architecture document - Wk 4+ Build oversight
Optional. Architecture authority during delivery, alongside your team or SI.
→ Statement of work, by request
Methodology
Why the work is shaped this way.
Independent
No license resale. No implementation team to feed. The recommendation is allowed to be "stop."
Architecture-first
Prompts get tuned by anyone. Data access models get fixed by someone who has shipped them. Different problem.
Written, not presented
A report a CTO can mark up and take to the board survives the next staff change. A deck does not.
What clients say
“His insights are always spot-on. He sees the architecture problem before anyone else can articulate it, and his recommendations are framed in language a non-Salesforce CTO can actually action.”
Juno Noh · Senior IT Manager, L'Occitane Korea
See full case studies → Best for / not for
Honest qualification.
A short list of who this engagement was built for, and a shorter list of who it was not.
Best for
- You operate three or more Salesforce clouds with a fragmented customer.
- You are preparing Agentforce and need the data foundation in place first.
- Procurement is about to sign a Data Cloud quote you cannot yet defend.
- You inherited a Marketing Cloud silo and want it joined to Sales and Service.
Not for
- You run a single-cloud org without multi-source ingestion needs.
- You want a licensing review and nothing else. Your Salesforce rep does that free.
- You want hands-on pipeline maintenance. Different engagement.
- The decision is to wait and see what Salesforce ships next quarter.
vs. an SI assessment
How this differs from a Big-Four engagement.
Independent architect
Big-Four assessment
€24,000 · 3 weeks
€100,000+ · 12 to 16 weeks
Independent of license resale
Tied to Salesforce reseller margin
Build-ready architecture document
PowerPoint with options
Identity rules tested against your data
Identity rules tested against a demo org
Right-sized scope, with rationale
License oversize is the business model
Decision in 3 weeks
Decision in 3 months
Questions
Questions that come up in procurement.
If yours is not here, ask on the call. The answer will be specific.
Q01 What does Data 360 actually solve?
It unifies customer data across Salesforce clouds and external sources into one profile, then powers identity resolution, real-time segmentation, and activation. Without it, every cloud has its own version of the same customer and no one is complete.
Q02 Is this a licensing review?
No. Licensing sizing is a one-page appendix at the end of the engagement. The output is a build-ready architecture document a delivery team can execute against.
Q03 Can you work before procurement decides on a Data Cloud SKU?
Yes. That is the most common timing. The architecture decides the SKU shape, not the other way round. Most clients save 20 to 40% on the first license quote once the data model is honest about what gets ingested.
Q04 What if the right answer is not to buy Data 360?
Then the report says so. About one in five engagements ends with "stay on MuleSoft for another two quarters, here is the architecture that makes it survivable." That answer is the deliverable.
Q05 How does this compare to a MuleSoft-led integration?
MuleSoft moves data between systems through APIs. Data 360 unifies identity and activates segments natively inside Salesforce. They solve different problems. The engagement names which one your situation actually needs.
Q06 Do you write the ingestion pipelines?
The engagement specifies them. Build is delivered by your team or your SI against the spec. The architecture document is precise enough that a competent integration engineer can implement without re-architecting.
Q07 Where are you based?
Paris and Seoul. The work is delivered remotely with two on-site days in week 1 if your team is in EMEA.
Q08 What languages do you work in?
English and French, written and spoken. Korean conversational.
Before you go
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