Advisory firms don’t run like SaaS companies. Client relationships are long, engagement types vary, and the data model has to respect the difference between a prospect, an active client, and a former client who might come back. Ascension Advisory came to Madison Ave with a clear ask: scope Salesforce properly before building anything.
The Approach
- Department scoping. Structured scoping questionnaires across each department that would touch Salesforce, so the final architecture matched how work actually flowed across the firm.
- Salesforce services mapping. Translated departmental needs into specific Salesforce capabilities and flagged where custom work was genuinely needed versus where standard configuration would do.
- Platform roadmap. Produced a phased build plan that let Ascension ship value early without painting into a corner on later needs.
Why This Mattered
A lot of Salesforce projects fail because the scoping was done by someone who wanted to sell the implementation, not someone trying to solve the business. Madison Ave’s model inverts that: the discovery and scoping are the first engagement, and whether the build follows is a decision the client makes with full information. Ascension got a roadmap they could execute, and a partner who had earned the right to deliver against it.