We Wish You a Merry Lightning

Every business is unique and has its own specific requirements. These specific requirements demand specific solutions, especially when it comes to the use of Salesforce. In this post, we’ll discuss Lightning, the latest solution from Salesforce.

Lightning: What is it?

For decades, Salesforce’s strongest selling point has been functionality, not design. You’d be hard pressed to meet a Salesforce user who’s 100% happy with the user interface. The outdated design has even caused some users to switch to another CRM.

This is what you’re currently using. Pretty boring, isn’t it? Image source developer.salesforce.com

Lightning has an entirely new modern look. Features such as drag and drop, instant visual feedback, and animations make its interface more dynamic. As one of our Salesforce gurus recently exclaimed: “We’ve been waiting for this for 16 years!”
Lightning is a full framework that allows you to do more cool stuff in Salesforce with less time and effort. But Lightning isn’t just about new design. It is a new way of interaction between you and your org. Lightning technology was used to build the latest apps. If you’re a Salesforce1 user, you’ll easily recognize many of its elements.

One of the features we definitely love is how Lightning works with fields and data. Entering new data in a static HTML page of Salesforce Classic requires a number of page reloads. It is time consuming – and, let’s be honest – irritating. Lightning saves the data as soon as you input it, so you no longer have to refresh the screen after each step.

When Classic debuted more than 15 years ago, nobody could have predicted that mobile technologies would surpass desktop. But it certainly has. The Salesforce Classic version wasn’t really responsive and didn’t work well on mobile devices. The new Lightning UX is highly responsive and looks great on desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

The new and improved Lightning version of Salesforce. Image source salesforce.com

Who should switch to Lightning?

Lightning was basically designed for sales professionals. It has a set of great new features that are not available in Salesforce Classic. For example, a salesperson can send an email, start a chat, or open a file in DropBox right from the home page. If you are using Sales Cloud primarily, switching to Lighting now can be a really wise decision in terms of increased opportunities.

Why we recommend Lightning

We see two core Lightning advantages: development speed (it’s really faster) and modularity. Aura development requires the creation of a great number of components which can be used many times for different parts of an application. Thanks to this, the development process takes less time. When developing a Lightning solution, there is no need to add third-party applications and learn how to work with them. For example, when developing the application AngularJS, beside the framework itself, we just need to use node.js and gulp.

Consider Lightning UX seriously if you’re planning a new project meant mostly for mobile devices. Lightning ensures your solution will work well on any mobile device.

We predict that sooner or later Lightning will completely replace Salesforce Classic and will be the default choice for user experience. That’s why the longer you postpone Lightning implementation, the more painful this process will be in the future.

Image source salesforce.com 

Our expert advice

You should really consider trying the Lighting Experience for yourself. You can choose to switch it for just your own account or for all users. Right now you can easily switch between Salesforce Classic and Lightning just in one click.

The easiest and most painless way to roll it out to your entire organization is to start from scratch with Lightning UX development. However, before doing this, we strongly recommend you consider an overall Salesforce system analysis. You can read more about a Salesforce System Check.

So, in conclusion, to switch or not to switch is the question. But consider this…why would you want to use a less efficient, time-consuming solution when you could upgrade to a more powerful and modern one?

Why not start the New Year with a new experience? Lightning! Tell us your ideas, thoughts or questions related to Lightning and we’ll be happy to discuss.