Explore the Site Readiness Assessment

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Explain what the Site Readiness Assessment (SRA) is.
• Describe the benefits of the SRA for partners and merchants.
• Describe SRA roles and responsibilities.
• List four ways you can prepare for the SRA.

Overview

Implementing an ecommerce website is a sizable task. As a Salesforce partner, you know that a powerful platform like Salesforce B2C Commerce makes the job easier. When there’s a Salesforce implementation service in the mix, your implementation success rates and merchant satisfaction can soar higher.

If you completed the Salesforce B2C Commerce for Consulting Partners module, you read about the Site Readiness Assessment (SRA) service. In an SRA, Salesforce evaluates your site implementation to verify it follows B2C Commerce best practices and is ready to launch. We offer the SRA directly to B2C Commerce merchants, who can choose to add the SRA to their B2C Commerce implementation projects. SRA engagements run the length of the project, from kickoff to site launch. 

In this module, you learn about the SRA program, how to integrate the SRA process into your project, and how to pass the SRA reviews with flying colors. 

Let’s start with some benefits. 

SRA Partner Benefits

Salesforce always conducts SRA evaluations. You might wonder how you, the partner, benefit. That’s easy. With the SRA, you get:

• An objective and independent site review
• Early detection of potential issues
• B2C Commerce team support
• Implementation guidance

SRA Merchant Benefits

There are significant merchant benefits as well. With an SRA, merchants get:

• Salesforce expertise and best-practice knowledge transfer
• Close collaboration between the partner, Salesforce, and the merchant throughout the project
• Early detection of potential issues
• Constructive feedback

The SRA is a project safety net that drives quality and reduces risk. 

Quality Assurance

The SRA covers many of the same quality assurance (QA) tasks you already do. Think of it as the ultimate QA backup system. The SRA is an example of the Salesforce shared success model. You, Salesforce, and the merchant form a mighty trio united to achieve one goal: customer success.

SRA Activities

The SRA includes these main activities:

• Kickoff Call: A process overview, and a deliverables and timeline discussion.
• Specification Review: An architecture and site-design review.
• Launch Readiness Bootcamp (LRBC): A hands-on session led by an SRA team architect that prepares the merchant for user acceptance testing (UAT), site launch, and site maintenance.
• Launch Gate: The final prelaunch review that includes a high-level code review, a site-performance evaluation, a support and operations review, and a launch-readiness review.

The SRA process works equally well with waterfall, agile, or hybrid project management methodologies. We set up the review process checkpoints according to your approach: linear for waterfall, and iterative for agile and hybrid.

SRA Roles and Responsibilities

Like any project, the success of an SRA largely depends on the people. Here’s how the teams work together during the engagement.

Identify Issues Early

When you identify problems early on in a project, they tend to be easier and less costly to correct. The SRA helps you do just that so you can keep your project on track. Here’s how. 

The SRA team:

• Evaluates key aspects of the implementation such as checkout, payment processing, and data-integration jobs.
• Identifies and assesses critical areas such as performance, uptime, and security.
• Confirms the use of best practices for storefront caching, personalization, session handling, and custom objects.

The SRA isn’t a panacea for an imperfect implementation. It doesn’t:

• Guarantee all aspects of the site.
• Ensure that no problems exist.
• Verify every use case and scenario.
• Validate merchant requirements.
• Ensure on-time or on-budget delivery.
• Resolve problems or provide solutions.

While our SRA team guides partners toward solutions, we don’t take an active role in resolving all problems. Ultimately, you and the merchant are responsible for the site.

If concerns arise during the assessment, there’s no attempt to hide them. We prefer transparency. The SRA owner escalates concerns to Salesforce, the partner, and the merchant. Teams can then allocate time to make improvements and implement risk-mitigation strategies. At the end of the assessment, the SRA owner provides launch-readiness feedback. The owner tells the merchant whether the site passed the assessment according to the SRA standards. After the assessment, it’s up to the merchant to make the final decision to launch. 

Track Review Status

The SRA team documents every review item in a workbook that’s based on the SRA template (Partner Community login required). The workbook is divided into three sections: Specification Review, Launch Gate, and TechOps Readiness. Each section contains a list of review items. Each item has a severity rating of launch blocker, critical, or required.

The initial status of all items is Not Reviewed. As the team addresses each item, we update the status to Yes, No, or Not Applicable based on our findings.

The review is complete when the status of every item in the workbook is set to Yes, No, or Not Applicable. The SRA owner shares the completed workbook with you. The SRA team assigns tasks with status set to No to either you or the merchant to resolve.

As you address partner-assigned items, be sure to enter supporting information into the SRA workbook. Describe the actions you’ve taken, and add links to missing specifications or other documents. Enter the date and time, as well as the name of the person assigned to resolve each item. That helps us track your progress. 

Prepare for Success

You don’t need magical powers to pass the SRA. Just follow our B2C Commerce project recommendations. Here are some to start with.

Be SRA-Friendly

Come prepared. Before the kickoff call, give your team insight into the SRA process. Discuss the topics in the SRA workbook so everyone is familiar with its contents. Review the required deliverables and ensure that your project plan includes all of them.

Share helpful resources like the B2C Commerce Learning Path. Make it your go-to place to find frequently asked questions (FAQs), best practice guidance, documentation, and more. 

Collaborate Efficiently

Involve the Salesforce team in all your SRA-related tasks. Whether you’re setting milestones or planning risk mitigation, we’re happy to help. The more transparent you are, the more support we can provide.

Let’s Talk

We share copious amounts of SRA information with you. We want you to share information with us. Regularly push project status, issues, and concerns our way. Every project is different, so help us help you. Work with the SRA owner to identify the best way to communicate changes fluidly.

Speak a Common Language 

Avoid miscommunications by using a common language. In the docs you create, “speak” SRA by using the category names and naming conventions that you see in the SRA workbook. Alternatively, use a Confluence or Jira project template that matches the SRA structure.

Now that you know what the SRA is and how to prepare for the engagement, let’s dig deeper into collaboration strategies for each SRA activity.

Resources

• Salesforce: SRA Partner Deep Dive Methodology (Partner Community login required)
• Salesforce: SRA Template for Partners (Partner Community login required)
• Salesforce: B2C Commerce Learning Path (Partner Community login required)
• Trailhead: Salesforce Commerce Cloud Architect Roles: Quick Look