Why is a Salesforce Technical Architect certification valuable in the UK market?
 
More and more, big enterprise customers are looking to replace aging technologies with Salesforce® and other cloud applications, so there is a rapidly growing demand for Salesforce resources in the UK. In fact, I’d say demand here exceeds the United States, where a greater pool of Salesforce consultants has been built up over time.
 
The Salesforce Technical Architect (TA) certification is proof to these enterprise companies that you’ve been vetted by your peers and can manage challenging, complex environments and deliver multi-faceted projects on-time and on-budget.
 
From a personal perspective, the TA certification is a great learning experience. No one is a complete expert in all the topics the certifications covers, so it is a great way to continue expanding your knowledge and building your expertise on the platform, which salesforce.com® is constantly innovating.
 
How would you recommend candidates prepare for the TA certification?
 
There’s a lot of content that salesforce.com has made available that is incredibly helpful, including an online community dedicated to enabling people going through the preparation process.
 
The journey for each person is going to be different, but there are a couple of steps that can help make your preparation more effective. Firstly, as you do the self-evaluation prior to taking the multiple choice examination, make a note of all the things you’re not 100% expert in. This list can then guide your studying and help you prioritise the areas to focus on.
 
As you prepare for the board review, the single biggest piece of advice I could give is that there is no way you’re going to completely solve the hypothetical. However, while you obviously can’t prepare for exactly how you’ll address the scenario you’re given, it’s important that you spend time practising how you want to structure your story and solution. Know that the scenario you’re given will likely include multiple orgs, different licence models, complex security and integration issues, various APIs and roles, mobile applications, and custom development – basically every facet of a complex Salesforce deployment – and prepare yourself accordingly. As much as possible, know when you’ll talk about users, the IT landscape, integration scenario, etc. beforehand, because if you spend too much time developing the structure and story on the day of the board review, you’ll struggle.
 
Also, take confidence from the fact that the board doesn’t want to fail you – they are your peers and know what you’ve gone through. They only want to be sure you are qualified.
 
What two or three tips would you give to others considering a Salesforce TA certification?
 
If you’ve been a solution architect for several years, the TA certification is a great process to go through. It’s a challenge, but I think it’s one of the best initiatives salesforce.com has introduced in recent years.
 
If you do go down the path, here are my top three tips for success:

1. Work with the salesforce.com partner enablement community – they’re extremely helpful.
2. Commit to spending a lot of time studying – set aside periods each week to prepare and review
3. Practice (even the things you’re confident you know) and practice, practice, practice – in front of friends that may not be technical and enrol technical colleagues to try to stump you

Finally, you need to know the most relevant information about all of the different elements of the Salesforce platform – even upcoming releases – so make sure you are abreast of the most recent innovations, as well as whatever is going to be live when you take your exam.

To see how you can extract ongoing value from your Salesforce org, check out our webcast The Eight Key Elements of Cloud Governance.