3 Key Lessons to Build a Scalable Business

Scalability can make or break a business. You’re either growing with demand or facing the risk of performance slowdowns, system outages, lost revenue, and unhappy customers.

While implementing scalability across an organization can seem like an enormous task, it’s doable. And the first step to becoming a scalable business? Learning from others.

In a recent panel discussion, IT leaders shared their scalability journeys and valuable lessons learned about streamlining operations, improving performance, and scaling systems effectively.

The scalability landscape

Enterprise scalability is a multifaceted challenge that requires IT leaders to navigate various technical, operational, and strategic barriers. 

• Reliance on legacy systems: Outdated infrastructures often lack the flexibility, speed, and capacity to handle high-demand applications, resulting in performance bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and increased costs
• Keeping up with innovation: While adopting cutting-edge tools and platforms is essential for scalability, integrating them with existing systems can be complex and time-intensive
• The talent gap: Not enough IT professionals are skilled at scaling modern systems, slowing the pace of innovation and increasing the risk that scalability initiatives will fail
• Security concerns compound: As systems grow and become more sophisticated, so do the threats they face

Complex problems don’t need a complex approach. While there isn’t a single solution for any of these challenges, the right collection of tools and tactics can help you address them operationally.

The fast lane to building a scalable business

As your business expands, so will the demands on your internal systems and infrastructure. An enterprise that can nimbly respond to market changes, consumer trends, and technological developments is future-proof.

Whether your organization is entering new markets, launching innovations, or improving existing services, agility is essential. Here are three key insights to keep in mind when striving toward your scalability goals:

1. Scalability from the start

Scalability should be part of the entire DevOps process from beginning to end. In particular, tools that overview the system performance and help with the project are critical to ensure success. Scale Center helps organizations anticipate potential bottlenecks before they can snowball into more significant issues.      

And through careful planning, teams can make sure their resources and development strategies are ready for growth without slowing down and sacrificing performance.     

2. Stress-test your Agentforce and AI applications      

A critical element of scalability is ensuring that your Agentforce and AI apps can handle periods of high demand.

Agentforce is the agentic layer of the Salesforce platform and your complete AI system that integrates data, automation, and humans in a single solution. It has everything you need to scale your business’s autonomous AI agents.

Whether your agents are answering routine inquiries, monitoring security threats, analyzing data, or performing a unique task specific to your organization, they may likely experience spikes in demand. Make sure your Agentforce is ready for any scenario by testing before deployment.                    

Additionally, testing in a Sandbox environment is as easy as it is essential. In your Sandbox, you can replicate and simulate your Agentforce or AI app during a product launch, promotional event, seasonal spike, or high-stress scenario.

Mimicking real-world conditions during testing helps ensure systems remain resilient under stress. Tools like Scale Test offer advanced performance testing capabilities and can be a game changer for organizations deploying high-volume applications.

Stress testing can ensure the reliability and smooth deployment of your Agentforce and AI apps. Beyond detecting vulnerabilities, it helps refine systems for optimal performance under the most demanding conditions.

3. Address coding practices that create issues

Poor coding practices can undermine scalability efforts even with the best tools and processes. Inefficient code can lead to performance bottlenecks, violations, and ongoing maintainability challenges. These issues hinder system performance and make adapting and scaling applications harder as business needs evolve.

The solution? Use tools that automatically detect code issues to refine coding practices and improve the quality of your code. For instance, tools like ApexGuru allow developers to identify inefficient code and remove unnecessary elements, streamlining operations and freeing up resources.

By prioritizing clean, optimized code and using tools to automate code analysis, teams can reduce technical debt and create more flexible and scalable systems over time.

Achieving a seamless, scalable business

Enterprise scalability is no longer a nice-to-have — it’s a must-have for your business’s future. By integrating scalability into development processes early, rigorously testing applications under stress, and refining coding practices, organizations can position themselves for more sustainable growth.

To help you attain a future-proof enterprise, Salesforce offers the tools to support your organization’s long-term success. Additionally, check out the Scalability trail on Trailhead to help deepen your understanding of scalability and provide actionable insights.

Explore more today to accelerate your journey toward becoming a scalable business.