Product Ownership · Solution Consulting · Application Architecture
Between what the business actually needs and what ends up in Salesforce, the essential part tends to get lost. Graf Business Consulting closes that gap — from discovery through to go-live, as product owner, business analyst and solution consultant.
The starting point
There is always a specific pain behind the call. And it rarely sounds like Salesforce.
We have Salesforce — and sales still keeps its own spreadsheet.
An adoption problem is almost never a training problem. It is a sign that the system does not reflect the way people actually work.
Our reports contradict each other depending on who builds them.
Usually the reports are fine. The data model underneath them is not — three fields for one concept, and every team picks a different one.
The project is running, but nobody here has time to steer it.
Internal capacity is the most common silent project killer. Interim steering is usually cheaper than a project that slips by two quarters.
Our vendor delivers exactly what we ordered. Just not what we needed.
What is missing between the business and the build is someone who speaks both languages and writes the requirement properly before it reaches the backlog.
Requirements change faster than we can implement them.
Without a prioritised backlog and clear decision paths, every release turns into a negotiation. Product ownership here is not a title, it is a function somebody has to fill.
We have acquired a company — and now we have two sales processes.
After an acquisition it is settled early whether this becomes one system or two running side by side. The work is rarely technical: both sides call the same things by different names, and somebody has to decide what survives in the shared data model.
Services
In small and mid-sized projects these roles are rarely all staffed. That is where the friction comes from — and where I step in, in one role or in several, depending on what the project needs.
01 / BUSINESS ANALYSIS
From the first workshop to a specification a development team can implement without coming back with questions.
02 / PRODUCT OWNERSHIP
Product ownership as a function that is genuinely filled — prioritised, decisive, and available to the team. Certified Professional Scrum Product Owner.
03 / PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Interim project management, including the uncomfortable conversations with stakeholders and implementation partners.
04 / ADMINISTRATION & ARCHITECTURE
Declarative delivery in line with architecture principles that still hold at the next rollout. Certified Application Architect, Data Architect and Sharing & Visibility Architect.
Selected work
Client names are left out on purpose. What matters here is the shape of the work: the sector, the problem, and the role I held while solving it.
In the first phase I was part of the consulting team that brought Salesforce in from scratch: replacing a FileMaker-based sales application, rolling out Sales Cloud and configuring quoting in Salesforce CPQ, together with a data quality score for leads, and visit reports that could be filed from a phone. This ran inside a wider restructuring of the system landscape, in which NetSuite was selected as the ERP — a neighbouring stream I worked with rather than owned.
Two years later the same client brought me back, by then freelance, as product owner for the sales side and its neighbouring processes on a platform that had grown considerably, with NetSuite established as its ERP. The focus was the lead-to-order process including Conga Sign and ERP hand-off, replacing Jira ticket handling for customer ownership transfers and company name changes with dedicated case management in Salesforce, several partner portals on Experience Cloud connected to HubSpot, and a redesign of lead management with new lead stages and a recycling concept for disqualified leads. I wrote the user stories, including user activation and the sharing model for the external portal users, and ran quality assurance on the sprint deliveries of the external integration partner whose team led much of the technical build. Alongside that I was the point of contact for day-to-day Salesforce questions on the sales side.
On top of that came the integration of two acquisitions: taking in their sales processes, mapping them against the existing ones in Salesforce and consolidating them onto those as far as that was possible — agreed with the owners of every system involved, until operating procedures, interfaces and data exchange lined up across all the platforms, legacy data migration included.
Owner of the Sales Cloud stream inside a large transformation programme running alongside ServiceNow and several downstream applications. Requirements engineering, process mapping, backlog, time and resource planning, and constant alignment with the product owners of the other streams to surface dependencies early. Contributed to the high-level design of the future Salesforce enterprise architecture and delivered a go-live for the B2B division, including Outlook sync, pipeline management, telesales support and master data synchronisation with external systems.
Part of the team delivering a worldwide Sales Cloud rollout. Requirements engineering, process mapping, backlog and user story refinement, hands-on implementation of stories, sprint reviews, stakeholder management, user acceptance testing and enablement — including teaching Scrum and agile practice to project members on the client side.
Implementation of Service Cloud to handle customer requests through cases, quick texts and status-based queue assignment, with requests arriving via a website contact form or entered manually. This covered requirements engineering, backlog and story work, hands-on implementation, sprint reviews, user acceptance testing, budget planning and staffing.
A global Sales Cloud rollout for an aircraft seat manufacturer, and Sales Cloud as the starting point for the digital reorientation of an electrical wholesaler. In both, requirements engineering, backlog and story refinement, sprint planning and reviews, user acceptance testing, and workshops on agile ways of working.
How I work
Not every project starts calmly. When it is urgent, the first step compresses into a few days — the sequence stays the same.
Thirty to sixty minutes on where you stand. It ends with an honest read on whether external support makes sense at all, and in which role — including when the answer is no.
A clear scope, timeframe and effort estimate, in writing. No framework agreements covering services nobody ever uses.
Work in your structures and your tools, with reliable availability and a status report at whatever cadence your project actually needs.
Documentation and enablement are part of the engagement, not an afterthought. The goal is a team that can carry on without me.
Profile
Product Owner & Salesforce Solution Consultant, M.Sc.
I did not start in Salesforce. I started on the business side of it — selling cars at Tesla, then running sales processes at sonnen, where my job was the interface between marketing, sales and the Salesforce team. Which mostly meant translating what one side wanted into something the other side could build.
That turned out to be the actual work. I moved into consulting in 2018, spent four years delivering Salesforce projects for large organisations as a business analyst, administrator and product owner, and have been working independently under Graf Business Consulting since November 2022. Sales Cloud and Service Cloud, mostly in the mid-market and enterprise segment, across energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, aviation and healthcare software.
The certifications came along the way, and the architect ones changed how I work: once you have had to reason about sharing models and data architecture properly, you write different requirements. What has stayed constant is where I am useful — early, when it is still cheap to change the design, and in the middle, when somebody has to keep the backlog honest.
Contact
A short description of where you stand is enough. You will normally hear back within one working day, with a suggested slot for a free first conversation if that makes sense.
