Salesforce Lightning Process Builder, Now Billions and Billions Served

We recently spoke with Sarah Franklin, VP of Trailhead, Developer & Admin Marketing at Salesforce, to learn more about the news that the Salesforce Lightning Process Builder has reached more than 100 Billion transactions. 

ADM: What is Salesforce Lightning Process Builder? 

Franklin: An average workday is full of repetitive tasks: emails to send, meetings to attend and approvals to track. While repetitive, these everyday tasks are key to an efficient business. They just take up a lot of time. And most IT teams don’t have the budget to hire a separate developer to automate those workflows. 

Salesforce Lightning Process Builder is a powerful, yet easy-to-use workflow automation tool that empowers anyone to automate business processes with clicks, not code. With a simple, visual interface to guide users, IT no longer has to shoulder the full responsibility of building processes.

And because Lightning Process Builder shows users a picture of the process, teams can collaborate and make edits in real time when business needs change. 

ADM: Why is it such a big milestone that the Lightning Process Builder has hit 100B transactions?

Franklin: Each transaction is a click that results in one step of business automation - i.e., setting a rule that triggers a follow-up email. In little more than a year since launch, productivity on Process Builder has hit more than 3,000 transactions per second, translating to more than 273 million transactions per day - or roughly quadruple the number of Instagram shares per day. That’s staggering. 

ADM: How does the Salesforce Lightning Process Builder help to drive business value?

Franklin: From sales to customer service, marketing, inventory, finance and HR, every facet of business can benefit from the automated business processes Lightning Process Builder enables. When business processes are streamlined and efficient, employees can focus on doing their jobs, rather than time-consuming busywork. 

Empowering anyone to automate workflows is also a big boost for IT teams. With simple, visual interfaces to guide users, IT is no longer alone in creating processes — which in turn lets IT focus on more complex projects. Companies save money because they don’t need to hire a separate developer to streamline operations, and employees boost their own performance and value by learning new time- and cost-saving skills.

ADM: Are you seeing the Lightning Process Builder contribute to the rise of the citizen developer?

Franklin: We’re seeing the rise of a new kind of developer: employees across departments - HR, finance, and more - who can deliver business value without having to code. It makes a lot of sense: they know their individual business needs best, they understand the technology, and they strive to deliver operational excellence every day. With Lightning Process Builder, they’re empowered to automate almost any kind of rote business process, freeing up time for more impactful endeavors. 

ADM: What are the main ways that people are utilizing the Lightning Process Builder? 

Franklin: As I mentioned, we’re seeing Lightning Process Builder touch every facet of business - ranging from sales and customer service to finance and HR. A few examples of the top business process being automated include: 

- Order Management: Track order execution with email notifications, create an order record, or add new order data to existing record.

- Discount Approvals: Auto-submit deal discount approval.

- Inspection Process: Send email notifications; create follow-up tasks when an incident or inspection status is submitted.

- Manage Opportunities and Deals: Auto-create records and notifications based on opportunity stage. When the Opportunity stage goes to “Closed Won,” create an Order record with the data contained in the Opportunity and the associated Account.

ADM: Can you provide an example of how someone has leveraged the tool to help them automate their business processes?

Franklin: We see standout use cases everywhere. One example is the University of Colorado Boulder, whose HR department took eight hours to implement 17 processes. Project manager Joanna Iturbe estimates these simple automations - covering employee onboarding, case management and more - will save the team more than 250 hours and $75,000 of budget - freeing employees from busywork and to be more productive with their time. 

ADM: Is there anything else you would like to add about the importance of this milestone? 

Franklin: In a connected and always-on digital world, companies are doing everything they can to operate at peak performance. With Lightning Process Builder, we’re erasing the barrier to entry for people close to the business who don’t know how to code but wanted to deliver value through process automation. 

Because when business processes are streamlined and efficient, employees can focus on doing their jobs, rather than busywork. Employees are empowered, business users gain productivity, IT shares the workload, and companies operate more efficiently.