Migrating to Salesforce Lightning is one of the most impactful CRM moves a business can make. Lightning Experience delivers a modern interface, productivity-boosting components, and tools that streamline sales, service, and marketing processes. Planning the transition carefully ensures better adoption, fewer disruptions, and faster return on investment.
Why Lightning matters
Lightning optimizes user workflows with customizable pages, dynamic layouts, and components that surface the right information at the right time. Native features such as Lightning Flow, Dynamic Forms, and Path reduce clicks and manual work. Many AppExchange packages are Lightning-ready, and mobile experiences are improved for reps working in the field. The combination of a modern UI and platform capabilities supports faster decision-making and higher user satisfaction.
Practical migration steps
– Run a readiness assessment: Use tools and audits to identify Classic-only features, custom code, and Visualforce pages that need updates.
Inventory objects, fields, validation rules, and installed packages.
– Prioritize by impact: Tackle high-value pages and user groups first (for example, sales reps and service agents). Start with high-usage record types and key business processes that will benefit most from Lightning features.
– Refactor customizations: Convert or replace Classic components with Lightning components. Where possible, replace complex custom code with declarative features like Screen Flows or Dynamic Forms to reduce maintenance costs.
– Leverage a sandbox-first approach: Build and test in a full sandbox to validate UI changes, performance, and third-party integrations before production rollout.
– Adopt source-driven development: Use version control and CI/CD pipelines to manage metadata changes and deployments.
This improves traceability and reduces deployment risk.
Drive user adoption
Successful migration depends more on people than technology. Secure executive sponsorship and identify champions in each business unit to promote the change. Provide role-based training with hands-on practice in sandboxes and bite-sized guided help inside Salesforce using in-app guidance. Communicate the benefits clearly—reduced clicks, faster reporting, and improved mobile access—and share early wins to build momentum.
Measure success with the right metrics
Monitor adoption and effectiveness using metrics such as login rates, feature usage, time-on-record, average time to close cases, sales cycle length, and data quality indicators (duplicate rates, missing critical fields). Run regular user surveys to capture sentiment and identify friction points. Dashboard these metrics for stakeholders to keep the program visible and accountable.
Common pitfalls to avoid
– Skipping readiness checks and underestimating custom code complexity
– Ignoring third-party AppExchange compatibility, which can break processes after switching to Lightning
– Rushing training or treating it as a one-time activity instead of ongoing enablement
– Allowing governance to lag, which can create inconsistent page layouts and permission sprawl
Performance, security, and governance
Test performance across browsers and devices to ensure Lightning pages load quickly; optimize by minimizing heavy components and using lazy loading. Maintain strict role-based access using permission sets and profiles, and implement a release management process to control changes. Clean up unused fields and reduce technical debt to improve long-term performance and administration.
Making the switch to Lightning is a strategic move that can unlock productivity and insight when approached methodically. A staged rollout, focus on high-impact use cases, strong change management, and continuous measurement will maximize value and keep users engaged.