As the digital world continues to grow, companies are realizing more and more the importance of Salesforce skills, including admin, developer, architect, and, now, designer skills.
According to a recent IBM State of Salesforce report, Salesforce is a platform of choice for modern business, and design is key to achieving customer success with Salesforce. A McKinsey study also shows that companies that excel at design grow revenue and shareholder return at nearly twice the rate of their industry peers.
Strategy design brings together a unique combination of experience design and business skills, analytical and creative thinking—just what companies need to navigate the ambiguity of today’s business landscape and build enduring value for the future.
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Foster innovation with inclusive design principles.
What is strategy design?
Through strategy design, designers identify opportunities to drive business outcomes with designed experiences and align stakeholders behind a strategic vision for customer success. As a Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer, you focus on building “enduring advantage”—creating value in the short term, with a plan for how to grow that value over time.
Strategy designers have skill sets spanning business, innovation, design, and delivery. This ensures that your company’s great strategic thinking and inspiring product vision aren’t lost in translation during the build process.
Trailhead Trail: Learn Strategy Design
Employ best practices emphasizing values, relationships, and accountability.
How does strategy design differ from user experience (UX) design?
UX designers focus on the user experience—its look, feel, and behavior. As a strategy designer, you start earlier in the process, framing challenges and asking, “What should we build?” The role is equal parts creating and aligning. It’s a specialization that brings disciplines together and articulates a desired future state that works in terms of desirability to customers, viability for the business, and technical feasibility.
Strategy design complements UX design, and the overlap of skills within the two specializations is a good thing, as it ensures continuity of effort even when there’s a handoff.
The Abstract State of Design in 2021 report agrees, stating that if organizations want to connect design to business outcomes, they must foster collaboration and focus on streamlining communication.
Salesforce Strategy Designer Certification
Salesforce introduced the Salesforce Designer role in 2021 with the Salesforce UX Designer Certification for Trailblazers who are passionate about creating human-centered user experiences. Salesforce Designers solve complex problems and design ethical, equitable, and sustainable solutions on the Salesforce Platform, serving both businesses and communities.
Now, as a part of our commitment to empower Trailblazers to skill up and tap into the power of design, we’re excited to bring you the Salesforce Strategy Designer Certification. This certification validates a Trailblazer’s expertise in using design methods to create compelling experience strategies that drive business outcomes using the Salesforce Platform.
As a Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer, you build impactful solutions that express company values through the products and services it offers. This is increasingly important, according to Forbes magazine, which notes that it’s easy to define your company’s core values, but much harder to ingrain them into the culture and lean on them to drive performance.
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Skills needed to become a Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer
A Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer brings together their design expertise and business knowledge to deliver advantageous results. Maybe you’re a consultant or architect looking for a way to expand your skill set. Or maybe you’re a designer wanting to validate your design experience and Salesforce proficiency. No matter which path you’re on, this is the certification for you!
The Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer Certification Exam is for individuals who want to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and experience in the following key areas:
- Value Design: Drive business outcomes with designed experiences.
- Tools and Artifacts: Create tangible deliverables through the crafting and communication of strategy.
- Intangible Deliverables: Do the “invisible” work to make the visible work successful.
- Leveraging Adjacent Roles and Skills: Use a broad understanding across the design and build process.
As someone who’s practiced strategy design for a long time, I’ve seen its power to transform products, services, and organizations firsthand. I’m excited to bring this unique capability to everyone in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Ready to get certified? Here’s how to get started!
Check out these free resources you can use to become a strategy designer #CertifiedPro!
- Learn more about your #DreamDesigner career: Check out Salesforce Designer careers to discover how to grow your Salesforce design skills. Take the Build your Designer Career on Salesforce Trailmix to gain valuable, in-demand design skills to create exceptional experiences.
- Find design content on Trailhead: Easily find Designer content and instructor-led learning. Use the Designer role tag to filter content and gain access to the right trails, modules, projects, and courses for you.
- Prepare for your exam with the Strategy Designer Exam Guide: Get exam-ready with key materials like recommended training and resources, a summary of the intended certification audience, relevant Trailhead—Salesforce’s free online learning platform—modules, and an outline of exam topics.
- Complete the Strategy Designer Certification preparation trailmix: Use this guided learning pathway to learn and apply the essential concepts you’ll need to demonstrate your skills and become a Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer.
- Schedule your exam at a test center or online once you feel confident. It’s only natural to get a little nervous before tests, so check out our 8 Proven Strategies To Help You Get Salesforce Certification Ready. And Don’t Let Fear of Failure Stop You!
- Become a part of the Trailblazer Community: Reach out to the Design Trailblazers Community Group for support with trails, join a local user group, connect with a mentor/study partner, and find other Trailblazers worldwide with relatable experiences and challenges.
You got this, Trailblazer
Ready to become a Salesforce Certified Strategy Designer? Check out the Salesforce Strategy Designer credential page for all the details and to gain access to each of the study resources available to you on Trailhead. And don’t forget to share your strategy designer goals on social media so we can cheer you on!
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