Although salesforce.com is now 10 years old, there is a shortage of experienced consultants. Through 2009 and so far in 2010 salesforce.com is becoming an increasing hot topic, aligned to the mainstream acceptance of cloud computing.
Salesforce.com revenues now exceed $1bn. There are a few schemes available to newcomers to the industry designed to provide hands on experience for consultants new to salesforce.com, however it must be said at the time of writing this (Feb 2010) a consultant is considered to be “experienced” if they have between 6 months and 2 years experience of salesforce.com and anything over 2 years is still relatively rare.
Certainly, those with significant experience are currently in great demand and relative newcomers (ie 3 to 6 months experience) are also being actively head hunted.
There is plenty of free online material that can provide some base education on salesforce.com features and functions. Additionally there are a number of courses on offer from salesforce.com that can provide good product knowledge for administrators, consultants and developers alike.
As for whether certification or experience are the most important factor in valuing a consultant of course the answer is, that depends. Certification is a great way of providing confidence in product knowledge and as an officially recognised mark of expected standards of knowledge and best practice. However due to the powerful and flexible nature of salesforce.com practical experience plays a vital role in providing the depth of skills required to be able to deliver services well to customers, to be able to accurately, efficiently and to best effect, provide consultancy services that make best use of salesforce.com to customers needs.
Certification can provide a very good introduction to the technologies involved and best practice methodologies and certainly demonstrates a commitment to moving in to salesforce.com consultancy and no matter what level of experience, to remain current certification should be a serious consideration. Experience of a wide range of customer profiles and processes and depth of practical experience will always boost confidence and capability.
So to answer the initial questions, it depends! However a bit of both are probably a great place to start!
