When your company decides to modernize its e-commerce platform with Salesforce Commerce Cloud’s Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA), you’re making a smart investment in your digital future. But here’s what many business leaders don’t anticipate: finding the right people to build and maintain your new platform can be harder than choosing the technology itself.

The reality is stark. Across industries, companies are competing for a limited pool of developers who understand SFRA Salesforce architecture. This shortage isn’t just an inconvenience—it’s a business risk that can derail timelines, inflate budgets, and compromise the quality of your customer experience.

Understanding the Talent Crunch

SFRA represents a significant departure from Salesforce’s older SiteGenesis framework. While SiteGenesis served businesses well for years, SFRA offers a more modern, maintainable approach to building online stores. However, this evolution created a knowledge gap that the market is still working to fill.

Think of it this way: imagine you’re renovating a building and suddenly discover that the blueprints are written in a language only a handful of architects can read. That’s essentially what many companies face when they commit to SFRA without securing the right talent first.

The numbers tell a concerning story. Job postings for SFRA-experienced developers often remain open for months, and when qualified candidates do emerge, they command premium salaries. For mid-sized companies especially, competing with enterprise budgets for these specialists can feel like an uphill battle.

The Hidden Costs of Going It Alone

Many organizations initially believe they can train their existing development teams to handle SFRA implementation. While this approach seems cost-effective on paper, the reality is more complex.

First, there’s the learning curve. Developers who spent years mastering SiteGenesis must essentially start fresh with SFRA’s different architecture, coding standards, and best practices. This isn’t a weekend workshop situation—we’re talking about months of reduced productivity as your team climbs the learning curve.

Second, training costs add up quickly. Between course fees, certification programs, and the opportunity cost of having developers in training rather than building features, companies often spend far more than anticipated. And that’s before factoring in the mistakes that inevitably happen when teams are still learning.

Third, there’s the knowledge transfer challenge. If you’re migrating from a legacy platform, you need people who understand both where you’ve been and where you’re going. Finding individuals with that dual expertise is like searching for unicorns—theoretically possible but practically challenging.

Why Specialized Consultants Matter

This is where the value of experienced consulting and IT services firms becomes clear. Rather than treating SFRA implementation as purely a technical project, successful companies recognize it as a strategic initiative that requires specialized expertise.

A competent consulting partner brings several advantages to the table. They’ve already invested in training their teams and have battle-tested experience from multiple implementations. They know the pitfalls before you encounter them and can navigate complex technical decisions with confidence.

More importantly, they can transfer knowledge to your internal teams in a structured, efficient way. Instead of your developers learning through trial and error, they learn from practitioners who’ve already made those mistakes on someone else’s project.

Consider the business impact: faster time to market means you start generating revenue from your new platform sooner. Fewer implementation errors mean less rework and lower total cost of ownership. Better architecture decisions upfront mean your platform scales more effectively as your business grows.

Building a Sustainable Strategy

The goal isn’t to remain dependent on consultants forever. The right partnership model involves a clear path toward internal capability building. Your consulting partner should be actively working to make themselves less necessary over time by empowering your team.

This might involve having consultants lead initial development while your developers work alongside them, absorbing knowledge through real-world application. Or it could mean having specialists handle the complex architectural decisions while your team manages day-to-day maintenance and feature development.

The key is being realistic about what skills you need in-house versus what makes sense to outsource. Not every company needs a full-time SFRA architect on staff, but every company does need access to that expertise when making critical platform decisions.

Making the Business Case

When presenting this approach to leadership, frame it in business terms. The question isn’t whether to spend money on consultants—it’s whether to invest strategically in expertise that accelerates your digital transformation or to spend unpredictably on extended timelines, quality issues, and opportunity costs.

Calculate what a six-month delay in launch costs in terms of lost revenue. Factor in the risk of a poorly implemented platform that delivers subpar customer experiences. Consider the competitive advantage of getting to market faster with a more robust solution.

Suddenly, the investment in experienced consulting partners looks less like an expense and more like insurance against much larger potential losses.

Looking Forward

The SFRA Salesforce talent shortage won’t resolve itself overnight. As more companies adopt the platform, demand for skilled developers will continue to outpace supply in the near term. This makes the decision about how to access expertise even more critical.

Companies that succeed with SFRA typically share a common trait: they recognized early that technology selection and talent strategy are two sides of the same coin. They didn’t wait until mid-project to address resource gaps—they built their implementation strategy around realistic assessments of available expertise.

Your e-commerce platform is too important to your business to leave its success to chance. By partnering with firms that have deep SFRA experience, you’re not just buying development hours—you’re buying peace of mind, faster results, and a foundation for long-term digital success.

The question isn’t whether you can afford to bring in specialized expertise. It’s whether you can afford not to.