How Ridgeway Partners Transformed Its Executive Search Delivery with Grids
Replacing a costly grid solution with Salesforce-native Grids to manage complex, interconnected Executive Search data.
Overview
Ridgeway Partners is a retained Executive Search firm specialising in board, CEO, and Senior Executive recruitment. Salesforce serves as the firm's central platform for managing clients, companies, candidates, search assignments, and recruiting activity.
Executive Search requires managing large volumes of highly interconnected data. Ridgeway's Salesforce environment has evolved quickly, and the firm needed a more effective way to manage large volumes of highly interconnected recruiting data. To address this, Ridgeway Partners implemented Raven Apps Grids, which added greater visibility, flexibility, and efficiency to their recruitment workflows.
Challenge
Ridgeway Partners needed a more powerful way to manage and visualise complex, interconnected recruiting and Executive Search data within Salesforce. Their previous solution (Conga) fell short in key areas:
- High Costs & Feature Overload — Conga Grids delivered much of the required functionality but came at a significantly higher price and included features the firm didn't need.
- Limited Salesforce-Native Functionality — Conga was not a native Salesforce Lightning Web Component, which caused friction when users leveraged Flows and other automation tools, often leading to custom development.
- Lacking Visibility Across Related Objects — Critical candidate information was spread across multiple objects in Salesforce (Accounts, Candidates, search-specific records, etc.), and standard Salesforce list views couldn't consolidate this data into a clear, useable view.
- Forced Reliance on External Spreadsheets — Users regularly exported data to Excel. Many worked outside the system and manually reconciled records back into Salesforce, resulting in a slow, error-prone process that undermined data quality and adoption.
Solution
Raven Apps Grids delivered the functionality Ridgeway needed in a modern, fully Salesforce-native framework. Where a single engagement can involve hundreds of prospects and candidates, Grids allows recruiters to consolidate information from multiple related objects into a single workspace.
- Unified Candidate Pipeline Views — Recruiters can now manage entire candidate pipelines and search assignments in a single workspace, with sorting, filtering, and inline updates. Grids provide spreadsheet-like flexibility while keeping Salesforce as the record location.
- Consolidated Multi-Object Data — A single search engagement can involve hundreds of prospects, each with associated company information, contact details, recruiting activity, search status, and assignment-specific fields. Grids consolidate this information from multiple related objects into a simple, actionable view.
- Native Lightning Web Component Architecture — Built as a native Salesforce Lightning Web Component, Grids enables Ridgeway Partners to leverage Salesforce Flows and automation without workarounds or costly custom development.
This flexibility improved productivity by empowering Executive Search professionals to work directly within Salesforce rather than relying on external tools.
Results
Since implementing Raven Apps Grids, Ridgeway Partners has transformed its Salesforce Org into an efficient operational workspace where users can easily manage their data inside Salesforce.
- Improved Data Integrity & User Adoption — Exporting and manual offline data manipulation have been curtailed, with candidate reviews and updates handled inside Salesforce. Users now accomplish more meaningful work in Salesforce, driving greater platform adoption.
- Faster Recruitment Pipeline Management — Recruiters can now review and manage extensive candidate pipelines more efficiently, enhancing responsiveness during searches and client reports, since Grids house all their data in a single view, eliminating the need to switch between records or screens.
- Better Automation Alignment — The native LWC architecture has enabled tighter integration with Salesforce Flows and automation tools, reducing manual effort and improving process consistency.
- Greater Value at a Lower Cost — Raven Apps delivers the exact functionality and flexibility Ridgeway Partners need but at a lower cost than its previous grid solution.
For an Executive Search firm, where data quality and process clarity are critical, Grids has positively impacted both the team's efficiency and user adoption.
Partnership experience
As a smaller organisation, Ridgeway Partners valued a vendor relationship built on responsiveness and collaboration.
"One of the aspects we value most about RavenApps is the Partnership. As a smaller organisation, we appreciated working with a team that was responsive, accessible, and committed to understanding our business requirements. While Executive Search is a niche Salesforce use case, the RavenApps team consistently took the time to learn our workflows and help us maximise the value of the platform. That level of responsiveness and collaboration is increasingly rare among software vendors and has been a significant differentiator in our experience."
Their advice to other firms: for organisations that manage complex Salesforce data and regularly export information into spreadsheets, Raven Apps is an easy recommendation. Grids combine the flexibility users want from Excel with the governance, automation, and data integrity benefits of Salesforce. Whether you're managing recruiting pipelines, sales processes, service operations, or other data-intensive workflows, Grids keeps users in Salesforce and supports teams to complete tasks and processes successfully.
Ridgeway Partners has found Raven Apps Grids to be an essential component in their Salesforce environment.
