How Borealis Compares to Salesforce for Stakeholder Engagement
Many organizations standardize Salesforce for sales, but when it comes to stakeholder engagement, the “we can code it in Salesforce” path rapidly becomes costly. Borealis is a purpose-built stakeholder relationship management (SRM) software that integrates with Salesforce, so sales stay in Salesforce while engagement teams get the depth they need.
Many organizations standardize Salesforce for sales, but when it comes to stakeholder engagement, the “we can code it in Salesforce” path rapidly becomes costly. Borealis is a purpose-built stakeholder relationship management (SRM) software that integrates with Salesforce, so sales stay in Salesforce while engagement teams get the depth they need.
Companies that chose Borealis
Why organizations move off Salesforce customizations (and into Borealis)
Why organizations move off Salesforce customizations (and into Borealis)
The pattern we often hear from organizations
“We use Salesforce for everything. IT says customizing it for engagement will be simple.”
“Six months later, we’re still building objects, flows, dashboards.”
“Adoption is patchy outside sales; data is fragmented; reporting is manual.”
What it’s costing you
Recurring customization costs
Continuous development and admin work just to keep Salesforce functioning for engagement.
Poor adoption outside sales
CSR, ESG, regulatory, and community teams find Salesforce clunky and avoid using it.
Scattered data
Information lives in different teams and systems, causing duplicate outreach and missed obligations.
Reporting and audit risk
Manual spreadsheets, inconsistent records, and no clear source of truth.
Slow time to value
Long IT build cycles delay real progress on engagement and compliance.
Comparison infographic
See a side-by-side comparison to quickly understand the difference between Borealis and a customized CRM.
What changes with Borealis
Purpose-built SRM, day one: issues, commitments, sentiment, stakeholders, all ready out of the box.
Coexistence with Salesforce: keep CRM where it belongs; run stakeholder management in Borealis.
Feature / Capability
SRM data model
Purpose-built structure for issues, commitments, relationships, and multi-party interactions ready on day one.
Requires custom objects, workflows, and development to approximate stakeholder relationship management needs.
Geospatial capabilities
Native GIS with parcel mapping and the ability to link assets, land, owners, and engagement records.
Limited mapping without add-ons and no native land and parcel context for engagement work.
Commitments and obligations
Tracks obligations, owners, due dates, escalations, and full audit trails for compliance.
Engagements treated as generic tasks without native commitment or obligation management.
Cross-department visibility
Centralized stakeholder relations system that unifies interactions, sentiment, issues, and outcomes across teams.
Fragmented data across systems and teams, often resulting in silos and duplicate outreach.
Reporting and compliance
Automated compliance-ready reporting with configurable dashboards and schedules.
Requires manual exports or custom BI builds to produce SRM and regulatory reports.
Communication capture
Automatic email and meeting capture linked directly to stakeholders, issues, and commitments.
Manual logging required for most non-sales activities.
Scalability for engagement
Designed for multi-project, multi-region engagement programs with consistent workflows.
Custom CRM builds become harder to maintain and more fragile as complexity grows.
Security and control
ISO 27001:2022 aligned with role-based permissions suited for sensitive stakeholder data.
Strong security, but depends on how custom configurations are implemented and maintained.
Global and multilingual support
Multilingual interface and customer success teams that actually understand stakeholder engagement
Broad CRM support but not specialized in stakeholder relationship management workflows or governance needs.
SRM data model
Purpose-built structure for issues, commitments, relationships, and multi-party interactions ready on day one.
Requires custom objects, workflows, and development to approximate stakeholder relationship management needs.
Geospatial capabilities
Native GIS with parcel mapping and the ability to link assets, land, owners, and engagement records.
Limited mapping without add-ons and no native land and parcel context for engagement work.
Commitments and obligations
Tracks obligations, owners, due dates, escalations, and full audit trails for compliance.
Engagements treated as generic tasks without native commitment or obligation management.
Cross-department visibility
Centralized stakeholder relations system that unifies interactions, sentiment, issues, and outcomes across teams.
Fragmented data across systems and teams, often resulting in silos and duplicate outreach.
Reporting and compliance
Automated compliance-ready reporting with configurable dashboards and schedules.
Requires manual exports or custom BI builds to produce SRM and regulatory reports.
Communication capture
Automatic email and meeting capture linked directly to stakeholders, issues, and commitments.
Manual logging required for most non-sales activities.
Scalability for engagement
Designed for multi-project, multi-region engagement programs with consistent workflows.
Custom CRM builds become harder to maintain and more fragile as complexity grows.
Security and control
ISO 27001:2022 aligned with role-based permissions suited for sensitive stakeholder data.
Strong security, but depends on how custom configurations are implemented and maintained.
Global and multilingual support
Multilingual interface and customer success teams that actually understand stakeholder engagement
Broad CRM support but not specialized in stakeholder relationship management workflows or governance needs.
Integrated artificial intelligence
AI that works where you work
While Salesforce AI is optimized for sales enablement, Borealis AI is built for stakeholder engagement:
- Ask Borealis AI: plain-language answers with sources.
- AI Insights: surface trends and suggest tasks.
- AI Writing Assistant: summarize, translate, and improve communications, all without exporting data to external tools.
Salesforce integration
Keep Salesforce, but stop over-customizing it
You do not need to replace Salesforce. You simply need to stop trying to turn it into an SRM. Borealis can offer a Salesforce integrator that allows both platforms to coexist smoothly, so IT teams can maintain their Salesforce environment while giving public outreach, project developers, government relation, and land teams the purpose-built SRM they need.
The integration helps organizations:
Reduce the pressure to custom-build stakeholder engagement functions inside Salesforce
Support IT’s desire for continuity without compromising engagement workflows
Transition to Borealis without disrupting established Salesforce processes
This approach keeps Salesforce where it excels while Borealis handles the specialized needs of stakeholder engagement without duplicating effort or creating unnecessary complexity.
The IT Case for Borealis
“We’re a Salesforce shop.”
Great, keep it for CRM. Borealis connects seamlessly with Salesforce so both tools do what they’re best at. The longer Salesforce is stretched into areas it wasn’t designed for, the more effort and expense accumulate. Integrating Borealis earlier keeps your core systems clean and scalable.
“We can code it.”
You can, but should you? Every custom build becomes something you must enhance, test, and support indefinitely. Over time, this slows delivery and makes change expensive. Borealis provides capabilities already proven across organizations, reducing ongoing development work and the long tail of maintenance.
“Change will disrupt teams.”
What really disrupts teams is waiting. When solutions take months to build, people fall back on spreadsheets, email trails, and manual workarounds. Borealis is implemented quickly, with guided onboarding and support that gets teams productive fast. Borealis has also been deployed hundreds of times specifically for stakeholder engagement, which means teams adopt it faster and with far fewer false starts, reducing the period where risk and inefficiency grow.
“What about reporting?”
Delaying a purpose-built reporting layer means more time spent reconciling inconsistent data and rebuilding dashboards. Borealis offers audit-ready, regulator-friendly reporting from day one, eliminating recurring manual effort and fragmented information.
Choose the best platform for stakeholder engagement
Keep Salesforce where it excels. Stop over-customizing it for stakeholder engagement.
Empower CSR, community, permitting, and regulatory teams with Borealis, the SRM purpose-built for stakeholder engagement—and integrated with Salesforce.
Next steps
- Download our business case template to discuss with our IT team >
- Compare your customization spend to Borealis time-to-value
- Talk to our specialists about governance, rollout, and migration