07 Systems
Salesforce is the one source of truth. Partners work in introw, money moves through Tipalti, and every other tool writes its result back to the partner record. A flat team of 9 reads one scorecard instead of eight dashboards. (Decisions 16 to 24, 69, 70, 82 to 84)
All of this is synthetic. Cloud Cruz and its partners are invented.
The map
What each system owns
| System | Owns | Writes to Salesforce | Decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salesforce | Partner and customer accounts, opportunities, deal registrations, tier, health, credentials, the Commission Accrual ledger | (it is the record) | 24 |
| introw (PRM) | The partner portal: onboarding checklist, courses and study, accreditations, deal registration, co-marketing requests, community, contribution points, commission calculation | Two-way sync: deal registrations, onboarding progress, accreditations, approved points, calculated commissions | 20, 82, 83 |
| Tipalti | Partner KYC, payout details, payments | Payment status on each released accrual | 21 |
| Pearson VUE | Proctored Level 1, 2 and 3 exams and the exam vouchers | Pass or fail, through the Credly badge | 83 |
| Credly (Certifier in the demo) | Badges, issued when an exam or accreditation is passed | Credential, level, issue and expiry dates | 22, 27, 83 |
| Crossbeam | Account overlap between Cloud Cruz and each partner | Shared target accounts, used in co-sell and the onboarding health check | 23 |
| Slack | Partner comms: one community workspace for everyone, plus a Slack Connect channel per design partner in the beta and per Premier and Elite partner after launch | Nothing: comms never count as activity | 17, 84 |
| Zendesk | Partner support tickets | Tickets on the partner record, feeding "Is their delivery clean?" | 18 |
| Support Hub | Version-controlled program docs, answered with citations by the AI Answer Engine (build 4) | Through Zendesk when it can't answer | 19 |
| Partner directory | A public page on the Cloud Cruz site where customers find a partner, built from each partner's profile in Salesforce and ranked by contribution points and results | Reads only | 51, 78, 82 |
| Typed-decision layer (Jev first) | Judgments plain code can't make: lead signals now, support routing and deal triage later | Every judgment with its value, confidence, model and date | 69, 70 |
How money moves
- The customer pays an invoice, and it closes.
- introw calculates the commission at the rate locked at close (decision 73).
- Salesforce records a Commission Accrual: Earned, then Held for 60 days, then Released (decisions 21, 24).
- Tipalti pays the released amount and records the payment.
- A refund within 90 days reverses the accrual (decision 75).
- Finance books the accrual in the ERP.
Co-marketing campaigns follow the same path. The partner requests in introw, Cloud Cruz approves the plan, and Tipalti pays once there's proof of performance (decision 77).
Rules that keep it simple
- One record per fact. A number lives in one system and is copied, never re-typed. Tier, health and the scorecard are computed in Salesforce, so partners and Cloud Cruz see the same numbers (decision 33).
- Events, not polling. A paid invoice, a badge or a new ticket fires an update. Batch work runs on a schedule. A score written twice gives the same answer (decision 70).
- A person approves anything that changes state. Every AI send in Year 1, every payout release and every tier change is approved by a person (decision 71).
- Every AI judgment is logged and has a fallback. If the typed-decision layer is down, plain rules take over, and low-confidence calls go to a person (decision 69).
- No tool without an owner. Partner operations owns the Salesforce and introw configuration. Every other tool has a named admin in 10 Roles.
The demo stack
The public demos run on the same design with synthetic data. Supabase (Postgres) stands in for the warehouse. Claude answers questions and writes SQL through a read-only role, with a 5-second timeout and a 500-row cap. The site runs on Vercel. A Salesforce developer org shows the setup with a 50-partner sample (08 Salesforce setup). introw's free plan shows one design partner end to end (decision 20).
Why this saves time and money
Each tool does one job and writes its result to one place, so no one reconciles spreadsheets or chases a number across systems. Partners get one portal. The team gets one scorecard. Cloud Cruz pays only for tools that carry work a flat team would otherwise do by hand.