A Simpler Way to Use Salesforce Change Data Capture

What most teams get wrong about Salesforce Change Data Capture

You’ve probably heard of Salesforce Change Data Capture (CDC). It’s how Salesforce lets you track changes to your data in real time. Sounds great, right?

But here’s what no one tells you: setting it up is technical. Getting the right data out is messy. And using it to support real business decisions? That’s where most teams hit a wall.

Teams often reach for CDC when they want to track things like:

• Deal stage changes
• Forecast shifts
• Close date movements
• Lead assignment updates
• Field-level changes for compliance or reporting

In theory, it sounds like a grown-up solution, something a “mature” ops org would use. But in practice? It’s a shiny object that eats up weeks of dev time, requires custom event configurations, and ends up being totally disconnected from the people who actually need the insights: RevOps, Sales, Marketing, and Finance.

The result? You’re left with an over-engineered event stream that’s hard to parse, hard to maintain, and even harder to use for day-to-day decisions.

Most teams drop it—or worse, pretend it’s working—while going back to pulling manual exports and patching together reports in spreadsheets.

There’s a better way.

What is Salesforce Change Data Capture, really?

Salesforce Change Data Capture (CDC) is a feature that streams changes from your CRM—like when a deal stage shifts or a close date is updated—in near real time. It’s meant to give you a constant feed of change events so your systems stay in sync.

But it’s not built for business users. It’s built for devs.

You’ll need to configure platform events, write code to subscribe to them, and manage those integrations over time. And even after all that? You still need to make the raw events usable, filter out the noise, and connect them to your actual workflows.

That’s why most teams turn to another built-in option: Salesforce Field History Tracking.

But Field History Tracking in Salesforce has its own problems. It’s manual. It’s rigid. You have to dig into the object manager, select the fields you want, and you’re limited to just 20 fields per object (sometimes less depending on your org’s setup). Even once it’s turned on, the data is still locked inside Salesforce. You can’t easily trend it, slice it, or share it with people outside the system.

So now you’re stuck between two options:

• A developer-heavy CDC setup that’s expensive to maintain
• A limited history feature that lives inside Salesforce and caps what you can track

Neither option gives your ops team what they actually need: clear, ongoing visibility into changes across your pipeline.

That’s where connected spreadsheets come in.

There’s a faster way to track the changes that matter

You can track the same kinds of data shifts, leveraging, get this, your existing tech stack… without the complexity of setting up Salesforce Change Data Capture yourself.

Imagine having a simple daily view of pipeline changes where you can filter into any date range fast shift stands out. This type of simple, internal tools makes your CRM data immediately actionable.

Here’s how:

Connect your spreadsheet to live Salesforce Objects and Fields. From there, you can enable daily snapshots that track changes to the fields and records you care about.

Deal stage changes? Logged.
Close date pushed? Tracked.
Owner reassigned? Time-stamped.

You get a full history of pipeline movement—without code, without waiting on engineering, and without digging through raw events.

💡 Watch how RevOps teams use connected spreadsheets and data snapshots to replace complex CDC setups and finally get clear pipeline answers, fast. This setup literally took 10 minutes for my team member, Frank, to build out.

Why Coefficient makes Salesforce Change Data Capture easier

CDC is powerful, but it’s not accessible. Coefficient makes it usable.

You can:

• Track changes to any object or field—deals, accounts, opportunities, anything
• View change history over time without touching your CRM
• Build shareable dashboards that show exactly what moved, when, and why

And unlike native CDC, you’re not stuck working through a dev team or waiting on a queue. It’s fast, flexible, and tailored to how RevOps and Sales teams actually work.

Need a custom report for your CRO? Done.
Want to compare pipeline shifts week-over-week? Easy.
Looking to spot stalled deals or backsliding in stages? You’re covered.

You’re not limited by a CRM UI or event stream, just your own process.

When the quarter’s on the line, you need clarity

You can’t fix what you can’t track. And if you’re only logging CRM data without watching how it changes, you’re missing half the picture.

Coefficient gives you the change tracking of Salesforce Change Data Capture, but in a format your team can use right now.

Want to make Salesforce reporting painless? We’re ready for you.