What is Vlocity?

Posted by Vinay Vernekar 18th October 2025

Quick context

Vlocity (now part of Salesforce Industries) is a suite of industry-specific managed packages and tools built natively on the Salesforce platform to accelerate digital transformation for communications, insurance, health, energy & utilities, and other verticals. It adds pre-built data models, UI building blocks, integration utilities and domain logic that align with industry processes — reducing time-to-value compared with building everything from scratch on Salesforce.

Core value proposition

Vlocity provides:

  • Industry-tailored data models and templates that map to common business processes.
  • Declarative and low-code components for guided selling, quoting, and complex product configuration.
  • OmniStudio (formerly Vlocity OmniScripts and FlexCards) — a set of UX and orchestration tools to design dynamic experiences without heavy code.
  • Pre-built integrations and transformation tools (DataRaptors, Integration Procedures) to connect and transform data between systems.

Key components explained

Below are the most important Vlocity/OmniStudio components you’ll encounter:

OmniStudio

OmniStudio is a family of tools for building guided user interactions and UI components. The main building blocks include:

  • OmniScripts — Flow-like, step-by-step scripts for guided data capture and processes (e.g., a customer onboarding flow).
  • FlexCards — Lightweight UI cards to display contextual data (account summary, product card) that can be embedded in Lightning pages or web apps.
  • DataRaptors — Declarative data extraction/transformation tools used to read/write Salesforce data and transform payloads without Apex.
  • Integration Procedures — Server-side, low-latency orchestration processes that call multiple services, perform transformations, and return consolidated payloads to the client.

Industry Data Models and Packs

Vlocity provides managed packages and industry data models (for example, product models, rate plans, policy objects) and accelerators for verticals such as Communications, Insurance, Utilities, and Health. These contain schema changes, Apex logic, and declarative assets mapped to industry standard processes.

Where Vlocity fits in a Salesforce architecture

Vlocity is installed on top of a Salesforce org. Typical roles:

  • Use Salesforce CRM for core account/contact/opportunity data.
  • Use Vlocity/OmniStudio for industry-specific processes and UX experiences (CPQ, quoting, order capture).
  • Use DataRaptors and Integration Procedures for transformations and integrations with external OSS/BSS or third-party systems.

Benefits

Using Vlocity (Salesforce Industries) offers:

  • Faster implementation — pre-built components that reduce custom development.
  • Consistency — industry best-practice data models and process templates.
  • Low-code extensibility — powerful declarative tools (OmniStudio) that empower configuration teams.
  • Scalability — built to work within Salesforce’s security, sharing and managed package upgrade model.

Common use-cases

Examples where Vlocity shines:

  • Communications providers: order capture, product catalog and rate-plan configuration, service activation workflows.
  • Insurance carriers: policy creation, rating engines, claim intake guided processes.
  • Utilities: service orders, meter management, outage workflows.

Limitations & considerations

While Vlocity accelerates delivery, consider:

  • Learning curve: OmniStudio patterns and Vlocity-specific metadata require ramp-up time.
  • Managed package constraints: you must follow upgrade paths and packaging restrictions.
  • Customization trade-offs: highly unique business logic might still require Apex or custom integrations.

Example: simple DataRaptor mapping (illustrative)

{
"name": "AccountSummary",
"extract": {
"source": "Account",
"fields": ["Id", "Name", "AccountNumber"]
}
}

Summary

Vlocity (now part of Salesforce Industries) brings industry-focused accelerators to Salesforce — packaged data models, declarative UX and integration tools (OmniStudio) that reduce implementation time for vertical solutions like communications, insurance, and utilities. It’s ideal when you want best-practice processes out-of-the-box while still leveraging Salesforce’s platform strengths.

For interview prep: be ready to discuss OmniStudio building blocks (OmniScripts, FlexCards, DataRaptors, Integration Procedures), how you’d handle integrations, and trade-offs between declarative Vlocity tools and custom Apex solutions.