When should a company consider using skinny tables in Salesforce?

Utilizing skinny tables is particularly advantageous when data retrieval speed is crucial for a company's operations. Skinny tables are essentially custom tables that store a subset of fields from a standard object. By doing this, they reduce the number of fields Salesforce needs to load and return during a query, which significantly enhances performance for read operations.

When a company has high volumes of data and requires fast access to that information, skinny tables help to avoid the overhead of unnecessarily loading all fields associated with a standard object. This is especially relevant in cases where the application is experiencing performance issues due to slow query responses.

In contexts where data storage is being challenged, the solution is not about employing skinny tables; traditional storage limits are better addressed through optimization or archiving strategies. Similarly, object relationships are not made more complex with skinny tables; rather, they simplify the retrieval process. Lastly, skinny tables serve specific performance needs rather than addressing issues with fields that may not be necessary for specific queries.