How to make Salesforce Implementations Successful

In this video, we will reveal the secrets to successful Salesforce implementations. By the end of this video, you’ll know exactly what to do to ensure a successful deployment! If you’re considering implementing Salesforce or currently are struggling, this video is for you! By the end of this video, you’ll know what to do to make your Salesforce implementation a success. From planning to execution to post-implementation support, we’ll cover it all in this video! Join us in this captivating podcast episode, where we converse with Kristian Jorgensen, an accomplished Salesforce professional and author of the ‘Salesforce End-to-End Implementation Handbook.’ Kristian offers invaluable insights and knowledge about Salesforce implementation and project management, making this conversation enlightening and informative.

Connect with Kristian: https://linkedin.com/in/kristianjorgensen/

Salesforce End-to-End Implementation Handbook: https://amazon.com/Salesforce-End-End-Implementation-Handbook/dp/1804613223/

00:00 Intro to Implementing Salesforce Projects
03:36 Journey into the Salesforce Cloud
05:15 Shifting Landscapes in Salesforce Implementations
07:05 Salesforce Governance and Control
08:57 Striking the Balance
12:22 Harmonizing Salesforce Vision and Structure
13:23 Balancing Inclusion and Technical Integrity
14:50 Strategically Streamlining Salesforce
16:05 Guiding Success to Salesforce
18:07 Steering Clear of Salesforce Pitfalls
19:32 Unveiling the Salesforce Customer 360° Reality
26:21 Unlocking Salesforce Value
31:17 Reviving Salesforce Projects from Chaos
35:25 Empowering Salesforce Implementation
40:15 Harnessing Past Wisdom

Transcript

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Hello, my name is Francis Pindar, and you are watching or listening perhaps to the Salesforce posse podcast, where I speak with Salesforce industry influencers so we can gain a better understanding of how to excel in a career path from a Salesforce admin or developer, to an architect. But before we start, I’m on a bit of a mission to prove that there’s an inner Salesforce architect in all of us, because for me, a Salesforce architect is all about design. But not all design is architecture. So I think of an architectural decision as something that’s gonna be hard or expensive to change in the future. So if you create an object in Salesforce, but flows, put reports on it, do integrations link it to other objects, this is going to be hard to change in the future. But I’m also trying to debunk the myth that Salesforce or an app at Salesforce architect is all about understanding the technical aspects of Salesforce, which is really not the complete case. So if you head to Salesforce AdminToArchitect.com/scorecard, you can score yourself against a free scorecard that measures yourself against the key skills that a Salesforce architect needs to be successful, and also gives you personalized feedback at the end. And you may be a little bit surprised by the results. But back to the show. And in this conversation, I’m going to be talking to Kirsten Johansson, who is a solution architect and now Team Lead at wag an IBM s company. And he is a fountain of knowledge around making Salesforce project successful. So I wanted to pick his brains around the things that you should be focusing on to really delight your users and customers that interact with Salesforce. He’s also written a fantastic book, the Salesforce end to end Implementation Handbook, which really is that end to end picture of how to deliver superior business outcomes using the Salesforce platform. So if you’re interested in understanding how to link the visions and goals of an organization to a Salesforce implementation, or want a demo to want to really show the demonstrate the value of Salesforce, or struggle to do that, or how how to manage everyone wanting a bit more than Salesforce, I’m really not knowing where to start. Or even just understanding the common traps that people fall into running Salesforce projects or agile programs, then I think you can get a lot of value out of this conversation with Christian. So without further ado, let’s go. I guess Welcome to the show.

Kristian Jorgensen
Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
So yeah, so I wanted to kind of get you on the show because you were kind of all things, you know, project manager and project creation and getting the best practice out of Salesforce implementations, and making sure it’s done the right way. But before we kind of get all into that, what was your history? How did you get into Salesforce originally?

Kristian Jorgensen
Yep. Great question. So I think it was about 10 years ago, I was working with a company that was going to replace both the billing platform and the CRM in one go, going from on prem to the cloud, Salesforce, and that’s where I first heard of it. I was in a in a channel management function, supporting sales directors and contact center managers in how to keep track of their business and control it. So I was an SME in the Salesforce project from the customer side. And then some, some years later, I moved over to the to the consultant side with the same company that was that was helping out.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Okay, cool. So how long have you been in kind of in it, I suppose for

Kristian Jorgensen
Could you repeat

Francis Pindar (A2A)
that? How has it How long have you been in it kind of the IT industry before kind of moving into Salesforce? Yeah,

Kristian Jorgensen
absolutely. So it would be around five years now. First Four Years at Capgemini. And then now about a year at Wake which is a specialized Salesforce boutique company within IBM.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Okay, cool. So how like, I think the so set the way Salesforce is implemented, I think is kind of starting to change, hasn’t it? Kind of we’ve kind of we’re seeing this shift in projects. Do you have kind of any insight in that and what you’re seeing currently in the industry?

Kristian Jorgensen
Yes, sure. And maybe it’s helpful just to go a bit down memory lane, even before I was part of the ecosystem, right? Because Salesforce started out as this with only Sales Cloud, right? That’s what it was helping out sales organizations, you know, better than me from back in the day. And it’s then evolved, right, with the both organic expansion product development. So Service Cloud, and then now spends marketing, commerce, field service, you know, integrations, analytics, so many things, and companies also leveraging and taking use of all those great innovations in the portfolio. Right. And, and that’s, I think, is what you’re asking, implementations have they also, yes, they have also seen a massive increase in complexity, technically, business, you’re talking to so many different parts of the organization now that you weren’t back then in the early days, right.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
I think also people, I think it almost get the right people are more aware of Salesforce, I think now. And it’s almost like, you know, you’re in when you’re even within your company, you know, people go, Oh, we got Salesforce. Now I you know, can we do this, this and this. And suddenly you’re kind of the scope of work kind of increases, I suppose, across across the project. So how, you know, when you’re first implementing a project, it’s kind of like, it’s always Greenfield very easy, right? So as the honeymoon, you know, this honeymoon period, I know, you talk about is kind of like these a bit of a start, and then you start maturing, and things get more complex, how do you see, you know, putting kind of governance and controls and things in a project, you know, what are the kind of key things you find people mistakes that people make going along that road?

Kristian Jorgensen
Sure. So I think, if we just go back to that, that Greenfield implementation, right, just just a little bit, because that’s really interesting, because it’s not all, all honeymoon, as a child that they’re the people you’re interacting with. On the customer side, may have heard of Salesforce or other CRM, but they there are so many things you need to introduce terms, best practices, what comes out of the box, what’s not, what does it mean configuration versus not? All these different things, is what you you need to slowly use change management for to get the insight, right. But then, yes, if we talk about the rollout, and the continuous improvement, there, you will likely have digressed or transgressed from being in this project mode to more continuous improvement of the domains you already have there. And how do you decide where to go? What what user stories or features or business problems? Should you attack an x? Right? How should you do it? Who reviews and qualifies? Do you have a design authority? If you’re working with partners, how do you structure that? Is it still statements of work? Yeah, sorry. Go on.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Yeah, yeah. So do you even like you said, like design authority, it’s like, do you need when you know, when you need to design authority, or when you it’s a lot of complexity in that right as well. You might be in an ad stablish organization that has a design authority, but doesn’t know Salesforce? So yeah, how do you? How do you make those decisions? Right? Yep,

Kristian Jorgensen
sure. Yeah, for sure. I think if you know, in the traditional waterfall, you would have these gates along the way. Other business requirements understood and detailed, check. Okay, then go into design phase is designed to live up to and so on. So there you had it built in sort of, sort of, where if you’re going anything that looks like agile or hybrid agile, where you don’t do all of that architecture upfront to the detail, then you need to have regular points throughout with a regular cadence where someone with experience assesses proposed solution designs, and that may be at a mid mid level or it might be at the at the user story level.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Okay, so going back to the greenfield site, if I’ve kind of like done initial implementation, relatively small, but it’s really successful. And now it’s kind of been socialized within the organization of people to kind of get They want to see what Salesforce can do. And everybody’s wanting a part of it right? And want to bring their their changes in. You know, adoption is high, and it is things are going are going well, but how do you manage that? How do you kind of make sure you’re doing the right thing? And you’re not kind of death by backlog almost. Yeah,

Kristian Jorgensen
absolutely. So I think they’re the whole concept of the product owner really plays a big, big role. Some Greenfield implementations are sort of hybrid, agile or more agile, meaning they definitely need to have a product owner part of the development team. And ideally, that person with all that knowledge that they have built up, should continue being part of the Salesforce team. And, and would also know how to qualify any requests that come in, right. But you need to have a forum where you review these types of things. What, what should be assessed against other product goals, which should be aligned to the overall vision and strategy of the company. But there’s there of course, needs to be the synthesis of what’s expected and desired by the organization and users of the solution, versus what’s the overall business strategy. So that’s, that’s where the rubber meets the road for whether this whole setup is really working, right? Because it’s sometimes two different things. Sometimes it’s aligned. And that’s great. But you need to have some some guidance there.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Okay, and how does that work with so? So you got the product owner, who is kind of the responsible party, making sure that what he’s getting built is relevant for the values and the goals of the organization? But how do you kind of balance that with, like, the architectural and technical goals, like maybe the project’s been around for a lot longer? And there’s a lot of a lot of tech debt in there. And actually, it’s always constantly just swept under the carpet, because you’re focusing on the backlog and the business change. Right? So how do you manage that?

Kristian Jorgensen
Yeah. So ideally, the product owner is experienced, because it is a senior role, you are making big, big decisions within your organization. So the person should be experienced knowing there is something called enablers, or technical enablers that need to be in place for the fun, functional features to be able to be developed for the benefit of users. It needs to be a close cooperation between the architect and the platform architect or the team of architects and the product owner or product owners. So it’s a it’s a marriage, you could say, because fulfilling a long term roadmap takes a takes both views.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
So how do we get so it’s really just making sure everybody’s included? And those technical elements are thought of as we’re kind of rolling through through the change? Yes, yeah, exactly.

Kristian Jorgensen
And if you were asking, so how do you do that? Specifically, concretely, practically. I think there are different models, right? Maybe the more DevOps see is to say, we do a continuously in every sprint, we will also have some time allocated for technical debt or refactoring, continuous refactoring. For some organization that works for others, it’s to say, every four or eight sprints, we will have a dedicated sprint just for refactoring. I think there are pros and cons to each way of doing that. The latter may seem less Devoxx II or less agile. But if you have that concretely on your on your plan, you know, okay, every two months, we have a sprint dedicated to that, then it actually gets done. So yeah, better to have something that actually gets done than something that is, we’ll do it within the sprint. But

Francis Pindar (A2A)
yeah, I tend to prefer that as well. Because it also you can kind of like, get the stats out of what are the slowest running processes? What are the things that actually you want to focus on during that sprint? until you’re ready and prepared for it rather than, Oh, we’ve got 10 story points we need to use on technical debt this month. I’ll just tidy this up. Or whatever.

Kristian Jorgensen
Yeah, exactly. So if you’re, if you’re not doing anything to alleviate technical debt or continuous refactoring, maybe start with that latter approach where you save, dedicate a space And or some time at certain increments, but then have the ambition to go to the more correct or DevOps the way of doing it continually, right. Yeah,

Francis Pindar (A2A)
absolutely. I think yeah, I think and also it kind of comes down to like the level of technical debt, your as well, I think, a real problem for you for delivering change. Based on you know, which approach you take, which I think is fine. Yeah. So also, there’s a thing called the Center of Excellence, right? And you’ve actually just written the book, the Salesforce end to end Implementation Handbook, which is fab. Yeah. And in there, you kind of talk about the center of excellence and the importance of a center of excellence. Can you kind of describe basically what it is? And but also, why is it important when at what point should this start to become kind of brought into an authorization? Yeah, I think yeah,

Kristian Jorgensen
absolutely. So I think, maybe we can say, well, what it’s not right. So it’s not a management or that type of body. It’s a Governance Forum, a structure to guide a team or teams of people working on the Salesforce platform. Right? And, and when should it be there? So if you consider before you even buy Salesforce licenses, right, you will likely have a team of people in your organization who are assessing what should we do we want a CRM or a new CRM, okay, let’s go with Salesforce. And then they’re looking into what capabilities should be supported the business case, all of this, those people are likely some of the good people that are going to be part of the implementation as well. And on an ongoing basis. And likely, it needs to require both business and technical and project or PMO. Delivery people, because it’s really those three aspects that you want to put some governance in place around. So both business technical governance and delivery governance. Why? Because it lowers risk. If you have, if you have guidelines and structures and guardrails in place, then it just lowers risk, risk that you built the wrong thing that you don’t deliver according to your your plans, and so on.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
And you’re continuously maturing, rather than doing the same old, same old versus well.

Kristian Jorgensen
Absolutely. Yeah.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
So when you’re kind of working in Salesforce change projects, what are the kind of common mistakes you see happening when I try to manage a project?

Kristian Jorgensen
Yeah, I think let’s just highlight two or three of them, right? So I think it’s typically that end users or the target users of your solution, have not been involved or not enough, are not early enough. And that’s really a big risk, right? If you, you can sit and you can have workshops with yourself or some other parts of the business and say, Hey, we really need this. But it’s not really until you go to market that you see if what you’re thinking of actually meets meets the goals, right. The other is that it’s a siloed organization and what you’re doing in the corner, let’s say it’s an IT lead project. It should ideally be both IT and business altogether in some symbiosis. But if it is just isolated, and you don’t have anyone from the business or from senior management, sponsoring, and being part of the conversation, you risk that you’re building something that isn’t really in line with the overall business and business strategy. Right. So that’s, that’s probably the second one lack of executive sponsor involvement. Because if you don’t have that continuously throughout that, that that’s a big risk.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
So what would happen if you’d if you didn’t for some examples? Sure.

Kristian Jorgensen
So if you don’t have, let’s say, the alignment to the overall business strategy, and you have little engagement with executive sponsor, sometimes people leave the company. So let’s say you, you, someone else joins to take the role of executive sponsor, look at the project and see Oh, but what you’re doing here is not aligned to the business strategy, let’s discontinue it, or let’s go the other direction. So it’s really there. So lack of continuity if you don’t have all those things in place.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Yeah. And I think I’ve Yeah. And also, I’ve kind of been on the projects where it’s a kind of a lift and shift technical fix side where it’s kind of like we’re replacing this with Salesforce because Salesforce is so much better. But they’re just lifting and shifting all that bad practices and everything into the new system value. And it’s not linked to any strategy or goals or anything approach that they’re trying to go to. And you just

Kristian Jorgensen
Conway’s Law, right? Where, if you’re designing it within the context of your own organization, and you don’t have external input or inspiration, right. Yeah. And

Francis Pindar (A2A)
I think this is where Yeah. And is that kind of the is that pull tug, I suppose between getting external people in to implement Salesforce versus the implementation yourself, or trying to do it in a hybrid way? And what level of engagement that has as well, I think, because even when you’re working at a consultancy, I think I’ve been in projects where it was almost like, they let the consultancies just do everything, right. And they had they really kind of as a hands off approach, and you’re kind of consultancy, you’re trying to, you know, deliver a result. But then they’ve got nothing to go on. They’re not listening to any goals or anything, or strategic vision. And yeah, again, it’s like, doesn’t give good positive outcomes.

Kristian Jorgensen
Absolutely, yeah. You got to have Yeah, sorry. No, go on. I was just gonna say, I completely agree. Right? You You need to have someone to interact with to understand the context and the users and the business. Absolutely. It’s key.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Yeah. And communication as well. But it’s happening that, you know, that people are aware of it, that people engage with it to kind of get the buy in and get the adoption and get the kind of the quick wins and what’s in it for me. You know, how but yeah, absolutely. Okay, so Salesforce is all about, like, the customer 360. And I think, yeah, I think we’ve all been there where it’s like, yes, we want a 360 degree view of the customer. But what are the kind of realities? When so if you’ve got a project that is, yeah, we want a customer 360 degree view of the customer go? The realities around that? Yeah.

Kristian Jorgensen
No, I, I’ve heard and seen many different impressions of what that actually means, right? From account page layouts with everything on it, and endless scrolls. So yes, there you have it, all the information you want it about your customer, but is that in a meaningful way? Right. And then also, just to the, to the completeness of it, I think, yes, it should be perhaps the ambition, right. But also important to think of in the context of the specific user. So for a salesperson, the 360 means one thing, right? It’s things that are key and important to know, same for a customer service, same for a field service person, many different types of roles. And then I think secondly, the, it should be the ambition to get there. But it’s okay to start with one ad or to 90 customer view. As long as that’s the the ambition, right? Cuz she didn’t want to.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Yeah, it’s kind of had the right data at the right time for the right role. Exactly. Yeah. Which is always tricky. And some organizations I remember, I was working for a insurance company. And actually, they were like, hey, Les. Yes. Because insurance is very siloed. Yeah, where you’ve got, you know, the organization sells many different types of insurance, but it’s all very separate. Yeah, life insurance is one department, you know, home insurance is another but they don’t really talk to each other. Like, they bring everything together. But then they started kind of coming across the challenges with that. So I remember there was an incident where there was, you know, rocking up to their customers houses and saying, Hey, look, here, we want to talk about your, you know, your life insurance and stuff like that. They’ve combined life insurance policies and home insurance together. And, and did have challenges where, you know, the people in the house, didn’t want the other people to know what insurance policies they’d had on them, right? Because they don’t want to get bumped off by their wife or their husband or whatever. And actually bringing all these policies together as a family unit, actually, Stein, oh, it’s challenges even just bringing data together, isn’t it? And wanting that 360 degree view and actually, he’s still going to have these kinds of firewalls and visible The key rules and stuff in place. So that not every, you know, yes, it’s tied together. But in some cases, not everybody can see everything. For the record seeing it for the right reasons.

Kristian Jorgensen
Yep, that sounds a bit more like also organizational business change. Challenge, right. For the insurer, right. Yeah. Yeah. With different divisions at the same time for the same customer segments. And so that

Francis Pindar (A2A)
yeah, and they know that they’ve got to connect together. But then yeah, it is finding that that approach that allows them to market right, but not Yeah, yeah, it’s challenging space. So if how would you go about if you were like, I know, there’s value in using Salesforce? Yeah, I know, the organization can really value on doing some processes or doing something in the Salesforce. But I know, obviously, I’ve got to get a budget for it. I’ve got to prove that it’s worth doing. Yeah, how do I get a case together to actually pitch it to say, hey, look, I think this is going to be a good piece of work to do.

Kristian Jorgensen
Yeah. So let’s say you, for example, that you are a business person within the company, right? Let’s say you’re working in sales as a sales manager or sales director, you will likely have seen that it works Salesforce works for you, or it has worked for you in in another company previously, so you want to interact with the executive sponsor, you want to get someone in senior management who can be part of that journey to convinced the organization to go for this right? You need someone from it like an Enterprise Architect, or some someone who can who can talk about, okay, system landscape, how’s it looking? What capabilities are supported by what what’s the roadmap? Where would Salesforce fit into that? Because you also need the buy in from the IT organization typically. And then you need this, this driver, it can either be yourself, or you can have someone from like a PMO. Organization, if you have that. And then you need to go, you’d need to do the work, right? You need to interact and understand those capabilities. Let’s say its sales, its account management, lead management, opportunity, quote, management, all of that you need to understand not in the detail, but you at least need to understand what what what are the processes? What are the pain points? Because if they’re on pain points, what are you really trying to do, right? So that that work you need to do and then look at the KPIs look, look at where you’re, where you’re tracking. Now, if it’s a, let’s say, sales domain project, you need to see okay, is it our order value that’s lacking? Is it our hit rate? Is it how long it takes for us to close our opportunities? So you need to look at what what factors within revenue is that that you can change and want to change with your with your project. And then you can build a business case around that together with someone from finance, and then present that business case and get get funding. So it sounds really linear and simple. But oftentimes, you have to go several loops. And that’s all right.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Yeah, I think also, it’s kind of getting their credibility, right. So once you’ve proven that, hey, look, there’s a long lead time or is a manual processes happening here and getting X amount of mistakes, which is costing this amount of money, improving it at the end of the day, once you’ve done it, hey, I’ve reduced it by this. This, and then it’s almost like, yeah, the business cases that come from Francis, Oh, it’ll be fine, then because he knows he’s done. He’s always done your due diligence on this. Right. Yeah, which I think comes into that other part of that kind of magnet project or Salesforce implementation projects, that kind of trust. And that kind of moving from that functional way of thinking of implementing Salesforce and job done, kind of moving into that kind of trusted advisor, one to becoming vital for the organization. So you can start always fine. It’s kind of like, if you’re new, you don’t actually know truly, maybe what the actual goals and the vision of the organization are. And it’s kind of building up that trust such that you are actually then start getting privy to the what actually we’re selling five different products, and five different teams all selling it. And actually we just want have, you know it’s stupid, they can all sell the same set of products. And it means we have a cost saving by reducing the T, for example. And obviously, you’re not privy to that initially. But once you start building up the draft, and you know, you’re not going to go blabbing to that those teams, but then that can really help you in the way you kind of design and architect your solutions as well. Absolutely, yeah. So if I was like, going, so say, I’m on a project, and it’s not going so well, maybe it wasn’t, you know, it was more of a Big Bang project, you know, you’re halfway through and you realize that’s probably, you know, okay, we’ve got, it was a mistake, you know, we’ve now got a lot of stuff that we need to deliver, there’s lots of issues. And you’ve got problems happening? How do you kind of take yourself out of that kind of type scenario where, or maybe you’ve kind of been brought into a project where it is a little bit chaotic? And what are the kind of first key steps or key things you think about or do to kind of try and get the project back on track?

Kristian Jorgensen
Sure. So you’re saying it’s a project that was meant to be released in a big bang, after a bunch of different capabilities should have been built? Or are being built, but have not yet been released? Something like that? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I think I would follow the steps. Right? So what is it really that we’re trying to achieve, but what’s really key? So going through all the things that should be done earlier in the in the pre development phase, as like, as I call it, go back to the to the business case, go back to see what were the key pain points for the capabilities that are part of the scope? And then try to work with the with the with the project team to see is it possible to chop something up in releases? Could we perhaps go live with let’s say, the sales domain or the service domain, and then add on marketing and commerce later? Is that an option? Sometimes it is, sometimes you need interim integrations, otherwise, people will need to work in two systems. So there are of course, trade offs. That’s what being an architect is about is sharing the options, but highlighting the trade offs with with either one, right? Yeah. So I think, be clear on what what the goal is, see if you can chop it up. So it doesn’t become sort of much as a big bang. And maybe go with more of a pilot approach, and then roll out in waves. That that set of functionality. And then you can always add, add more later.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Even Start Yeah, start small and experiment. It doesn’t have to be rolled out to everybody, maybe I think the smallest I ever did was literally account and contacts. And that was it. It was literally a company Rolodex. And that was it. It was just to prove that the integration, you know, the data migration worked to prove that, you know, they could see all the data. And really, it was all read only because obviously, we didn’t know if the data was right. So you can create any new records, it was literally a company Rolodex, but they could do a reporting, they could do loads of stuff they could never do previously, which they found really valuable. And then we just slowly iterated from there. But

Kristian Jorgensen
could they log calls and activities against those?

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, even just that. And you know, it’s just kind of a revelation for some companies. On my word, we can see who’s actually contacting customers. Yeah, yeah. And I think that’s, I think, obviously, you kind of get a bit bogged. I know I didn’t, you kind of get a bit bogged down in that. Salesforce is so vast and could do so much. You think that you need to deliver a lot to get value, when actually, if you really look at it, and really kind of talk to people and users and read the the vision of the kidnappers, the strategic goals of where they want to get to, some of it is very simple, almost just get loads of value out of Salesforce by just using even just the company Rolodex and bringing that data together, right. Yeah. And so really kind of understanding that is like, absolutely key, and kind of measuring it as well. So you can see, actually, yeah, I did make a benefit, you know, did benefit the users. And they are, you know, finding it useful and now, the organization as a whole can can have a better picture of what’s going on. So you say your book coming back to your book you Why did you create the Salesforce in 20? Implementation Guide? Because yeah, it’s a lot of project management books out there. There’s a lot of Salesforce books out there. So why did you feel that you wanted to create a book on Salesforce implementation? Yes.

Kristian Jorgensen
Good. Good question. Well, I, through the years in consulting, I often wondered, there should be a structured way to do this repeatedly, just like we have best practices, and we have architecture patterns. We have development guidelines and testing guidelines. There are so many things. Ensure there is also for project management. And there is for agile, different things. But how do you mix and merge it all together in a in a Salesforce context? So I thought that’s missing. And then I frankly, just became confident enough and was pushed a little bit by by someone I have worked with previously, Tommy Berry, who I’m grateful for giving me the encouragement to pursue it, right. So it’s this, this mix of thinking, I would really have liked to have had this book when I started out in Salesforce, yeah, maybe I don’t get to work on all the different corners in the book, because it does span the entire implementation lifecycle, right. Sometimes, you’re only part of the development, sometimes you’re not part of rollout. But it’s still seeing what are the different bits and pieces involved and considerations and change management and communication and local deployments. I just think it’s a, it’s something that I would have loved to have had when I when I was starting out. And I also like to think that it’s, it can improve increase empathy. So because there are so many different people involved, it’s not just end users and developers, it’s many different parts of the organization. So if you read it, and you get to see what changes for many different parts, it’ll increase your empathy when you get to be part of projects and start to engage. That was my, my hope, at least, yeah,

Francis Pindar (A2A)
the challenges that other people have in the organization have that you can Yeah, definitely. And also, I kind of find that. Yeah, I don’t know. I feel like Salesforce is a lot more business led than it led. So it, it does have a kind of a different implementation approach. I suppose that a traditional IT project where you’re maybe thinking a lot more about the non functional requirements, so a lot more about, you know, the security implications where a lot of that is kind of taken off your hands by Salesforce. And not as the case may be. So making sure you get that balance. But yeah, it’s yeah, it’s a really fascinating book. And it’s definitely definitely worth a read. What do you think, like? Who’s the who’s the book? So you said it’s kind of like it’s aimed at like the people that you’d wish you’d had when you started? Your your Salesforce journey. But also, there’s loads of other stuff in there, like, you know, creating a CEO we creating, so it’s not just, you know, that kind of beginning journey, I feel anyway, I’m looking at it.

Kristian Jorgensen
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So I’d say it’s a, it’s targeted at, at mainly end customers who are actually having and using Salesforce more considering implementing Salesforce in their organization. And that could be a product owner, it could be PMO, lead could be a scrum master. It could be an architect. It’s it’s really for for everyone. And then I think it’s for also consultants who are working with customers, because this really shows the considerations that companies are having to go through throughout the implementation lifecycle, right. Yeah.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Cool. Okay, and if you have any other questions that you want to write

Kristian Jorgensen
not that I really, really can think of right now. I mean, I do know you have your last question.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Last question. Yeah, I asked everybody. You ready for the last question? Yeah. Okay, here we go. So, yeah, so you asked it to pretty much everybody If you could wind back that clock top point in time in your past, and you could give yourself some advice, what point in time would it be? And what advice would you give yourself?

Kristian Jorgensen
It’s a great question. Let me think. So I think I would probably go back to when I was when I started on the consulting side, like five, five years ago, and I had been doing a bunch of stuff before joining, let’s say, the IT side, I’ve been in sales. I have a degree in marketing, I’ve been in channel management, and bi and finance. So a lot of different things. And I think it’s the same story for many different people in the Salesforce ecosystem, not everyone studies, computer science, and then goes into development or architecture, right. So my advice would be, have more confidence to bring your knowledge and your context and industry knowledge to to work. And then also, as soon as I, I got the appetite to do more than, let’s say, use the story, development and so on. Just speak up and say, I have appetite. For more, please, can I be part of, let’s say, an epic or feature level? Design? And so on. So speak up and reach for the for the opportunities? Yeah, absolutely. They’re not always just given to you.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Yeah, completely. And even like, yeah, advice on your previous experience, you can bring on board, I think a lot of people, like, a lot of my students are kind of like, I’ve come from this industry or that industry. And I think everything’s amazing. Everybody thinks it’s like a stop. And Salesforce is a completely new thing, right? But it’s not, it’s like, it’s so linked to specific industries and industry knowledge and, and things like that. And actually just, you know, you can, you know, if you’ve come from a retail background, or a finance background, or whatever it may be, all these organizations in those industries use Salesforce. So it’s, and then Salesforce is so close to the business. Knowledge is so important, and so useful in your career. So, yeah, absolutely. Couldn’t agree more with that. And also, yeah, the opportunity asked for those opportunities and find out, but like trailhead, you know, find out or more about it. So you can go and give that advice and kind of go, Whoa, have we thought of this? This could be interesting. Yeah, and asking for that. Because I think organizations aren’t really, you know, well, back in my dad’s Father’s Day, you know, the beginning training as a life career and all this kind of stuff was now it’s it definitely, you know, if you want to progress your career, you got to think about yourself, and, and learn for yourself and reach for those opportunities, because they’re not going to just come.

Kristian Jorgensen
Yeah, get a mentor, either internally, where you’re at, or externally. Or perhaps I’ve heard of this guy who, who helps admins become architects, so there are plenty of resources out there. So use them. Right, right.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Yeah. And even like, even if it’s not a mentor, a sponsor, somebody who can actually put your name forward or really kind of go, actually, you know, I can put you in contact with people that can help your career. So it’s not even you know, it’s not kind of mentor, such, you know, it always kind of helps as well. Yeah. Brilliant. So you’ve also you’ve actually created a website called the Salesforce implementation Help Center, which is quite cool. Can you tell a bit about that?

Kristian Jorgensen
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s based off the book where I describe four phases of a Salesforce implementation, there is pre development, before you even buy licenses and provision an org, or get new licenses for a new project. Then there’s development, this rollout where you want to ensure adoption and support it. And then there’s continuous improvement, which is everything after. And for each of those phases, you typically face some challenges, some common issues, and it’s around those that I thought, hey, maybe it would be useful for people to be able to access these different issues and the underlying root causes in a sort of knowledge article. So I went ahead and together with one of the technical reviewers, Tony calm. We built this community site or experience cloud site, where you can where you can go into SF dash e to e.com. You can find out okay, what phase Am I in? What overall common issue Am I facing and then you’ll be Presented with the potential root causes, and then you can see the resolution or strategy for mitigation. So sort of like the Help Center, where Salesforce has technical how to implement Sales Cloud or digital engagement or whatever it may be, then this is more for the implementation Help Center.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
I cool. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s been.

Kristian Jorgensen
Thanks for having me. My pleasure.

Francis Pindar (A2A)
Thanks for watching or listening to the Salesforce posse podcast now please, please, please, if you like, or what you see or hear then please rate this podcast in your podcast player, as it tells me that there are people out there that actually are listening to this and that it’s useful to them. Also, it helps the podcast algorithms to kind of elevate the podcast in the different podcast directories which will be really helpful for me, as well. And finally, if you do have a question that you want to ask on the podcast, then head to Salesforce posse.com/message. And maybe you will appear in the next podcast, but apart from that, thanks for listening, and until next time,

 

The Salesforce Architect Soft Skills to Learn with Kier Bowden

When thinking of a Salesforce Architect, people usually jump to the need for a deep technical knowledge of Salesforce. But that’s only part of the picture, and there are so many other skills that are important to become a highly successful Salesforce Architect. Keir Bowden, Chief Technical Officer at BrightGen, features in today’s episode of the Salesforce Posse podcast to share his incredible experience at Salesforce.

Today, we talk to Keir Bowden about the value of people skills, how to handle difficult situations, and the significance of effective communication across organizational levels. We discuss the need to make things as easy to use as possible and the design principles behind this philosophy.  Also, Keir explains critical things you need to know and where to begin your training to become an architect. At last, we reach a point in the conversation where we talk about learning to say no.

Keir has worked in the information technology sector for the past three decades and is currently the Chief Technology Officer at BrightGen, a Salesforce Platinum Partner in the United Kingdom. He is responsible for the current and future technical strategy, certification and product development there. Since 2008, Keir has been developing solutions and applications on Salesforce, and Keir currently possesses a number of qualifications, including the highly sought-after Technical Architect (CTA) certification. In addition to being a Salesforce MVP, he is the author of the Visualforce Development Cookbook, a frequent blogger on topics related to Apex and Visualforce solutions, and a speaker at events such as the Salesforce World Tour, Dreamforce and London’s Calling. He maintains a blog in his leisure time, writing on Apex, Lightning Components, and the Salesforce Command Line Interface.

[02:08] Background – Who is Mr. Big Bob Buzzard?

[04:00] Soft Skills – We are all savvy with PCs, but dealing with actual humans is a different story.

[09:27] Keir’s Role – Keir shares his role and objectives in the room.

[11:46] Be Simple – We discuss the importance of simplicity in design and how to achieve it.

[15:04] Difficult Conversations – Disagreement is typical at times of transition. Keir shares his ideas on how to cope with crises like these.

[20:56] Communication – The importance of communicating at different company levels.

[24:08] Key Learnings – Keir outlines the essential skills you need to become an architect and where to start learning.

[33:54] No – The art of saying “No.”

Resources:

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/keirbowden/

Hosted by AdminToArchitect.com

Ines Garcia Salesforce Agility & Sustainability

This episode’s guest ‘Ines Garcia’ has literally written the book on how to run successful Agile projects in Salesforce and has an incredible way of looking at the world, she’s an Agile Coach, a Salesforce MVP and is helping organisations build in a sustainable way. So they can have a positive and better impact on the well being of communities and the planet we live in.

At the Salesforce Posse podcast, we interview influencers in the Salesforce ecosystem so that we can gain a better understanding of how to excel in everything from AdminToArchitect.com.

Twitter
LinkedIn
www.getAgile.co.uk
Amazon ‘Sustainable Happy Profit’
Amazon ‘Becoming more Agile whilst delivering Salesforce’

Sponsored by AdminToArchitect.com Salesforce Training

00:00 Introduction
01:45 Why Agile?
03:14 Why did Agile come about
04:10 What are the mistakes Agile teams make?
06:00 The flows in the system. Leaving
06:46 Ines Garcia’s Origin
08:30 How do we make time more engaging and satisfying
09:00 Scrum master certification
11:20 Ines Garcia’s Books: Becoming more Agile & Sustainable Happy Profit
17:15 Where should Sustainability start? At movement, company or individual level?
19:00 How do we design things to align with nature
21:30 The Purpose Economy
23:00 How to Contact Ines
23:50 Sustainable Cook Book

Transcript

Francis Pindar 0:00
Hello, my name is Francis Pindar, and you are watching or listening perhaps to the Salesforce Posse podcast, where I speak to influencers in the Salesforce ecosystem. And in this conversation, I’m going to be talking with Ines Garcia, who I’ve known for many years. But when I first met her, she was working in the Salesforce ecosystem with a passion for Agile. But now she is not only the author of two amazing books, becoming more agile whilst delivering Salesforce and sustainable happy profit. But also she’s an Agile coach, a Salesforce MVP, and is helping organisations to build in a sustainable way. So they can have a positive and better impact on the well being of communities and the planet we live in, if you are interested in Agile, or how sustainability really can be a force of good within companies. And I think you’re going to get a lot of value out of this conversation within Ines. So let’s get on to it. Hello, Ines, and welcome to the podcast.

Ines Garcia 1:11
Hello, Francis. Thank you for having me.

Francis Pindar 1:13
Oh, great. I think God, it seems like forever since we last saw each other I think because you did London’s calling a couple of times. But it’s like since then it’s just been virtual craziness.

Ines Garcia 1:26
I think that’s Well, for us. And for many more,

Francis Pindar 1:28
you actually the talks you done at Dreamforce. All around agile, and you’re living in this kind of Agile world. But you know, there’s I think a lot of my students I have a lot of people that listen to this may use agile or in away or not heard of it before. And I think a lot of even for me, it’s like, there’s loads of different frameworks out there. And methodologies and ways of working, I suppose from, you know, extreme programming, kind of Kanban, agile scrum, and then also the kind of more traditional ones like, you know, PRINCE2, PMP. And I think it’s like all why agile, I think and what what are the benefits of it?

Ines Garcia 2:06
Big question, I suppose agile, like other names comes with a lot of baggage. What I find often when I go to help organisations and teams is that there is a sense of, they’re maybe doing Agile, but what I see and the results are not fermenting in a way that they would expect, one would expect with the principles that those frameworks bring. So in a very simple manner, what I like to do sometimes is just to drop the name at all, I tend to refer to, to our colleagues who out of what we’re trying to do here is to deliver better value do that sooner, safer, happier, at the end of the day, that’s the aim.

Francis Pindar 2:48
I don’t know, if you’re the same as me, it’s like, there’s all these different ways of doing things. But actually, you can use elements from all of them really to kind of really support what the business and the objectives of the business are trying to get out to support the team that same as you, but it can become a, I think, is quite good. Are you dropping the word agile? Because then you kind of set you in this kind of mindset of that’s the way I should be working, which may not be the benefit for the business. I don’t know if that makes sense.

Ines Garcia 3:13
In that sense, like think that this Agile has been around for more than 20 years, people that they were already developing software in different ways and the more traditional and standardised manner, they came together, they drop their differences. They let them like in the other side of the door, and they discuss what were the commonalities of the things that they were doing differently. And that’s where the Agile Manifesto emerge. And for whoever’s listening this if you haven’t checked it out, please go to AgileManifesto.org. And have a look about the about why were they there where they were trying to achieve. And so when things become trending is very easy for core of the content to dilute and I think is, if you haven’t had the greatest experience with a type of agile, unfortunately, that may be a reason of your experience. So there is a better way, and there are hosts out there.

Francis Pindar 4:09
So what are the common things that you kind of noticed when you work with companies that say they’re doing Agile, but it’s fragile, or it’s just not quite achieving? What is the kind of common things do you kind of see within the projects?

Ines Garcia 4:22
Some of the anti-patterns, I suppose we could call it is that we expect to be able to foresee the future. And if anything over the last 24 months, we have proven wrong, that ain’t going to happen. If we look at natural systems, we can get the Inspire how nature works, in a sense that nature is built to adapt to change to help storm and the trees still being able to flex. So how can we mimic some of these concepts in the way that we organise ourselves and in the way that we build the products and services that we put to market.

Francis Pindar 4:49
So Is that because the first book you did was all around agile and you’d like to talk about the Agile Manifesto and the people that came together at point, which I found out found really interesting. How did that connect into your sustainability and agile? And how does that kind of fit into the same world?

Ines Garcia 5:16
The same world, the common denominator is me. I work for myself and I struggled to put myself into a box because I have really wide interest of different things like the first product I kind of put out there was a card game makes a my love for games, because I really like board games with the work that I do with Teams. Why not? inventing is part of the process, always learning is part of the process. Sometimes I wonder if I enjoy more of the process of learning than the outcomes. And what has come more apparent to me is that the way that we behave, society political structures, the systems that we in bam, they all conceptual systems, they don’t really tangibly exist, we make them up, there are flaws in the system, unless the system is designed to leave the place better than how we found so in a very abstract way, in a very meta meta meta way, there are similarities. I come from communications background, that’s what I study, I landed in the Agile world by being interested of how others do better what they do. So I ended up working internal communication. And yes, digital has lot to do a lot of tools that the things that can help there but at the end of the day are humans problems that we are trying to solve.

Francis Pindar 6:35
So is that why you because I sort of noticed on LinkedIn you kind of you started off at Lappin, the cutting out kind of restaurant was that where you had that communication experience?

Ines Garcia 6:44
I’ve done lots of jobs in my life from promo and from my family business is a wine shop. And if you want to get to my heart, you do that also through my tummy. Lots of different jobs and I study comm See, used to be a double degree PR advertising marketing that five years and I was already working for tourism of Gerona of the city where I was studying, then I ended up working as well. For segway I don’t know if many of you will remember, two wheels one platform is supposed to revolutionise so part of my job was convincing politicians to jump into this thing of a summer in August, everybody disappears. I said to my bus, I’m gonna get to London for a month. That’s how I landed here. And I was finishing my uni the air like sometimes I will take the first plane in the morning coming back the last one at night just to present my final project and very intense. And I did all sorts of jobs because I was holding my rental flats there, my rental flats and life over here. And so all sorts of different things. And for me, it came apparent that over time, I kind of miss the big boom of social media and for our communicators, somebody that wanted to build their professional career around that, well, he was a big moment and to kind of be doing all sorts of things. So you find your pace, and you’ll find your ways to go back to do what you love. And so I ended up coming back into internal comms. And in one of the organisations that I was working, actually, they were trying to embed Salesforce into the internal tools. So that kind of came to mind. And I read a lot and I really liked to experiment sometimes with humans. In a way, that’s how we organised how can we make it more engaging? How can we make it more satisfying the time because the time that we have is perishables, we should really make the most out of it. And with that I my investigations that are raising hearing agile, do you suggest that so I borrow bids, and I try stuff with my team. Thanks to them for meant right. I think over time I come to the conclusion.

Francis Pindar 8:51
Was that based on just you learning yourself? Or did you go on training to learn agile at that point?

Ines Garcia 8:57
Yeah, at that point. And so what I decided to do is to put myself through this scrum master certification Scrum is a framework that applies some of the principles of agile and extends with some coloured ceremonies, like some touch points into your delivery cycle, to help you to align with your team help you to get better at your process, essentially, is that and so going through this motions, and then I finished there are several path into the scrum mastery, sort of professional path. And I finished that like few years ago, so there is always learning and things become more clear as more than you do at the end of the day is a practice.

Francis Pindar 9:40
Yeah, it’s not just about I always think of it as like, you can kind of functionally know it, I suppose. But that doesn’t give you a you know, you need to actually practice experiment with it, play with it, really learn it and see what works for you. And yeah, and just that kind of experience of doing it but also that kind of X Factor. turf war, I get a kick out of my burndown graph or whatever it is, that kind of drives you to improve and do better. Some

Ines Garcia 10:07
of the analogies, I think they are commonly uses. I hope I’m not like butchering the idea, but from the film of Karate Kid, where the kid is being told to watch the car, but he wants to learn karate, you just do what the master says, Do it, do it. And then those forms and those mannerism and those disciplines, they come to us later on. So in essence, it’s a bit like this practice, and then you will just get better.

Francis Pindar 10:38
Yeah, definitely. And I think also just learning things that are kind of outside of your industry or your area of expertise, I suppose I found I learned that quite early on when I kind of went worked in film post-production, you know, agile in film paths for post-production does not exist. But a lot of the concepts from agile they were using, and it was, as they just called it the film pipeline. It was just there doing the show and tells every morning show what had progressed the previous day, the wall of the time before it all got digitalized the wall of all the shots and the stages of productions, you could literally pick see, looking at the wall exactly where the film is set, but also the things that I didn’t use in my kind of coding world that I kind of picked up and kind of thought that’s quite interesting. But yeah, also actually, when I was reading your book, I’ve got them here. Actually, you’re kind of agile, becoming agile, and I haven’t quite finished. I’ve got a little way through sustainable Apple profit, but not there. But especially with your agile book, like your references to other materials, other books and stuff. That because I’m a big reader, and there are loads actually a lot of the books like yeah, just Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, you know, the cornerstone, I suppose, of classic books, but there’s a couple of others that I just had never read, which I started got on our audiobook drive The Surprising Truth that motivates us. Not read, but yeah, fascinating. So what how with the books, what drove you to go watch today, I’m going to write a book, the passion of agile, what drove you to do it,

Ines Garcia 12:09
so it wasn’t a day, the session of a time when it came more apparent is that I only have certain hours a day. And I really want to the I’m on this quest to demystify like them what Agile was about, but to help others to see that there is a better way to do business, I can see that there is a commonality of the messages subliminal or maybe not. So subliminal messages on trying to fit into this content, creating a product where you do the effort once and can span in a way, way there that I could do with which I love to do anyway with articles and community conferences and supporting local community groups. And all of that I will do and continue to that is a way to extend the influence, hopefully to reach others, to give them the tools, the ability and to debunk so many myths, there is a better way to do business, there is a better way to enjoy work, and there is a better way to spend your perishable time. Let’s do it. I have fun.

Francis Pindar 13:13
I think also, especially with that always found like, especially the ground sustainability, diversity, and all this other lace kind of stuff that companies will kind of almost like go on this training course and learn this, because we need to look like we’re being sustainable and diverse. And then you come back and then but they don’t really kind of engage with actually making a change in their in their business. And I don’t know, I kind of seen like even last couple of years are kind of a bit of a seismic shift in to companies going well actually, we really need to look at a product creation process and seeing really how we can be more sustainable and more environmentally friendly, I suppose. So what from some of the from the Agile book and moving into this kind of sustainable happy profit was that just that that came about with working with companies and wanting to move and learn more about that kind of side of business,

Ines Garcia 14:03
it was a very selfish quest, where at personal level, I made changes and I continue trying to evolve in the way that I can reduce my footprint and leave the place better than how I find and it’s hard. It’s hard in terms of decisions that you make things that you purchase, or you then purchase or things that you grow yourself. So wish me luck with my tomatoes this year. So there are many, many things that we can do. And I think in general, there has been a why their educational piece and awareness piece into the wider population at the masses. And there is a common understanding at the system level at the political level that we need to change. Yet as a one person company, it was very difficult for me to translate some of these ideas into how do I run my Ltd better. So that was a very selfish question. I started, I started reading lots of things, there is a myriad of information, it can get really overwhelming loads of different frameworks, lots of different things to account for. And I took the path of talking with the organisations that they were doing things differently. Over two, three years, I had fantastic conversations, and I learned a lot from others. And some things or face some frame, some tools, some actions, I started practising, you know, I was my own lab rat, and with my own company, and in the way that I may not engage with certain industries anymore to the work that I do, every single decision that we take can leave the place better. So it’s really up to us. So knowing that this massive population is kind of aware, as a consumer, for me, it’s very difficult, I was doing a French drain because of some dumb issues in the house, blah, blah, to be able to find the right product that you see there. upcycle, or it doesn’t have big damage is really hard. So all the things that I learned and the things that I was practising if it didn’t feel fair for me, just to keep it for me, because I already published another book, I thought, Let’s reuse the framework. And there you go. In the second book, The Sustainable happy Prophet came to life. At the very end, I had this revelation of, I’m just gonna fit scope creep. I’m gonna fit the handbook at the end to help even more tangible I think we really liked like one page or two pages, because there is just so much going on. So people can quickly like refer back and look at it. So yeah, that was a big extra scope against the clock. I’m hearing good things from it.

Francis Pindar 16:38
It’s also it’s like kind of the myths of like, always drives me nuts with with your recycling your plastic at home kind of thing. But actually, it’s not recycling its downside claim, because it can only be recycled down to another form of plastic, really a park bench or whatever it may be. But it still ends up in as rubbish at the end of the line is still not really eradicating plastic altogether is great. A first step by Coca Cola, still plastic bottles, biggest waste in the world, I think for plastic, but also, I think there was a I read somewhere that was somewhere that was eliminating single use plastic and loads of people going, Oh, no, but I’ve seen those things where the youth are trying to put stuff into pots and sell it buying it. And it’s a complete disaster, but actually by governments actually saying, hey, let’s stop single use prices. Just an example, could drive the innovation to come up with alternatives that are a lot more environmentally friendly. So do you think that governments do have a part to play and it’s not just kind of companies being able to or is it literally, it’s got to come from a company base.

Ines Garcia 17:43
For me, it was the book, it was the revelation to find that we have this massive gap where politics is aware, yet has precious and some systems constraint. I’m not gonna solve our economic system in this conversation today. But there are some things that the results are way too slow, and it has low pots and they are not agile enough for the speed of change that the world deserves. at the population level, I’ll tell you my own constraints in my consumerism decisions is very tough. I can empathise, now, we have this middle saying that is a great player in the marketplace, organisations and you know what they are made up of individuals of us. And so bringing back the designers, the ones that are creating, we’re creating products, software, how the things talk to each other, how much they talk to each other, how efficient it is, how much of it with it, every single decision, it can make a difference, it has to come from within. In terms of plastic card, this is also a massive subject. Because we seem sometimes to design things for one function and designing it for one function, it misses a heap of context. So if you design plastic came about because is an easy way to store liquids, we then think beyond that, to where the materials come from. If you look at nature, a leaf has no toxicity on it, you can take one leaf out of the whole plant, and the thing will continue absorbing energy producing new trends. At the end, when it’s done its job, you will go back to the ground and it will decompose into multiple different things. It doesn’t become a leaf again. So and the way that we design things is like how can we make that in line with nature?

Francis Pindar 19:35
Yeah, it’s I think it also is that fallacy that actually doing thinking that way will be less profitable for the business. I remember there’s a company in Germany that made carpets and they basically looked at their whole supply chain and realise that all the raw materials that make up a carpet was constantly being cleaned at every different step of that process. And actually just piling Looking at all these companies that were supplying those were all materials, they eliminated a lot of waste from just the cleaning and the the materials being used. So much. So the carpets were almost simpler, leave more hair created in, in more basic such that actually, when they fitted the carpets, they wanted the customers to contact them in five years time. So they could take the carpets back to then reuse those raw materials from it to create new carpets from it, which then also helped the customer, because then took away the carpet, it all went back into the supply chain, that he got better relationships with the customer, because they can offer a discount, because obviously they’re making money off the carpet that they put in 510 years ago. And just the whole circular nature of it. And that was all driven by it all started kicked off the process when he was the German government said the wastewater from factories had to be a lot cleaner than it was and then just trying to reduce the amount of chemicals that actually resulted in better profit and a more interesting way of creating their products as well.

Ines Garcia 21:12
So yeah, and there are great stories, I think this idea of you want to cheap, good legs to actually you ended up with something very mediocre. In the work that we do. You see sometimes conversations are being very polarised and we ended up something Yeah, kind of in the middle. There are more variables. And I think when we look at the business, you can in fact deliver in a more sustainable way on a happier way. And profits will be a result, not a compromise. When I speak with CEOs and the conversations goes down into the aim of the game. The vision of the organisation is to generate more profit, I challenge that is not an organisational vision. We have a big problem over here. Why do you exist? There has to be a purpose. I think we entering in the age of purpose, purpose, economy, purpose, economy. Profit is a result a result of doing the things in a way that leaves the place better than how you found

Francis Pindar 22:15
I think that there’s another kind of as you said, it’s like the people in the masses wanting to to work for those companies that are making a difference and that what I’m doing isn’t damaging the environment. And then actually the good people that people that are what using their feet to walk to those companies, you start becoming less competitive almost just by the fact that you’re not being sustainable. And people can see that be interesting how it moves on over the years,

Ines Garcia 22:41
I help from competition to collaboration or my favourite work co-creation. When you see that all parties and everybody has a place to play, you achieve much more than generating resistant and putting effort on against fascinating

Francis Pindar 22:57
for those who don’t know where to contact you if they wanted to contact or find out our books, where should they go?

Ines Garcia 23:03
I would like to believe I miss it to find so if you go to Google in his GetAgile, so I should be out there in the community of Salesforce. We use Twitter quite a bit. So there you can find me at Zenith calm that Okay, the second one, there is a story behind One day One day we’ll have time this will be the good place to go. I suppose Amazon easy to find the books and the game and stuff.

Francis Pindar 23:30
And then you’re coming to London’s calling as well. Yes, yes. Brilliant. So if you want to meet up there, maybe there as well. So brilliant. Thanks so much. Is there anything else you wanted to shout out about while we’re here?

Ines Garcia 23:42
Well, one of my very last inventions if I may, we came together for a bit a few people from the community over the beginning of March 2020 where we start cooking things and retain each other you couldn’t really go and eat somewhere else so we start showing up look I cook this I cook that and bring something alive food is something that brings us together that all the time has become a cookbook we launch a cookbook

Francis Pindar 24:12
absolutely vegetarian one provide

Ines Garcia 24:15
Yeah, yeah, we should definitely increase our percentage of plant base is very nutritious is less footprint and many many together

Francis Pindar 24:24
because we’re vegetarians at home it kind of each of us get it at some point. But we can use our numbers Amazon as well.

Ines Garcia 24:32
Of course all profits go to nonprofit organisation that are focused to help those that they don’t have enough to eat. So trying to like bring the love of foods for the love of others.

Francis Pindar 24:44
is fantastic. Loving it. Well look forward to seeing you at London’s calling. Thanks so much for being on the show.

Ines Garcia 24:50
Thank you, Francis. It was a pleasure

Salesforce Flow with Andy Engin

I think of Andy Engin as one of the masters of Salesforce Flow. My go-to guy on anything Flow related, so it made sense to pick his brains in this month’s Salesforce Posse to dig into how he started in Salesforce, his experience with teaching Flow to 1000s of people across the globe and the future of the Technology.

 

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