How do you explain what Salesforce is and what you do?
It’s been great launching this blog, something that I have wanted to do for a long time. The one problem launching a blog, specifically in the IT space, not everyone knows what you’re on about. You launch a blog about food, photography, travel and you can be pretty certain everyone is going to know and understand what you’re posting. When I started this, friends and family were very supportive, but the one comment I constantly got was, what is Salesforce? and what do you actually do? (I’m sure most people working in IT get this question a lot) So I thought i’d do a post for those of you who perhaps have never heard of Salesforce, or even consulting.
I guess we should start at the top.
What is Salesforce?
To put is simply, Salesforce is a CRM platform (Customer Relationship Management) which allows you to have a 360 degree view of your customers relationship to your business. Now you’re asking what is CRM platform?. CRM is a way in which you can manage a whole host of things in order to support running your business from storing customer data, supporting sales processes, managing lead data, improving customer service and overall improve business processes which are typically manual and time-consuming. Over 91% of companies with over 11 employees will have some sort of CRM which they use and you’ve probably been exposed to, just not realised. CRM is the beating heart of most organisations, and Salesforce is the world leading.
Even if you haven’t used a CRM yourself, chances are an organisation which you have interacted with is. Customer experience is key in this day and age in deciding whether an organisation is successful or not. Think about your personal life, great experience makes you want to keep going back and keep being loyal. Salesforce assists organisations to be able to ensure this experience by knowing everything about you and your engagement, the ‘360 degree’ view of the customer.
Salesforce is a huge multi-billion dollar organisation. They have got to that stage by listening to their customers, listening to the needs of the consumer, continuously improving their product. There are 3 major releases each year, in which they take feedback from users/customers/partners and improve upon the existing product to make it even better. Salesforce is not just a CRM platform, it enables organisations to digitally transform, it enables them to provide that level of service which customers are so used to in todays world and keep up with competition.
Salesforce works a bit like like building a house, you have the foundations (CRM functionality), you need bricks to build the house. These bricks are the products in which Salesforce offer and build on top of the foundations. Each product is broken down into a ‘cloud’ which is a subset of products. For example, Sales Cloud, which enables organisations with their sales process. You can see a breakdown of how Salesforce builds this customer 360 below:
I could write for ages about Salesforce, and why they’re the leading CRM but that should give you a breakdown of at least what CRM platform is, and why it is important organisations invest in one. If you’re interested more, Salesforce themselves have some great articles on what it is, and how they empower organisations here
Onto the next most asked question..
What do you actually do?
I can pretty much guarantee, if anyone reading this is in a technology related career, or consulting, you often get asked what do you actually do?. It’s a good question, one sometimes I struggle to answer myself sometimes. It’s hard to explain, especially if someone is not perhaps technically advanced or minded, so it’s simply put as “I work in IT”. When you say this, there is a perception you just stare at the computer all day, or you now have some magical powers to fix all IT related issues for the whole family, right? but unfortunately this isn’t the case.. I wish!. When asked to elaborate a bit, you usually get some looks a bit like this
So i’ll try an put it simply. Now you know what Salesforce is, this is the biggest obstacle to understanding what someone does when they say “Salesforce Consultant” or “Salesforce Solution Architect”. They work with the Salesforce platform mentioned above, to enable organisations to unlock the full potential. Salesforce themselves don’t actually implement Salesforce, they rely on partners to do it for them. There is a ranking system for these partners, from registered through to global strategic, each with a different number of points to get to the next level. How this score is worked out is quite complicated and not necessary for this post, but if you’re interested it’s here. Whilst you can work for Salesforce directly, most people with these titles will work for one of the partners mentioned. These partners can range in size from just a few people to global 400,000 employees.
Often there are many titles banded around for people who work with Salesforce, but essentially they all come back to ‘enabling organisations to unlock the full potential of the Salesforce platform’. Once Salesforce has been purchased it comes in an OOTB (Out of the box) state. This works for some organisations, but many of them it needs to be tailored. Likened to clothing, you buy a nice suit or dress, it fits good and serves the purpose, but it can be tailored to make it exceptional. Salesforce consultants/Architects among others, do the the tailoring. They take the business requirements and transform that into a scalable working solution on the Salesforce platform.
Here are some things a Salesforce consultant may be responsible for (we’re only scratching the surface here - each role has different responsibilities but will often cover across):
Requirements gathering - Runs workshops with the business, submerges themselves into the business process to create the foundation we spoke about earlier. Often the business process is not clear even for the business..
Writing user stories - The output from the requirements gathering results in whats called user stories, or need statements in which we tailor Salesforce to. For example. As a customer I need to be able to receive an email on my birthday so that I feel appreciated - they’re technology agnostic - it’s then an architect or solution lead to take this and transform it into a solution.
Assist other team members - Consultants often help the more senior/technical resources, whether it be writing specs/assisting with solutions or liaising with development teams.
Configuration - Someone needs to take the user stories and solution which has been agreed, and then tailor it as we mentioned. This involves making changes to Salesforce to fit the business need. Often working alongside developers (for the more technical tasks)
Documentation - The key to a successful delivery and often overlooked. Documentation. The customer needs to understand why you have built something in a certain way, and what it’s purpose is. Once the implementation is done and the implementation team are no longer there, the customer needs to be self sufficient in maintaining and improving the solution you’ve delivered. Often they will hire a Salesforce administrator (or already have one) who will take this documentation to understand the build.
Across a typical project lifecycle, a consultant/business analyst/architect are all key to the delivery of that and all work together to deliver the outcome of a successful Salesforce implementation. As I mentioned i’m only scratching the surface, but this should give you an overview of some of the key responsibilities.
I’ll be releasing more in depth blog posts, detailing exactly what going into these roles and responsibilities in due time, but the next time someone mentions that they work with Salesforce, you should have a bit more idea of exactly what they do, other than looking at them with the confused face.
