November 30, 2022 • 32 mins
The Salesforce platform can empower businesspeople to create digital solutions without writing code. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell takes on this topic with Jacob Goldstein, host of What’s Your Problem?, and guest Phil Weinmeister, Head of Product, Salesforce Americas, at IBM. They discuss human-centric design, the low-code/no-code approach, and how IBM Consulting powers digital transformations with the Salesforce platform.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Robert and Joe here. Today we've got
something a little bit different to share with you. It
is a new edition of the Smart Talks podcast series,
which is produced in partnership with IBM. This season of
Smart Talks with IBM is all about new creators, the developers,
data scientists, c t o s, and other visionaries creatively
(00:22):
applying technology and business to drive change. They use their
knowledge and creativity to develop better ways of working, no
matter the industry. Join hosts from your favorite Pushkin Industries
podcast as they use their expertise to deepen these conversations.
Malcolm Gladwell will guide you through this season as your
host to provide his thoughts and analysis along the way.
(00:45):
Look out for new episodes of Smart Talks with IBM
every month on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. And learn more at
IBM dot com slash smart Talks. Hello, Hello, Welcome to
Smart Talks with IBM, a podcast from Pushkin Industries, I
(01:07):
Heart Radio and IBM. I'm Malcolm Glabwell. This season, we're
talking to new creators, the developers, data scientists, ct o s,
and other visionaries who are creatively applying technology and business
to drive change. Channeling their knowledge and expertise, they're developing
more creative and effective solutions no matter the industry. Our
(01:31):
guest today is Phil Weinmeister, had a product Salesforce America's
at IBM. Drawing on IBM's offerings and expertise, Phil helps
businesses craft better digital experiences for their customers, employees, and
business partners. A lack of highly specialized software engineers is
a major challenge for companies trying to improve their digital experiences,
(01:56):
so using the Salesforce platform, Phil teaches people with little
or no technical background how to make custom digital solutions
on their own without needing to write code. On today's show,
you'll hear Phil's thoughts on human centric design, unlocking the
potential of the low code, no code approach, and how
(02:17):
ib AM consulting powers digital transformations with the Salesforce platform.
Phil spoke with Jacob Goldstein, host of the Pushkin podcast
What's Your Problem and former host of nprs Planet Money.
Jacob has been a business journalist for over a decade,
reporting for NPR, The Wall Street Journal, the Miami Herald,
(02:40):
and is the author of the book Money, The True
Story of a made up thing. Okay, let's get to
the interview, just very briefly, sort of what's your role
at IBM. Yeah, it's a good question because my role
is it's a bit unique. So we're for having consulting,
(03:00):
which is a consultancy. Salesforce is one of the platforms
that we um deliver services for. My team is a
product team, so we're like a product organization within a consultancy,
and I had that team up. So yeah, it's really
cool because we get to combine the client needs client
(03:21):
problems that are brought to us through consulting engagements, but
we're ultimately product development, so we get to build solutions.
So I kind of love the sweet spot that we're
in there. So basically, businesses have problems, and you build
solutions for those problems, for those problems, but also thinking
about future clients, so we build it so that we
(03:43):
can reuse it in the future for different clients. So
that that's what makes it a little bit unique at
the consultancy versus you know, typical engagement. You solve a
problem and you move on to the next problem, but
we solve it while taking a step back and saying, well,
are similar problems that other clients, UM, that could be
(04:04):
solved through the same application that we build. If that
makes sense. It does, and I think we'll get into
some specific examples which will really help help us everybody understand. Um,
Can you just talk a little bit about the kind
of challenges around digital transformation that a lot of businesses
are facing right now. There are a few things that
(04:26):
I personally seem quite a bit um, one of which
is that businesses simply don't have the data they need
to provide the right type of experience. I mean, at
the end of the day, customers want something very easy,
and ironically it it's actually somewhat hard to provide an
easy experience. A lot of experiences are probably overthought, over engineered,
(04:51):
and that creates this divide between an organization and their customers.
I mean, organizations want to know their customers, they want
to know their partner, they want to know their employees,
and if they do that right, it's a game changer,
it's absolutely transformational. But without that, and that's all data centric,
data driven, you don't know your customer. You can't give
(05:15):
them what they want because you don't know who they are.
There's a phrase that I know is important in your work,
and that I want to make sure we touch on
here and and that phrases human centric innovation. Tell me,
tell me what that means, you know in this case
and more generally in your work. Yeah. Absolutely, So when
we think about a solution, especially with digital experiences, we
(05:42):
are always thinking about who is the end user? Right,
And with the digital experiences, one thing I'd like to say,
do a lot of presentations at Salesforce events, and I've
spoken on topic of personalization a few times. I think
it's useful to start with where things have been and
where we're coming from, which is really a one size
(06:04):
fits all web experience and that still exists throughout the
web in quite a few places. Is this is a
dissemination of information, right, It's a push. I have information
I want to get out, or I have actions that
I want you to complete, and I'm going to set
up an experience. Do you know, get the information you
(06:25):
need or do the things I want you to do.
And we're seeing that the demands have significantly changed, right,
Customers expect a lot more these days and simply one
size fits all. So that direction we're headed towards is
starting with that end user and really thinking about who
is this person, what do they want, what are they
(06:48):
trying to achieve? And starting from that perspective, so the
the audiences that we're building a solution for now become
more critical than ever and they're not and after thought,
but instead who are these audiences that are going to
be part of the solution. We do things like journey
mapping right where we walk through the flow from beginning
(07:10):
to end. What does their experience look like? What do
they want at each stage? And we have to think
about that in the solution. So, uh, you mentioned Salesforce,
and Salesforce is It's kind of a funny thing, right
in the world of business. Salesforce is this gigantic company
that has transformed software, has transformed business in a lot
(07:32):
of ways, but outside of kind of enterprise scale business,
lots of people have never heard of it, right, amazing,
So just like, very briefly, what is Salesforce? You know,
it's it's been a complete game changer. It is technically
it's a customer relationship management platform, and that though I
(07:52):
don't think, really captures what it is. And when I
describe to people I know, technical or non technical, I
describe it as this is a platform on which you
can run your business. For me personally, um, it's been.
It's been completely revolutionary because I came from an organization
at the time that had everything custom built, homegrown, which
(08:13):
I think it was a little bit of a sense
of pride at that organization. But what was happening was
everything required hundreds of hours. Any change was a major project,
super costly, and things broke when changes were made. And
when I started on the Salesforce platform, I think the
biggest thing is stuck to me was the low and
(08:36):
no code development capabilities that business minded people who are
not necessarily technical in the sense that they write code
can now be empowered to actually deliver solutions. So I
think that's how i'd say it. It's it's a platform
you can run your business on. It is that single
source of truth. It's the interface that your employees are
(08:57):
going to interact with on a daily basis to get
their jobs done. So there was a phrase you mentioned
in in passing. That phrase was a low code or
no code development, and I'm glad you did because it's
one of those phrases that I've been hearing and that
sounds kind of amazing, but I also feel like I
don't quite get So let me take this opportunity to
(09:19):
ask you what is low code or no code development? Well,
I love the question because I'm personally very passionate about this,
coming from where I was before, at an organization that had,
like I said, custom built solutions, any change to the
digital experience required code. That that is where I was
(09:42):
coming from, and that's where a lot of organizations are
coming from today. So what that means is you are
always dependent on a technical resource to make that change. However,
when you want to make some basic changes, some let's
say some process automation or update like that that maybe
isn't wildly complex, it is fairly limiting to not be
(10:07):
able to actually implement any of these changes yourself. So
when we say lower no code platform, essentially what that
means is there's another phrase that's used by Salesforce clicks
not code. So think about it this way. Salesforce has
done all the hard work and written many millions of
lines of code behind the scenes to provide an interface
(10:29):
where through clicks we can essentially build a solution. So
I wrote a book a few years ago called Practical
Salesforce development without code, right, it's still development. You're building
a solution that can be implemented and drive value for
a customer. But it is literally through clicks. Now that
doesn't mean it's you know, always super easy, it can
(10:52):
get pretty advanced, but literally through clicks you can do that,
So that that's a completely different way of thinking. And
what when you say clicks, you just mean you're using
like a graphical user interface. You're pointing and clicking at
different buttons, dragging things around. Just to be clear, when
you say clicks, that's the kind of thing you made, right, Yeah, exactly,
exactly right. It's sort of democratizes the technology a little bit.
(11:15):
And I think the biggest thing though, is you have
all these you know, smart business people who are business
minded in throughout the world who don't necessarily code, and
it just allows them so much more ability to drive change,
is I think what we're seeing. So it's it's a
(11:36):
great thing and I and I personally love it because
it gives us more tools in our arsenal. For sure.
You work for IBM at kind of the intersection of
of IBM and Salesforce, right, I mean, can you tell
me about the way IBM uses Salesforce tools to to
help businesses improve, become more efficient, adopt a more data
(12:01):
driven approach. Yeah. Absolutely, we're approached for a number of
different reasons. A lot of times we work with organizations
who are coming at us with industry specific requests. They
have needs, There's quite a variety, so we have we
are set up to have experts in each of those areas, right,
(12:23):
business experts, technical experts, and we've gone through a number
of solutions in each of those paths. At the same time,
then we have more horizontal experts as well, who are
Salesforce technical architects for example, business analysts, those that know
the platform. By combining those, we can not only understand
(12:49):
what's needed in those industries. But the reality is you
have to know the platform well, right. You can't just
come in with industry knowledge and try to build a
solution on the sales Force platform without knowing it very well.
And it's now just so massive. There are so many
clouds they call various products under the platform, umbrella clouds
(13:12):
and these are these are Salesforce clouds right, sales right,
so megap products exactly. You know, we it started with
sales cloud service, cloud marketing cloud, there's philanthropy cloud, consumer
goods Cloud just launched, right, higher education cloud. There are
all these different areas of expertise. So it's it's that
combination of the industry knowledge, platform knowledge. And then you
(13:36):
mentioned human centered design and thinking really trying to putting
the end user at the center of the experience and
thinking about their journey and then designing a solution that
at the end of the day will deliver what they need,
keep them happy, and keep the business moving along. So
(13:56):
that idea of combining industry specific knowledge and salesforce specific
knowledge seems really interesting and powerful. Are there any specific
examples of that in action that you that you want
to share? Yeah? Sure, So we recently we built a
(14:19):
manufacturing solution on the Salesforce platform. Essentially, what this was
was based on the industry expertise, so we internally we
met with individuals who had expertise in manufacturing. The audience
here for these organizations was their partners. So the concept
of us, how do we deliver a solution like a
(14:41):
basically a PRM solution for the manufacturing industry. What CRM
stand for Partner relationship management, So UH, manufacturers often are
interacting with suppliers, distributors, all of those and that's a
common need, especially digitally, and you can imagine this is
one of those areas that was widely neglected for many
(15:03):
years with either very poor or non existent digital experiences. Right,
So we met with industry experts internally to understand what
these use cases were, and then we took a step
back and looked at how we could leverage this on
the platform. So the solution we came up with was
essentially a template. It was a a digital experience template
(15:28):
that organizations could employ really with a few clicks. Obviously
they would have to configure it, they could customize it,
but it was a rapid accelerator that allowed for these
specific use cases for example, distributing and assigning leads to
(15:48):
these distributors, providing reporting metrics on opportunities or leads, all
that type of data we provided and it was a
template so they could start quickly, right, get up and
running in a few weeks, and then leveraging our professional services,
(16:09):
they could customize it as well, so they would work
with us and they could provide their you know, individual
client needs and take it from there. So that's one
example of a solution that we built that again took
the industry needs, but also it was it was married
to a platform specific technology. If you were trying to
(16:31):
boil it all down and you wanted to give just
one tip for a business that's trying to improve their
digital experience, what would that tip be. I would say
that you need to be open to change and be
open to breaking away from the old way of doing things.
I think I think a lot of times customers can
(16:54):
hurt themselves by being tied to what exists today, right
maybe for cultural political reasons that their company that maybe
they feel like, you know, they've invested so much in
a solution already that they want to try to get
as much out of that as they can. But I
think being open to the innovation, being open to new technology,
(17:18):
I think makes a world of difference because if the
client is open to a new solution and we come
in and we can listen to them, really anything is possible,
and that's where I think the biggest changes are made. So,
while it may sound very simple, I think that would
be my number one tip is just be open to
a new way of doing things. Film mentioned certain areas
(17:41):
of business like manufacturing or distribution often neglect the digital experience.
By finding and connecting experts across IBM, Salesforce and a
client's industry, Phil helps businesses bridge these gaps in their
digital experiences, and Jermaine cognizant their human end users. The
(18:01):
clicks not Code approach becomes so important here because it
empowers almost anyone in an organization to create human centric
digital solutions. As Jacob and Phil continue their conversation, Field
explains how he got involved in teaching Salesforce to begin with,
and how he cultivates creativity in his professional life. So
(18:25):
I want to talk some about creativity and want to
start with with your writing. And you're teaching right. You
have a blog about Salesforce features and the Salesforce platform.
You've written books on Salesforce, CRM online courses. I'm curious
how you sort of got into writing and teaching in
(18:47):
the first place. Yeah, it's a great question. When I
first started building solutions on the Salesforce platform, I was
very excited about that, being able to do more than
I ever had and able to before through the clicks
not Code approach, and I started sharing what I was
(19:07):
learning with other employees. Personally, I feel like it's a
benefit to everyone, and it's a benefit to myself. So
I started communicating to other employees, you know, a little
tips and things like that, and one employee my company said, hey,
have you ever thought about writing a blog? And I hadn't.
I thought that could be kind of interesting. So now,
(19:30):
about maybe eight to ten years ago, I started sharing
some tips. You know, here's how to solve this business
problem using Salesforce, that type of thing. And you know,
it was surprising to me how quickly it was picked
up and people would respond and say, hey, this this
really helped me out a lot. And then one day
I got a phone call from a publisher and they said,
(19:55):
you know, we want to start publishing books that have
to do a salesforce. Would you be the author of
the first book we're going to publish on Salesforce? And
he said you can call me if you think that,
you know, I'm pranking you or something, Because I was,
I was like, where, you know, it was pretty surprising.
So my first thought was, you know, Salesforce has a
(20:18):
lot of help documentation. What would the benefit of another
book be, you know, So I kind of went through
the is this really going to help anyone out? And
it's been awesome. Um, I really put my heart into
these books, and I try to communicate as clearly as
I can. I use a lot of visuals, a lot
(20:38):
of examples, so I walk people through, you know, with
actual data, and it's just been amazing because so at
this point, I've sold over seven thousand books, which to
me that that seems like a lot. That there are
a lot of people out there that using it. And
I've received a lot of feedback from people who have said,
(20:59):
you know, this really help to get me back on track,
or this help me learn this concept and really made
a difference in my day to day job. And that
just you know, kind of fuels fuels the creativity more. Right,
It's just an exciting thing to see. It's the best
part of writing is getting that feedback. So I'm curious
to you, you know, what does creativity look like? How
(21:22):
do you how do you think of yourself as a
creative technologist slash business person. So I would say that
creativity and business is definitely related to just being creative
in general. And I think that for those who are creative,
you know, in the business world, they are probably creative
(21:44):
just across the board in their personal life, right, I
think it's about being open, it's about being inquisitive, and
it's being resourceful, at least for me. Also, one thing
that is unique about this ecosystem is there are a
lot of nation shares and there are a lot of collaborators,
and so just being willing to talk to others and
(22:07):
work with others absolutely is a piece of that too,
because I learned a lot from other people. I mean,
I learned a lot of new ideas seeing what others
have done, and so we kind of build on each
other's shoulders. One thing that I'll mention is I think
sometimes being creative actually is just being able to ask
the right questions. Right. If we go in maybe slightly
(22:30):
arrogantly thinking, you know, this is all just I'm coming
up with all of this in my own mind, we're
missing out a lot. So I, you know, I try
to be open to others thoughts and work with them
on things. And so just being able to solicit what's
in other people's minds and then have conversations about it,
(22:51):
I think is one way that you know, I come
up with new ideas too, is asking people the right
questions and then like I said, listening as well, I'm
curious about what what you have learned from these collaborations. Clearly,
you know you're bringing things to the clients all the time.
Are there examples of you know, skills or insights that
(23:14):
you've recently paid thanks to these partnerships. Yes, definitely. So.
I recently was at dream Force, which came back in
almost full effect after a few years of being on
pause because of the pandemic. Enforce is the big salesforce
(23:34):
gathering you got it? Yeah, it used to be north
of a hundred and fifty thousand people in San Francisco
for a week. Um. They toned it down a bit,
only only thirty five thousand. Um, you know a few
weeks ago. How big the salesforce universe is, right, people
who are not in kind of enterprise software business applications universe.
(23:59):
It's like this giant force behind everything we touch. We
just don't know it, you know exactly. Yes, it is
actually very very large. So um, it was a great
opportunity for me. I was selected to speak UM in
a few sessions so on stage at Dreamforce in front
of different audiences, which is very cool. And I was
(24:21):
asked to be a part of one particular session that
had to do with Salesforce and Slack. UM and so
a colleague of mine, Jared Kingston, who I would also
call a definitely a you know, a creative mind and
a great collaborator. He and I worked with Salesforce and
Slack to deliver a session around It was called build
(24:46):
the Way You Want with Slack and the Salesforce platform.
The whole idea was to show the different ways that
Slack could be used, whether it's you know, with clicks,
with code to deliver solutions and so speaking about collaboration
and me learning new things, this was a great example
of that because we took different roles on this presentation
(25:09):
and I learned a lot from my colleague Jared because
he and UM, a seasoned member of his team, built
out some actual solutions. So we're very keen on live
demos in our sessions, so we we do. I've done
a lot of presentations over the past few years, and
UM I very much MS supporter of live demonstrations on
(25:34):
the Salesforce platform. That's one of the great things that
we can do it that is, instead of just going
through slides and trying to convince people of the great
things that can be done. Why don't we show them
live you actually do the thing. You actually do the
thing right there on stage that you're talking about exactly,
and it really resonates. People love to see you doing
a B and C and then they see the end results.
(25:57):
So um, he and his colleague built out this solution
with slack it, you know, showing how you can automatically
post a Slack, automatically create a spin up, a channel
for collaboration, all of this. That was part of that
session and it was great because I learned quite a
(26:18):
bit through it. So it was, you know, we collaborated together.
I learned from him. So that was an example that's
a little different, right, it's not working with a client,
but it was working with salesforce and my colleague and
we're we're able to deliver a great session. So, uh,
slightly more personal question. But when then, I think I'll
be useful to a lot of listeners, And that is
(26:40):
you have four kids and obviously a big job, and
I'm curious how you how you sort of fuel your
creativity when you know, you get busy with everything. How
do you how do you keep going? How do you
stay creative? Yeah? Well, you are absolutely right that life
gets busy. Um. Yes, I have four children, three of
(27:02):
them are in sports right now that uh, you know,
are very active, so that that's another thing. Um. And
obviously parenting at any age is NonStop. As you have teenagers,
those needs just deepen into different things. UM. And also
you know, my Christian faith is is important to me,
(27:23):
so I'm very involved in my church and i'd lead
a couple of groups there, so that that's another um activity.
It takes up some time. I don't have a lot
of free time, and so I actually get asked a
lot like how in the world do you get this
all done? I don't even I can't even get my
normal stuff done, and you're out there writing books. I
would say a lot of it has to do with
(27:45):
balance and efficiency. So I'm sure like you, Jacob, you know,
I like to use my time really wisely. That means
trying to use my time as efficiently as possible. That
doesn't mean never taking a break, right, Sometimes you need
to take a breath. Maybe I play the piano for
a few minutes through the ball around with my kids,
(28:06):
or um. Sometimes I just want to get some wisdom
from my my wife. Um. But all these things work
together to really give me a very balanced, satisfied personal
life where it gives me an energy, um when I
need it. So I think balance and efficiency, like I
(28:28):
said in in personal life and in work life are
really what allows me to continue to be creative, collaborate
and have energy to do so. I will admit though
there are some nights where I just you know, I
just crashed down on my pillow and that's the end
of the day. But yeah, it is hard, but um,
I think that work life balance is so critical. It
(28:50):
feels so good to crash down into the pillow at
the end of the day. I don't know if it's
I don't know what what it means, but it's a
it's a nice moment to just lie down and go
to sleep. Fine, it is, although now as I get older,
you know, like many people, sleep doesn't come as naturally
as it once used to. So, you know, waking up
(29:10):
at four o'clock in the morning when you don't want
to is It's not fun, But that's just part of life.
I'm in that club. I'm in that club. Last thing,
what are the are the trends in the industry that
you're excited about? What what do you think is coming
that's exciting for me. Some of the things that we've
(29:31):
talked about are are actually what I'm really focused on.
So the focus on the on the consumer, right, the
focus on the humans that are using our applications. That's
going to continue. This emphasis on no and low co
development again, you know, custom development's not going away, but
(29:54):
they're just continues to be so much happening there and
it continues to open up what on coders are able
to do. And I just I think this is really
changing business for a lot of people. Explainable AI. So
that's something that Salesforce is stressing a lot, right, the
ability to take something as complex as artificial intelligence and
(30:17):
actually make it accessible UM. And that's an area that
I need to explore more on the Salesforce platform. I've
dabbled a bit in that, but there's there's a lot
to learn. They're so I'm excited about that, and I
think all those things I just mentioned really all point
to the democratization of technology, right, just allowing people who
(30:42):
maybe UM weren't able to leverage it to the fullest extent,
to leverage that more. And that's that's exciting to me.
So those are the things I'm excited about. It was
great to talk with you. Thank you so much for
your time. Absolutely, thank you so much, Jacob, I appreciate it.
I share Fiel's excitement for greater democratization of technology and fills.
(31:05):
Work with Salesforce and IBM consulting is a step in
the right direction empowering businesses to create better digital experiences.
When a company has the right tools to modify the
digital side of its business, it can create new solutions
on its own, deploy those solutions on its own timeline,
and build human centric digital experiences that meet its unique needs.
(31:30):
When it's easier for anyone in business to build a friendlier,
more customized digital experience, it becomes easier to do business. Period.
Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Romano, David jaw,
Royston Deserve and Edith Rousselo with Jacob Goldstein were edited
(31:50):
by Sophie crane Are. Engineers are Jason Gambrel, Sarah Brugair
and Ben Holliday. Theme song by Gramascope. Special thanks to
Carlie mcgliori, Andy Kelly, Kathy Callaghan and the Eight Bar
and IBM teams, as well as the Pushkin marketing team.
Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries
(32:11):
and i Heart Media. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen
on the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Glabwell. This is a
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talking to new creators, the developers, data scientists, ct o s,
and other visionaries who are creatively applying technology and business
to drive change. Channeling their knowledge and expertise, they're developing
more creative and effective solutions no matter the industry. Our
(01:31):
guest today is Phil Weinmeister, had a product Salesforce America's
at IBM. Drawing on IBM's offerings and expertise, Phil helps
businesses craft better digital experiences for their customers, employees, and
business partners. A lack of highly specialized software engineers is
a major challenge for companies trying to improve their digital experiences,
(01:56):
so using the Salesforce platform, Phil teaches people with little
or no technical background how to make custom digital solutions
on their own without needing to write code. On today's show,
you'll hear Phil's thoughts on human centric design, unlocking the
potential of the low code, no code approach, and how
(02:17):
ib AM consulting powers digital transformations with the Salesforce platform.
Phil spoke with Jacob Goldstein, host of the Pushkin podcast
What's Your Problem and former host of nprs Planet Money.
Jacob has been a business journalist for over a decade,
reporting for NPR, The Wall Street Journal, the Miami Herald,
(02:40):
and is the author of the book Money, The True
Story of a made up thing. Okay, let's get to
the interview, just very briefly, sort of what's your role
at IBM. Yeah, it's a good question because my role
is it's a bit unique. So we're for having consulting,
(03:00):
which is a consultancy. Salesforce is one of the platforms
that we um deliver services for. My team is a
product team, so we're like a product organization within a consultancy,
and I had that team up. So yeah, it's really
cool because we get to combine the client needs client
(03:21):
problems that are brought to us through consulting engagements, but
we're ultimately product development, so we get to build solutions.
So I kind of love the sweet spot that we're
in there. So basically, businesses have problems, and you build
solutions for those problems, for those problems, but also thinking
about future clients, so we build it so that we
(03:43):
can reuse it in the future for different clients. So
that that's what makes it a little bit unique at
the consultancy versus you know, typical engagement. You solve a
problem and you move on to the next problem, but
we solve it while taking a step back and saying, well,
are similar problems that other clients, UM, that could be
(04:04):
solved through the same application that we build. If that
makes sense. It does, and I think we'll get into
some specific examples which will really help help us everybody understand. Um,
Can you just talk a little bit about the kind
of challenges around digital transformation that a lot of businesses
are facing right now. There are a few things that
(04:26):
I personally seem quite a bit um, one of which
is that businesses simply don't have the data they need
to provide the right type of experience. I mean, at
the end of the day, customers want something very easy,
and ironically it it's actually somewhat hard to provide an
easy experience. A lot of experiences are probably overthought, over engineered,
(04:51):
and that creates this divide between an organization and their customers.
I mean, organizations want to know their customers, they want
to know their partner, they want to know their employees,
and if they do that right, it's a game changer,
it's absolutely transformational. But without that, and that's all data centric,
data driven, you don't know your customer. You can't give
(05:15):
them what they want because you don't know who they are.
There's a phrase that I know is important in your work,
and that I want to make sure we touch on
here and and that phrases human centric innovation. Tell me,
tell me what that means, you know in this case
and more generally in your work. Yeah. Absolutely, So when
we think about a solution, especially with digital experiences, we
(05:42):
are always thinking about who is the end user? Right,
And with the digital experiences, one thing I'd like to say,
do a lot of presentations at Salesforce events, and I've
spoken on topic of personalization a few times. I think
it's useful to start with where things have been and
where we're coming from, which is really a one size
(06:04):
fits all web experience and that still exists throughout the
web in quite a few places. Is this is a
dissemination of information, right, It's a push. I have information
I want to get out, or I have actions that
I want you to complete, and I'm going to set
up an experience. Do you know, get the information you
(06:25):
need or do the things I want you to do.
And we're seeing that the demands have significantly changed, right,
Customers expect a lot more these days and simply one
size fits all. So that direction we're headed towards is
starting with that end user and really thinking about who
is this person, what do they want, what are they
(06:48):
trying to achieve? And starting from that perspective, so the
the audiences that we're building a solution for now become
more critical than ever and they're not and after thought,
but instead who are these audiences that are going to
be part of the solution. We do things like journey
mapping right where we walk through the flow from beginning
(07:10):
to end. What does their experience look like? What do
they want at each stage? And we have to think
about that in the solution. So, uh, you mentioned Salesforce,
and Salesforce is It's kind of a funny thing, right
in the world of business. Salesforce is this gigantic company
that has transformed software, has transformed business in a lot
(07:32):
of ways, but outside of kind of enterprise scale business,
lots of people have never heard of it, right, amazing,
So just like, very briefly, what is Salesforce? You know,
it's it's been a complete game changer. It is technically
it's a customer relationship management platform, and that though I
(07:52):
don't think, really captures what it is. And when I
describe to people I know, technical or non technical, I
describe it as this is a platform on which you
can run your business. For me personally, um, it's been.
It's been completely revolutionary because I came from an organization
at the time that had everything custom built, homegrown, which
(08:13):
I think it was a little bit of a sense
of pride at that organization. But what was happening was
everything required hundreds of hours. Any change was a major project,
super costly, and things broke when changes were made. And
when I started on the Salesforce platform, I think the
biggest thing is stuck to me was the low and
(08:36):
no code development capabilities that business minded people who are
not necessarily technical in the sense that they write code
can now be empowered to actually deliver solutions. So I
think that's how i'd say it. It's it's a platform
you can run your business on. It is that single
source of truth. It's the interface that your employees are
(08:57):
going to interact with on a daily basis to get
their jobs done. So there was a phrase you mentioned
in in passing. That phrase was a low code or
no code development, and I'm glad you did because it's
one of those phrases that I've been hearing and that
sounds kind of amazing, but I also feel like I
don't quite get So let me take this opportunity to
(09:19):
ask you what is low code or no code development? Well,
I love the question because I'm personally very passionate about this,
coming from where I was before, at an organization that had,
like I said, custom built solutions, any change to the
digital experience required code. That that is where I was
(09:42):
coming from, and that's where a lot of organizations are
coming from today. So what that means is you are
always dependent on a technical resource to make that change. However,
when you want to make some basic changes, some let's
say some process automation or update like that that maybe
isn't wildly complex, it is fairly limiting to not be
(10:07):
able to actually implement any of these changes yourself. So
when we say lower no code platform, essentially what that
means is there's another phrase that's used by Salesforce clicks
not code. So think about it this way. Salesforce has
done all the hard work and written many millions of
lines of code behind the scenes to provide an interface
(10:29):
where through clicks we can essentially build a solution. So
I wrote a book a few years ago called Practical
Salesforce development without code, right, it's still development. You're building
a solution that can be implemented and drive value for
a customer. But it is literally through clicks. Now that
doesn't mean it's you know, always super easy, it can
(10:52):
get pretty advanced, but literally through clicks you can do that,
So that that's a completely different way of thinking. And
what when you say clicks, you just mean you're using
like a graphical user interface. You're pointing and clicking at
different buttons, dragging things around. Just to be clear, when
you say clicks, that's the kind of thing you made, right, Yeah, exactly,
exactly right. It's sort of democratizes the technology a little bit.
(11:15):
And I think the biggest thing though, is you have
all these you know, smart business people who are business
minded in throughout the world who don't necessarily code, and
it just allows them so much more ability to drive change,
is I think what we're seeing. So it's it's a
(11:36):
great thing and I and I personally love it because
it gives us more tools in our arsenal. For sure.
You work for IBM at kind of the intersection of
of IBM and Salesforce, right, I mean, can you tell
me about the way IBM uses Salesforce tools to to
help businesses improve, become more efficient, adopt a more data
(12:01):
driven approach. Yeah. Absolutely, we're approached for a number of
different reasons. A lot of times we work with organizations
who are coming at us with industry specific requests. They
have needs, There's quite a variety, so we have we
are set up to have experts in each of those areas, right,
(12:23):
business experts, technical experts, and we've gone through a number
of solutions in each of those paths. At the same time,
then we have more horizontal experts as well, who are
Salesforce technical architects for example, business analysts, those that know
the platform. By combining those, we can not only understand
(12:49):
what's needed in those industries. But the reality is you
have to know the platform well, right. You can't just
come in with industry knowledge and try to build a
solution on the sales Force platform without knowing it very well.
And it's now just so massive. There are so many
clouds they call various products under the platform, umbrella clouds
(13:12):
and these are these are Salesforce clouds right, sales right,
so megap products exactly. You know, we it started with
sales cloud service, cloud marketing cloud, there's philanthropy cloud, consumer
goods Cloud just launched, right, higher education cloud. There are
all these different areas of expertise. So it's it's that
combination of the industry knowledge, platform knowledge. And then you
(13:36):
mentioned human centered design and thinking really trying to putting
the end user at the center of the experience and
thinking about their journey and then designing a solution that
at the end of the day will deliver what they need,
keep them happy, and keep the business moving along. So
(13:56):
that idea of combining industry specific knowledge and salesforce specific
knowledge seems really interesting and powerful. Are there any specific
examples of that in action that you that you want
to share? Yeah? Sure, So we recently we built a
(14:19):
manufacturing solution on the Salesforce platform. Essentially, what this was
was based on the industry expertise, so we internally we
met with individuals who had expertise in manufacturing. The audience
here for these organizations was their partners. So the concept
of us, how do we deliver a solution like a
(14:41):
basically a PRM solution for the manufacturing industry. What CRM
stand for Partner relationship management, So UH, manufacturers often are
interacting with suppliers, distributors, all of those and that's a
common need, especially digitally, and you can imagine this is
one of those areas that was widely neglected for many
(15:03):
years with either very poor or non existent digital experiences. Right,
So we met with industry experts internally to understand what
these use cases were, and then we took a step
back and looked at how we could leverage this on
the platform. So the solution we came up with was
essentially a template. It was a a digital experience template
(15:28):
that organizations could employ really with a few clicks. Obviously
they would have to configure it, they could customize it,
but it was a rapid accelerator that allowed for these
specific use cases for example, distributing and assigning leads to
(15:48):
these distributors, providing reporting metrics on opportunities or leads, all
that type of data we provided and it was a
template so they could start quickly, right, get up and
running in a few weeks, and then leveraging our professional services,
(16:09):
they could customize it as well, so they would work
with us and they could provide their you know, individual
client needs and take it from there. So that's one
example of a solution that we built that again took
the industry needs, but also it was it was married
to a platform specific technology. If you were trying to
(16:31):
boil it all down and you wanted to give just
one tip for a business that's trying to improve their
digital experience, what would that tip be. I would say
that you need to be open to change and be
open to breaking away from the old way of doing things.
I think I think a lot of times customers can
(16:54):
hurt themselves by being tied to what exists today, right
maybe for cultural political reasons that their company that maybe
they feel like, you know, they've invested so much in
a solution already that they want to try to get
as much out of that as they can. But I
think being open to the innovation, being open to new technology,
(17:18):
I think makes a world of difference because if the
client is open to a new solution and we come
in and we can listen to them, really anything is possible,
and that's where I think the biggest changes are made. So,
while it may sound very simple, I think that would
be my number one tip is just be open to
a new way of doing things. Film mentioned certain areas
(17:41):
of business like manufacturing or distribution often neglect the digital experience.
By finding and connecting experts across IBM, Salesforce and a
client's industry, Phil helps businesses bridge these gaps in their
digital experiences, and Jermaine cognizant their human end users. The
(18:01):
clicks not Code approach becomes so important here because it
empowers almost anyone in an organization to create human centric
digital solutions. As Jacob and Phil continue their conversation, Field
explains how he got involved in teaching Salesforce to begin with,
and how he cultivates creativity in his professional life. So
(18:25):
I want to talk some about creativity and want to
start with with your writing. And you're teaching right. You
have a blog about Salesforce features and the Salesforce platform.
You've written books on Salesforce, CRM online courses. I'm curious
how you sort of got into writing and teaching in
(18:47):
the first place. Yeah, it's a great question. When I
first started building solutions on the Salesforce platform, I was
very excited about that, being able to do more than
I ever had and able to before through the clicks
not Code approach, and I started sharing what I was
(19:07):
learning with other employees. Personally, I feel like it's a
benefit to everyone, and it's a benefit to myself. So
I started communicating to other employees, you know, a little
tips and things like that, and one employee my company said, hey,
have you ever thought about writing a blog? And I hadn't.
I thought that could be kind of interesting. So now,
(19:30):
about maybe eight to ten years ago, I started sharing
some tips. You know, here's how to solve this business
problem using Salesforce, that type of thing. And you know,
it was surprising to me how quickly it was picked
up and people would respond and say, hey, this this
really helped me out a lot. And then one day
I got a phone call from a publisher and they said,
(19:55):
you know, we want to start publishing books that have
to do a salesforce. Would you be the author of
the first book we're going to publish on Salesforce? And
he said you can call me if you think that,
you know, I'm pranking you or something, Because I was,
I was like, where, you know, it was pretty surprising.
So my first thought was, you know, Salesforce has a
(20:18):
lot of help documentation. What would the benefit of another
book be, you know, So I kind of went through
the is this really going to help anyone out? And
it's been awesome. Um, I really put my heart into
these books, and I try to communicate as clearly as
I can. I use a lot of visuals, a lot
(20:38):
of examples, so I walk people through, you know, with
actual data, and it's just been amazing because so at
this point, I've sold over seven thousand books, which to
me that that seems like a lot. That there are
a lot of people out there that using it. And
I've received a lot of feedback from people who have said,
(20:59):
you know, this really help to get me back on track,
or this help me learn this concept and really made
a difference in my day to day job. And that
just you know, kind of fuels fuels the creativity more. Right,
It's just an exciting thing to see. It's the best
part of writing is getting that feedback. So I'm curious
to you, you know, what does creativity look like? How
(21:22):
do you how do you think of yourself as a
creative technologist slash business person. So I would say that
creativity and business is definitely related to just being creative
in general. And I think that for those who are creative,
you know, in the business world, they are probably creative
(21:44):
just across the board in their personal life, right, I
think it's about being open, it's about being inquisitive, and
it's being resourceful, at least for me. Also, one thing
that is unique about this ecosystem is there are a
lot of nation shares and there are a lot of collaborators,
and so just being willing to talk to others and
(22:07):
work with others absolutely is a piece of that too,
because I learned a lot from other people. I mean,
I learned a lot of new ideas seeing what others
have done, and so we kind of build on each
other's shoulders. One thing that I'll mention is I think
sometimes being creative actually is just being able to ask
the right questions. Right. If we go in maybe slightly
(22:30):
arrogantly thinking, you know, this is all just I'm coming
up with all of this in my own mind, we're
missing out a lot. So I, you know, I try
to be open to others thoughts and work with them
on things. And so just being able to solicit what's
in other people's minds and then have conversations about it,
(22:51):
I think is one way that you know, I come
up with new ideas too, is asking people the right
questions and then like I said, listening as well, I'm
curious about what what you have learned from these collaborations. Clearly,
you know you're bringing things to the clients all the time.
Are there examples of you know, skills or insights that
(23:14):
you've recently paid thanks to these partnerships. Yes, definitely. So.
I recently was at dream Force, which came back in
almost full effect after a few years of being on
pause because of the pandemic. Enforce is the big salesforce
(23:34):
gathering you got it? Yeah, it used to be north
of a hundred and fifty thousand people in San Francisco
for a week. Um. They toned it down a bit,
only only thirty five thousand. Um, you know a few
weeks ago. How big the salesforce universe is, right, people
who are not in kind of enterprise software business applications universe.
(23:59):
It's like this giant force behind everything we touch. We
just don't know it, you know exactly. Yes, it is
actually very very large. So um, it was a great
opportunity for me. I was selected to speak UM in
a few sessions so on stage at Dreamforce in front
of different audiences, which is very cool. And I was
(24:21):
asked to be a part of one particular session that
had to do with Salesforce and Slack. UM and so
a colleague of mine, Jared Kingston, who I would also
call a definitely a you know, a creative mind and
a great collaborator. He and I worked with Salesforce and
Slack to deliver a session around It was called build
(24:46):
the Way You Want with Slack and the Salesforce platform.
The whole idea was to show the different ways that
Slack could be used, whether it's you know, with clicks,
with code to deliver solutions and so speaking about collaboration
and me learning new things, this was a great example
of that because we took different roles on this presentation
(25:09):
and I learned a lot from my colleague Jared because
he and UM, a seasoned member of his team, built
out some actual solutions. So we're very keen on live
demos in our sessions, so we we do. I've done
a lot of presentations over the past few years, and
UM I very much MS supporter of live demonstrations on
(25:34):
the Salesforce platform. That's one of the great things that
we can do it that is, instead of just going
through slides and trying to convince people of the great
things that can be done. Why don't we show them
live you actually do the thing. You actually do the
thing right there on stage that you're talking about exactly,
and it really resonates. People love to see you doing
a B and C and then they see the end results.
(25:57):
So um, he and his colleague built out this solution
with slack it, you know, showing how you can automatically
post a Slack, automatically create a spin up, a channel
for collaboration, all of this. That was part of that
session and it was great because I learned quite a
(26:18):
bit through it. So it was, you know, we collaborated together.
I learned from him. So that was an example that's
a little different, right, it's not working with a client,
but it was working with salesforce and my colleague and
we're we're able to deliver a great session. So, uh,
slightly more personal question. But when then, I think I'll
be useful to a lot of listeners, And that is
(26:40):
you have four kids and obviously a big job, and
I'm curious how you how you sort of fuel your
creativity when you know, you get busy with everything. How
do you how do you keep going? How do you
stay creative? Yeah? Well, you are absolutely right that life
gets busy. Um. Yes, I have four children, three of
(27:02):
them are in sports right now that uh, you know,
are very active, so that that's another thing. Um. And
obviously parenting at any age is NonStop. As you have teenagers,
those needs just deepen into different things. UM. And also
you know, my Christian faith is is important to me,
(27:23):
so I'm very involved in my church and i'd lead
a couple of groups there, so that that's another um activity.
It takes up some time. I don't have a lot
of free time, and so I actually get asked a
lot like how in the world do you get this
all done? I don't even I can't even get my
normal stuff done, and you're out there writing books. I
would say a lot of it has to do with
(27:45):
balance and efficiency. So I'm sure like you, Jacob, you know,
I like to use my time really wisely. That means
trying to use my time as efficiently as possible. That
doesn't mean never taking a break, right, Sometimes you need
to take a breath. Maybe I play the piano for
a few minutes through the ball around with my kids,
(28:06):
or um. Sometimes I just want to get some wisdom
from my my wife. Um. But all these things work
together to really give me a very balanced, satisfied personal
life where it gives me an energy, um when I
need it. So I think balance and efficiency, like I
(28:28):
said in in personal life and in work life are
really what allows me to continue to be creative, collaborate
and have energy to do so. I will admit though
there are some nights where I just you know, I
just crashed down on my pillow and that's the end
of the day. But yeah, it is hard, but um,
I think that work life balance is so critical. It
(28:50):
feels so good to crash down into the pillow at
the end of the day. I don't know if it's
I don't know what what it means, but it's a
it's a nice moment to just lie down and go
to sleep. Fine, it is, although now as I get older,
you know, like many people, sleep doesn't come as naturally
as it once used to. So, you know, waking up
(29:10):
at four o'clock in the morning when you don't want
to is It's not fun, But that's just part of life.
I'm in that club. I'm in that club. Last thing,
what are the are the trends in the industry that
you're excited about? What what do you think is coming
that's exciting for me. Some of the things that we've
(29:31):
talked about are are actually what I'm really focused on.
So the focus on the on the consumer, right, the
focus on the humans that are using our applications. That's
going to continue. This emphasis on no and low co
development again, you know, custom development's not going away, but
(29:54):
they're just continues to be so much happening there and
it continues to open up what on coders are able
to do. And I just I think this is really
changing business for a lot of people. Explainable AI. So
that's something that Salesforce is stressing a lot, right, the
ability to take something as complex as artificial intelligence and
(30:17):
actually make it accessible UM. And that's an area that
I need to explore more on the Salesforce platform. I've
dabbled a bit in that, but there's there's a lot
to learn. They're so I'm excited about that, and I
think all those things I just mentioned really all point
to the democratization of technology, right, just allowing people who
(30:42):
maybe UM weren't able to leverage it to the fullest extent,
to leverage that more. And that's that's exciting to me.
So those are the things I'm excited about. It was
great to talk with you. Thank you so much for
your time. Absolutely, thank you so much, Jacob, I appreciate it.
I share Fiel's excitement for greater democratization of technology and fills.
(31:05):
Work with Salesforce and IBM consulting is a step in
the right direction empowering businesses to create better digital experiences.
When a company has the right tools to modify the
digital side of its business, it can create new solutions
on its own, deploy those solutions on its own timeline,
and build human centric digital experiences that meet its unique needs.
(31:30):
When it's easier for anyone in business to build a friendlier,
more customized digital experience, it becomes easier to do business. Period.
Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Romano, David jaw,
Royston Deserve and Edith Rousselo with Jacob Goldstein were edited
(31:50):
by Sophie crane Are. Engineers are Jason Gambrel, Sarah Brugair
and Ben Holliday. Theme song by Gramascope. Special thanks to
Carlie mcgliori, Andy Kelly, Kathy Callaghan and the Eight Bar
and IBM teams, as well as the Pushkin marketing team.
Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries
(32:11):
and i Heart Media. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen
on the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Glabwell. This is a
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