Unintended Consequences: Windfall from the Cloud
Posted on April 17, 2018 by Katerina Parkins
I want to talk about Salesforce. I’ve been involved with Salesforce for about 5 years now. There’s no such thing as being a Salesforce veteran though, do not be fooled as with the power machine that is Salesforce.com and their pumping out new feature releases three times per year, it’s hard to keep up. Even for the keenest of the keen Salesforce enthusiasts.
So if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably found yourself with Salesforce in your lap without knowing much about it. Of course the business expects you to somehow miraculously figure it all out … One morning our then-CEO walks up to my desk and says remember that anonymous company survey we had to submit where you mentioned you wanted to have more responsibilities, well here’s your chance. Well it didn’t quite go like that but that’s the ‘gist’ of it. And I’ve got to admit I’ve never looked back.
There was no Trailhead in those days, these were pre-historic times so you had to crawl your way through the settings and configuration all on your own. Your head is spinning … ‘help’ you shout out, ‘help’ from google, ‘help’ from support or anyone really!
I didn’t know it then but Salesforce was about to take off massively, getting adopted by leading companies all over the world.
Subconsciously I must have realised the potential and decided then that I was going to grab this opportunity and that this was going to be my path …
So you become an Administrator and then what?
Chances are you are not much further with your training than the rest of the company is, yet you need to get ahead and above all, seen as if you have everything totally under control. Your company might not invest into the Salesforce training that’s available for a rather hefty £5+k, especially if they’ve just rolled out SFDC to the entire company. It’s not a cheap gig by any means. For me self-learning was the way to go with the trial & error approach.
At the beginning I was so scared to touch the system – the responsibility – but I remember the first buzz of creating a field. One whole field!! A field that was visible to not just me but others … ! I did that – I pointed out proudly! 🙂
I quickly realised that I enjoyed working with the users. There were many disgruntled ones who had to adjust to yet another change of systems, but I love that part of getting them slowly converted.
You might be a great Administrator or Developer or Salesforce Project Manager but it takes a whole team, or dare I say the whole company, to maintain a good CRM system so getting everyone’s buy-in is paramount. It doesn’t stop after the implementation and when the roll-out is complete. The danger is you get stuck and the useful tool that SFDC is becomes stale, dated and full of dirty unreliable data.
How to keep up then?
There’s no denying that Salesforce.com has become the buzz word. They are dominating the world of CRM and everyone’s watching their every move and strategy with watchful eye trying to predict what’s coming next. So if you think you want to get involved but just don’t know how and where to start, there are some super dedicated people on Salesforce community. In addition to this fantastic resource, and in the hour of need (or when studying for exams), I turn to my favourite online resources like Salesforce Ben, sfdc99 & Adam of Cirrus Red – they are such inspiring mentors who dedicate their time to break it all down and to make life that bit easier for the SFDC users like you and I.
Never in my wildest dreams would I think I’d become a woman in tech, yet here I am setting up my next aspirations – to become an Application Architect and to attend Dreamforce ’18 in San Francisco. Easy!
Current credentials:
Eyes On The Cloud 