SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome! You are listening to the CRM Success Show, where you will hear from CRM executives who have overseen some of the most interesting and complex CRM implementations. Your hosts, David Mastri and Kira Whitey, will be bringing you real stories, real insight. Follow along on social media for updates on new episode releases, exclusive content, and much more. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Welcome to the CRM Success Show, where we deep dive into CRM success and failure, delivering real stories with real impact. I'm Dave Mastery. And I'm Piero IT. And today we're talking with uh Phil Ryan, the VP of Operations Technology at Flexo Concepts. So welcome, Phil.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

All right, thank you guys. It's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

All right, Phil. Um, so we've got a lot of ground to cover today. Thank you for joining us. Um, if we could just start with a quick couple minute intro in terms of your background experience and what your current kind of title includes uh today, please.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

Yeah, sure. So um, yeah, my title is VP of Operations and Technology at Flexo Concepts. Um, we are a small uh business uh manufacturer. We have 25 employees, half of them are out making product uh here in the United States. Um we ship all around the world. The product that we make is um uh it's a niche product. Um it's called the Doctor Blade. It's uh like an industrial scraper blade used in wiping applications. Like the best example in our biggest market is selling to commercial printers who do food packaging and things like that. The blade is used in controlling ink film thickness. Um, it's also used in lithium ion battery, that's a big growth uh place for us right now. Um, and I've been at the company for 15 years. Uh I started out uh in customer service, picking up the phone, uh entering orders, and I've been through uh a number of roles uh over the years. So um, you know, we we are a Salesforce first org just philosophically. Um a lot of that is uh that vision is driven by one of the owners, my boss, uh Greg Howell, who's um president uh at Flexo Concepts. And um we uh you know we run our whole business on the platform. So when we say that, we mean it's paperless manufacturing. Um and we have our ERP and accounting on the Certinia uh app uh from the app exchange for only financial force. We use products like Bring for our shipments. Um, so everything that we're doing in our day-to-day, it's all run on Salesforce, um, including uh you know our customer interactions. We have um an e-commerce platform that I built called FC Marketplace that is uh maybe a unique um application and so, right? It's made completely out of uh Salesforce screen flows embedded on a uh community or digital experience uh that our customers log into and they get real-time access to um to the same data that our that our team has served up from Salesforce about their orders, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Super cool. Um now now in terms of volume, uh you have around 18,000 SKUs, correct?

SPEAKER_03 3:32

You know, it's funny. I checked that the other day, and we actually are closing on 21,000. Um, the product that we make, it's made to order, it's very customizable. These blades are just kind of a configurable item. So there's different materials and different combinations of dimensions, which ultimately are infinite. Uh, and so yeah, 21,000 SKUs.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

And how much did your personal kind of passion for for the space and being a creative, hands-on uh, you know, woodworker uh influence kind of your your your your time in the business with Plepto Concepts? Similar industries, right? Yeah, very similar.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

Um, yeah, I um, you know, I just have a passion for solving problems personally. And um, you know, I've I've I've always said in in terms of my role in the business, we could be selling anything. That's not really what's important to me, what our product is. It's great that it's such a stable industry and it's provides a lot for our employees. Um, but uh, but what is interesting to me is the operational uh excellence and uh and the way that we do business and how we do it. And I, you know, everybody thinks their business is unique. There aren't that many. There actually are other plastic Dr. Blade manufacturers in the world. We have competitors, but um you know, businesses all have the same problems and uh the tools uh that are used to solve those problems, um, you know, they're fun to to work on. So that's that's my passion.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

So give us a quick timeline in terms of Salesforce. You went live in 2016, is that right?

SPEAKER_03 5:13

Yeah, that's right. Um so at that time uh I was really in a supportive role. Um and excuse me, um at that time I was really in a supportive role. Um and I was helping with some data prep, things like that. Um, we went live with Certinia in 2018, October 2018. Um, and that I had a leading role. So, you know, in the interim, uh I got involved just learning Salesforce. We needed an admin. Um came from a uh a Sage, you know, on-premise um networked ERP, just classic software. And uh and just going back to uh to my colleague Greg, you know, he had this vision that getting all the data uh connected was what mattered, right? And so that's the the goal that we pursued initially was trying to get um all of our ERP data and our CRM data in the same place. So we had an integration passing um uh Sage data into Salesforce. And um and then you know you we kind of wanted to push it the other way, and and you realize having the data visible isn't really all that that counts. So we uh went big on uh what was then Financial Force now Sartinia. Um so I led with uh we we did have uh an implementation partner uh who helped us, but I led the uh data aspects of it. And then you know, from the point of the the keys being turned, uh I've kind of owned uh the management and maintenance and customization of that solution on our platform. Um so we were paperless within um two months of going live, or you know, by the end of that year, we were paperless.

SPEAKER_01 7:11

Awesome. So for those of us who don't know, like myself, what exactly is Certinia?

SPEAKER_03 7:19

Yeah, so Certinia is uh a lot of things. Um yeah, Financial Force um became Certinia. Um and uh, you know, they're a PSA solution more than anything. Um, but they have kind of what I think they would consider a legacy product called order inventory management, and that is for businesses like mine to maintain stock, to create purchase orders, just all of those types of things that you need to do to run like a practical goods in, goods out type of business. So uh it includes a lot of functionality that we don't really use. Um, we've really optimized it around our business uh needs and um and uh kind of simplified and streamlined the way that is out of the box. Uh, and then we've built a lot on top of it. Um but it's a great platform, and their accounting software is also great. Um, but they they don't identify as an accounting and ERP, they identify PSA first. It's a great team though.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

But you did move off of Sage onto, I guess, Financial Force. And so Tiny is an upgrade on that or just a rebranding?

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Just a rebranding, uh, some kind of acquisition uh recently. I think they just got investment that was added and uh and uh and and did a rebranding in conjunction.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

Yeah, so uh for our listeners who don't know, Financial Force, and correct me if I'm wrong because you're probably closer to this than I am, right? Is not owned by Salesforce. They're an ISV that puts out um I get the PSA. It's not a that's right.

SPEAKER_03 8:54

It's a it's a it's a really complex managed package. So gosh, we have over a thousand uh custom objects in our org. Um, and I've made quite a few of them, but not over a thousand. They're mostly uh they're mostly part of the um Certinia manage package, you know, inventory positions, um, sales order line items, uh all the the accounting transactions, um, budget stuff, all that lives inside of custom objects uh on Salesforce. And it's um, you know, in theory, it's if if you had enough time and resources, you could you could do it yourself. You know, you could create all those objects and the automations that connect them. Um and at the time we went live, we weren't you know mature enough to even think about doing something like that. Uh, I think accounting is so important and rigid that I wouldn't trust uh anyone but a professional. Like accounting seed is another player in that space. They've got a great product um for uh for doing accounting on platform. Uh the ERP is is a little different depending on how simple your business is. We could probably build it today if I was to if we had a time machine, we might do that.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Uh back in the day, believe it or not, I actually used to build custom ERPs before I got into the CRM space. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 10:15

That's good.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Uh so though I know you guys like are all in on Salesforce, right? So you started, I guess, with the accounting piece, I assume sales and marketing. Um, and then you're also now incorporated your manufacturing in there connected to machinery, running your lines. Can you tell us a bit about that?

SPEAKER_03 10:34

Yeah, so just backing up a little, yeah, we have sales and service cloud. We we use um uh account engagement formally Pardot, that's our our marketing solution from Salesforce. Um we have uh a number of other applications that are important to our business uh that are smaller, whether they're from Salesforce, you know, feature-wise or or ISVs from the app exchange. Um but yeah, what what after building Epsy Marketplace, this e-commerce solution, um uh you know, we decided it was time to start rebuilding a manufacturing, like a manufacturing execution system on platform. Um, so at the time that we were integrated with um Sage into Salesforce, we uh in those early days we were integrating um to a uh custom-built application that we call production tracker. And what that allows is uh ordered data from Salesforce to pass over to our manufacturing team in a uh web application. Uh so they, you know, that was part of our paperless transition. They were able to manage tickets virtually uh instead of with pieces of paper floating around all over the shop as you as you try to manage your work. And um and so fast forward to today, um, you know, we're rebuilding that as a product called that we call workbench. Um, so that's uh an application uh that I'm building. Um clicks, not code. I'm not a developer, you know. I so it's kind of funny where I have a personal intersection, but um, you know, I'm leading other people on the team who are contributing to that. We've had interns who have helped uh build out little micro applications that are a part of it. And uh yeah, the whole premise is that our manufacturing team will be able to log directly into Salesforce and manage their work um using information displayed on those screens, you know, in Salesforce. And uh and it's not to say it will control the equipment directly, their operators, they're controlling the equipment. Um we have a lot of proprietary, homegrown, home-built equipment that runs our, as you can imagine. There's not all these Doctor Blade uh equipment, you know, manufacturing builders. We have to make what we need, and uh, and so the types of automation that they have are mechanical, not digital, right? That's maybe a future state that we could that we could control the machines. That's not where we are today. So it's really just about getting the operators the information they need to do their work.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Awesome. So so you said before, right? These are all custom products, right? So every build is custom. I mean, that's kind of why it's not like you can have like an assembly line where you keep doing the same repetitive, repetitive, right? So these are very um, I guess they need the instructions per order, I would say. And then yeah, and then are these like they're creating not one piece, I assume they're creating what several dozen at a time.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

Yeah, so the form factor of these blades, uh, they're not complex. Um, we're really more of a of a converter than a than a manufacturer. So we're not like buying and assembling pieces that become a doctor blade. We're taking um, you know, coils of plastic and applying an edge to them that that makes it suitable for wiping. Um and so uh yeah, it do, you know, we we think in terms of linear feet, right? So we have just lots and lots of linear feet moving. Um, products do pass through different routing steps, you know, like a product may need um to be uh sized to a correct width at one area and have a bevel applied to it so it wipes in another area, and then maybe it needs to be cut to a finished length rather than being sold as a as a coil. So there's different routing steps and different types of plastic require different equipment that we process it on, and uh all of that is managed through uh through um that tool. You know, we have a lot of automation, so as we think about those 21,000 SKUs, we add at least 10 every single day, and um and that process is uh is highly automated with flows. Um, you know, there's there's no um requirement that someone on our team even knows that a product has been sold before or not in the course of their work. Um, you know, the the flow decides, hey, this is a new SKU, I need to build it. And uh and then all that, you know, I don't want to say it happens by magic because there's nothing magic about it. But as far as the a user on our team and customer service or sales would know, the parts just appear and already, you know, uh that configuration, the pricing. Um, I we've built uh our own pricing algorithm to operate. So it's it's a lot of fun stuff.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Uh so so when you're when you're designing this, right? Obviously, you want to continually improve the process. So when you think of continuous improvement, which I know you're big on, you're not necessarily just talking about the software, right? You're talking about the manufacturing process too, right? And then are you driving that from within Salesforce or you're driving the process, figure out a process that works, then back into the software? You tell us how you go about that.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

Yeah, no, continuous improvement, I think to any manufacturer is uh or is or should be um you know the center of their business and culture. Uh, and it certainly is the center of ours. Um, that and really innovation, we think of those two things together. Um and so we have um, for example, we have a whole application that's built out just to collect ideas uh from all of our employees. You can think of it kind of like a virtual suggestion box. Um, and it's built on Salesforce, it creates cases of a certain record type that designates them as a continuous improvement idea. And then we have a whole methodology to go through a review and either implement or or dispense them. So um, so even even that level of of communication and and thinking it's all captured and tracked on Salesforce.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Um is there a concern that you have a software bug and that like wrecks batches of physical manufacturing inventory? Or or your user is like smart enough to say, no, that's just wrong. I'm not doing that.

SPEAKER_03 17:32

Well, yeah, I mean, and and as AI comes along, those types of concerns are are even more important. But no, we have lots of human and humans in the loop. Um there's nothing that's going to be made without an operator looking at it and having to set up a machine to produce it, right? So we we definitely we've had we track all of our um quality issues uh very closely, and they get attributed to down to the person who ultimately made it made a mistake that caused it to happen. And one of those people is uh automation error. So we track um issues that are for the result of automation errors. It's one of the ways that we keep track of and improve the automations themselves. So mistakes do occur, right? Shipping methods get altered in ways they shouldn't be, but in terms of like producing an enormous amount of incorrect product, um there are enough people involved with a lot of experience who uh who would be able to intervene there. And just a point, you know, we're 25 people, and um I think our average tenure in the building is like eight years, but in manufacturing, we have guys who are um at you know coming up on 25 years, 20, 25 years. I've been with the company 15 years. We have a lot of um of experience in the building, and and the humans are as important as the technology. We're not, you know, we're not using Salesforce its automation capability to displace people. It's about making the work faster and simpler and easier to understand. That's what continuous improvement is. We want the job to be enjoyable, for to be hard to make mistakes. People don't like to do that, right? And so uh, and and our and our customers don't want that experience. We have, you know what an MPS score is, net promoter score. Um, we have an MPS of um 90 right now, which is pretty hard to believe. I mean, like, you know, I think some uh telecoms companies have negative MPS scores, and an excellent MPS score would often be considered like in the 30s or 40s or 50. And we're you know we we get that that uh that reputation and that satisfaction from our customers and our employees uh through this type of work. Um so just a rant.

SPEAKER_02 20:05

So so in terms of continuous improvement, because I think it's important to establish what exactly that is, in essence, it's all about saving time, creating a better product, becoming marginally better on a weekly, monthly basis, right? It's not transformative changing the rule but becoming 100% better overnight, right? It's it's fine margins, small gains, but regular gains. So um you mentioned you built your own methodology. Why not use like Lean Six Sigma or you know, I don't know, Kanban or something like that to help you with continuous improvement. Do you use aspects of that methodology and incorporate into your version?

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Or yeah, yeah, absolutely. I I don't mean that we have our own version of continuous improvement, we just have a tracking system on platform we use to manage it. But um, no, we do lots of um of training um, you know, with our staff. We we use grants from the state of Mass Plymouth, Massachusetts. So we use grants from the state to train people on all kinds of aspects of continuous improvement, formal trainings and methodologies. We do use Kanban methods to manage our inventories. Um, we do use um you know some shingo approaches. Um, we have you know, our manufacturing manager is is uh pursuing some certification in uh uh in lean. So we we we take lean um to heart, and that that's a part of what we do in terms of what continuous improvement is. You're right, it it is small incremental changes and not necessarily just for the sake of changing, right? That's not the intent. Um, although it does require a culture that accepts change, right? Because to be continuous. Improving over time, things are incrementally, they are always in small ways changing little things every day. How can this be faster, better? Um, but uh, but you know, that's where we value innovation too, because there is an opportunity to be transformative, and we're not afraid as a business to um to stick our neck out on long bets, right? That we think will have big payoffs, but may fail. Um, you know, the the willingness and acceptance of failure is is part of that experience and journey, and it's important um to us as well.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

So let me ask you this because I'm sure it's a question people will juggle. How do you find the balance between ongoing improvement, continuous improvement, and the reality of just the daily BAU keeping the lights on, operational demands, etc.?

SPEAKER_03 23:00

Yeah, I mean, that's real and also a fallacy at the same time. You know, there's kind of like uh there's a classic cartoon of um cavemen like pushing uh wheelbarrow with a square wheel, and uh, you know, the punchline is something like uh they don't have time to invent the wheel because they they gotta you know move whatever blocks they're doing, right? But but making that taking the time to do that work and put a round wheel instead of a square square wheel has huge impacts on the business. So um, you know, we we we just take a uh a tactical approach to it. We have meetings, um operational teams that are focused on continuous improvement, that are focused on uh moving the needle and working through projects um in their areas of discipline. Um and so I I I have a leading role in all of those teams as it as you know technology gets involved in those. They're not all technology-based, there's all kinds of work in the business um for improvement, but um yeah, you know, you just have to make the time and uh and you have to believe that it's worth it. Um just philosophically, and this goes back to like you know, before I knew anything about Salesforce, I was spending a lot of time in Excel building formulas to try to solve problems. And I just always felt like I'd rather take 10 minutes to build a complex formula, even if I could do the work manually and fine, right? Because suddenly you have a tool that can be leveraged again and again, or at least a skill set. And so um so short-term, you know, losses like that for long-term gains, that's what's important. Um, and uh, and so you know, we make the time, and uh you know, there's always compromise.

SPEAKER_02 24:58

But in terms of a percentage, Phil, what would you say your team and yourself are dedicating to uh continuous improvement versus operational projects, etc.? Do you carve out quarterly, monthly meetings specifically to talk about new initiatives that come under that kind of continuous improvement package or movement project initiative, whatever you want to call it? Or are you just kind of doing this as a not even that detailed? It's just like this is something that's ingrained in our culture and our DNA, and we're doing it every day, not like a set time, et cetera.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

Yeah, it it's I wouldn't say it's it's formal. We're not tracking the exact time spent one way or the other, but you know, in marketing, for example, um yeah, I mean, we gotta make content, we gotta have a calendar, we gotta execute against that. There's journeys and campaigns to build and all that kind of stuff. Um, but at the same time, you know, there's new technology that's worth understanding and studying, and we just have to make that part of part of our daily routine as well. Uh, and so um, you know, that's a team that I've been working with a lot uh over the past um year or so as we really try to um dial in and and and refocus our efforts in marketing and and making sure that that we're using the right tools and technology to support that. Um, because you know, you can just get out there and grind out posts and all that kind of stuff. Um, but you know, there's lots of exciting stuff out there. We're looking at this product, uh, Hey Genai, that um makes uh really awesome translated uh videos. Like you just do a recording and feed it in there and it dubs over the mouth and puts it, translates it to the language of choice, you can refine it. It's important to us. We sell in um over 70 countries around the world. Wow. And you know, we if if we weren't always picking our head up and looking around and poking and prodding, you know, we might miss products like that. Um, so you know, I've been to Dreamforce for the past five or six. Um, my boss Greg has been to probably seven or eight. Um, our marketing manager has been to a couple, our manufacturing manager has spent to Dreamforce. I don't know how many people do that, but we invest in that um so that people are getting exposed to those ideas. And again, you know, you just take the time and and and give it. Uh we've been to Inbound for HubSpot. That's a great product too. Uh, we don't use it, but even their event um is uh is inspirational for our team. They're great thought leaders in marketing. Um, so you know, we whether it's conferences um or other forms of education, you know, that that's important.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Let's talk a little bit more about being all in on Salesforce because I know when we first spoke and met, that was something that you highlighted straight away, right? Um we're a business that pretty much fully embraces Salesforce across our company and have done and will continue to do so. Um I'm curious, was there a particular decision point or turning moment for the business that led them to go down that path and fully commit to Salesforce and its exterior products that you've got integrated into your org?

SPEAKER_03 28:32

Uh yeah, I mean, I think the experience that we had maintaining the integration between uh uh Sage and Salesforce just you know it it made it clear. Um you know, a metaphor or or analogy I like to use a lot is um like a thermometer versus a thermostat, right? A thermometer tells you the temperature. You can read it, you know what it is, and what do you do? Okay, it's cold out, it's hot out. The thermostat does that, but you also gives you control, right? Thermostat, you can move the temperature up, move it down, you can have settings, right? Programmable, and you can just make your environment the way you want it to be. And so, you know, I think in terms of integrations, when you pull data in, for example, from your ERP into Salesforce, great, Salesforce has all these awesome reporting capabilities. You can display that stuff. How do we affect it, right? We don't want to just be looking at KPIs that are numbers that um that you know are are disconnected from the action that is required when by looking at those numbers, right? So Salesforce, I think, um, creates this unique opportunity when all the data is all in one place, and you can use these powerful automation can uh capabilities to connect the dots between those. That's what we do now. We build thermostats all day long. Um, there isn't you know a dashboard that we look at um that that doesn't drive action or isn't isn't telling us uh about action that that that needs to be taken otherwise. Like for example, we have these workspaces um that are full of uh list views um formatted as count cards. It's it's actually a feature from Certinia. It's just a little lightning web component that gives you a count of a list view. By the way, oh hang on, you pet peeves of Salesforce. My God. There you go. I'm cute. Yeah, like how about when you go to a list view, it tells you how many records are in it, right? Instead of you having to scroll down 200 at a time until it casts, or you know, you can make a chart on the side and that has take forever to load. So, you know, list views are so helpful when you think of them as numbers that should be zero, right? We don't want any late orders, should be zero. We don't want any unapproved orders that haven't gone off to manufacturing, should be zero. So we have workspaces in all these different categories, and they're all list views of data that shouldn't exist, right? And you know that that isn't um isn't an automation example, but that's a really powerful lever and I think philosophy for managing um work to be done. So now we have this informational space. But anyway, that's that's like a whole a whole you know move away from the question, like all in on Salesforce. It's it's just about that power to have the data and to act on it and to explore it, to discover, ask questions. I mean, if you are a curious person, there's really no question about your business that you can't answer if the data is in Salesforce from a reporting perspective or you know, with more custom solutions.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

So obviously, you talked a little bit about different parts of the business going to things like Dreamforce, um, experiencing that event in itself is is pretty cool, but being able to get access to these kind of conversations, new ideas, approaches, and so on, how much do you think like being all in on Salesforce has impacted positively collaboration across those departments like marketing, manufacturing, tech, sales, etc.? Does it help? Do you think being all in on Salesforce with just general kind of business objectives, goals, you know, there's no kind of this system doesn't talk to this system, we can't do this, and so on, because everyone's using Salesforce, it just is what it is.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Yeah, it certainly, you know, it becomes part of the culture, it brings um departments together into a common structure. Um, some are easier and more intuitive than others. Um, you know, engineering is one that you might think, why would an engineer spend any time at all in Salesforce? Um and uh and so you know, some people use it less than others, but we find, you know, reasons to manage that. Um, or uh we're not looking and pulling the reasons out of thin air, but you know, again, just thinking creatively creativity creatively, the use cases are are abundant. Um and so you know, drawing people in and also how you know, I think when people use it and understand um how customizable the solution is and the things that you can do with it, you know, that's part of it too. Like at a certain point, um, people start to get greedy. That's a good thing. You know, people get lazy. They're like, why would I have to do that when I know there's some way that it can just be automated and never happen again? I don't have to think about it. And uh, and you know that that's an important part is for people to uh in our business be aligned in uh in in thinking that way, like uh wanting that more. And it it draws them in and it's a great collaboration space. I know chatter is uh is a dirty word these days, but we use chatter a lot. Um, we use Microsoft Teams instead of Slack. That's kind of not on platform, but um, you know, uh uh chatter is a is a great tool for us, you know. We message in the context of the the data that we're talking about, it's it's an outstanding tool. Um so hopefully they don't actually sunset that, which I I think they talked about and maybe stalled.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Um yeah, I think they I almost say somebody viewed that as a competitor to Slack, and after Slack exhibition, they just want to move everyone over onto Slack. I think I think that's the mindset. I'm not sure, but I I it it's true. A lot of people really, really like chatter. Um and then some people just never use it or don't see it. So taking a step back, um, one of the things you mentioned is Salesforce is really powerful because you got right, you got the metadata there, you got the data, you got your workflow, um, and then you just gotta take action on it. It's funny because one of the complaints you hear about Salesforce quite a bit is that the data is somewhat inaccessible. Um there are the reports have limitations to them, the data structure and SoQL has limitation to it. Um it's kind of a relational database, but there's like lots of nuance to it. Um so yeah, so what so what are your tips on like really getting the most out of it? Um, like are you using a BI tool like CRMA or Tableau?

SPEAKER_03 36:15

Or yeah, yeah. Um we we we've used uh analytics on and off over the years. Um it's but is I think that's what tab it's no that Tableau Analytics now. It's like a lot of Salesforce products, it's had more than a few names. I think it was like Wave Analytics when we first got it or something like that. But um yeah, I mean analytics um is an option. Um the tool could be easier to use and to configure, and uh we've stalled a lot on it for that reason. You know, you can create these nice shiny dashboards, and uh and but it it it's pretty hard to set those up and and manage just from personal experience. Um so you know, we we make do with uh creative use of just reports and dashboards as they are. Uh there's not too much data that we want to visualize uh in a way that we can't, with the exception of maybe detailed uh financial data. And uh Certinia has a bunch of reporting capabilities built out to to solve for that. So I get I get that that aspect of it. Um the reporting and dashboarding could be a lot better, you know. Like for example, uh you can't like in Excel, if you have a date range that includes days where there's no values, they just won't display in Salesforce, right? It's kind of a basic limitation. Uh I've been, you know, I I don't even think about it anymore. You know, I guess I got got used to that. Someday I'm sure they'll figure it out. But um, yeah, there it I I I agree with that. Um it can be limiting in that way. Um you know, recently uh I've started using actually Sockwall and Flow together to create some new reporting interfaces that do things you couldn't do any other way with screen reactivity. Um I've built uh an application we call Pulse. Uh, had a little LinkedIn video that kind of demoed it, but it uh it runs SoQL queries to pull together a lot of data and very quickly presents it um in in pretty interesting and dynamic ways. It's been a great discovery tool for us to uh we call pulse because it's like you know, measuring the pulse of it's like an account health type of tool. You know, how many SKUs do they have that are becoming stagnant? You know, what's what's at risk with this account? What's their revenue year over year? And um, and it, you know, you can using reactivity in the screen flows, you can just click and it it does a lot of cool stuff really fast. But that's a totally custom solution to solve that type of problem. And and that's kind of the space we're in sometimes is like, well, what can we do to uh what what skills do we have in the building to solve those problems uh in an outside the box kind of way?

SPEAKER_01 39:21

All right, cool. Um I'm I'm honestly surprised that you said you found serum analytics difficult. It might just be a difference of mindset. Um so disclaimer, I I was actually a serum analytics ambassador for a few years. Um, and then I guess I was rolled out of the program last year. So I mean, I I personally really like the product, I use it a ton. I I think you just need to more have more of a data engineer hat on because the key to success with CRM analytics is designing the data model of CRM analytics and forget what it looks like in Salesforce. Um, and then it becomes like real easy to build.

SPEAKER_03 40:01

No, I try I completely agree. I I think uh that that is the the issue. Um, you know, being able to imagine a new data structure and all that, it's like data cloud, you know, you can do some really cool and powerful transformations there, but you have to be able to think that way and then understand how to build it. And um, you know, uh I see those as common limitations between those two products is you know, they the the advertisement is that you don't need data scientists anymore. I'm like, well, I really think you kind of do, um, because we've never wanted for one before until we got a data cloud subscription, and um, you know, we're learning it. But um, as we try to build it as the foundation for AI, um there's complex work that you need to do for it to actually, you know, be able to do things like make predictions. You can't just feed it a bunch of uh sales orders and then it says, oh, here's the ones that are going to be late. You know, it can't just it can't do that. It needs it needs um information to correlate and train on. Uh and so, you know, my impression, the way that you do that is by is by joining, you know, many objects together, like a large SQL join via their transformation. And um and uh and then you I I think more often than not, you do have to feed it some binary information, like is this an account who did it for it or not? Um, so that it can understand all the other factors in the universe that might affect an account, you know, a customer being lost and being able to predict that. So it's uh it's a you know, it's a a cool tool. Uh sorry, I know you're asking about analytics, and I'm talking about data cloud, but no, it's all good. There's complexity there.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Yeah, so so you've tried to implement data cloud. Um that was an actual use case, predict who's gonna pay late?

SPEAKER_03 42:05

Um, you know, who's going to we want to see who's gonna become a lost customer, not pay late. Although that's a good use case too. I mean, there's a lot of good use cases. Uh yeah, so we we're a data cloud customer. Uh we got on fairly early, um, I guess uh over a year ago for sure, maybe two years ago. Um, and uh and uh we have primarily found use cases for it in marketing, um, you know, activating to external targets like LinkedIn. We can create segmentation lists of um customers who meet certain criteria, you know, have engagement that looks like X, Y, or Z, and we wanna we wanna serve and add to them on LinkedIn, for example. Um, that's been fruitful for us. Um and then you know, getting it ready to use uh with AI or agent force is kind of the next frontier. Um not that we would lead with agent force, I think we would lead with uh just being able to build predictions and leverage that in uh in some way.

SPEAKER_01 43:16

So tell me tell me about that decision to buy or to buy to or to buy any product, right? So in this case we're talking to buy to buy data cloud, right? Because you guys clearly seem to have a preference to in-house build as opposed to just buying a product off the shelf. Um like what's the thought process there? Because I think most people is the opposite is they like we do not want to go custom, and you guys seem to like just really, really thrive in that space. Right to the classic driver's build decision, you are usually you know by wins.

SPEAKER_02 43:58

I think the piggy. Pack on that as well, Phil, with a second follow-up question to that. Is there a criteria that goes into that decision-making process to build or buy? For example, you've got a lot of manufacturing mindset, right? Continuous improvement, lead to Sigma, et cetera. Is there a if it's going to take us X amount of time to build something internally, we will look for a existing product on the market type analysis that goes into that piece of that mindset?

SPEAKER_03 44:29

Yeah, you know, unfortunately, that type of analysis isn't always possible or transparent. You know, you just can't know until you work with it what the what the expenditure is going to be. Um, I think, you know, when I think about that decision, I'm most interested in buying capability, right? Data cloud on its face is capability, right? Because we've been kind of anti-integration, but it's got all these connectors where kind of you're making you're you're pushing the complexity of the integration to some extent to Salesforce and trusting that um that they're going to build connections that you know pull it into the trust world wall and make it less of your problem to manage a broken field or things like that. Um and it's you know, not that uh I understood it as the foundation for, I don't know that Salesforce understood Data Cloud as the foundation for for AI initially. Uh, I think they've had a lot of use cases for it uh over the years as it's been through different branding, you know, different branded names. But um yeah, that that's that's it in a nutshell. It's like um it used to be we bought products because we didn't have the capability to build those solutions. And just like the Excel formulas, you know, when you put enough time in it, suddenly it becomes easier to scale and imagine how you'll approach challenges. And you know, then then you can kind of do some ROI and think about like uh is it gonna be better to buy and be tied to yet another SaaS bill that just recurs year after year, month after month, or or is it better to incur that one-time expense? Not that there isn't technical debt associated with it, but um, you know, and have a solution that is tailored to our exact needs and um and which we ultimately have control over um and responsibility. That you know, it's everything's a double-edged sword, but but you know, looking at products like the AI tools that Salesforce is offering, and looking at data cloud and looking at marketing cloud growth, those are situations where I think we're we're buying capability for us to do new things and solve new problems, not just a solution.

SPEAKER_02 47:02

It's interesting you mentioned marketing cloud growth because it's almost as if you knew, Phil, that is the next question I was going to ask you uh in terms of we were gonna move the conversation on. So um so marketing cloud growth was announced at the beginning of this year, I think around February time, if if I'm correct. Um and I think competitive pricing was one of the biggest uh benefits, um, but also object alignment, data cloud mapping, um, et cetera, et cetera. Now, quite interesting and quite cool. All of you guys were invited, um, or were you invited? We'll talk about that in a second. Um, about the pioneer program. So, do you want to tell tell us a little bit, Phil, about kind of what that pioneer program meant exactly and and where you're at so far with your journey with marketing cloud growth?

SPEAKER_03 47:52

Uh yeah, yeah, the pioneer program um was really uh fun for us to participate in at times and stressful at others. Um we um you know we had uh become um data cloud customers uh before that, and we're we're looking for these different use cases, and uh and data cloud and marketing cloud growth go go hand in hand with each other because unlike um pardot or or account engagement that uses um synced, you know, it's really not on platform, it's synced data uh to drive marketing campaigns and things like that. Um, the premise of uh marketing cloud growth, it's driven by by segmentation lists from from data cloud. And uh and so then you know you can pull in all your web activities and email clicks and things there and process it in different ways and use it to make um kind of more powerful, granular, focused, dynamic uh email engagements, for example. Oh, it does more than that. Um and so um yeah, we got the invite from Salesforce to participate in that. We were one of, you know, it's mostly partners that they pulled into that program. Um, but uh, you know, Salesforce was getting excited about some of our use cases. We try to stay close with them and um and be loud as a customer. Um, and it's it's paid off for us over the years for the size that we are as a customer to them. We get a lot of attention uh and support. Um and uh and I like to think that we do great things with the tool, and so it it it you know it becomes a reciprocal thing, but yeah, the program um was uh was intensive. Um we were meeting two or three times a week.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

Before you jump into that, sorry to cut you off. Can you tell our listeners exactly what it is, the pioneer program?

SPEAKER_03 49:57

Marketing cloud growth or the pioneer program, yes. So um the pioneer program and and this particular program was targeted at account engagement users who would convert potentially to marketing cloud growth. Um, and it really was to test out functionality just like beta users, really. Um I've I've participated in islet programs with Salesforce before, and I think this was the first pioneer program that was more in-depth. It put you know, users and partners who might implement for others um in direct contact with the product team who's trying to deliver something for people to use. So they were advertising uh a little ahead of their skis. I think that's what Salesforce does. So they had kind of announced it, and uh the product in many ways was still being built. Um and even to this day, it's it's early in the product lifecycle. They're they're running at hard. So we had these two to three meetings uh a week where we were getting together with their the leaders of the product team for this, and they were like, here's a hands-on, here's how you deploy, you know, here's how you configure, here's how you create. And so we walked step by step through the different features of marketing cloud growth. And you know, we were literally creating tickets, we had a special channel within the Salesforce support team that was focused on this because um, you know, we were some of the first actual users of the product, um, and it, you know, predictably it didn't all work, right? So that's where the stressful part of it came through. It um, you know, compared to somebody who's picking up the product today, um you know, they're gonna have a much more straightforward time. The like the way that um the different data graphs and things that are built and data kits that power it had to be deployed at that time. It was very manual, it was complicated, and and now I think you just click a button and it all just kind of happens, you know. You go into setup and you switch a toggle, and it it just does everything kind of behind the scenes, but it wasn't like that. It was a lot of work, it was a lot of clicking, and um uh so you know it was fun. But um, you know, if they ask us again, I'll just make sure that we know what the product, you know, make sure we we it's something we want to do. This definitely was it was a cool experience.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

It's funny again. Yeah, I was gonna ask that question. Would you do it again? But um, let me ask you a different question. So, so the the idea, my understanding and understanding of the pioneer program is it allows customers to be to feel like they're part of that journey in terms of developing a product, but also the purpose of it is in essence that you will do the testing uh and give the find the flaws, right? Before it goes out to market at a broader scale. And I'm guessing there's some advantages that have flowed to you as a result, right, in terms of being a part of that pioneer program. There must be some benefit to flexo concepts. So, so what is that benefit?

SPEAKER_03 53:20

Um, yeah, I think the benefit um was really, excuse me. I think the benefit was really um more on the intangible side, you know. We certainly got early access to see what they're thinking. We got to affect the shaping of the product in in many ways. You know, suddenly we're getting on calls with people who are asking us, like, hey, here's what the marketing calendar is gonna look like. What do you want? Is this good? Is this bad? So, you know, uh there's just direct benefit there, but um just from a relationship perspective and the access we got, um, that was you know, that that was a lot of it. Um uh so I don't know. I mean, I I I definitely have the inside track on some things that I'm not sure if they've been announced yet or not. Like I don't know that this is secret, but I think prospects are coming to core platform, which for marketers is a big thing to know and understand. So we do have a little a little insight. Um and uh and the team was great to work with um through and through, uh, so supportive and appreciative of of of the partnership. Um, you know, Greg and I spoke at uh uh connections, which is their their marketing event in Chicago, uh in in May. I think we did a couple sessions uh talking about you know our use case. So we got to get a little brand exposure there. Um, not that in the Salesforce audience, just like from this podcast, there's not that many people are gonna know what a Dr. Blade is. Um, and then we spoke again at Dreamforce again, talking about the ways we're using data cloud and and the ways we're using marketing cloud growth. So um those were great experiences to go through.

SPEAKER_02 55:10

PR for the business as well, right? Um, being given this the stage to to talk more about the company, it's great. All publicity is good publicity. Um, so following on from that notion, I'll I'll be cheeky and ask you a quick question. Um, any commercial benefit to being part of the pioneer program, any discounts or extra products for you given for free or anything like that?

SPEAKER_03 55:31

Well, yeah, I mean, we didn't pay for it while we were piloting it or pioneering it. Um, so so that didn't cost us any money. And um uh, you know, when you are speaking at Dreamforce, you don't pay to go there, so you know, you save some fees and things like that. Um, you know, I'm not at liberty to say any more than that.

SPEAKER_02 55:55

But overall, a fair trade-off, I think it's fair to say, right? You know, you you took a bit of pain, but overall, your overall experience, you're you're pretty happy about it.

SPEAKER_03 56:04

Yeah, for sure. And you know, marketing cloud growth, just another thing I'll say about it. I have talked a lot about flow, I'll continue to talk a lot about flow. It's um you know, it uses flow as the engine to drive the actual email campaigns, right? So instead of uh a tool built to build email campaigns, you're using flow. So that's super powerful, right? Anything that you can do with flow, oh super power. Well, with great power comes great responsibility. Somebody someone said, and um, it's uh you know, you can create records, right? When people are clicking on emails and you receive that feedback, you can do and automate anything that you would do elsewhere on the platform. You can you can use marketing engagements as the engine to do that. You compare that to account engagement or partot. Um, and there's some things you can do, and and I think you can custom develop probably whatever you want to fire as an action from Pardot, but that's you know, coding and so forth. Um, so it's a much tighter, you know. Uh uh for example, right? We have um people who fill out a marketing cloud engagement web form that they want to participate in a webinar, and uh, we have like a swag box that we want to send out to them. Now we can create a sales order in our ERP that's on platform, and manufacturing is like, hey, here's a swag box I have to send to somebody. Got triggered by them clicking on a marketing form. There's approvals and things, so you know, again, to to keep control of things, you that's a responsibility all everyone has, but um that's the power it has.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

Just speed and and taking out some physical manual, somebody looking it over.

SPEAKER_03 58:01

We don't even need to talk to each other, you know, it just happens. So good stuff.

SPEAKER_02 58:10

Over to you, Matt.

SPEAKER_01 58:11

Yeah, so I mean we're coming up on time. So what so what's next for for Flexo? Um, you're gonna keep pushing more and more Salesforce, you can try some other things, Agent Force maybe.

SPEAKER_03 58:24

Yeah, I mean, always more. Um yeah, Agent Force is uh is interesting. I've done some you know hands-on work with it. Um I think it's today it's a little immature, it's slow, it's uh it's expensive, um, you know, has the advantage, um, at least from a marketing perspective, of living within the Salesforce trust wall. And I think that's important, but it it comes with trade-offs, right? When you um, you know, when you use your your AI assistant in your phone, Chat GPT or whatever, it starts to build a context and understands you and your preferences and things like that. When you're sending individual packets of communication that are anonymized, um, I'm not sure that that context is built or maintained in the same way. It's not like it gets better at understanding what your brand is, you know. That's all stuff that you pass through instruction. And so um, so you know, that affects the speed um because there's just a lot of bubble wrap around it to make it safe and and all that stuff. Um so you know what I'm looking at right now is connecting um directly via you know HTI uh HTTP call-outs to the um open AI API. So, like for example, in flow, we can make uh an apex action that uh performs a function, it goes right to Chat GPT or or whatever model you want to use and uh does work for you very fast and very cheap. So there's security responsibilities that you assume in doing that, and you know, there's compliance risk that's not super relevant to us, but um, yeah, we can we can send out um from a flow a file to be processed like a purchase order, right? It can be dissected into um CSV text strings that get returned, and then the flow can take those and create records based off the data it receives. And it costs like well, I won't say what I think it costs, but it's a lot cheaper than uh than two dollars per conversation or whatever. Now those are capabilities you know that that Agent Force doesn't really even have yet. You'd have to build that. I think you could, but I just don't know how fast or how how expensive it would be. So we're exploring a lot of options there. Uh, but you know, we're all in on AI, just like we were all in with with Salesforce. It's it's you know, you just have to keep your head up and and and look at what the opportunities are. Just last week we had uh our you know twice annual company meeting, and uh, and I was spending so much time preparing it with uh my my GPT assistant that I was like I could just co-present. And so I did. I co-presented with with uh chat GPT and advanced voice mod. Like that's crazy. So I was able to ask it questions that you know it knew uh was going to be talked about, um, and it it gave answers consistent with the direction I gave it. And then there was other parts that were completely scripted, like sorry, this is way out in the weeds, but this is the the world I'm thinking in. It's like I did a technical demo of well or demonstration of pulse to the company, and I didn't have to remember what I was supposed to say, I didn't have to say it at all. I didn't have to remember where I was supposed to click because I had already written all that up as a script that I fed to ChatGPT and then conversationally called upon it. It knew it was time for the demo, and it just started walking me through giving the demo to everybody while telling everybody, you know, as so it was it was cool. Uh it was fun for everybody, yeah. So gimmick, you know, but it was fun, and uh, I would do it again in a second. Like I might do all my presentations that way. Next time we have a lot of podcasts, you guys will be talking to AI Phil. Just give me the script ahead of time.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:47

We'll see, we'll see. I'm hoping this isn't AI Phil right now, but um maybe me and Maz will be out of a uh a passion project here with the with the co-host that will be replaced by AI. Who knows? Um but um joking aside, that sounds really cool. We'll uh we'll pick that up offline. But um I I think that's a wrap. So um, Phil, thank you. Um you know, really appreciate your time. Uh thanks for sharing a bit more about what you're up to at Fluxo Concepts. Um so many different areas that we wanted to continue to discuss, and hopefully we'll pick it up at a later date. But um, but thank you again. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:23

Yeah, thank you guys. Thanks for uh hearing me and hearing our story. It's been uh a lot of fun. We love to tell what we do, and uh and uh so thank you guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:32

No, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:33

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:34

So for our listeners, um, we hope you enjoyed what you just heard. Uh if you did, uh please continue to download and subscribe the CRM Success Show uh for more interviews with phenomenal guests such as Phil on future episodes. Cheers.