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 Mossri and Kiro 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_02 0:29

Welcome to the CRM Success Show, where we deep dive into CRM success and failure, delivering real stories and with real impact. I'm Dave Masry, and I'm Akira Witsi. And today we're talking with Melanie Dixon, who will be telling us about her time as the Director of Enterprise System at Oshna Health. So welcome, Melanie.

SPEAKER_04 0:47

Thank you. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

So, Melanie, real simple to kick us off for today. Please give our listeners an overview of your background experience with Salesforce and a little bit about your title. What does that encompass at Oshner Health, please?

SPEAKER_04 1:03

Okay. Oshner Health is the largest health system in Louisiana. We have 40 plus hospitals, 34,000 employees. And I started at Oshner about seven years ago. I was a project manager coming off of one of our local museums. I led one of their uh major expansions. I was ready for my new, my next, um, my next uh fun time. And so I landed at Oshner Health. I happened to land in IT without healthcare experience and without technology. So I'd have to say that I walked in with a little bit of imposter syndrome, you know, faked it till I made it, and um ended up being on the enterprise CRM implementation project on the client side. So I was the project manager for the client side. We partnered with an implementation partner and implemented marketing cloud, health cloud, and commerce cloud over a couple years, year period. During that time, uh I don't know if other systems do this, but ours sure does. Um, we re-orged, we kind of follow what operations does. So operations uh developed a uh digital consumerism team, and so we needed an IT digital consumerism team to partner with them and support them. And so a manager position um came up for the Salesforce team. I at that point, I wouldn't say I knew the most about Salesforce, but I knew the most about our Salesforce environment from the project, and so I was able to come on board and lead lead a very talented development team that kind of continued to grow over the next four or five years to include some other platforms, so SharePoint, ServiceNow, our RPA platform, which is UiPath, and then our power platforms. So what I found during all of that is that my superpower outside of project management is growing platforms.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

That's what I did. Okay. And Oshna Health, just to give a bit of context for listeners, huge nonprofit healthcare provider. Uh I I was reading prior uh to the recording, uh, about one and a half million patients uh every year. Any particular specialism area they focus on specifically?

SPEAKER_04 3:40

No, it's a I mean it's a your traditional healthcare system. We have a fantastic transplant department, but um we are we are just one of the largest in in Louisiana.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Fantastic. Your background prior um was with a museum. How much do you think your project management experience there served you and set you set you set you up for success starting out in that project manager role with Oshana Health?

SPEAKER_04 4:10

Um, well, I'll give you my my spiel of project management. It's kind of the key, I think it's the key to life. There's three pillars of project management. I don't even know if they're pillars, but three like the secret sauce of project management. And if you can do these three things, I feel that you can you can do anything. So whether that be leading a dev team, whether that be um, I don't know, performing and live in front of people. Um if you can manage expectations, anticipate the needs of your customer, and then be flexible in your communication style, you'll be a good project manager manager along with a good leader, etc. So um I've always I've always followed those. And I actually learned it when I one of my first jobs was at Waffle House. She has no idea that I still talk about her, but Rhonda was my manager. And Rhonda would take me up to a table and she would say, Okay, Melanie, this person, you know, customer A ordered a burger, customer B ordered a steak. And what do you need to bring them? And so you would have to like figure out that you would need to bring them ketchup and mustard for the burger and A1 sauce. I'm gonna cringe saying it, but A1 sauce and a steak knife for the steak. And so that was like that, you know, at 16, I think I was learning that you needed to anticipate the needs of your customer, of your client, of your leader, of anyone that you're dealing with, of your wife, of your husband, of whomever, of your kids. Anticipate those needs. Um, it it really makes makes for a smooth whatever you're doing. So um moving to project management in IT, I was able to not just follow your traditional, you know, project manager skills. I used those kind of soft skills to to be successful. So everything I learned at the National Museum that I was at in New Orleans to Oshner Health allowed me to be successful at Oshner Health.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

And uh I think also really cool, every 18 months to two years to three years, progressive promotions, more responsibility, bigger title, etc. So obviously it's paying off, and and kudos to you for that as well, making it happen. Um, I'm sure wherever Rhonda is now, she's gonna be uh proud to hear your story and growth and should definitely be uh taking a little bit of credit for your success, I think, with the project management mentality.

SPEAKER_04 6:50

If I could ever find her, I would let her know.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Oh, I'm good at finding people, so maybe we'll uh challenge accepted, we'll talk about it more after the show. Um over TMAS.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

All right, cool. So um believe it or not, I also got my my start in Salesforce ecosystem in project management. So that's really it's really interesting. So when you started at Oshner, you started at the PM, but not within the Salesforce space and then moved into Sales.

SPEAKER_04 7:16

That's right. I was um in their IS PMO, so we had a PMO that was very small. Uh, I think I believe we had four or five project managers. We were project managers are needed everywhere, but we were brought in to oversee multi-departmental or multidivisional projects that were really trying to keep everyone going. So if you're if you have a project in in your you know department, it's a lot easier to move from stage to stage. But when you're dealing with multi-departmental projects, you need someone to kind of herd the cats, and it is constant hurt cat herding. Um and so that's what we were doing, and and and I just I really lucked out and being selected for the enterprise CRM implementation. It taught me a lot, and now I'm super passionate about Salesforce.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

Yeah, yeah, it's uh it's interesting. People always like that's like over their question now. How do you how do I get into the Salesforce ecosystem? How do I how do I do it? Um this was what eight years ago or so? How long ago was it?

SPEAKER_03 8:28

About seven years. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

Seven or so years. Yeah, I don't I don't know, I don't know how how effective it would be today on a hero, if you know. Um if it's a good path to try to break in as opposed to the admin path.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

I mean, look, I think um with agent force, um given the entry point to becoming an admin is higher than it's ever been before. I I think personally if you're coming from a BA or PM background, you'll you're probably more likely to get that initial shot because I think those roles in particular, those two projects, uh two to job titles in particular, there's a lot more transferable skill sets within them than Salesforce Admin. A SharePoint admin to a Salesforce admin is very different, where a BA on a taking requirements down from a Salesforce project is not too dissimilar to a dynamics project, for example. Melanie, maybe you felt the same as well.

SPEAKER_04 9:26

100%. I the team that I led at um at Oshner definitely they were wearing many hats. So they were being the BA, they were the trainer, they were the developer, they were the admin, they were doing all of these uh different roles, which made them the most well-rounded developers ever. So when I when I joined the team, I did start hiring those admins and trainers and QA and and in different roles, so they didn't have to serve in those capacities, but but it was invaluable to them to be a developer that is traditionally heads down or an admin that maybe not isn't is so heads down, but but having that like head-down role, but having to be a BA and deal with the business and learn how to gather those requirements and kind of some of the admins we're serving as project managers. So all of those skills I think are so are so fantastic to kind of round out a person.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

But yeah, I would absolutely agree with that because that's the that's what I see from my clients that I support as well. The biggest need and and and ask is for, especially for full-time hires, is for the softer skills to be naturally uh you know curious and asking questions. Well, why have we done it like this before? Do we need to continue to doing that in the new future to be stay, right? Um, sometimes you can have a technical admin, they're not necessarily gonna ask those types of questions. It's very much ticket-oriented, task focused, as opposed to the interpersonal type skill set. So I would definitely, Maz, I'd definitely say if anyone's looking to get into Salesforce still, it's still up there is opportunity, but more so from a probably a BAPM aspect as opposed to the traditional admin route.

SPEAKER_02 11:15

Okay, yeah, that's that's good to know for sure. All right, so so Melanie, um you got in from the project manager, walked out, I would say, got assigned Salesforce. Um and then I understand that like you almost stepped uh uh I don't say out of your role, but expanded your role to almost become like an evangelist, right? Really pushing the platform um and then helping the organization like say, hey, you can use Salesforce here and like really growing um, I guess the Salesforce footprint within the organization. Can you tell us a bit about that? Like, you know, what you did there, maybe maybe a little bit about the why also.

SPEAKER_04 11:54

Yeah, um, I would say the why is for the why was because project management, there was always stuff going on, right? So you always had a project, and so you were always looking, once that project was over, you were looking for your next project. So I I don't know how to slow down. So having a robust roadmap is always my goal. And so after we finished the Enterprise CRM project, I wouldn't even say after we finished it, probably about halfway through, because we were using an implementation partner, we still had a very, we had four at that time, I believe, um, developers. And so they still had capacity that I needed to fill. And so, how did I do that? With we had a handful of kind of sales cloud, sales, traditional Salesforce sales uh use cases like business development and like the our our what we call direct to employer. So our uh our folks would go out and to employers and sell products to their employees, and um, and then they would transfer to like these different programs. So we had these like sales pro sales use cases. Um, so once we implemented uh the enterprise CRM Health Cloud, I needed to fill their bucket with other things. So I started thinking about like how do I do that? Who else needs to use Salesforce? And let me make a note. Previously, previous to my time at Oshner, I had never heard of Salesforce before. So I am very new in this whole ecosystem. Um, you know, seven years is not is not that that long. And so I had a lot to learn. So I did, I dug in and like learned all of the different ways you could use Salesforce. And to be clear, Oshner loves the shiny toys when it comes to sales or yeah, when it comes to Salesforce. So we have all the products, maybe not all the products, but we have like Health Cloud and we had Experience Cloud, we still do CRM, CRMA, um, Salesforce maps, territory planning. We have all these things. And so, how do all of these you know kind of play with each other? So um what we started doing is talking about how either current state use cases could like what is like the what is their full life cycle, I guess is the the statement. What are they doing before they get on the Salesforce? What are they doing after they get on Salesforce? So, and that was a clear way to become, you know, to expand the platform. So an example there is um within IS, we needed a solution. We had a solution, but it was it was done, it was in SharePoint, and it what didn't give people enough visibility. But we needed a solution for our Epic, which is our EHR. Um, we needed our Epic trainers to be able to look and see what the status of a new employee coming in, what their training status was, because you have to take epic training in order to get epic access, in order to be a nurse on the floor or a provider or any other clinician, you have to have certain access levels and you have to take that training. Current state was that they did not have visibility into where those the new employees were and what they were um, you know, whether they had taken the training, whether they had not. If they had not, sometimes they would show up on the hospital floor and not be able to do their job. So we needed a solution. We built it out on in Salesforce, platform licenses, very affordable. But like what happens before that? So that's kind of an HR HR use case. Before that is talent acquisition. So before you become an employee, you're a candidate or you're a person a prospect, and then you become a candidate. And all of these are done in outside of what HR uses as their source of truth. We use workday. So, and they were done in like legacy systems that weren't very good, you couldn't track very well, we're spending a lot of money. So we decided to start looking at how we can do this all in Salesforce. So we um would build it, built out talent acquisition into Salesforce, and then the next stage would be once you become an employee, how do we keep you happy and engaged? And so that's called talent management. So we have a ton of programs that we built onto Salesforce so that they could track those programs and the outcomes of those programs. They were doing it on spreadsheets before, so lots of Excel spreadsheets managing of that, and um, and so we essentially automated all their all their workflows, and then you look next the next is career center. So, same thing, like um you have these programs you've gone through. So, what's how do we elevate your next level? How do you become a director? How do you become an admin to a to a developer? All that those pathways, those kind of programs are also managed in Salesforce. And and we haven't gotten there yet, but the goal is to have like that alumni piece, so outreach to folks that have left the system, but maybe want to boomerang back or have moved away and they end up moving back. We want to keep that contact with this the alumni so that we can, you know, keep get them back when they want, when they're ready. So looking at that full end-to-end life cycle of whatever that consumer base is is how we decided to grow the platform. And it just became an easy thing, it became like a list of people that wanted to come onto Salesforce instead of like having to search for them.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Right. So you were using a partner and you're continuing to expand um over seven years. That's expensive, like any issues getting pushback, like you know with the budget.

SPEAKER_04 18:13

So we used, I think this is also pretty key to a successful Salesforce ecosystem is having a good implementation partner or SI. And and we found one. We were very lucky in in, and it's not luck. I mean, they did a great job when we bid the project out for that enterprise CRM project. We went with Slalom, they did many of our implementations, many of our expansion projects, but the goal was always to work them out of a job, and they knew that. So we partnered our developers with their developers or with their principals and made sure that it wasn't just a knowledge transfer transfer, they were they were working alongside them, and so the majority of our expansion was done without an implementation partner. But what that because they were able to um, or because they became such a great partner for us, when we stopped using them, they kind of flexed and became a strategic partner. And that ability to not just like always going after the dollar allowed us to continue to use them. And now we use them across several platforms. We use them in the Service Now space, we use them in tech assessment, we use them all over. Um, they're just a really, really great strategic partner for us, but they don't typically do any of our implementations anymore. So, from a budget standpoint, if you invest in your team along with investing in your SI, then eventually that budget will decrease.

SPEAKER_01 20:02

It sounds real simple, but just doing the right thing as you know to your customer, right? You know, you're gonna get other opportunities to land and expand into that account. And if you do a good job, people trust you, they're gonna introduce you to different areas of that business. So that's right, uh, it sounds like that's exactly the model that uh that those guys have have taken, and that's a good reminder for a lot of other SIs out there as well, right? Think about bigger the bigger picture, not just the immediate statement of work uh that you're trying to sell. So just to backtrack a little bit on Oshner's journey. So prior to HealthCloud or Sales Cloud, prior to Sales Cloud, were they were they coming from a legacy healthcare related CRM or anything like that? Or was it just all spreadsheets and Excel?

SPEAKER_04 20:53

Or um we did use a different CRM. It was it was benefiting, I would say it was a it it was patient marketing. So it was it was billed as a CRM, but it really wasn't a true CRM. So you could outreach and you could outreach based on data, but there was no, if you look at like the full the full like gamut of a of a CRM, how robust it can be, which is being able to track, being able to aggregate data and then make decisions based on that data. It's not just patient marketing, it's not just that. So we we were using a patient marketing tool. It was uh I'd say I might get this wrong, but I want to say it was like 95% outsourced. And so and Actionar Health is a is very innovative. So we like to um personalize our messaging and and put together propensity models for um who's gonna who we think may be at risk for certain you know diseases or whatnot and then like mark target them and market to them so that we can get them healthy.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

Okay. In terms of choosing health cloud what was the reason for that Melanie and what do you think the biggest benefit if there is a another healthcare organization um and are in you know should we should we go from sales cloud to health cloud what I guess would be your advice to them and and the reason you you did that as an organization?

SPEAKER_04 22:41

So we went with health cloud because it had cases so like we were using sales cloud for traditional sales use cases. So when we went to health cloud when we implemented health cloud it was being implemented in our contact center so that we so we needed the cases so that we could track the calls and and so that's why we went with health cloud it was implemented by an SI so we did not so that implementation was was fine when we decided to migrate our sales let me backtrack for a second our traditional sales use cases were were spun up in one org when we implemented health cloud we decided to spin up a new org once that implementation was was complete we migrated the other org to the new org that way we could clean up the data from the old org and and kind of start fresh. And so that I would say that migration probably had a little bit more heartburn than the initial health cloud implementation.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

But because we went with a strong implementation partner we I feel like we didn't we didn't hit as many like roadblocks as I've heard other systems have have had to go through so and and how important were for instance the integration capability with your your EHR like you know Epic how how important was that in the decision making process that that it all the work you'd done on that side of the application you couldn't lose that integration capability. So I don't know if there was an alternative to health cloud you looked at at the time from another business but how much was that a factor to your decision making because I I I see Epic as kind of like one of the main EHR systems that exist.

SPEAKER_04 24:41

So it is um we we did not actually look at any other CRM systems because of Salesforce capabilities. So if we were just looking for patient marketing it'd be one thing but because we were also looking for our contact center and then we also we're a little different than a lot of health care or health systems we implemented Commerce Cloud as well. We have a whole health and wellness side of the house where it's fitness centers and performance training and cosmetic procedures and whatnot that are kind of outside of your traditional clinical use cases. So we implemented Commerce Cloud as well and you can't get that anywhere else. So we didn't look at anything else but back to your question about the integration into the EHR that's key I mean that's where your that's where the gold is right so you have to be able to look at that data in order to personalize to your patients or other consumers.

SPEAKER_01 25:43

Gotcha and what about when you talk about healthcare industry and data most will jump to hypercompliance right and my understanding is is healthcloud Salesforce health cloud helps healthcare businesses because it comes with a built-in compliant out of the box functionality that allows you to secure your PHI records and information. So is that it is key it is key um but but any issues there was that was it was it was it seamless as you know it's made out to be that piece was seamless.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

I I don't feel there were any I mean outside of getting a BAA in place like that's uh that part that that that part wasn't didn't cause any issues I'm I'm pretty sure that core Salesforce is HIPAA compliant too so I'm not sure I mean I'm not an expert in this area but I I'm pretty sure so yeah our our our previous use cases didn't use um didn't use patient data so we didn't have a need for it to be HIPAA compliant but I I think you're right you might need shield I'm not sure if you have to have shield to be HIPAA compliant because of the auditing um but I'm I'm not sure we don't have shield okay I guess you don't need it so tell me about about that migration so you decided to migrate your legacy org to a new org with health cloud and then completely shut down the old org?

SPEAKER_01 27:20

So it was a full it's it's pretty much shut down we we kind of keep it open in case we need to we left some of the data there because we only brought over like one license in case you need to exactly go back and look yeah yeah so tell us tell us about that like what about like all of the non-health cloud cases use cases did you like try to lift and shift the code over what did what did that what did the the strat what was the strategy for tackling this so we rely heavily on our implementation partner and our developers so there was a lot of lifting and shifting um there was a lot of data cleanup and and then a lot of I think we I believe I'm not the technical person so but I do believe they had to go review a lot of that code anything that was being pulled over um but we had again that that SI is key to make sure that you're doing the right thing but they also knew your legacy work too yeah only bring over what's necessary right no I mean they were familiar with the code base it's not like you brought in a new SI to lift and oh no that that's the whole point of of getting a strong SI is that you don't you keep them for additional projects so that they are familiar with your your org so in all of your environment we did that across yeah multiple um expansions when we expanded from a marketing cloud standpoint we expanded from patient marketing to internal communications we used SLOM as well in that aspect so that we they understood they knew what they knew what they had just built so like we didn't have to have that whole yes we had requirements gathering but we didn't have a ton of discovery which can be as you know like overly painful because you're repeating yourself six times so in terms of um not necessarily challenges you encountered uh during the implementation I'm sure there were a few and if you want to quickly highlight a couple then please do but I'm curious an implementation is it a straight line so was there a stage during the implementation where you had to kind of pause pivot and and maybe go with plan B or plan C?

SPEAKER_04 29:51

100% so our I don't want to oversimplify phase one phase two but phase one was marketing cloud basic marketing cloud basic health cloud so basic contact center use cases no near real time feed but our but a batch feed so of our EHR data phase two was kind of optimizing it doing advanced marketing cloud features and then uh the near real time feed for our contact center phase three was commerce cloud that is where um if we did it all again I don't know if I would say I would suggest to implement commerce cloud in the healthcare system I think it's definitely has a has a future there but we had no idea from a business standpoint we I'm gonna say from an IS standpoint um have no idea what we were doing in commerce so we didn't have an order management system or management her name was Katie um we didn't have a warehouse management system our people were printing out labels and then dropping off at their local FedEx on their way out and so there was no tracking I mean there was tracking but there was no like sending out to the customer things you you you expect in this day and age we didn't have any of that stuff and we didn't know we needed any of that stuff so implementing straight commerce cloud was not the way to do it. So when we were working with Slalom they were like okay where's your OMS? Okay where's your WMS we're like I don't know what you're talking about and so we had to and then the other thing we were doing and I'm gonna say this and I don't mean this in any um I always say that we were held together by bubblegum and duct tape. We did a damn good job of the bubble gum and duct tape but we were in our brick and mortar stores using whatever system they were whatever online system they were using we were using that to make to take the order and then we were using a knucklebuster or or a swiper um and without any connection to the order in the actual payment capture. So we had to figure out that POS system as well along the way so we had to pause and start the Commerce Cloud implementation three or four times.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Luckily Slalom was able to keep the same project team for the most part every time we stopped we'd start again so from everything that was probably our timeline killer our budget killer you know um it was definitely the the the challenge but once we were able to get past all of that and get those items in the OMS implemented we never did implement a warehouse management system but we didn't feel like we needed it we don't have we're not high volume um we're selling branded apparel and digital technologies and so once we got past that those those few systems we had to implement then we were able to implement but it was definitely a it was definitely a challenge cool let's go back to um to when you were getting started right so you're you're an experienced PM but not necessarily heavy in tech um and then you you kind of got thrown into this so so how did you how did you tackle that right um did you just kind of say like you're gonna run it like a non-tech project and how different can it be or did you were you like proactive um and did it go as expected what was surprising I would say that I went at it as I typically would any project management project but I think I'm a different project manager.

SPEAKER_04 33:50

I again I dig in pretty heavily I don't feel comfortable managing a project that I don't understand. And so I met with stakeholders I met with Salesforce I met with our implementation partner to learn as much as I could so that I could make sure we were doing the right things I also had a one of the other keys like so being a non-tech person I relied heavily on the manager on my team like when I I was leading the team at that point he was a lead and so I had a technical person that I leaned on so that I could understand what was needed. But um we also had and I think this is key a lot of things are key um but change management to me is very important. I know a lot of people kind of are wishy-washy on it yes they think it's important but should there be a fully dedicated resource I think there's a little bit of difference in how we handled it so we did have a change manager assigned to the project from a slalom side but we also had a change manager assigned to the project from the client side but that's not the that's not the key excuse me our change manager very talented figured out the secret sauce of change management and that is kind of not just what the books say so the books say communication and training right that's communication plan training plan that's your change management making sure those things are are tied up but going a bit further change management to me is finding those kinks in the chain a lot of time people are so resistant resistant to change um it's because they don't have enough time to understand the change they think it's fine how it is or maybe sometimes it's as easy as there's like a missing communication level and so the people either at the bottom are not getting the communication to the top or the top is not getting communication to the bottom. So we had a change manager that found all of those let's call them areas of vulnerability and solved them. And so it was very very um it was very smooth our implementation when we actually went live in our contact center we didn't do that as a big band we did that phase but like everything was it couldn't have gone better. And I and I've taught and I credit that to that change management. And not a lot you know of course you're gonna have to have that training plan and that communication plan alongside that but solving those other you know areas of vulnerability are are definitely key.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

Was the uh change manager an internal hire that was already embedded into the business knew who everyone was on the different work streams or was that a resource that you sourced externally she was an internal she was an internal project manager who actually worked for our strategic PMO but interestingly enough she was also a project manager at the same museum that I worked at so I was very familiar with how she worked we worked well together she kind of served as the trade the change manager she actually knew a lot of the people as well because she worked on a lot of strategic projects with um some of the same key players but uh yeah she just dug in and found the found those kinks and and then just solved them in in terms of change or you brought her in she brought you in or you brought her in uh she so she was assigned to the project so she was internal that assigned the project oh I so we um there were there was a couple of of different people that left uh the museum and went to Oshner and we were all kind of I followed her so yeah good i in terms of change management I think it's uh a quick follow-up question to that one I've heard arguments for both sides but do you think if you had to hire somebody for a change management role or appoint someone as a change management role again do you think it would be more viable to have somebody from external to the organization coming in with the idea being there's less bias on certain work streams and and Kate pandering to certain people who have been in the business or they get on with better versus putting someone internally but the the the counter argument is they know the business they know the different personality types and can navigate them probably with a lot more success than someone coming in from the get-go. Where do you fall on that kind of options?

SPEAKER_04 38:36

I fall um on the internal being assigned to the project but having external guidance if you're using an implementation partner or partner of some sort having that person guide you in perhaps providing communication plan templates or training templates or what have you like that guidance is invaluable from it from the outside but really those relationships building those relationships within the stakeholders the team members the project team all of that is is really key and you can't do that with an external person not in enough time you know projects only you know could be six months could be a year but you're not going to build those relationships like you would if you were an internal person.

SPEAKER_02 39:22

Yeah also internal people signals caring if that makes sense right if you're doing it yourself that means you care a lot more than um offshoring it out someone um it's external to the organization um the other the other the other big thing with change management just to point it which I'm sure you I'm sure you know is um a part of that communication plan is a support system right here's where you go if you have a problem and we got your back type messaging and again that comes much better from an internal I I think and a lot of the times the conversations that you have you know trying trying to find the the kinks in the chain as I was saying reading people's cues from an internal you know having having those off the cuff conversations a lot of that happens internally so you you need that relationship in order to solve those those problems yeah so going back to your time as a PM um so technical people often don't like non-technical PMs I'm just gonna go out and say it. Did that cause you any problems particularly new so you're coming in now obviously your partner their job is to be patient right but internally have you have any struggles with with that like you know please explain this to me and you know and they're like obvious because you know what I mean so yeah I totally get that um I probably didn't say I didn't understand anything I probably just asked the questions and let them explain things but I have to say with the Salesforce project that that enterprise CRM it was so heavily operational that I was talking to marketing so marketing would not expect me to understand their workflows and the contact center they wouldn't expect me to understand their workflows and so the majority of uh the majority of work was done operationally in that project now when I started leading the teams they obviously knew I didn't understand 100% what they were doing but I do think they knew I cared right so I think that goes a long way they knew that I was there for them that I was going to bat for them that I every step of the way was to benefit them and and to benefit Oshner obviously but I want to grow them as employees I want to grow them as a team I want to grow all of us together and so I don't think they expected me to have the technical knowledge and understood if I if I needed it they would explain it but oftentimes I didn't need it as long as they were they understood it from their side I understood what needed to happen we're in agreement on how that moves forward and so they're all good.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

And I have to say Oshner's IS division is made up of some phenomenal people and if you think about it from a from the EHR standpoint so from an epic standpoint those are not necessarily technical people so out of the let's say when I started 700 IS you know employees a third to half are are epic employees they might have been working in the entertainment like in the music or in the um movie business they have a big you know movie business down here but because they could pass the epic tests and um have which are basically logic tests um they weren't technical either so we were I our IS department was um hugely just good people who were willing to learn and wanted to learn and and in terms of Epic as well um conscious we might have a few non-healthcare uh listeners today uh electronic health record uh system that um healthcare organizations use to do primarily with with patient records and and workflows and it it does it have a credentialing aspect to it like checking the credentials of nurses and doctors and so on am I right in thinking that yeah yes there are there are tons of of epic modules that are used across multiple different areas both in the clinic um in the hospital you're a lot of people are when they go to schedule an appointment they're going to a portal and that's also part of the the EMR the electronic medical record what I

SPEAKER_04 44:00

I found before I got into healthcare, I found it very amazing the first time I was able to go to a doctor's appointment and not have to explain my entire medical history to my doctor because he could look in the system and see I had had an appointment the year before, I had had a surgery, I had had XYZ, and it was so nice to and really it was a relief not to have to, you know, sit there and explain myself and almost justify myself. So it's that's what the electronic medical record is. It's connecting all of the data of your clinical history.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

It's um it's something that sounds like it should be a given today, but it is amazing how many healthcare organizations still, and I think it's just the part of it is the volume of of the population, right? And and people moving from state to state and transferring those records and cases and notes and different businesses acquiring other you know organizations. It can get messy, but um, but but yeah, not to be taken for granted, it will seem, even still as we we go into 2025, um you know, for sure. So looking at reflecting back on on that, I don't I don't want to say it's a seven-year project because it wasn't, but like seven-year tenure, um, you know, using Salesforce and you know, transformative period of time, um, whether it was the initial implementation or or kind of you know different phases, what would you say like one of the biggest light bulb moments were for you where it all kind of just made sense?

SPEAKER_04 45:42

It's it's funny that you asked that, because I vividly remember when I got it. And what we would do is we would someone would reach out, you know. We by the time, you know, three or four years in, that that's not how when this happened, but people would start reaching out to us, like, hey, because does this work in Salesforce? But um in the the first year that I was on the Salesforce team, I would reach out to use cases or or businesses and be like, hey, let me tell you what we do. And you tell me if if it works and and if it if it's something that you can see yourself using or a problem that we can solve for you. And I remember I was I was in a meeting like that, and the person was telling me what their problem was, and usually I kind of pivot to the technical resource that I would you know buddy up with and bring with me. I was the one that would set up, and I was the kind of the one that performed the outreach, and then he would provide to the technical part. And instead of re instead of pivoting to him, I started solutioning and I solutioned the entire thing for them. And then at the end they were like, that sounds fantastic, let's do it. And I was like, oh, there it is. I figured out how, and it's not just how core Salesforce works, it's all of those shiny toys that we have, how they all work together, how that Experience Cloud site works with the core site or core Salesforce, where there's an you know an admin portion to where you're either capturing payment or outreaching to someone or lead management, all the different things you can use Salesforce for, but it's really connecting all of that and how you can use it together. Um, I vividly remember that. And that's when I I feel like that's when when the light bulb went off, that's when I was I was really like became this passionate sales Salesforce advocate.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

Good. In terms of the implementation, what were some of the kind of the metrics and KPIs that you were adopting to ensure the the implementation was an actual success? I know we know that it is, but how are you kind of justifying it to the stakeholders, the the C-suite, et cetera?

SPEAKER_04 48:01

From a contact center perspective, it was a little difficult because it was so what was the benefit of Salesforce? The benefit of Salesforce and the contact center at that point was that we could now, they always knew what calls were coming in, but we could kind of document what percentage were epic related because the call center is there to help patients. The majority of it is going to result in an epic transaction. So whether that be scheduling an appointment, canceling, you know, um, rescheduling, uh checking, you know, whatever test results, like anything that you can think of that someone's gonna call for a clinical nature that you would check, check Epic for. But there's a big chunk. I think we ended up finding out that was 40% of our calls were non-Epic related. So they were not going anywhere before Salesforce. So you call, I need directions to this clinic. Okay, here's the directions. They'd pull it from a SharePoint site, give the directions, hang up, and that's it. They have no idea no way of tracking. They could track the calls, they could track, they could kind of tie them together with what was happening in Epic, and then like this group of non-things, non-happening and epic calls, but they couldn't give a percentage to which ones were directions, which ones were other use cases. So with Salesforce, that was that allowed us to do that. So there weren't really KPIs, but it was that visibility ability to um in the contact center. Marketing cloud knocked it out of the park. Like, and I'm not gonna, we didn't run, we didn't own marketing cloud from an IS perspective. That was led and run out of our marketing department. We have a very, very talented marketing automation team. We were just responsible for getting the data to them, but they knocked it out of the park. They went from using a system that uh was outsourced to really insourcing everything and owning everything, and they were beating like all the click rates and all the all the other marketing type KPIs that they are tracking to where when I was renewing every year, I'd see this kind of big line item that's like you know in the six-figure range, and I'm like, why are we paying for that? And I would call our our marketing team and they'd say, Hold on, let me check. I'll let me show you what we're doing with that one line item. And they'd say, like, we're using it for two use cases, but that those two use cases are bringing in $1.5 million each. And I'm okay, thank you very much. We will continue to pay for that. So uh Marketing Cloud was always always the the clear winner and and really took us above and beyond what we what we really expected.

SPEAKER_01 50:55

So what about so so you were able to identify about 40% of the calls were perhaps calls that you know maybe were or could have been one-time calls? So you were building, taking that analysis, building out fact, I don't know, like frequently asked question pages or yeah, so if you're you're on the right, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:18

So so with that 40%, and what do you do with that data, right? How do you essentially stop those calls or uh or provide something? So if if 40% of them were, if they were all direction related, then we somehow need to provide these directions to our patients. So when you schedule an appointment, you should get an automatic email of directions to where your your appointment is. If you know, whatever the other, how how do you then deflect those calls essentially? So how do you get them to that so that if you stop using, if you stop that 40%, then you are opening yourself up to taking more calls that are clinical in nature, creating appointments, which brings in revenue to the system.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

So and I guess the overall goal is just continued process improvement, um, reduce the number of calls means reduce the number of agents you need to employ, et cetera. Um curious, is that a good use case for Agent Force? Uh obviously very hot on the topic at the moment, but I would imagine a lot of that could be done and replaced by Agent Force.

SPEAKER_04 52:27

It could be. Um I think that a truly innovative health system. So Epic also has has a excuse me, Epic also has a contact center module that they are rolling out, which is is very great for it. They have something called Call Hub, and it's fantastic for contact centers. It it lacks a little bit of the innovation that you need. Um, so having Salesforce work alongside, I kind of like that better together saying in that contact center space, and then having Agent Force 100% would be the most innovative contact center. I don't know if we're ready for it though. It's a, you know, healthcare is always a little bit behind, as innovative as we say we are, we're always a little bit behind all of the other industries. So I don't know if we're quite ready for Agent Force in the contact center space. I can tell you we are ready, ready for Agent Force in some of the other 45 different businesses that we have expanded to. But um, but yeah, it's uh it we'll we'll see what happens. It could be an exciting, I don't call it a contact center anymore. It could be an exciting engagement center.

SPEAKER_01 53:40

I've got a quick question before I know Mass has a couple of questions um we want to we want to get in before we hit time, but what did you find moral innovation took place? Was it in the healthcare space or was it prior in the non-profit museum type industry? Um just from your personal experience?

SPEAKER_04 54:00

Would you say one was more advanced than the other, or uh so it's a hard question because excuse me in the museum space the innovation happens in the exhibits, which is all outsourced. So that was part of my job was to manage. I had a peer who built the buildings, who was like the construction manager. I was the project manager for all of the was a $300 million expansion, and there are four pillars of projects. So there's uh fabrication, integration, media, and lighting. So the integration and the um media are the two innovative spaces, and so as you can imagine, trying to have a space come alive can be fantastically innovative, but it's a different innovation. It's you know, how do you how do you make someone from 1945 look real? And then with healthcare, it's how are you integrating, how are you aggregating all of this data? And then what are you doing with it? And how are you, you know, it's it's it's innovation in a different way. So I think they're both innovative. I think with the from a museum side of things, like outside of those exhibits, we were very, very um, I wouldn't say archaic, but very not innovative. You know, we just we were we had 300 people working there, so it was very, it was a much smaller, smaller organization. But but they're both innovative, just in in in very different different realms, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 55:46

Yeah, it it's quite possible. It's quite possible that it has to do with the time frame, but um the technology really did advance a lot in the last seven years. Um it doesn't seem like a long time, but when you talk about tech, if you go back to you know the late the late 20 teens, like the big data was the big thing, right? Um and now it I kind of pivotal to how using using that data, not just collecting it and the effective management of it and the AI data models. Um and yeah, and and even even internet speeds have have changed quite a bit. I mean, not that much since then, but it it kind of kick peaked out at that point. Um so yeah, so I think that might have a lot to do with it as well. So you did construction PM, right? So how different did that from technology project management? Um, like what's the most stark difference?

SPEAKER_04 56:44

So the difference, and I have to say that I struggled with this in the beginning, is how you manage the relationship to your vendor. So, in construction management, as you can imagine, there are a lot more aggressive and abrupt personalities. And so when I not the Salesforce project, but a different project was uh when I first started at Oshner, uh a vendor came back with um a contract that was the SOW was way higher than they had promised, and I um spoke to them in a much more aggressive way than than you typically would in technology project management projects. And then I got off the phone and immediately called them back. And um, there may have been some tears and some I'm sorry, but it was it's definitely that that's the big difference, is is the relationship management, especially in healthcare, the relationship management with your vendors is key. Uh at least it is for me. It's it's something that I strive to have is you know, just a good relationship, whether it be your implementation partner or any of the um software systems that you might be using that are either adjacent or or sit on top of whatever you're doing, making sure you have those good relationships so they know who you are, so that so that you can get the things you need done, done. I mean, and and plus, like same thing with your account team. So the one thing that I'm most proud of at with with Salesforce, maybe not most proud of, but one of the things I'm really proud of is that our account team at Salesforce, it grew to this fantastic team that became my friends. So it's like that true meaning of Ohana, like what Salesforce, you know, preaches is Ohana. And like that was that's the account team that we have. And and it it was a long way to get there. We it also comes with growing the platform and growing the licenses, you know, you get more people assigned to you, but we also our team stayed pretty much pretty much the same over a few years, you know. A lot of times those sales teams uh change, but they understood our they understood our environment, and that's that was key to me too. So uh yeah, it's just the that relationship management's way different.

SPEAKER_02 59:23

Okay, so uh we're we're just about at time. So let's wrap up with one quick question. Um, just what general advice would you give to uh you know to someone who's a new PM in the Salesforce space?

SPEAKER_04 59:33

A new PM in the Salesforce space, well, it depends on what you want to do. If you want to grow into leadership, then you know you start looking at those opportunities, but really dig in to what Salesforce can do because it it honestly is it can do everything, whether that's the right thing or not, knowing being able to tell when it's the right thing is is very important. But making sure you have, you know, from a from a leadership perspective, the advice I would give to any organization would be to invest in an implementation partner, invest in your development team, make sure you have that development team in place so you're not always relying on the implementation partner, make sure there's some sort of governance in place so that you can have executive alignment. If you don't have that executive engagement, your Salesforce environment is going to suffer. And then making sure, going back to that great account team, making sure you have that in place so you're kind of covered from all sides. And that way, you know, from a leadership perspective, I was always surrounded by the best people.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

I'm gonna flip that question on its head a little bit. What don't you do as a PM coming from operations, construction, marketing, whatever it might be, going into Salesforce?

SPEAKER_04 1:00:54

Don't just follow traditional project management. It's not just an implementation. Um, I've been on I've been involved in implementations where you're just rolling out a system. You get a status report at the end of the of the week, you the you know, someone's gathering requirements, they're implementing, they're showing it back. It is your traditional, traditional implementation. It's not fun, and there's no connection. So don't be that project manager. Dig in and and and figure it out, like find out what Salesforce can do because it's really so powerful, and a lot of people don't understand that.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:39

Especially coming from outside of Salesforce, right? I think um you just maybe look at it as like another system. But um, but but Melanie, we appreciate you. Thank you for your time today. Hopefully you had as much fun as we did, and I'm sure our listeners will giving it a listen.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:54

Thank you. It's been great being here.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:56

Um for our listeners, uh please do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show for more episodes featuring leaders like Melanie, uh, who are truly influencing uh the future of CRM. Uh you can follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube and listen to us on your chosen playlist, be it Spotify or Apple. Um thank you very much.