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 Mostri 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_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 Masri.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

And I'm Kira Witzi.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

And today we're talking with Dave Sweden, the Director of Salesforce Engineering at Verasite. So welcome, Dave. Thank you. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Good to have you as well. So, Dave, why don't you start off by giving our listeners a bit of a high-level 35,000 feet overview overview of your time in the Salesforce ecosystem, a bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_04 1:03

Sure. So my name is Dave Swyton. I am the senior uh director of engineering at uh Salesforce Engineering at Verisite. Um I've been in uh IT for just about 30 years. Uh, started in uh a manufacturing company in SalesOps, or sorry, not sales ops, but uh supply chain and operations, and uh got my first uh stint in IT doing an SAP implementation uh back in 95 actually. And fast forward to about 2008, uh after quite a few SAP implementations at companies I worked for, um I joined uh Seagate uh to try to get away from SAP and learn something new. And I happened to join the Salesforce team at the time, and uh so it was in 2008 that I actually got my feet wet in Salesforce. And at the time, you know, you couldn't do half the stuff you can do today. It was still S controls. There was no Apex and Visual Force that you could do. And so that was kind of my first uh first experience with Salesforce, and uh from there uh made it a career to uh you know work in Salesforce environments uh up until uh I went back to Seagate in 20, I don't know, 2022, I think, to do another SAP implementation at Seagate, oddly enough. And uh and then made a quick pivot over to Versight where I'm at, where I'm leading the Salesforce team.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

Awesome. What one one question I want to cast your mind back a little bit through the years. Um how did you go from doing a bachelor's in marine biology and falling into technology? Now that's interesting.

SPEAKER_04 2:38

Yeah, I get I get that question a lot. Um so I I actually, like I said, I you know, when I was about 18 years old, I joined a turnkey manufacturing company in in the Bay Area. Um and so that I could put myself to school through school and not actually uh have student loans. And I worked there for about 10 years. So uh and I did. I put myself through school and um you know, to get a degree, I just really wanted to I wanted to get a degree in something I really enjoyed. I loved the ocean. I was interested in biology, and it was just a good fit. And by the time I graduated, I graduated in '94, and um I realized after I graduated, because I had worked uh for logistics as the company uh throughout that time, I realized that I already had a career. You know, I was in my mid-20s, and shoot, I had a career. Like, what am I gonna do with marine biology? So I I did some volunteer work after, and uh I actually almost pivoted and got my uh master's in environmental science. Um, but um I started talking to a counselor uh actually at a at a at San Jose State, in fact, and um they go, You you really have a career. Are you sure you want to do this? And I mean, you would really take a step back. And I was like, hmm, you know, so I kind of stayed in the high-tech world and and here I am. Um, but I I don't regret at all getting a uh you know degree in marine biology. I mean, uh there's a lot of knowledge and a lot of skills that I actually got out of that. Um uh even to take into the high-tech world. I mean, just because you have a degree that may not fit uh, you know, in a in an IT environment doesn't mean it didn't teach you how to think uh critically and analytically and and sort of use those skills to build a career.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

So awesome. Um so a big part of your career was spent with Seagate, and we're gonna talk a little bit more about both ERP and Salesforce shortly, but I think we'll talk about Seagate and uh Verisight and maybe Outset Medical. Um just just very quickly, tell us what those three different companies do so that our listeners have got some context for later on.

SPEAKER_04 4:49

Seagate, I mean Seagate's a hard drive manufacturing company, right? So they you know most it's either WD or Seagate today, and if you have a hard drive, it's one of those two. Um Outset Medical is a uh it's a med tech company, um, and they they have a dialysis machine that they've uh you know designed and built over the years. I I think I started before they IPO'd and then I went through that with them. Um and it's actually built uh to be somewhat mobile, it's built for home uh as well as clinics. Uh and then VeriSite is a is a diagnostic company that focuses on genetics uh for cancer treatment.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Okay, good stuff. Um so C Gate. Prior to Seagate, you're first in at Seagate uh in 2008. Uh you've done a uh successful SAP implementation prior to that, correct?

SPEAKER_04 5:42

Yeah, yeah. Actually, quite a few. I mean, I did one at logistics back in 95, and then I went to 3COM and um we implemented uh uh SAP uh through a series of phases, and then we uh quickly pivoted and re-implemented it to get rid of customizations that were built over the years. Um uh and then and then I I I went to Apple, which SAP was already pretty well established, and and and you know, again, finally ended up at uh Seagate to uh and I you know SAP, I wasn't even working in ERP at Seagate when I went there. It was all Salesforce. Um but I think what I think where where where they saw um they saw the benefit in me joining was my background in uh understanding big enterprise systems uh and my ability to uh help uh build integrations. And at the time that I joined Seagate, Salesforce was literally, I don't know, maybe six months into uh being owned by the technology team. Um it was brought in by sales and marketing. Sales marketing realized they can only do so much with it. And again, this is back in 2008 when you couldn't do quite a bit on Salesforce like you can today. Um, and so the technology team inherited it, and um sales had a big appetite. Um, they were pretty much the the primary stakeholder, and so they wanted people that could come in and sort of think out of the box, think different, and start to um help build uh solutions on on Salesforce.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

So back back in 2008, there wasn't there wasn't online material like there is today, right? In terms of advice and guidance on trailhead, and you know, not as many companies had obviously implemented Salesforce back then. So what was that like, you know, all of a sudden learning a new, you know, CRM you'd never maybe even heard of before at that point? How how did you how did you go about that in 2008?

SPEAKER_04 7:43

I love technology, so that that's one thing that um you know has always been I like new things and I like to learn new things. So so um when you know when I got the opportunity to do something outside of SAP, learning a new system like Salesforce wasn't wasn't difficult. In fact, I found it much you know somewhat refreshing and easy because even back then, you know, your the how you manage objects and creating fields and all the basic things that we still do today, I think um, you know, I was like, wow, this is this is kind of a game changer. This is a pretty easy platform to to uh to to scale. Um and yeah, there weren't the resources. In fact, they had a team. I wasn't the only team on the Salesforce team um at the time. There were another I don't know, three or four people. Um and for the most part, it was just being used for your typical CRM stuff, opportunities. Sales didn't really manage leads that much, they didn't like to, uh account management, things like that. Um but um the first class I went to, I think maybe two weeks into it, was I actually went to Salesforce, up to Salesforce, and I think it was a week or two in class learning to be an admin. So that was that's how I got to be an admin. There wasn't any online sort of options at the time, but I remember. Um we actually just had to go pay for pay for an admin, um, I don't know if admin 201, maybe that was the course, I can't remember, but I think it was a week or two of just like literally eight hours in class for that period of time. And I came out of it and I was like, oh, complete game changer for me. I'm like, my eyes are open, I'm ready to go. Um you know, so good.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

So you you so you actually took the uh the exam then, the 201 exam right after that coming out of the class?

SPEAKER_04 9:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and the the concept of certificate, like I was certified, I had that, you know, I have a little certificate somewhere still probably. Um, but you know, we didn't talk a lot about certifications at that time. We didn't have the ability to go to Trailhead and do free training. In fact, I just it's funny, I just mentored uh a guy I surf with quite often. He's he's he's a younger kid, he graduated from college like uh four or five years ago, he's probably in his mid-20s, wants to make a change. And he and I just talked to him. I was like, if you want to do something different and you want to be get more into the technology role, start taking trailheads, learn Salesforce. And sure enough, like a week later, the guy's like going out there and he's he's you know trying to get certified in a bunch of sales. So I guess the point is there's a lot of things that we have today that we didn't have in the past that people can take advantage of, and Salesforce provides it.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah, it yeah, they I mean the ton of learning resources, but the product is also huge, like it's absolutely huge. Um I I wouldn't be surprised if it's bigger than bigger than SAP now. Um that's probably an exaggeration, so though though back in 2008, right, you were working on SAP, they had SAP. Were they an SAP CRM? Like, wouldn't that be the obvious choice? And any reason they decided to go to Salesforce, like this brand new company.

SPEAKER_04 10:49

Yeah, C Gate wasn't on SAP at the time. They were, I mean, they were on Oracle. So why when I went back to C Gate in 2022, we we moved to SAP. So, in fact, the reason I went back there is I have a certain skill set in that SAP world. There was a challenge in that project, they needed my skill, and they they you know brought me over to to fix an issue uh to get that thing over the finish line, right? So um and it's around master data because I have a strong master data background, especially around parts and bombs. And in fact, back in the days they used to call me the parts and bombs guy at three com. Uh um, but anyway, um, you know, uh I think SIBOL, you know, a lot of companies had SIBOL. That was kind of a CRM back in those days. Um, and you know, it was I there's always a lot of complaints about that. SAP does have a CRM component, but I mean, let's be honest, um, all your ERP environments, right? And um they're really good about the planning, the purchasing, the manufacturing aspects, the financials, um, all that stuff is why you have an ERP environment, right? Um, typically, I haven't seen sort of modules within SAP, and they do have CRM capabilities, but most companies won't implement that. They will keep the focus on your financials, your planning, your manufacturing, the core skills or the core functionality that a uh an ERP environment does support. And usually they will have uh a different platform to manage their CRM, which is more focused on sales and marketing, and then in some cases service, right? So um, you know, I I don't think I've been at a company yet where um the entire stack is in one enterprise platform.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Yeah, uh I I don't think I've ever either. Actually, you do think quite a few are on Net Suite where they're using Net Suite CRM. Um, and you see a lot of migrations off Net Suite CRM and then they split in. Yeah, um, but that that one is fairly common, I think. Um though tell though I mean I worked in Europe for uh for a few years before going into the CRM space. Um so for a lot of listeners, they're more hardcore CRM people. And you kind of touched on it, right? When you think Europe, you're generally thinking financial accounting, maybe supply chain um stuff. But like, why don't you give our listeners like the core difference between CRM uh and Europe? And then maybe specifically in terms of architecture between SAP and and uh Salesforce?

SPEAKER_04 13:32

I mean, um to me they're very different platforms, obviously. Um and and I am sort of an ERP, I like I am a Salesforce proponent, love the system. Uh I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today if I didn't and believe in it. Um but ERP to me is is from a enterprise platform, it's the heartbeat of the company, um, for sure. Like you don't implement Salesforce to go address your uh core functions to um build a product, ship a product, and roll up your financials. Salesforce, that's not that's not a Salesforce thing. That is an ERP thing, whether it's Oracle or Net Suite or QAD or SAP, it doesn't really matter. Um, you know, your ERP environment is what drives that company from a systems perspective. CRM, um, you know, and you know, Salesforce specifically, again, um I don't think there's a better system out there that lets you scale. Uh, I don't think there's a better system out there that doesn't have the uh give give companies the ability just from an implementation perspective to pretty much uh get an instance. Um, you've got the built-in security model, you've got out-of-box data models that pretty much from the start, you could start managing leads, opportunities, accounts, uh, and easily scale it. Um, and and the other piece to it is CRM and ERP, um, there's gotta be an integration. You can't like your customer onboarding process, typically, for example, will start in your CRM uh and end in your ERP, right? Because ERP is always going to be, if you think about pure ERP and what it does for a company, your customer master is not, Salesforce is not the single source of truth of the customer master, typically when you've got these kinds of enterprise architectures. ERP is your final state for customers. Salesforce is good about uh the onboarding process, and there's got to be tight integrations. Um, but that's the difference. I mean, the difference really is your ERP is the heartbeat of the company. It's it's it's where you're gonna close your books at the end of the day. And Salesforce, um, when it comes to things like driving approvals, onboarding customers, even taking in orders to feed them to an ERP environment, um, having uh the ability to have an external portal for order intake and giving your partners and your customers the ability to see data that they need to see with even within your ERP system. Salesforce, I don't think there's a better solution. Um, because you're not going to give your external partners and your customers access to an ERP environment, but you can use Salesforce to facilitate what they need to see in terms of the transactions and other areas that they need to be aware of to drive decisions on their side.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Um yeah, because it goes back to the customer service, right? It's not just end of sale. Um it used to be, right? Yeah. Pre-sale, right? Marketing, sales, close the sale, goes to the ERP, um, do your billing, your financials. But now you have the customer service, you have to service them, and that's in CRM. Um, so you so you end up with a much tighter integration than you might have to. But it's true that the ERP generally maintains the core customer master um information. Uh though I the what I was really getting about when when talking about the differences uh uh you know a little bit on the R on the architecture, because like I said, our our listeners are are very familiar with with Salesforce architecture, but not necessarily um SAP. Um I I don't know SAP at all, like I like I said, I I assume they have a cloud product now, but I have no idea. It's not all on-prem. I assume back in in the 2000s you were working on on-prem systems, you were dealing with servers and uh and scale and maybe load balancers, um, direct database access, right? So there's some uh I guess really architectural differences that give you a different level of of not necessarily better, but a different mode of attack to solving problems. Um can you talk about that a bit?

SPEAKER_04 17:40

Yeah, yes, I'm not an ops guy, so um, you know, I don't want to butcher um data centers and servers and hardware and stuff like that. But the reality is, yeah, I mean, there I think there is a cloud product for SAP now, but I don't think you'll see many companies implement it. I think it's all pretty much still on-prem. Um, in fact, when I went back, I hadn't touched SAP for I don't know, 13 years when I went back to Seagate to to do that implementation. And um, I still had a local GUI on my machine um to you know drive transactions and see data and things like the same one that I worked with back in '95. It didn't change that much. Now they do have a web client now, that was kind of new. And they do have uh, I want to say it's called Fiore now, the ability to sort of build sort of more of a web-tiled app, like you know, kind of like you might see in a Salesforce portal or something like that. But at the end of the day, you know, when I went back and I logged on to SAP for the first time, uh, it was very much like 1995. And that's not to knock them because, you know, uh, in fact, when I went to look at a material and look at a bomb, the screens were exactly the same and the transaction codes were the same, which isn't is actually kind of a good thing because if you know you can it's sustained that same sort of architecture and functionality over a long period of time. Um but it is still pretty much on-prem. I don't, I don't think I heard there are some smaller companies that can implement a cloud version, but I'm not sure how I don't know how much how big it is in terms of your ability to scale and in terms of volume. So um, you know, when we it it is an on-prem still. So architecturally, it's not a cloud product. Now, I think probably NetSuite uh is um uh QAD is sort of a smaller ERP uh system that I've worked with in the past. Um, you know, again, doing a lot of what other ERPs do, um, they have a cloud product, but I don't think you would ever see an Apple or uh a Seagate or a Cisco or anybody like that implementing something like that um to drive their business.

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Even a new implementation.

SPEAKER_04 19:43

No, I I highly doubt it. I don't, you know, I mean, if you think about all the you know, the big six, you know, the big companies out there, right? The big high-tech companies, especially, they're they're either running Oracle or SAP. I'm you know, pretty much guarantee that in in terms of their their primary enterprise platform for ERP. Um mid-sized smaller companies are likely running Net Suite. Um, there's probably a lot of I think QAD is used in a lot of med tech companies. Um, but you're not gonna see a scenario where uh at least today, uh, you know, an apple is gonna go, hey, we're gonna we're gonna re-implement SAP and it's gonna be a cloud version because I just don't think they have the ability to scale it the same way they do with on-prem. Um so you do have to give it data with data centers and servers and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Would they move their infrastructure to like a cloud infrastructure? I can't make that service. I guess you're running your servers as virtual servers in Azure or AWS and yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:45

Yes, yes, they can. I I'll I'll give you a funny story. So um back in uh ear probably the 2000 time from early 2000s when I was at at 3COM, we had our own data center, right? We had an entire like floor. Uh and we moved uh one of the things I was tasked with was hey, we want to move our data center. At the time, I think uh the company was called EDS, right? So they were basically a uh data center as a service to some extent. And it's funny, I think about that, and we did. We moved all the hardware, they were gonna support it. Um, and um, it was a big undertaking, and SAP was included in that. And um uh the the funny thing about it was I look at that as like the kind of a pivot point when the the cloud kind of concept started coming out because now we don't have hardware, we're just managing our sort of applications, and someone else is worried about all the other performance and load balancing and uh and that kind of thing. Obviously, you pay for that, but um yeah, I mean, um, you know, you can certainly have uh, you know, your all your all your enterprise stuff hosted by a cloud, but um it's sitting on servers in a data center somewhere, you you you might not have to to to manage it yourself. So you might not have to have all the ops, but um I think in the C in the case of C It, I think they did manage. I think we still had a big data center.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Yeah, it's it's expensive. Infrastructure services hit the expensive, and you really, really gotta watch the um, you know, watch the you know the burn um of that. It's one of my pet peeves, honestly, even today. It's like I gotta control when the when the machine powers on, when the machine powers off, um, how many CPU cycles am I paying for, you know, um left over, right? Or or like always on. Um, anyhow, um, that's a topic of this. So though what about some other differences? Let's say let's talk about like implementation, like when you're planning SAP, SAP gets a bad wrap, right? Let's not beat around the bush. It gets a bad wrap as something that's really difficult um to implement, prone to failure, costs four million dollars and takes three years, right? Um, I mean, obviously I'm exaggerating a bit. I I don't know if to the small SAP implementation, never heard of one, but maybe there is. Um, so is there well let's start with there any truth to that? Um and are things done differently than in the Salesforce world where it tends to be a little bit more at least the reputation is right to be more agile and yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:24

I lost you guys for a sec, but yeah, I I um I got I got I think I got all your questions. So let me let me start with um let me start with the the the myth. Um SP does get a bad rap, but uh we can't blame the systems, right? You gotta blame sort of the implementation and the approach to the implementation. The system is not the problem typically. Um so that's one thing. The second thing is um I've never been on a bad implementation. So, you know, I don't know if you know, I I have you know, I haven't done hundreds, but um I've done quite a few big ones um at large companies. And I'll tell you, like the first one I did, we implemented SAP in four and a half months. Now we and we did it not with a big IT team. In fact, I wasn't even in IT at the time. I was pulled from the business because I pretty much helped write all the ISO 9000. I knew I knew how everything worked at that company. I'd been there for so long, and so did the person next to me who was a finance person, and the person behind me who was kind of on the sales and distribution side, and then one other person on the purchasing side. They picked four people from the business and they partnered us with a premier uh consultant that taught us how to implement the system basically. And we did it in four and a half months. And at the time, you know, we're talking in the 90s, smaller company, um, not you know, it was a private company, but it was a pretty complex implementation, and we went live. Our target was four months, we extended it by a half month. And I think I you know, I don't remember the exact cost, but I think it was like four million dollars. And there was a formula to that success, uh, which I can lead into. Um at 3COM, uh, I went over there to help with their SAP implementation. We went through multiple regional phases. Um that took years, that was like a three-year project, and I don't know the cost. I was, you know, it was probably lower than my pay grade at that at that time to understand that or know that. But um the reality was over those three years, you know, we had successful implementations. We got everybody you know on the system. Um, and I think there were, I think that was another man man to SAP implementation. Man's kind of, you know, those those of us that are you know maybe at my age know about man man, which is the old ERP of the of the past. Um about six months after we went live with the last one, we ended up going, we there's just too much customization and the products you know have changed, and we just need to re-implement it. And then we re-implemented it successfully, somewhat painfully, in six months. Full global big bang. Um, and then you know, you know, fast forward to to you know me join rejoining Seagate to do uh uh an SAP implementation. Um, you know, I think I joined, I don't know, I want to say a year and a half into it. Um, and it was about another year and a half to implement. And I will tell you, probably one of the most successful things I've been part of, amazing team. Um, you know, uh zero consultants, uh, no big sixes, right? Um, and we literally turned the lights on on July 4th and went live, and very few bumps in the road. And there is, there's a formula to all of this. And it doesn't, to me, it doesn't matter if it's an ERP system or a CRM system, right? Um, so we can talk about that formula. I mean, I have some thoughts, I could share that. Um, but that's kind of my experience on the SAP side. Did I cover all your questions so far?

SPEAKER_01 26:56

Well, except how it's different in Salesforce, but you seem to be saying that it's the same in terms of process. Um go ahead. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

I think it's the same. Like I don't think um, you know, any implementation you do, it doesn't really matter what system it is. Um, it's not the system that's gonna fail, it's the approach you take to implement that system. So, for example, every everywhere I've ever gone, when people bring up problems to me and say, Oh, the system's broken or uh we need to implement this and we're struggling or whatever, my first question is let's not worry about the technology, let's talk about the process, right? We we know the system can support the process, even even the out-of-box functionality, right? Typically, that's you you pick a product based on what it can do for you. Um, but it's really the business process that's gonna drive how you implement that system. It's also the business process that's gonna tell us do we need to really customize or can we think different? Can we change our processes to align to uh a more best practice that the system helps us get to? Right? So you start at the process layer and you actually start to talk about what is it, you know, what do we do today and how do we do it? You put boxes and arrows together and you have those deeper conversations, but to have those conversations, you got to make sure that if you're it you're kind of you're you're on a journey here to to to implement something new. Again, it doesn't matter if it's Salesforce or SAP or Oracle or whatever, you got to have the right people in place. Like you can hire a big six or uh you know, or a big five or whatever, you know, or a boutique even to come in and help you do it. But at the end of the day, it's the internal people that are gonna help you make drive that success. And you can't involve everybody, but you got to have transformers and superusers that can actually help start answering those business process questions and documenting things. Um, and as you're doing that, as you're working with those people that have all that knowledge of how things are done at that company, whatever it is, you can actually start to proof of concept things in those technologies that you've selected and show them how it works out of box, and then start to pivot and start to find the it depends and start to sort of adjust as needed, right? Everybody goes into a project typically, those again, doesn't matter what type of technology we're talking about. A lot of people go in, we need to we need to go out of box and vanilla, right? Um, but until you start to drive into those, dive into those processes, you don't know if you can go out of box or vanilla or if it's you know vanilla with a few sprinkles. So I'm that those are some of the the keys to success, I would say. And then the other thing is where I've seen like things go well and things fail, is um, especially with bigger implementations, getting stakeholder alignment up front, especially at the steer code level, is critical. If you don't do that, uh there's gonna be a lot of challenges, both from a change management perspective as well as setting the expectations that any implementation you do, Salesforce, ERP, doesn't matter. Um it requires a lot of business partnership. Like IT can't do it alone, because at the end of the day, it's not IT that's gonna be the end user of the system. So setting the expectations with the right folks in all the different functional groups is very important. And some of those expectations is, you know, it could be you're gonna have to spend 30% of your time uh in a given month uh working through requirements, documenting things, uh, organizing user acceptance tests, all that kind of stuff. Like these are all sort of formulas that I've seen succeed when you've got all that lined up up front. Um, and where things start to fail is you know, when you're not controlling your scope and you don't have the right business folks, and the functional groups can't align, and people really don't understand, and you haven't started to document those business processes, that's where things start to go haywire. And to be honest, again, um it's not the system that's the problem, it's it's the process and it's it's the it's the project approach and the program approach that you take.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Yeah, uh, I think you kind of hinted at it, it's not just the people, but it's uh it's the team, right? How well they work together. I think um Yeah, yeah, a team of let's say mediocre people will probably outperform that works well together, will probably outperform a team of superstars that for whatever reason can't work well together.

SPEAKER_04 31:28

Yeah. It's funny when uh again, just I'll use SAP as uh or Seagate's implementation as a good example. Um a lot of the people that I had success with implementing back in you know the 90s and 2000s, in terms of where I was then. When I when I went back to Seagate, and I I I think I left for only like two and a half years, um pretty much everybody that um I had worked with to do a successful implementation there was who I worked with at 3COM back in the days. I mean, it was like a full-on reunion. And you know, these are all people that were part of the same success stories that that I was part of. Um, and you know, the just so happened that the CIO uh at Seagate at the time uh was someone that I worked with at 3COM. And um that same person, um, those folks that were there had followed him through sort of a lot of the his journey and been part of other successful implementations. So I guess the point is like on the IT side, if you can, if you have a lot of trust and faith in the people that can do the right thing, because you've seen them do it time and time again, you'll see those people at at companies later on doing the same things that they did in the past. And that formula that I talk about, it's no different today. Um, everything I talked about is how we implemented it at logistics. Everything I talked about is how we drove success at 3COM. So um, yeah, I mean it's it's the people on both sides too. It's IT, right? Um, it's if you have partners, IT has to work with those partners, and those partners, if there's a true partnership and uh alignment and they've got the the right uh skill sets to help you get over the hurdles you have, that's important. But I I would argue that um aligning with the business, both at all levels, they are the ones that um ultimately are who have the go-no-go decision. They're the ones that actually have to do all the user acceptance testing, they're the end users. Um, and if you don't have them involved early and you don't set the expectations of the amount of work it's gonna take to do it, uh whatever the implementation is up front, things are gonna go haywire towards the end. That's typically where you start to see, oh my gosh, we don't have resources, oh my gosh, we we're in a critical month or critical quarter, and there's too much volume, and we can't support this. And and those are the kinds of things that start to go awry. And then on top of that, if you're not establishing what the business processes are up front, right? You know, if if you didn't document them well, you didn't have good conversations up front, what you're gonna find is halfway through people are gonna go, oh, we forgot about this. Right. And it's a big thing. So now we've got to add scope, right? And so these are all the things that and and that happens in every project. It's how you control them that that I think is uh you know how you drive that success. So change management, scope creep, these are all things that again parallels, like there's no difference, doesn't matter what system you're talking about, you're gonna have those challenges in in every system implementation, doesn't matter what platform.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

I I definitely uh concur to that thought process. Um I was fortunate enough to recruit in Europe um and being based obviously from the UK. Uh SAP is huge in Europe, right? Um, Germany, Holland, uh in particular, manufacturing, supply chain, logistics, uh, pharmaceutical, those types of industries is a go-to for those. And one of the biggest reasons we heard for project failure was actually countries where the the companies are so huge, right? Uh as you'd expect with an SAP ERP implementation, but each country would want SAP to work in a different way, and there'd be so many nuances between languages, currencies, um, ways of working, cultures. Um, you know, that would often coming back to change management, most of them would fail because Germany would want it built out differently to how the Dutch would want it built out, and they would want it completely different to how America wanted it to be built out. And that was surprisingly one of the biggest reasons we would constantly hear about why an SAP project failed. Is that anything? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:06

Yeah, I mean that that's exactly like I'll take again the three-com scenario, right? Uh what's funny is is some of the folks that my first implementation, they're they're out in Luton. Uh, and I spent I spent an entire month at Go Live in St. Albans. So I I you know uh uh I've actually done the uh what is it, the uh the magic roundabout in Hamel, right? The the crazy one. I don't know if you know that, but uh it's a little hard to navigate in a car. Um but yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yeah. Um but anyway, I I digress. But the the reality was that was part of the challenge, right? We we had a regionally sort of uh, you know, it was a global company at the time. Three comm is not even a company anymore, but um uh that's a different story. Um but uh yeah, I mean we were focused on AMIA, and then we put the focus on the Americas because that's where we did a lot of manufacturing, and then we had an Israel component. So there, you know, we did a very regional rollout, but you're right. I mean, when you when you open it that way, um there were a lot of it depends, right? Where uh how AMIA wanted to drive things uh was different. And even even in that AMIA rollout, um the you know, we had multiple plants, right? We and we had we had sites in Ireland, we had sites in the UK. How they did things uh with very similar processes and needs in between Ireland and the UK was very different, right? And so what we ended up with in the end, like when everything was said and done, we had a lot of customization and a lot of it depends type scenarios, and that's why there was a decision at some point to go, let's let's bag everything we just did and re-implement and and do it in a more standard way, which you know, by the way, there's it was it was more vanilla with uh you know, maybe a little bit more sprinkles on top. So um, but yeah, you're right. I mean, global implementations definitely um add to those challenges for sure.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

So uh we know SAP is global, um, and I think most people listening will know or have heard of SAP, but in preparation for this episode, I was doing some fact finding on SAP. Um, won't surprise you to probably know it's the number one ERP vendor uh out there. Um but I'll ask you both this question: what percentage of global transactions from a revenue standpoint across the world do you think touch an SAP system?

SPEAKER_04 38:31

That's an interesting I I wouldn't even know. Um hazard a guess. Hazard a guess, like a percentage of global transactions? I don't know. Uh let's see. Let me think about this really quick because I know companies that aren't SAP. I don't know. I'm gonna I'm gonna maybe this is even low, but I'll say 85%.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

85%? If I'm gonna answer this, um I'm gonna go higher only because of the wording of your question. You're not asking the final transaction was an SAP. You're asking touched an SAP, which means raw materials, write the components somewhere. It's it's probably closer to 95%.

SPEAKER_02 39:13

It's actually 77%, which I thought was still a lot. So three quarters of the revenue in this in this world, yeah, go touches uh an SAP system at some point. Um 99 of the hundred top uh 100 largest companies in the world use SAP in some context. Um, it has over 460,000 customers across 140 company uh countries, uh 31 billion revenue. What I thought was interesting because we touched on the cloud piece. So of the 460,000 customers, 23,000 of those customers are using their new cloud product. Um so obviously it's I mean, quick math, that's less than five percent, about five percent, right? So only five percent of its customers are using their cloud product, but I suspect over the next few years that might might increase, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:06

I would imagine. I mean, I had a mancast. You have a sales standard for Salesforce?

SPEAKER_02 40:14

We'll come back to Salesforce then. So so um a couple couple of quick again, quick questions, just just you know, um initial kind of 30 seconds thoughts. Uh, how how how would you compare Salesforce and SAP? Uh I'll ask you a couple of quick questions or topics. Firstly, from a customization approach, uh, how would you compare Salesforce to SAP?

SPEAKER_04 40:37

Uh way easier. Um, you know, it's it's not it's still not that easy to customize SAP, I'd say by design, right? Um, you know, for the most part. Um, but I would also argue that your ability to scale and customize on Salesforce can be your best friend and sometimes a company's worst enemy, really, um, because of what you can do and how quick you can do it.

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Probably an obvious one, but what about implementation speed?

SPEAKER_04 41:06

Uh for sure, implementing Salesforce is gonna be a lot faster. Uh, and I would say you have a lot less risk to deal with. Um, not saying there's not risk, not saying there's not complexities, but um, you know, if I think about most SAP or most Salesforce implementations, they're gonna be you know focused more on the CRM and service side um than anything. So you don't touch every functional group. And so your user base is probably even less, even even at a large company that has a large uh group of large number of users. There's gonna be fewer users probably that are touching your CRM than your ERP.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Okay. What about uh from a user adoption or or kind of UI differences that that you know when you've gone live, um, what what are the the kind of users experiencing in terms of like ability to then maybe maybe a power user to to understand the platform? Um obviously we know Salesforce has this drop drag and drop type approach, but how would you compare the user adoption UI differences between the two?

SPEAKER_04 42:10

I think the the general user experience on Salesforce um is far easier for users to um to understand and adapt to than even SAP. I mean, um, but like I said, I mean uh SAP, like when I logged on for the first time in 13 years, um it was pretty much the same screen I saw, you know, um even further back. So um, but the the the user experience on an ERP environment, especially you know, the older school ones that that you know, even uh even I'll be honest, even on the web front end, I didn't find it as as uh uh rich of an experience as I find when I log into a Salesforce environment.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

What about upgrades and and general maintenance? Now, obviously Salesforce has three upgrades a year, but I don't know if SAP does, or is it more of a manual upgrade? How does that compare?

SPEAKER_04 43:07

Uh upgrades are a project, sometimes a program in SAP. Yeah, it's not, it's it's it's a lot more challenging, a lot more risk. Um, you know, getting getting those those uh I I rarely worry about a seasonal update from Salesforce uh affecting me.

SPEAKER_02 43:26

But you would SAP potentially.

SPEAKER_04 43:29

Uh it's not automatic, so um the the the worry there is that you've actually got to um you gotta you gotta put a team around it and you gotta do some testing. It's you know it it's a bigger program.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Do you skip versions?

SPEAKER_04 43:43

It's it's not an implementation, but it's uh it's it's pretty sizable. Whereas you know, things happen automatically in Salesforce, and yeah, sometimes you gotta you gotta make sure that you know if you build some customizations, you gotta make sure you you plan for them, but it's completely. Different scale.

SPEAKER_02 44:02

Uh Maz, I think you uh gonna ask a question on that.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Yeah, I was asking you ever just skip versions.

SPEAKER_04 44:10

You can skip, you don't, I mean, you can still be on a down red version of SAP and run your business. Um, you know, um, there are certain cases I think in the past that I've seen they start to to not support you, but um uh it was rare. Um so you can absolutely skip versions and and upgrade SAP later.

SPEAKER_02 44:29

What about um last quote last one for the comparison piece for now, but what about like general out-of-the-box capabilities? Do you find Salesforce have more of that? Does SAP?

SPEAKER_04 44:43

No, I mean you can um the out-of-box functionality in SAP exists. I mean, you do have to configure things and set up and it it's actually very similar. You you know, you've got to set up like if you're talking about material master, for example, there's that you have to set up your material groups and your basic stuff, and right, but out of box, you could pretty much uh jump into the system with minimal configuration and start creating records and transactions for the most part. Um, you know, similar to you know, in in the other unique thing is typically with European environments, um, you know, I'll talk SAP more. Um, you actually do have to set up your financial org structure, your sales, your plant. Um, like you have an org structure you have to set up. You can't do anything until you do that. If I were to get uh an environment today, a brand new brand spank a new Salesforce environment and I spun it up, you know, I can start creating accounts, right? I can put an account, it's got the address. I mean, so it's um you know, out-of-box functionality in both systems is there. I would say Salesforce pretty much you uh your ability to to go fast is is probably higher.

SPEAKER_02 45:52

Awesome. So moving forwards to the present, you're with Verasite. Um what what are you doing, I guess, from a Salesforce standpoint for for them? Um again, sharing what you can um as some of it is is is perhaps ongoing as as we speak, but what what how are they using Salesforce? What are your plans looking forward to the future, the next six, twelve months? What what are your goals and aspirations and projects uh during your time there?

SPEAKER_04 46:23

Yeah, it's a it's a core platform, um, for sure. Uh um it's definitely core and enterprise uh to us. Um, you know, it's used for ordering and other things. So um uh VeriSite uh you know acquired uh a company Decipher, I don't know, three years ago. Um obviously they have their own systems, part of that stacks Salesforce. Um and so you know, part of you know, I'm trying to do a few things. One thing I'm trying to sort of modernize and simplify and uh also uh consolidate. So that's kind of what's on my my plate. Um, you know, obviously when you inherit uh systems uh and you try to merge systems and processes, um, there are challenges in that. And that's kind of what my focus is is trying to get get us to a point where you know we've uh we're modernizing and simplifying, really.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

What are you um most looking forward to about Salesforce going into 2025? Um maybe it's agent force, maybe it's AI, but but but anything else that's kind of capturing your attention?

SPEAKER_04 47:36

Yeah, you know, um, like I said, I haven't even looked into Agent Force. I've had a lot of other things um to focus on, on the even on the Salesforce side. Um I am interested in it. Um, you know, we are a healthcare company, so AI is a little scary. Um, you know, we've got a lot more compliance type things with you know PHI and things like that we have to worry about. So um, you know, what am I excited about Salesforce uh, you know, in the future? Um I guess one thing I learned which was interesting is there's potentially some out of uh 2025, I heard is gonna have some connectors that potentially give you the ability to connect to systems like NetSuite without having to go through a middleware. I think that's pretty exciting if that's if that's really uh on that roadmap and something we're gonna get. Um doesn't change things for me that much today, but I think that's a good opportunity. I mean, if you can simplify your architectural stack and you know almost build point like point-to-point solutions between or integrations between systems without having to have middleware, that that's kind of interesting to me, right? I mean, you know, typically you've got a MuleSoft or a Boomi or a Tibco or whatever in the middle of all that. So that's that's cool. That's exciting. I'm like, I've been fired up on Flow since it came out. Like I feel like they're gonna continue to um provide functionality just with flow. And if I'm being honest, it's a game changer. And if you're a developer today, um, you know, I think a lot of developers fear a declarative, uh, you know, the clicks before code uh functionality sometimes. But the reality is I think to build good complex uh solutions, even in a declarative model, you actually have to understand development. Um, and so I think that you're I you know I'm guessing, but um I'm I feel like it's a pretty good guess. Flow is going to continue to change and it's gonna continue to evolve and for the better. Um, and that better is being able to have people allow people to scale much faster to build solutions. Like that that's what I'm excited about.

SPEAKER_02 49:46

Matt, so obviously you your background's uh heavy, heavy focus on on data and integrations and so on. Um have you heard anything around that as well? What what Dave mentioned?

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Uh so data cloud, I believe, does have a net suite connector. I know CRMA had one for quite some time to bring data in. I have not heard about pushing data back out to Net Suite. Um, I know obviously natively Data Cloud does with sync out to uh um not sync out uh zero copy right back out to Snowflake. But I've not heard about a native outbound integration to Net Suite. That's something you actually heard of, or yeah, I heard it the other day.

SPEAKER_04 50:27

No, it was it was it was a true two-way integration, is what I what I gathered, but I it it could have been bad information, but um you know I was like all fired up all of a sudden, like well, this is this would be awesome. Like, if we can actually do that, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

Um save a lot of time, a lot of resource costs, and so on, I'd imagine.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

Well, I mean, the temples obviously in details, right? Um, but there's a lot of tools on the market now that do it pretty straightforward. The question is the mapping and then the transformations and and all of that stuff, right? Because you have to create an order going the other way, yeah, right? Consuming data. Okay, yeah. So it's it's an interesting place for I think Salesforce to go. I'm not surprised that a product like that would come on the market. It would just surprising that it would be native. Um, so I don't know, you'll see. We'll see what it looks like.

SPEAKER_04 51:19

Yeah, you know, it's funny. If you know, if I like I I I I've developed on Boomi, so you know, usually when you're building your your process on a on a Boomi platform, you're you know, you're consuming the the model here, consuming the model there, you're building your process and then you're mapping data, right? So um I can kind of like, you know, you know, I'm speculating here, but you theoretically, like if I think about building a flow in Salesforce, uh, if there's a connection that you could build with a you know external environment, an ERP, whatever it is, right? A lot of what I would do in Boomi, I don't know why I couldn't do it in Flow if that that capability existed, right? So I I don't know. It I was very excited about I don't know if it's it could be a rumor, uh, and hopefully I didn't spread a rumor, but the reality is if it's true, um, yeah, I think it's again another game changer. And again, I think it probably would have a component to flow.

SPEAKER_01 52:12

So safe harbor. Safe harbor.

SPEAKER_04 52:15

Yeah, here's my safe, where's my little like safe hard, you know.

SPEAKER_02 52:19

In in a year's time, if it if if it doesn't happen, we'll edit, we'll edit it out and repost the the episode. Um I just want to finish up um on Dreamforce. So I thought uh one thing that was really interesting was you were one of the first that I know uh early um I don't know a lot of people, but you know, early kind of speakers at Dreamforce. I believe it was 2008, which was when you were invited by Salesforce to talk at Dreamforce for the first time, right?

SPEAKER_04 52:52

I think it was 2008 or 2009, yeah. It was early, early days. Yeah. I want to say it was either I I I I based my Dream Force on the concert. So my first one was Foo Fighters, uh awesome, by the way. Uh, and then the second one, I think it was the Stevie Wonder one, which might have been 2009. I can't remember now, but um yeah, I mean it was it was at least 2009, I don't think it was 2008.

SPEAKER_02 53:17

Okay. Uh Food Fighters did perform more recently, so just for for people who know, I think I think that yeah, they were there. I managed to see them there. I would also agree with your assessment there, so you got good taste. Um, but um, have you been back to Dream Force since? Like how how if so, how is that compared to like when you went? And are you gonna go, I guess, in 2025?

SPEAKER_04 53:39

Yeah, uh, I'll be honest, I haven't been to Dream Force since uh the last time I went was uh Green Day. Uh again, concert, right? Um, which was uh it was either Green Day Day or Food Fighters, or not Food Fighters, but uh Red Hot Chili Peppers in San Francisco. It was the year before you had to um it was so big that they had to actually start uh bringing in cruise ships. So whatever year that was, I don't remember. That was the last time I yeah, yeah. Uh these might have been even before that, actually. Um, but that was the last time I went. Um part of it was it just it got overwhelming, it got too big, and honestly, we just had a lot going on uh at the time, so it just didn't make sense. And I was like, give my ticket to somewhere, someone else. And um speaking at Dream Force by then, I just it was a little, I mean, you know, it's it's was probably one of the best and remote most rewarding experiences because I um, you know, made a lot of good connections and you know, I felt like I had a lot of good content to share. I think I did three, four, five sessions maybe in the span of three years, I think it was something to that effect. Um, some bigger, some smaller, some panel. I did one with a couple Facebook guys. Um, but yeah, I mean it's it's a lot of prep and it's a lot of, you know, I didn't when I was going to Dreamforce to do those events, um, my ability to do a lot of sessions was limited because you were, you know, obviously nervous, you're gonna go speak in front of potentially hundreds of people, and you gotta prepare, and then there's questions. So um, yeah, I mean, like I said, it's it's rewarding. Um, I'm glad they asked us asked me to do it and go. And you know, I feel like people came up to me and had a lot of uh good feedback and asked a lot of good questions, and I think I enlightened them in some cases, but yeah, I mean, do I plan on going back to Dream for Dream Force? Um, yeah, my account team at Salesforce really wants me to. Um, but to some extent, um I, you know, I think I'd rather have uh people from my team go and and then report back. Um, but um yeah, I mean it's just a lot. Um, and when and I've got a lot of my plate already. So dream for Dream Force this year, I may just send someone else. We'll see.

SPEAKER_02 55:56

I think it's a good incentive for someone on the team, right? You could always put like a vote system for you know the rest of the business who who influenced them who was the biggest help when it came to the Salesforce team, or something like you know, best performer, because I think it is an experience that everyone should experience. Um there's nothing like it, right? And and I can see how for an admin or a developer, an architect, even you know, it is a big deal, and it's cool to tick it off and experience the Ohana and it's all its glory. So I think that's a good idea. Um, and I'm not on commission for ticket sales, I'm just saying it from my own experience. Um, but uh, but awesome. Okay. Well, uh, I guess any other events that you're interested in this year outside of Salesforce, any other conferences that are on your list or anything local to you that networking-wise?

SPEAKER_04 56:48

No, I mean, uh, like I said, I've got I've got a lot going on. My team's got a lot going on. So um, you know, I would say 2026, hopefully things start to settle down, and you know, maybe I'll be a dream force, maybe I'll go this route. I don't know. But uh no, I mean there's not a lot of uh conferences that I'm interested in going to right now. Um every day I feel like I'm heads down and and you know solving good problems.

SPEAKER_02 57:12

So good. All right. Well, well, Dave, um, we really appreciate you taking the time uh with us today to share more about um sap, CRM, nuances between the two, pros and cons, benefits, things to know. We covered a lot of ground in in the episode, so really appreciate your time.

unknown 57:32

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 57:32

Yeah, hopefully you guys found this useful. I appreciate it. It's a lot of fun for me. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:37

Absolutely. Um for our listeners, please do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show for more episodes featuring leaders like Dave, um, who are shaping the CRM and ERP space in this case. And uh, you can follow us for more exclusive content on LinkedIn and YouTube uh for the future.