SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome! You are listening to the CRM Success Show, where you will hear from CRM executives who have overseen some of the most interesting and complex CRM implementations. Your hosts, David Mastri and 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_03 0:30

Welcome to the CRM Success Show, where we deep dive into CRAM success and failure, delivering real stories with real impact. I'm Dave Masri. And I'm Kirawitzi. And today we're talking with Hans Tiefenthaler, the director of Salesforce and CRAM platforms at Access Telecare. So welcome, Hans.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Thanks for having me. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

All right, Hans, we're going to keep it real simple to kick things off today. Please give our listeners an overview, couple of minute version of your role, background, and current company you're supporting.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Yeah, so uh I've been doing Salesforce for about 15 years. Uh started in-house uh at Constant Contact, the email software, email marketing software provider. Um got my start there, went to um Athena Health for a couple of years and built out uh basically like CPQ uh using Spring CM, which is a pretty complex solution. Um and then was at Gear CRM, now Raptor One for seven and a half years. Um went from being a uh senior consultant, running the projects, doing the test scripts, you know, building out different functionality and you know, working with our customers, and then um, you know, kind of progressed into the solution architect uh path there. So a lot of that you know became basically kind of the upfront um hybrid kind of pre-sales as well as uh delivery. And so working with customers, defining what they needed, working with the project team, getting things baked, and then um kind of starting to back off as as they were off and off to the races. And then uh was at Rose Tree Solutions for about two years uh and then went to Thunder. Uh, and then I ended up coming across um uh across this role at Access Telecare as a CRM director or director of Salesforce and CRM. Um so I joined in November and have been here for just over three months now.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Fantastic. So um journey started out in-house um with Salesforce, correct at Athena Health uh back in 2013.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Constant contact way back when, yeah. Even prior. So yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

So in-house, decade of of consulting experience uh for some big big name partners, um, and then doing kind of full circle uh moment by joining Access Telecare uh and like you said, just just kind of done your first full quarter with a business, correct?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Correct, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

So so um for those who might not be aware, uh Access Telecare, my my understanding is that and you can correct me, hands, if if if I'm wrong, but they're essentially a telemedicine provider uh in virtual care solutions, um hospitals, health systems, and so on, correct?

SPEAKER_01 3:10

In a in a very basic sense, yeah. We're we're a uh we call ourselves a technology enabled physicians group. And so a little bit different about what we do is we have specialty providers. So we actually run uh code blues, acute stroke, septic shock, um, different, you know uh true specialties. We have infectious disease specialists, maternal fetal medicine. Uh so if you have sniffles and you're like, hey, should I get some antibiotics? Um, that's you wouldn't talk to one of our doctors. We kind of say people talk to our doctors on some of the worst days that they have. Um so very, very kind of niche and a little bit different than the standard kind of telecare, um, but definitely within that realm.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

Awesome. And um, I was did a bit of research prior. Uh, one out of five US hospitals uh you cover, which is quite phenomenal, really. Uh especially for a yeah, I always like to see a company based out of Dallas uh as well, being being uh you know a an honorary text and living here now. So um Dallas-based business has been going for about 20 years, serving 20% of the hospitals in the US. Um, seven million patients, um, I would I was reading. So carrying your weight in the space, it's fair to say.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Absolutely, yeah. It's uh very, very cool company, very cool space. Uh, and you know, I I think what's what's great too is that the you know, within underserved communities, um, you know, less affluent zip codes that they're able to now have access to specialty care that they wouldn't normally have. Um, you know, we hear all these stories of people that are in a hospital that don't have the specialist, that you know would have had to ship them out, or Medevat couldn't fly, and and one of our providers is able to help you know save save lives.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Good stuff. Um so so really real good business, doing real, real good things, um, serving people who need it most. So um so so your role, director of Salesforce and CRM platforms, what does that encompass?

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So uh a lot of what it says, uh, but you know, it's a pretty dynamic role. So um I you know I've got a uh handful of in-house folks and then a handful of uh contractors who are offshore. Um and so we we work to basically develop you know Salesforce and customize it to meet the needs of the business, as you might imagine. Um and you know, my role kind of spans everything from uh leading the team, uh leading the architecture, working with the team to make sure that we've you know vetted the design is gonna work with what the business needs. Um and then also you know, a bit of uh project management, working with our project manager uh and you know, kind of stakeholder management. So it's uh very dynamic and uh a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Good stuff. Um in terms of the usage of Salesforce, how how is that currently used? Is it core cloud? Is it a health cloud? Are you doing anything on the FSL side? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Yep. So we've got sales service, um, and then we are in the middle of a large, complex field service implementation, um, which is pretty unique too, because it's uh we're we're not actually dispatching providers, right? They're all remote. So we're using field service mostly for the scheduling engine and uh and trying to optimize you know between different facilities in different time zones, providers who are available in different time zones at different times of day, uh, and also physicians who are able to work at a facility based on their state license, their um credentialing within the facility, their privileges to work within the facility, and their specialty, and then trying to kind of line all that up so that we've got the best care and the and the best coverage for our customers.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Fantastic. Yeah, and then rough rough size in terms of number of users, Salesforce users, what does that look like?

SPEAKER_01 6:55

So we bought uh 300 internal users and then uh 700 uh or so clinicians uh who they don't really log into Salesforce, they're more um set up just so that we can we can schedule them with field service.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

All right. So you brought in a quarter, uh just over a quarter ago. Um I guess what what was the mandate? Why did they bring you in?

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Uh the the other uh director actually decided to go from in-house back into consulting. Uh so uh we we kind of ships passing in the night. I went from consulting back to in-house.

SPEAKER_03 7:31

Oh wow. So uh so you guys felt yeah. So so what what did you walk into? Like were you in the middle of a project? Were you like you know, getting something started up? Was it a mess?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Uh yeah, you know, it was um the the team had been working really hard and um you know to get field service off the ground. Uh we previously were on shift experts, so like the uh legacy click software uh field service model, and that went end of life on January 25th this year. And so we were up against a deadline trying to get everything in. Um the project, you know, the team is super resilient, has a lot of tenacity and grit, and they um made it work, right? And so basically kind of launched field service, I think um, I think about nine days after I started or so. Uh so I was I was more in the passenger seat for that, but we we got that live. Um, you know, given the timeline, I think there we definitely saw a lot of bugs, a lot of issues and different things that needed to get cleaned up. And so December, you know, end of November into December was a bit of a firefight, just kind of stabilizing things. Um and as we looked into it, uh, you know, the team had gotten into a point where we needed to make it work. And uh the the way the the kind of it was a little bit more of a brute force approach at the end. Um, so using uh Apex basically to create service appointments and get them available so that people could be scheduled. Um, so you know, my first few weeks were really kind of working with the team, understanding where we were, and then uh trying trying to kind of figure out how we could use more native field service functionality. And so going into uh January was really more of like a re-architecture exercise, um, getting maintenance plans, work rules, uh those kind of figured out so we could move away from our custom work and into the into the native engine.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

So it it sounds like you came in, nine days later they launched, um and then you uh you immediately ran into some issues. Was that like planned? Like it was a planned fast follow, as you would call in the consulting world, or was just like this requirements? Like what happened there?

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Uh the you know, I mean, the business is super complicated, right? Uh when a service appointment is completed, we have our proprietary software that um looks at the service appointments to figure out which doctor, which clinician's available. Um, and that does the routing, like kind of if a nurse enters an encounter for a patient, uh, it's gonna say who's on shift and then route it outside of Salesforce. Uh as those encounters come in and people are saying, you know, what was the ICD 10 code? Basically, you know, like what are we gonna build for? What should the uh clinician be paid? All that runs back in Salesforce. And so there were a lot of um just a lot of complexities that I think weren't uncovered with with the timeline that the team had. And so it was it was just a bit of um just a bit of cleanup and probably probably could have uh benefited from additional time testing. Uh and then there were also you know moving from shift expert into sales in into field service, uh, because it was all new objects, right? All the 900 reports that people ran to tell a facility which provider was going to be on next month, um, those all had to be rebuilt. All the list views that they were using to uh filter and see who's on shift and do I have a do I have a gap in coverage? Do I have enough you know coverage here or not? Um, all those had to be rebuilt. So it was it was a lot of kind of catch-up um in addition to some stabilization of the downstream uh downstream automations that we have.

SPEAKER_03 11:33

So it sounds like um it may be a misunderstanding, but it sounds like sorry, too. So again, you started there, you launched. Were you was this planned that you were going to continue to build out field service um and make tweaks like that was expected? Or did you have like, you know, I'm starting here, let me get past field service and start a new project that I can own, um, start to finish?

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah, so it it was uh, you know, it was a phase, a planned phase of the field service rollout. And I think that um, you know, our our next kind of phases and what we're working on delivering this quarter, um, one is uh the ability to get availability from providers. So uh having an engine running in Salesforce, so that 700 people based on are they gonna sign up for three eight-hour shifts or two twelves or a 24-hour shift or you know, whatever it might be based on the type of work that they're doing, um, to be able to have uh our our proprietary app actually on a on a mobile app present to them and say, you know, I can work these days or I can't work these days or whatever it might be. Um so we've got that. And then uh one of the things that came out of some of the customization around creating uh future dated service appointments to schedule was that it was a bit more manual than we would have wanted for our scheduling team. Um so just based on the batch processing or the the triggers actually um and the volume that they could handle, there was a lot of kind of like repetitive clicking, multiple clicking. So um making that a more streamlined process, which is where we went to maintenance plans. Um so those were kind of like some of the immediate future phase follows, uh, and then uh basically getting off of shift expert, allowing our providers to be um schedulable, and then uh the next you know kind of holy grail that we're going for is the optimization engine. So being able to look across all the service appointments, all the service resources, and say this is the right person for that shift at that facility. Um so that's that's uh next quarter at that we're uh targeting to start building out that.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

So that's that sounds interesting. Um so you're you're gonna match, so somebody says, I need an appointment. Does the facility really matter? I mean, because it's telehealth, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:57

It does, yeah. And so there's yeah, it's fairly complex. So one is you have to be licensed in the state, right? So if you came out of med school and you've been practicing, you know, in Massachusetts for forever, you maybe you have a New Hampshire license or something like that. Um, but you're you're probably more a doctor that goes into a facility, so you only need one. Um, some of our providers are licensed in all 50 states. And once you have a license in that state, then the medical facility has to basically um credential you, which is saying you don't have malpractice um suits out. We you know called the facilities you worked before and they validated that you did uh good work and that you're credentialed there. And then there's a thing called privileging. This is all new to me when I uh came into Access Telecare too. So uh basically it's like getting hired by a hospital, right? So you're saying, hey, this doctor can work here, they're not a they're a good doctor. Do you agree to have them on your staff? And then there's a signed agreement between the the uh physician and the hospital. Um so we have all that, and then there's also kind of the human component of it, which is saying that if every time a nurse goes into the into the screen in the room and she gets a new person, there's no rapport being built, um, there's no trust being built. It's just kind of like that box and you get a face. And so being able to have physicians focus it within the group of facilities so they do have that kind of interaction um with the hospital staff that's on the ground is is another important element of it.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

So so your clients are in the hospital, they're home, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:39

No, they're in hospitals. So so our our the the people that pay us are the hospitals, um, basically, right? So we sell physician time, physician encounters, and then medical director time. So medical directors could, you know, advise a hospital here's the new things that we're seeing, here's how we should manage this differently, et cetera, et cetera. And then we have the actual like NPs, APPs, um, and they're supervising physicians or other you know, MDs, DOs that would be working at the facility. Um, so that's I I think that answers the question, but I think so too. Yeah, I I I kept thinking that the patient is scheduling it directly, and sounds like that's not yeah, it's not like Teledoc or or something like that where you're going online and saying, hey, check this out. It's you're in a hospital because you just had a stroke.

SPEAKER_03 16:30

Right. Yeah, I mean, on uh in terms of a business model, obviously that's probably one of the reasons you had so much growth, right? Is because your accounts are much bigger. Um, it's much easier to target hospitals, I guess, B2B um at the price to a BCM.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yep. And it's also good for hospitals too. You know, if they've got a great um neurologist or infectious disease expert, but they only work 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, they can cover the nights, they can cover the weekends, and and we can fill those gaps in coverage for them.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Awesome. All right, so uh let's go back to the tech. Um right, so so yeah, so how how how'd you get started, right? So like you were you handed a mandate of hey, these are some goals you want you to accomplish. Maybe you inherited it from your your predecessor. Um, did you put together a new plan? Right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Um so my boss is is the CTO, and she uh actually built Salesforce and a lot of what we have from the ground up, starting a long time ago. So she's actually very sharp and uh and has been a great resource. And so she's got a bit of the roadmap in her mind, which has been helpful as I'm just kind of trying to get my hands around everything. Um, but as far as kind of like the the how um of certain things, that's that's been, you know, hey, we need to make this better, like go figure it out. Um, so that was you know, going from our custom APEX to create service appointments to using native field service maintenance plans. Um, you know, those were some of the decisions that I made and then worked with the team so we could figure out a plan to get that in place.

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Jason, what's your plan?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Uh plan right now is uh yes, we're uh availability with providers. Um we're gonna do the you know automation of the the blank future dated service appointments, move into optimization. Um and then I think you know at that point we've got uh you know the company was was a number, Access Telecare is a number of other companies that have kind of come together through acquisition over the years. And so we've got a lot of bringing and folding different groups in, standardizing their processes um into the you know field service solution that we're putting together. Um and then, you know, um what I've seen is there's a lot of kind of low-hanging fruit around um, you know, just page layouts, workflows. Some people are still using classic, uh, a lot of that stuff. So um my approach, you know, and and have done this with a number of customers in the SA SI days is really to be able to kind of step back, walk through workflows with people, and kind of do like that whole business process systems review. So we can say, all right, how are you actually using this thing? Let's figure out what features you need, and then create a plan to kind of roll that out and streamline things overall. So um I think there's a lot of case management in the future that we're gonna be looking at. I think that there's um, you know, definitely some things with our call center and telephony that we're gonna be looking at, um, and you know, really trying to be able to streamline um once we get once we get the scheduling piece uh and the optimization piece figured out.

SPEAKER_03 19:42

Cool. Um so I'm gonna apologize in advance for this question. Hopefully you don't say anything that gets you in trouble. Um but your boss your boss, you said it's been there for quite a time, quite some time, um, built the current instance. Um so it seems like she's probably heavy client side. And you came from a heavy consulting side, I'm sure you had a lot of um, let's say different experiences and maybe different ideas on how to do things, how to do different design. Um so and any any adjustment in working with her, or maybe you know, you have to pivot things. How how is how's like that? I say, let's say relationship dynamics slash the planning adjustments going.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Yeah, no, I mean she's been, as I said, super supportive, really helpful resource when you know I'm like, oh, you know, we had someone was asking for a feature the other week, and I went to her, I'm like, why don't we just do this? I think I've got you know a couple hours of the team and we've got a little bandwidth right now. And she's like, no, that's you know, that's gonna be a whole can of worms if you open up that, right? So um having having her guidance as far as kind of blocking and tackling, um, I I think that you know, probably to your where where would I get in trouble? And the response would be that you know, there there is uh a lot of history there, right? So here's how that team works, here's how here's why this might not work, those types of things, and kind of working through that with her. Um I think that there's also, you know, from a consulting perspective, and you know, we we had a business requirements document, or I was handed a business requirements document from that was developed and kind of finalized, signed off on last summer. And if you went to an SI and said, hey, we've got our requirements right here. Um, we we finished them up six or seven months ago, go build it. The SI would say, no, right? Like we're gonna do discovery, we're gonna charge you for the discovery, we're gonna start there, and then we're gonna get moving. Um, so that was a little bit of a, you know, I mean, it's not not the way I would have wanted to approach it, right? I would have wanted to do the consulting path of saying, let's let's go through it again, let's validate. Validate everything, we'll come up with a plan and then go. Um, so it's been a little bit of a juggling act from there, but uh, you know, I mean, I think it's I also didn't have to give them an estimate and a timeline. Um, so you know, we're we're working through it together, and but it's it's been a good partnership.

SPEAKER_03 22:16

I don't want to do timelines, sorry. Um yeah, go ahead, Kira.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

It's interesting. We um we recently did uh a recording with a uh director of Salesforce um and it was focused heavily focused on the importance of getting the requirements right. And I think one of the biggest bits of feedback we hear from SIs is around the documentation piece, right? Or lack of it, uh when handing back the reins, so to speak. So you again you're coming from the flip side of that now, right? And and somebody else in in theory has been in the driving seat for a long time, and you're kind of coming coming into the back end of that and trying to reach the speed and and kind of um I guess position of the implementation, whereas maybe from an SI perspective, you'd be more so at the start, I I think, um, or like more emphasis or you'd have more control over the requirements at least, because you're part of that initial exercise, as you mentioned.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Right. Yep. Um, yeah, absolutely. And you know, I there's obviously everyone's got a big backlog, and we've got a big backlog. And one of the things that I've been trying to kind of institute within as working with different stakeholders is saying, you know, we're we're not gonna be able to do that for three months, right? So I don't want to talk about it right now because in three months something's gonna change. And so being able to kind of get that roadmap, so it's like, all right, we're gonna have bandwidth. Now let's define it, now let's sign off on it, now let's build it so that we're not, you know, tying something with a nice bow and then putting it on the shelf for a few months.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Mm-hmm. So in terms of the industry, obviously there are nuances um with healthcare. We often hear businesses they like hiring individuals that have that healthcare experience and exposure due to all the kind of um, like I said, nuances, terminology, right, hyper compliance and so on. I know you started out your uh career in Salesforce, you did a did a stint in the healthcare space. What about through the last decade of consulting? Were you were you like what percentage of projects were healthcare focused, would you say if you had to kind of round it up?

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Uh round up to about 1%. Uh really, yeah. Yeah, I mean, you know, I I we worked with like a life sciences company that was, but they were basically a consulting company, and um, you know, but uh yeah, I mean I mean it's it's definitely a unique, nuanced industry. Um, fortunately from my time at Athena Health, you know, I I knew what an ICD 10 code is, I know some of that stuff. Um, but yeah, um it it's definitely definitely a learning curve for sure.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

How much has changed since 10 years ago um when you were back at Athena uh compared to today, not just in terms of like the industry, but also Salesforce and how it's supporting healthcare businesses or how it's used by um healthcare organizations?

SPEAKER_01 25:17

So um that's a good question. I mean, I I think I haven't seen a huge difference, honestly. Um I think that now we've got more AI, and so there's a lot of you know that conversation, right? Because you've got HIPAA and PII and PHI and all that kind of stuff, and kind of how do you how do you handle that with AI? So that's gonna that's been the big big question. Um you know, Athena Health, uh I don't even think Health Cloud existed when I was there, and we're not on Health Cloud, so we haven't uh had too much, you know, too much exposure to that to really be able to speak to it.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Makes sense. Um and therefore able to leverage kind of your core cloud experience over the years as well. Um, you know, pretty much plug and play, just different different language in terms of the industry, right? So yeah. Um so so before we move on to some you know questions around comparing the consulting space and in-house, um, which we're gonna cover shortly, a little bit more about access telecare. So again, you're a quarter in now, you you've kind of done this main project um in in terms of getting it to go live. Um there was there were some other stuff that you were busy doing uh around the DevOps process and and scrum and and so on. Do you want do you want to elaborate a bit more on those topics?

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Yeah, yeah. Um that's actually been a huge, huge win uh in the in the near term as far as working with the team. Um you know, you're coming from an SI, right? Like you literally manufacture projects. That's that is how you make money as an SI. And so within that, you're doing story points, you're doing billable hours, you're doing, you know, what are your project dates? Are you hitting this? What are your dependencies? Lots of communication, lots of those types of things, right? And you know, I think coming in with the team and the deadlines that they had, there were old tickets from nine months ago that were still in new, but they've been deployed. Uh, you know, people had different ways of working, and it was very, very collaborative. Uh, a lot of smart people working really hard, but not necessarily working in more of a kind of that linear process-oriented fashion. And so um one thing that I I basically said was, you know, if we if we look at the kind of consulting standards of uh utilization metrics, right? You know, in consulting, it's 75% utilization for your delivery team, typically for an onshore resource. And um, you know, using that to back into how many story points we should we be able to do, um, and being able to track our DevOps tickets and close them out and assign story points and put estimates on things um was not a big change for me. And something that I kind of figured would be like, yeah, let's let's do that, right? Let's figure out how much this is gonna take and figure out how much bandwidth we have, and then we'll deliver it on time. Um, and I think it was uh probably more of an adjustment for the team than I had anticipated, uh, and and might have made people uncomfortable, uh, you know, as we're like, hey, let's let's kind of go with what I I viewed as kind of industry standard. Um, but you know, it probably took four, four, five, six weeks, a couple of sprints, and then people are starting to say, wow, that was a lot more efficient, that was a lot calmer. Um, that was much more predictable. And here's why something slipped, or here's what I need differently in the next sprint. So to be a little bit more rigorous and you know, uh PM and and overhead, like it can add a lot, uh, and it can be inefficient if you're doing it too heavy. But um I think by putting in some of these guardrails um and figuring out how much people can accomplish has been super helpful. Um, we also, you know, going into this quarter, we're doing the architecture, we're trying to figure out what's happening next, finally figured out kind of our high-level user stories, put story points on them. And by that point, we had actually had a couple weeks of um our DevOps tickets getting closed with the user stories um or in the story points assigned to them. And so we're like, hey, we've got 25 points that we need to do in this sprint for this body of work, and we're averaging 32 points on our sprints. So we're okay, we can do this, right? Um, and I think it gives everyone a lot of confidence that that we can do the work. Um, and it also gives me confidence that I'm not gonna burn someone out or ask too much of the team when we're when we're trying to target a deadline.

SPEAKER_02 29:53

For sure. And and and I think um it also allows you to establish some quick wins, right? And and also almost kind of instill some confidence in internally, right? Um so so you talked about um you know a bit more process, bit more standard standardization, uh, maybe were were kind of the first few things in that kind of 90 days that you were keen to uh embed into the organization, um, as well as kind of just you know your rapport building, getting to know the the history of the org and so on. Anything else that you were you know you were keen to ensure you carry it out in terms of an exercise uh within those the first 90 days, right? If if it's someone else that is following in your footsteps, um making that similar, you know, not just necessarily just joining a new organization in general, right, and applying more of those kind of lessons learned from consulting. Um, what else did you set out to achieve in those first 90 days?

SPEAKER_01 30:51

I I I think it was also building trust with the team, right? Um, so uh, you know, credentialing myself with them of being able to say this is what an architecture could be, bringing them along. Um, you know, and I think when you start to go, we're gonna start tracking story points and we're gonna start tracking output per sprint, you know, people can start to get worried about like, what if I'm not doing enough? Is he gonna get mad that I didn't accomplish X, right? So making sure that people knew why we were doing it and the importance of it. And then I, you know, I think that again, it was probably more uncomfortable than I would have wanted initially for the team. Um, but I think that as we got into the groove, it was like, oh, cool, this this works. Now I I can accomplish my week, I can sign off on Friday. I knew I did a good job, and I'll, you know, sign off for the week and then start again next week.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

Yeah, I think rather than being seen as you know, just being the new guy, you know, new guy with new ideas just for the sake of it, right? Um at least at least providing that story as to the the why we're doing things this way, um, and and how it will benefit. And hey, turns out you you were right, even better kind of thing, right? So um good. All right. So um Max, I know you had a question.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

Um yeah, maybe like what what are the the core differences? It's always interesting to talk to people who make the switch from consulting to to client side, um in terms of the the the overall uh say the the thought process or the psychology behind it, right? Because you you're always thinking in terms of business process improvement, there's no contract to kind of guide. Um so how how has that adjustment been been for you? Do you think coming from a consulting uh is a benefit when moving to client side?

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Yeah, I mean, I think um absolutely. I mean, you have so much more experience across so many different projects. The what's been interesting though is some of those you know, long-standing uh lesser used corners of the Salesforce universe that as an SI, you know, you don't really hit, right? So I I was doing an opportunity history report uh for our for one of our sales leaders, and I'm like, I haven't looked at an opportunity history report in like 10 years, right? Um, and so some of those kind of some of those kind of things were definitely different. Um, you know, preparing for releases and trying to figure out what's what are we gonna do with downtime and you know, we're moving to hyperforce in a couple of weeks. How are we gonna handle that when people can't, you know, they're the systems on read-only. Um, so though, you know, those are definitely different. Um, but I think that the the execution on a project and you know, how to think creatively, how to manage stakeholders, and doing that for a long time across a lot of different use cases is translates really well to you know any business.

SPEAKER_03 33:54

What about like end user support, right? Because usually DSIs will say, you give us a point of contact and we only want to talk to uh small group of people, right? Obviously, here that's not the case. Um, how's that been? How did you structure that?

SPEAKER_01 34:09

So we're we're using cases. Um, uh, you know, as you might imagine, um, you know, we don't have a huge volume of cases, and then basically uh what we're one one change is that you know, essentially if the case is like under two hours, if we can fix it, it's a report, it's a permission issue, someone has a question, password reset, whatever, just take care of the case and close it out. Um, but you know, if it's gonna be a new uh an adjustment to a flow, if it's gonna be something that's gonna take a little bit of work, um, we're assigning a DevOps ticket to it or associating a DevOps ticket to it, closing the case and saying we're we'll you know get back to you when we can get this prioritized. So is that the same team?

SPEAKER_03 34:51

So sorry. Is that the same team or you have a dedicated team dealing with support?

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Same team, yep. So we we it's a pretty uh pretty small team, right? So we've kind of have two, we have a um uh admin and a developer. Uh and our developer can do both admin and development, and our admin actually has some development experience as well. Um, so from you know, from a role perspective, that's what we have, and then uh and then myself. So I'll try and grab a case here and there just to kind of help um you know take that off the team. But uh, you know, we're basically kind of monitoring the queue, anything that's type high priority we'll take care of, and then um also trying to work with our uh counterparts on the offshore team, uh, so that if there's you know certain things that are well defined that we can just pass off, we'll uh we'll ask them for help for their for those things.

SPEAKER_03 35:42

Okay, cool. Um Kiro, you want to move on to uh next topic?

SPEAKER_02 35:47

Yeah, so so um general not necessarily pros and cons, but but observations uh between consulting and in in-house. Um so so before we dive into that, Hans. I know we talked offline a lot about this was a proactive strategic choice of yours um to move back in-house, right? It was something that you were pretty adamant, unless it was a uh again, you know, a life-changing opportunity, you were going back in-house, right? So why was that? Because other people, you know, some people have 20, 30, 40 year careers in in consulting, right? And they do perfectly fine. But what was it for you that kind of sprung the urge to get back in-house?

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Yeah, you know, I mean, I think um I think I was looking for a bit more of a dynamic role. Uh, and you know, back in the day, uh, you know, on the gear side of things, when you know, Salesforce was going game busters and AEs were knocking on the door. Can you please help me scope this? And you know, it was a lot of fun, right? And then uh, you know, from a sales perspective where I'd spent a lot of time in in pre-sales, that became more knocking on the AE door and you know, asking for things and more on like the actual sales than just kind of having fun making cool projects. And so um I ended up going back into delivery, and then it's kind of like you're you're really as an SI, I think to survive now, you're either super specialized, right? And you that's what you do, um, or uh, or you have to be total cutting edge, right? And you're working with your your uh your partner account manager and you're trying to get access to pilot programs and get access to have your hands on the new tool that's coming out um so that you can stay relevant so that you're the only partner that people can go to. Um, so you know, the space from a consulting side, I think is is less fun uh nowadays. And so it's harder. It's it's harder, yeah. Absolutely. Um and you know, within delivery, uh, you know, it's it's kind of you know, same thing is you're either going to be very, very technical or very technical in one area, and you kind of end up in that area. And so, you know, I wanted to, I wanted the chance to um, you know, kind of go back to leading a team, um, going back to working with the company and really kind of making my mark uh on a longer-term roadmap and also like eating my own dog food, right? So you can architect things all day. You know, you say here's how it should work, and then you know, you finish the engagement, but six months after that, I'm you know, I didn't have the chance to see those results. So um I I think I did an all right job with the architecture, but uh didn't get to say, you know, have end users say that was great, or to be like, hey, that didn't work, right? And to learn from that and get better.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

So um uh Kiro, I'm gonna ask you to chime in on this after after Han's answers. Was was compensation a point in it? So I came from I'm from a consulting background too, and then obviously I I went on on my own and started cool on digital. Um, but one of the reasons I went out on my own was I was hitting um pay ceilings. Because in consulting, you can basically only earn as much as you can bill, right? Um and probably half of that. Um so you know, billing rates get suppressed, the market gets tight, even if you're still employed, um you right, you're you just you hit you're hit you hit ceilings pretty quick. Um and then you have to kind of move into management. You know, behind moving client side, where you were you finding yourself hitting ceilings? Or was it just uh I wanted time for something different?

SPEAKER_01 39:35

You know, I mean I I think um the you know the SI job market is is certainly tough right now, right? Um even people that I know who are really, really good consultants with a lot of experience are applying and not getting callbacks. And so I I think there's an element of that uh that the market was just tighter. But you know, I don't I I don't think anyone says, I'm gonna go from consulting to in-house to make more money. Uh right, it's it's usually the other way around.

SPEAKER_03 40:05

Yeah, it's not to make more money, it's uh because I'm talking about somebody who's really, really senior. So if you're at an SI and you're almost at the director level, let's say, unless you're going to uh the Deloitte to PWC, you're gonna hit a barrier. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but if you go client side, you could potentially you know go, I guess what would be the equivalent of a VP level um in the consulting side. I know you know the private sector, VP's like lower than director, it's like it's weird that it's fine. Um right, you or you know, or sleep in a two level. Yeah, yeah, it's much easier.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Uh I hear what you're saying. Yeah, I think, yeah. And and you're right, like that was that was definitely another factor was like longevity and resiliency in my career, right? Um, so yeah, as I said, you know, you're in SIs, I think that the tendency is either you get to a level or you specialize. Um, but again, either, you know, and I I don't think that there's a lot of that like big law type of thing where you you could bill, you know, 70 hours a week and make a bunch of money. That's not how um the SI system in Salesforce is set up. And so it's more like here, you know, we're gonna allocate you at 40 hours a week, and you're gonna hit your utilization metrics and you get a little bonus every quarter or whatever it might be. Um, but but yeah, I think that you know, looking at my career and saying between AI and the different things that are happening in the market and how Salesforce is working and you know, across the board, um, to be going in-house and you know, being able to say, I can I can lead a team and I can come up with great solutions and I can deliver for a business and I can you know do that overall gives you a lot more options once once you hit kind of the higher end or or or whatever you might call it of consulting.

SPEAKER_03 41:59

Yeah, uh Kiro, so obviously you're you're a little bit close to this. Um what are your two cents on it?

SPEAKER_02 42:04

Yeah, I mean obviously we work with both sides um extensively. I think as an individual contributor, absolutely, I think the pay is generally better on the consulting side. Um you know, think things like architects, right? Um, you know, I I think the barrier um the the salary by salary is higher, the banding's higher, um, more often than not, right? Um and I and I think the likelihood of being hybrid on site is also significantly reduced, right, as well. Um whereas I think I do I do agree, I think once you hit a manager level, I I think it's more attractive from a comp standpoint to work in-house, and we've seen uh a number of people um you know follow follow that trend uh over the years. Um I I think also as well, I think it's more about um you kind of touched on it, Hans, as well, like how deep you actually go in with the stuff that you're building, right? Um, you know, because generally the life cycle of a of a mid to enterprise customer, you're talking a couple of years max, right? And and sometimes it takes a lot, a lot of time. There's different scopes, it's different statements of work. You're doing like one part of their project, which is like not even 10% of how they use Salesforce as a business. So, like how much are you really impacting um and and and being able to see things through? Um, you you mentioned um I think you mentioned something about seeing seeing uh eating your own own our own food or whatever, right? Um but but um but you know, seeing the fruits of your labour, I think is uh is what I often hear. Um and I don't think you get that as much on the consulting side. And um, you know, it's interesting you mentioned there are there are there are there are a lot of people looking, good people versus looking is another conversation for a different podcast. But um there is a lot, but how much a a top, you know, one, five, ten percent. Um But you're right, you know, SIs have have typically traditionally specialized, and then those areas have been so focused on, let's say, CPQ for three, four years, right? Where most businesses, either SI or in-house, won't just hire us in-house, definitely are unlikely to hire just a an SA to focus on CPQ only, right? They want a a broad core cloud, you know, SA who also knows CPQ. So it's challenging, right? Um, so I think typically what I hear, um, money is maybe like a small factor in it, but it's usually the ability to go deeper with a with with a with more of like the roadmap for Salesforce and other systems, um, as opposed to just kind of you know smashing out statement of works, proposals, pre-sales, etc. Right? It's a different feeling.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, it's you know, just there's so many different things that um in the past, you know, 90 days or so that I've been like, oh, that thing, you know, I gotta go look that back up and you know, re-familiarize how that works. And so uh, you know, I think the dynamic, right? It's you you bounce, bounce around and get deep in things, remember it. It's it's a different way of learning and growing because that's the other thing is you know, in the SI thing is like, you know, you you can work for eight companies, you could do 12 projects in a year, right? Where in another company or in a house, you know, that that can be the frustrating point for people is like, I've been slogging on this project for nine months, you know, like people, you know, I'm just plugging away, right? And so um I I've actually had kind of the opposite experience where it's like there's just so so many different things um to to focus on um that's been you know refreshing.

SPEAKER_03 45:50

Um you ever feel like you're not in tech anymore? So I I can tell you what I what I mean. I was I interviewed for um a relatively small shop some time ago. Um they happened to be a water company. And one of the decisions that I decided to turn down that position, it was an interesting position, was I felt like I would have to go into the water business. Um, right? Because it's just like I said, it's such a completely different mindset. You're looking in terms of right of of growth, of servicing customers. Your focus is not on the technology. Where in the consulting, you're constantly looking to okay, what's the the next tech to learn? Do I gotta pick up an AI? Do I got another cert? Right? Um, it's again a very, very different. What do you you know are you starting to feel any of that? Um I know I know at a larger company it's definitely different because you're surrounded by tech people um than probably in a smaller company where you're dealing directly with like you know, the business leaders or only with business leaders.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

Yeah, I mean, I I think um it's a little bit of both, right? Because I think that to your point, you know, you do have to know the business. You have to be an expert in what your company does. Um and and you can't just say, well, yeah, if you just put these objects in a trigger and you know, X, Y, and Z together, that you know, this will work, right? It'll meet the requirements. Um, so there's a lot more of that context and the people part of things, and you know, making sure that you're understanding, you know, what the end users really are kind of going through on a day-to-day. Um but at the other point, you know, I think that at least from an access telecare standpoint, we have such a unique business and such a unique way of doing things. And with the different companies I've acquired and how different people work and how their businesses operate, you know, successfully, um, there's so much customization that has to happen that it's almost like we're we're building custom applications within the Salesforce framework, almost, you know. So um trying to use as much standard functionality as possible, of course, but uh there's there's a lot of like application development that's going on as well.

SPEAKER_02 48:15

Good. Um a couple of quick questions for your hands on on general comparisons. Um answer them as you see see fit, right? Um choose to pass, you can have one pass. Um quality of talent, in your opinion, is it higher in the consulting environment or in-house from what you've seen?

SPEAKER_01 48:38

So I think I've got a great team. I think that in consulting, a lot of SIs can be really, really, really picky. And so you can get really, really, really talented people, but it depends on how the team works together, too, right? Um, so just because you have a bunch of really talented geeks doesn't mean that they can do what they need to do.

SPEAKER_02 49:02

I I think I often hear how consulting gives you that variety, and you talked about the variety as well being one of the biggest benefits of consulting. Um but you're absolutely spot on. I I think we're seeing more of a shift towards I don't want to call it soft skills, but it is the ability to elicit and gather the requirements, it's the people's skills, right? Um the the ability to ask, like, well, just because we can do it in Salesforce this way, why are we doing it that way? Right? Is that actually the you know, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Um whereas I think consulting, it's very much like, okay, it's in the statement of work, just do it, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Um totally. So it's different skills. Situations where you just, you know, they customer, you know, customers always right even when they're not, uh, you know, at some point, right? And you're like, I gotta close out this SOW, and you just do it. Um, so yeah, that that can be yeah, it's it's tough too, because you know, as a professional, you want to deliver a good product, you want to deliver something that's gonna last. And if your customer says you gotta just do this stupid thing, you know, eventually you have to do it. Um, which which is the the bummer about consulting sometimes?

SPEAKER_02 50:16

Where let's say fast forward three, four years, right? Um maybe the answer will be different in three, four years, but let's say fast forward three, four years, you've done some good stuff with uh, you know, um these guys. Do you think you'll stick out in in in-house or do you think you'll miss the is there any I guess let me phrase it differently? Four months in, anything you miss about consulting, is there anything that will tempt you to go back to consulting in the future?

SPEAKER_01 50:50

No. Short answer, no. Yeah. Um, I mean, you know, it my my role before I was I was a solution architect, right? And so I had a lot of control over my day. I hit my utilization, you know, I and I could bill aggressively and be efficient in my work and sign off at the end of the day. Um, and so now I've got a team that needs help. I've got an offshore team, I've got 24-hour, you know, 24-7, 365 users of Salesforce. So shutting off is a little bit harder. Um but not in my in my mind, you know, the experience and the folks I'm working with doesn't offset that uh uh that downside to it.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

Are you working, would you say, harder um typically as a as an individual, uh less so as a as a leader, but from an individual contributor standpoint with your own deliverables, would you say the expectations are harder in SI versus in-house because the notion of well, clients paying for this kind of thing?

SPEAKER_01 51:59

So, you know, I I I I worked my pace, which is pretty hard. Um, and then you know, but I think that it's much more clear-cut as an individual contributor in SI. Here's what you have to do, here's the deadline, get the work done, right? Um I've always kind of thought uh in my experience, I'm like, yeah, you know, if I get into an org for a month or if I can talk to a couple of people for a couple hours, I'm gonna understand what's going on. And I still, I'm still coming way up to speed on all the different custom things and applications and all the things that we're doing in our org. It's it's really complex. So I think that that's why, you know, right now I'm working uh more uh you know, at a higher rate, higher number of hours and and whatever that uh than I typically would expect.

SPEAKER_02 52:49

Again, not necessarily thinking about um just in general. Um obviously there's a continuation of layoffs here and there in the ecosystem, um, talking to Salesforce layoffs. It is easier to risk like assess and less likely to face a layoff in a consulting partner than it is in-house, or again, that's like a general question because I know it depends on where they focus, what percentage of deals an SI is getting from Salesforce and so on, where they rely on, but in general, um, do you think there's more opportunity for for for longevity um in-house or consulting?

SPEAKER_01 53:41

I I think from a career stability, uh job stability, and obviously, you know, tech has been hit hard and all that kind of stuff just across the board, but I I would say in-house probably is a bit more stable. Um, because you know, at an SI, if you're not bringing new deals in, if the overall utilization rate's going down, they have to cut people, or they're gonna, you know, that's that's the nature of the business.

SPEAKER_02 54:09

What um what did you maybe underestimate in terms of making that return from consulting to in-house? Was there something that you you thought I could have maybe been better prepared for this?

SPEAKER_01 54:30

Uh honestly, you know, it's kind of funny because Access Telecare, so we're we're PE owned, right? So that adds a pace to the business, right? If you're a giant 20,000-person shop, you can expect things probably move a little bit slower. Um, but I think that the pace of the business is more than I would have expected for an in-house shop, um, which is good, right? Like I didn't need to go out to the farm uh, you know, for uh at this point of my career, but um was thinking it would be a little bit slower pace than it is. Um that was that was actually a bit of a surprise. And uh, but that was that was I think the big underestimation of kind of the the level of work and the workload and um amount that has to happen. Also kind of interesting too is the yeah, resource constraints, right? If you're on if you're an SI, you've got a project, someone scoped it, and assuming that they didn't try and lowball it and they didn't discount the hours, they discounted the dollars and not the number of hours that they're billing for, you know, you you've got the time, you've got the people available to do the work. And when you only have, you know, here here's what you can do from a hiring perspective, um, that's your bandwidth, right? So that turns more to stakeholder management and team management to figure out what we can actually accomplish versus like saying, here's a check, here's an SOW, here's a scope, we're gonna do it.

SPEAKER_02 55:59

Makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 56:00

Maz, over to you. I think you've gone on mute. This thing is weird, anyhow. So um I I think when you start a new job, generally when they're hiring, they have a need. So you so you'll often come into a very busy shop when you switch to client side because that's why they hired you, right? And that's why they had a they had a spot. Um, and then it and then it kind of slows down. Um going back to stability, I think one of the nice things, if you want to call it a nice thing, of working at an SI, um, if you're gonna let go, generally you'll see it coming because there's a slowdown and you know you're not hitting your hours, um, or you can see the pipeline. Um I think when when you're in-house, what often will happen is like they'll talk about budgets during their, I don't know, the powers that be quarterly retreat or whatever. Um, and then they'll just come to you and say, Oh, Salesforce budget next year, cut your staff, and then we'll pick up projects, you know, in two years, keep the lights on. Um, something like that. Um yeah, so what was stability part of your thought process or at all when thinking of in-house first consulting?

SPEAKER_01 57:17

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and I think, you know, one of the SIs I had worked for, you know, went from I was, you know, around 50 employees when I started, around 35 when I left. And that was, you know, not not a happy time, right? And no one wants to be in that situation, um, including the leadership, right? And they're doing everything that they can. Um but then, you know, just looking at it, you know, in the next the next SI of how how hard they had to sell just to, you know, to feed the beast, right? And so I think that that's it, it's it's tough, right? It's um Salesforce, you know, AEs are doing everything they can to bring in deals. Um, I think a lot of people have Salesforce already, right? And so they might add a module here, module here, but like right now, people aren't doing two million dollar investments in technology, um, you know, with interest rates going up and all that kind of stuff. So it's a it's a tough time, you know, as an SI to survive, which is um, you know, means you gotta be more willing to cut um your resources if you need to.

SPEAKER_03 58:30

Cool. So um we always end with this question. So I I know you've only been there a few months, um, but what's next? What's next for you? What's next for Access Uh Telecare? I'm sure you have um a ton of plans.

SPEAKER_01 58:45

Yeah, um, you know, I'm I'm really looking forward to getting the field service stuff going. Uh, I think it can be really impactful for the company as far as um, you know, helping people just be able to focus on new things, taking a lot of the manual stuff out, um, ideally making you know our clients happier and also making our scheduling and you know how much we're being being able to make from a provider that's providing um care, you know, like being more profitable. So really looking forward to seeing the impact there. And then, you know, I think that having having that under my belt and being able to really kind of get Salesforce and the whole team just really operationalized, really running smoothly. Um, that's kind of the near term. And then uh, you know, from there just uh see if we can keep expanding the team, keep doing better work, and um, you know, keep going down this path.

SPEAKER_02 59:38

Any um agent force for you guys, you think at all, whether it's next quarter or later on in the year?

SPEAKER_01 59:46

Yeah, I mean I I think um Yeah, you know, six to twelve months or something like that, start to look a little bit closer at that. But um, but yeah, we we gotta get our hands around uh you know certain things first, and then you know, we start looking at cases and start um you know kind of figuring out what we can layer in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:05

Get some of the basics right by the sounds of it before the advanced stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:13

Yeah, we we want to see your scheduling agent um when you get that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:17

Yeah, it I'm I'm not gonna say if, I'm gonna say when when we get it right, this will be uh it'll be a cool use case. I'm sure Salesforce will want to show it off.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:25

So yeah, it's really cool. Well, maybe we'll see you at Dreamforce this year, then no pressure. Um being invited to talk about it. All right. Any any closing thoughts on you from you, Hans? Anything else you want to add?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:37

No, no, appreciate the time today. Uh thanks for having me on. And um, you know, great to be a part of the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:42

Absolutely. Well, we loved having you here. Uh thank you for joining us today. Um, for our listeners, please do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show for more episodes featuring leaders like Hans, um, who are truly shaping the the current and the future of CRM. Um, you can also follow on LinkedIn for more exclusive content. Thank you.