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_03 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_04 0:37

And I'm Kira Witzi.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

And today we're talking with Jason Belote, the Vice President of Technology at Very. So welcome, Jason.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Thank you guys. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_04 0:48

Absolutely. We're going to start off real simple, Jason. No preparation needed for this one. Give our listeners today a little bit of an overview of your uh your role, uh, what Very do, um, and uh a bit about your background and and time with the company, please.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the VP of technology here at Very. So I I kind of own all of the technology uh components within Very. So that includes our business systems, which a big part of that is Salesforce. We have a large Salesforce footprint. Um, and then we use SAP for our ERP, Boomi for our middleware, um, and then a lot of the Microsoft tools for our BI and analytics solutions. Uh and then additionally, I have the IT tech uh operations and support team that supports our desktop computing and our our network and our Wi-Fi and our collaboration tools. Uh, and then additionally, cybersecurity kind of rolls up to me. And so that's my current current role at Very. Um, and so maybe just a little bit about Very. So in simplest terms, Very's an office furniture company, but we we feel like we're much more than that. So we we consider ourselves a workspace innovation company, you know, really on a mission to create workspaces that elevate people. Um, and so making them happier, healthier, and more productive. And so that's either you know at home, in the office, or in one of our bare space locations. And so we're really striving to bring speed, simplicity, and quality to the office furniture industry. So really trying to revolution it revolutionize the office furniture industry. Um, and so that's kind of the sales pitch about Very. Um, but one thing that, and we can get into it now or maybe later, I would love to kind of share the origin story of Very, um, which may be interesting for the listeners.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Let's share it now. Let's dive into it. No time not present.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah, so um, so we were actually originally uh called Veridesk. Um, so some of your listeners may be familiar with the Veradesk product, but um we were we were actually incubated back in 2011, 2012 within our sister company, Jimmy. Um and so Jimmy is an inflatables company. They make a lot of the inflatables that uh Lowe's and Home Depot sell at you know Christmas and and Halloween and things like that. But um, long story short, one of the founders of Jimmy was having back problems. And so he would stack up boxes on his desk and put his laptop on just so he could stand and work and relieve the pain in his back. Um and so at the time, my CEO and then the the leader of product at Jimmy looked for a good solution for him. And so they they ordered a number of office or standing office furniture uh contraptions, they called it, uh, to try to give him a solution that would help. And so they would come in a million pieces and be low quality. And so so they were a product company and kind of product-minded. So they were they're like, we can do something better than this. And so that's when they invented the Veradesk. And so uh for anyone that's not familiar with what that is, it's uh a desktop product that goes onto an existing desk and then allows you to raise it and lower it to be able to stand or sit as you work. And so, really, we invented that category, and and so that was our sole product, and Veradesk was formed around that product. Um, and so for the first you know, five or six years, that was our only product, and it it grew like crazy and and really kind of caught fire. Um, you know, we sold it all around the world in hundreds of countries, and uh at the time we were in like 95% of uh Fortune 500 companies, and so we sold it direct um to consumers and a lot of direct uh to businesses uh for that standing solution. Um, and so that took us a long way. And then in 2018, the company made a pivot and and wanted to get into the full office furniture space. And so what that meant is we we went from that one product to hundreds of products, office furniture products to be able to outfit a whole office space. And so that includes things like standing desks, movable walls, conference tables, marker boards, really anything you would need uh to outfit an office. Um, and so with that was kind of a major pivot. Um, and so that's kind of where Salesforce got introduced, and I can talk a little bit about that later. But really, we we were we brought on an inside sales team and and we were you know firing up a B2B sales uh motion. And so we knew we needed to evolve our systems and kind of go the next level. And so that started in 2018. Um, and then in 2019, we entered the commercial real estate space uh with our Verispace concept. So that's our uh space as a service offering. Um the first one we did was actually the old Zales headquarters in Las Calinas that had stood empty for many years, and so we bought that, redid it all, and kind of started our first varispace concept there. And then we opened a building in Southlake, did the same thing, kind of a building that had been on the market for a long time. We bought it, redid it, and turned it into Fair Space Southlake. And then the Verispace Kapel where I am today, uh, we actually built from the ground up. And so this is our third varispace, uh, but also serves as our corporate headquarters. And so that was 2019, and then in 2020, I'm almost done in 2020 is when we rebranded from Verades to Very, and that was really just to kind of showcase you know that we did a lot more than just the Verades product, which we were known for up till then. And so that that happened in 2020 with the launch of Salesforce.

SPEAKER_04 6:16

Fantastic. I don't think I'd be forgiven if I didn't ask the obvious question. 2018 2019 transformed the in-office experience that a lot of us faced, right? Um, with the pandemic. Um I never worked remote up until then in my career. Um, and obviously you guys are investing and pivoting to this market where you're relying on people being at their desk. Um so so what was that like? Was there must have been like a panic button hit at some point? Um, how did you pivot just from like a business perspective before we dive into the into Salesforce? But what was that like? Um navigate time.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Very interesting. The the timing was uh uh was was definitely challenging. So uh, but luckily we we kind of went live with very.com and kind of did the rebrand literally in February of 2020, and we know what happened in March. And so we were on a new, luckily we're on a new robust platform uh to help support e-commerce. So obviously our work from home e-commerce business um took off during COVID, but our other strategy for our B2B sales uh definitely um didn't take off as fast as we expected. And so, so I mean to be transparent, it's it's it's that's part of the business is you know that's been a challenge over what was a challenge for several years after 2020. Um, and so we we continue to kind of navigate the waters. Um my my CEO has a lot of great sayings that he he kind of throws out to help motivate us. It and during the time, one of them was just keep rowing. Um, and so so anyway, so we we powered, you know, we've been powering through a lot of things and um you know that's happened in the world and you know, macroeconomic things, but you know, we keep kind of plowing forward. But so it it so it did help that we were on Salesforce for the e-commerce kind of spike that we saw in 2020, but it definitely has challenged that B2B strategy.

SPEAKER_04 8:22

So so you've got three physical locations. So that's a model that you know maybe is not unfamiliar to many. Um, co-working type spaces. Are you doing private spaces where it's like the whole floor is yours, or or or is it co-working or an element of both?

SPEAKER_01 8:39

So it's really kind of in between traditional uh sublease and co-working. And so we uh so we they're all class A buildings, so really nice buildings with you know front desk and gyms and uh some of them have cafes, so all the services. And so we uh we really cater towards companies that will um lease space within Vera Space. And so we some of the differentiators are, you know, we have we you know we do shorter term leases and it with all the full amenities, uh, plus it's obviously fully furnished or mostly usually fully furnished with our furniture, so it's kind of a turnkey solution. Um and so we, you know, one of our core values is is flexibility. And so we're we do the short-term leases to be flexible with companies and you know, if they grow, we can, you know, add space to it, or if they contract, we can, you know, reduce space. Um, and so there's a lot of concepts, but that's kind of the key thing is you know, class A buildings with lots of amenities, a lot of flexibility, really easy for companies to come in, you know, get space and not have to worry about going and buying furniture and and all of that. So we try to keep things simple for companies.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

Good. Well, if you guys open uh open up a hub in North Dallas, let me know. We might be interested uh in joining you in in a bit of in having one of these spaces, um, preferably Frisco. Um but um all right, cool. So Salesforce.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

I don't know if we have any in mind, but yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:06

CBD on the roadmap. Um Salesforce, how how are VeryDesk using uh very apologies using uh Salesforce today? How many users, what products are you using uh high level yeah?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

So we um so I like to say we you know we have a lot of breadth. Um we we don't have a huge user base, we're we're a smaller company, kind of at the the peak, I think we had like 350 users. Um we're smaller than that now, but uh but we do have a breadth and really a cross-cloud implementation. Um and so kind of how it started uh when I joined in 2018 and we kind of went through a little bit of a CRM selection process, but the the original goal was uh sales cloud and service cloud for our sales and CX teams. Uh and we kind of initiated that, got approval to get started, and then kind of after that we we decided to really partner with Salesforce and kind of go all in. And so that's when we added marketing cloud and then also B2B and B2C commerce. Um, and so really our whole front end of our company, kind of the front office of our company, you know, uses Salesforce kind of wall to wall from you know sales to CX to operations to accounting to you know e-commerce, etc. So really we use it across the board.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

Cool. Yeah, real cool. Um so going back to to 2018, I guess you guys decided to do B2C. Did that kind of like really help you guys when the pandemic hit? So that was right then and there. Did you like see like an uptick of you know home office setups and then uh yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

So we we actually uh we launched uh B2C. It was actually the last work stream of our kind of our rollout of Salesforce. It was the last thing that we implemented and and definitely the biggest one because it was we not only implemented the new technology, but we also did a full rebrand from Verades to Very. And so that had a lot, a lot um of creative and you know content and and all that stuff that went along with it. Uh, but yes, it it definitely helped us because we were on a previous platform that wasn't near as robust. Um, and so being on a you know super stable, robust uh e-commerce platform definitely helped. And and we did definitely that uh over that first year, we saw a big you know spike in in home office uh purchases. So it was definitely good timing uh for that part of the business, as we talked about earlier, not not as good for the the B2B shift that we were going through.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

Yeah, that's that's how the world goes, right? Um and now now with all the tariff stuff, you guys impacted by that, or that that can also force you to pivot?

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Uh yes, we're we're trying to figure that out like a lot of companies. So we we do uh um manufacture overseas, and so yeah, so tariffs will uh definitely be something that we're looking at and trying to figure out our strategy on, but that that'll be coming out here pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

Yeah, so many unknowns, it must be difficult. Like you don't even know what's gonna cost in what country.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Yeah, and how it's gonna change over time, and yeah, so it's it's definitely not a an easy problem to solve. No, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

All right, so going back to the beginning, I guess. So you guys decided um you needed a new platform and then ultimately chose Salesforce. Can you like give us a little bit about okay, one, what was the driving decision between hey, that said, hey, we need a switch, um, and then you know, the kind of decision-making process and how you ended up landing on Salesforce?

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Yeah, so we uh so we were previously on Net Suite, so we used uh Net Suite for our ERP, like all our supply chain functions, and then uh the team used their CRM, um, but it wasn't well integrated into their process. They I would say they lightly used it. Um, and so as we were making the pivot and and adding, you know, building out a uh internal sales team, we really knew you know the sales CRM part and was really important uh to kind of have a good platform and really kind of bring all of our processes together. They were kind of disjointed at at the at the time in NetSuite. And so that was really the driver just to help support the strategic pivot that the company was going through. Um, and so we did the first thing we did when I joined was do uh kind of a CRM evaluation. Um and so obviously Net Suite was a candidate. Um we also looked at Sugar CRM and Microsoft Dynamics and then Salesforce. And so um I had, and I haven't gone through my my history, but I had a lot of uh experience in history with Salesforce, and so uh maybe I was a little biased, but um we did try to do an unbiased uh evaluation where we brought in vendors and did a scorecard and you know had people kind of score it. Um and Salesforce just from our features and functionality and flexibility and ability to you know recruit resources and build a team, you know, was by uh by far the the the top solution. And so that's what we chose to go with.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

Okay, cool. One of the things you mentioned um when we spoke, I guess the the pre-interview was you had a series of guiding principles that you felt was very instrumental into your into your success. Um, Yona, tell us a little bit about those.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Yeah, so it was actually um our partner at the time actually helped facilitate this for us, but it it was really a kind of a North Star visioning exercise. So the partner was West Monroe. I'll kind of give them a call out, but uh they led us to a great exercise at the beginning of the program where we kind of brought in some key stakeholders and executives and sat down and had a discussion to, you know, identify and kind of answer some of the questions of, you know, why now and and what are the benefits and what are our guiding principles for for the project. And so, you know, really why that was important is uh one, it ensured we had executive alignment, which is super critical, uh, but also set the vision and kind of answered some of those questions and kind of put it down on paper and then establish the guiding principles for the project. Um, and so just to share some of what those were, um, so it was challenge the status quo, uh keep it simple, leverage best practices, can configure over customization, and manage change of employee processes. And so those were our key principles. And so where that was valuable for me as a somebody kind of in the trenches as we're delivering the solution is sometimes you get down into the weeds and and it and you're trying to solve a problem or solve a requirement. And so sometimes it's good to take a step back and say, all right, we said we want to keep it simple, we said we wanted to configure over customize, and so how about this solution versus that solution? So it's just a way to kind of ground yourself as you get into the throes of the project uh to be able to kind of make sure you stay kind of as you intended kind of going into the project.

SPEAKER_03 17:12

So was there ever an instance that or maybe you can give us like an anecdote of when like you're struggling with a decision and then the guiding principles really is what made right or or drove, I guess, the decision, at least with a tipping point.

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yeah, I don't I don't remember a specific example that you know there's multiple examples that kind of the most common one is where you get a business requirement and uh and then the team is kind of going down to to kind of figure out how they solution it. And sometimes you it's really easy to over-engineer things and make things more complex than they need to be. And so, you know, as you as you identify the um you or the team kind of doing that, it's just you know, take a step back and think about it from a different perspective and see how we can simplify. It's a lot harder to to make a simple, elegant solution that solves the problem versus a really complex, you know, heavily customized solution. And so just just being able and and being able to negotiate with uh it was kind of a card we could play with the business of, you know, hey, we all agreed this is how we were gonna build the system, and here's why that's important in the future, right? We want a a tool that we can support and maintain and and and continue to be agile moving forward. And so that's why we want to do these things. And so, you know, how about this option versus kind of going down this direction?

SPEAKER_03 18:40

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, great. So um you chose Salesforce, you got your guiding principles. Um, I guess next is what you decide on your MVP, or did you go big bang?

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah, so we we definitely used uh kind of an agile approach. Um, and we we really broke it into six major work streams. And so the the first one we kicked off and it was late 2018, it went live in 2019, but was uh a basic, we called it the sales MVP uh or minim minimal viable product. Uh and so that was just we wanted to get some basic sales serum capabilities into the sales team's hands, and so that was account management, lead management, opportunity management, you know, just really a way for them to manage their their customers and their pipeline and and their kind of how they were managing their leads. And so that was a you know, couple two, three month project where we kind of did some um data migration and got them up and running on that. So that was that was phase one. Uh, do you want me to go through all the work streams? That'd be helpful. So we yeah, so that was the first one. The the second phase was uh kind of sales part two. And so that's where we implemented CPQ uh and then built some of the integrations to our ERP to do things like syncing customers and some other things. And so that that then allowed the sales team to do more of their end-to-end process where they could, you know, do that, have their opportunity, create their, you know, create a quote and and kind of go go all the way through with them. Um and then the third phase was Service Cloud Plus uh really integration to all of our all the channels we get orders from. Um and so uh so Service Cloud was pretty straightforward. So that was case management. We also uh integrated Vontage into Salesforce to to kind of have a seamless experience for them. And then we built a lot of integration from uh our e-commerce site as well as some of our reseller and marketplace uh channels that we get orders from, so things like Amazon and CDW. And so we the way we kind of built an order management process with CPQ. Uh Salesforce order management wasn't out at that time, but so we kind of built our own. And so that all those channels fed in through Salesforce and created a quote, and then that quote would then flow to NetSuite at the time uh to kind of create the order and do the fulfillment process. And so the the reason we did that is because we wanted our CX team to have a consistent way to service those orders. So if somebody placed an order on the website and then called in and wanted to make a change to it, it gave them the ability to kind of have visibility to all those orders and make the update and then transmit it to the Net Suite for fulfillment. And so we kind of built uh we call it order management light in in Salesforce with the Service Cloud implementation. And then uh the the fourth phase was our B2B Commerce platform. So really this this is for our corporate customers uh to go in and buy. Uh it's kind of like Amazon business, but so they get an account, they can go in and buy with their you know negotiated corporate discount and their you. buy on terms and some of those kind of corporate things. It's really kind of a buying portal for them. Uh and then we we implemented marketing cloud to replace Marketto. And then the final phase that I alluded to earlier was our B2C commerce, which turned into Very.com and was a part of the whole rebrand. That was by far the biggest um work stream uh because we like I said we we had to do the rebrand plus implement the new technology. So that kind of some of those weren't serial we we did a lot of those kind of in parallel. Yeah I think you said very com went live in 2020 correct yeah February of 2020 all this in two years uh less than two years yeah yeah so it was uh quite a lot decent effort yeah um so uh one more question I guess I'll hand it off to Kiro um in terms of like planning was this planned up front did kind of five stages um yeah we did it we did a lot of planning up front um like I said the it kind of evolved over time so we were originally originally focused on sales and and service and then and then we layered on the marketing cloud and commerce I I mean we didn't have the full plan from the beginning but but it we definitely it kind of evolved as we went along we we definitely had a plan for the sales and service part and then we added on the the commerce and marketing piece and and and kind of wove that into the into the program so in terms of building a team to tackle this um I'm assuming at the start 2018 you had you who knew Salesforce but not really developers implementation you guys go like the SI route did you build a team hybrid I know you mentioned West Monroe um yeah so yeah it's also so we yes we did both um so uh we definitely so I did join as a team of one uh and then we we actually converted some of our net suite admins and kind of you know they converted over and and uh got trained up on Salesforce so they they definitely learned through the implementation process uh we then uh also hired a couple of experienced admins uh throughout um and then and then yes we we leveraged uh partners to kind of help us and and definitely kind of fill some gaps for us uh so uh West Monroe helped us with the sales uh MVP and CPQ project um we actually did the the majority of service cloud all in-house um and so we did the case management piece and then we had a lot of uh integration work we were actually on jitterbit at the time now that I remember uh so a lot of uh jitterbit integrations uh that we use our internal integration team to do uh and then we use partners for B2B commerce marketing cloud and B2C commerce we we use live area for the commerce and marketing uh and then West Monroe for the sales service and that they actually helped us with the B2B commerce as well okay go ahead uh cure um so so a lot of a lot of good stuff there Jason um uh I'm curious how you know just uh before we go into kind of the success and and how did it go and and your opinion on on that um you know how how much did your background prior to very um impact some of those decisions uh how confident you were about delivering those six phases in 18 months um you did you know some of our listeners might might when they check out your LinkedIn profile they might not go far back enough but uh to realize that you did you did work at Salesforce back in back in 2006.

SPEAKER_04 25:52

Do you want to quickly tell us a little bit a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_01 25:55

Yeah and I uh yeah so I've been doing CRM my whole career. So I I actually started uh with Sebol Systems uh as a so out of college I was a consultant implementing SIBL systems at enterprise companies. Uh some people may not know what SIBL systems is but it's it's really the it was the on-premise CRM before Salesforce. So I may be showing my age a little bit but um but that was the the pre-Salesforce go-to CRM solution and so I did that the first part of my career and then my my last project at that consulting company is when I got introduced to Salesforce. And I honestly really kind of fell in love with it and and loved it. And so I actually uh took a job with Salesforce's small to medium sized business consulting group and so this was back in 2006 2007 so Salesforce was very different from what it is now it was a a pretty um basic um CRM tool like a core CRM tool for sales and and service teams and so um I was there so it was small to medium sized business so it was a lot of really small projects so you know 100 200 hours and so I'd work on four or five at a time and and kind of roll through them. So I worked through a bunch of of uh projects which was interesting and good good good and challenging and and all those things very different from implementing enterprise SEBL projects uh so it was it was definitely a a good change um and so went through that uh and was there was there for about a year and then I actually got uh left there got recruited to Sabre um to to kind of lead their CRM team they I they had been one of my clients at my original consulting company and so I went back there and spent 10 years there uh and so did a bunch of things there always owned CRM originally SIBL and then helped the transition to Salesforce at Sabre but also had a bunch of other um technology teams along the way but that's kind of a brief synopsis good so so all that experience and especially the the experience with Salesforce um where I I think you mentioned you worked over 40 projects um including uh a Salesforce project at Tesla uh who at the time again were a very different company um so all that knowledge and expertise um you know obviously with the help of the right partners the you know and and and the team you were able to deliver uh six work streams in 18 months um how how'd it go quite simply what what are your thoughts how do you how did it go overall uh overall I was uh super proud of of what we accomplished um and so uh built and still have an unbelievable team uh that that made it possible uh and and just the company culture uh embrace like one of our core values is embrace change and believe it's possible and so very positive environment uh which which definitely helped um obviously there's things that were challenging and didn't go as well as we would have hoped and um definitely things that that went good uh work streams that were better than others uh but overall I'm I'm super proud of the work we did and and kind of what we accomplished in a in a very short time.

SPEAKER_04 29:10

So a big goal of our podcast is to help listeners uh potentially avoid mistakes or overcome challenges that they might not have thought about yet so um could you share a little bit more about some of those challenges that perhaps you didn't take into consideration at the time for whatever reason turned out to be a challenge when they shouldn't have shouldn't have been uh could you give us some examples?

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Yeah so I mean as I reflect back I think uh you know once again I I do think having that North Star visioning was super helpful so I definitely recommend that when you're embarking on a big program. Um thinking about which work streams went better than others I I think the work streams that we went into uh more prepared uh were were more successful so so um work streams that we we had in-house knowledge both on the technology and the business side of kind of an experience implementing systems where we we kind of had an idea of where we wanted to go so we were as we were working with partners we were driving requirements versus the the partner pulling requirements from us um obviously we hire them because of their expertise and their experience and so we you know we leveraged that but you know we had a good idea and and oftentimes uh and I can give kudos to our uh VP of e-commerce he he came to the B2C project with a whole set of requirements you know day one and so he knew exactly you know what he wanted and and why and and was able that was just really helped kind of kick out the project and and uh kind of doing some of the you know legwork up front really made the the end the the whole project successful so so definitely kind of going making sure you have the right people on the team from an IT and technology perspective um executive alignments super important um so that's kind of some of the the bigger things I think the things that bit us the most um which I may do a little bit differently if I did it again was uh and Dave may appreciate this but just the data part of the project the data migration uh and and making sure we have the right approach and tools and and kind of starting that early a lot of times you start with a functional piece and the data piece comes later but kind of getting those work streams excuse me spun up early is super important because it always to do it right uh it takes time and and effort and and you want to start that early um and then also just if you're gonna have a lot of integrations uh that's another kind of long pull in the project and so make sure you you have enough resource and you allocate the the right amount of time to kind of do those integrations right because that's what help helps the project be successful.

SPEAKER_04 31:57

Mm-hmm. And and and I think um you know one of the takeaways I've taken so far is is the notion of simplicity um even going back to the vision of the business which is simply revolutionizing how workspaces are defined designed delivered right it's simple you talk about simple keeping things simple um throughout right phase one was just getting the simple concepts of of Salesforce up and running um so you can start to see ROI.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

Yeah you use a lot of Salesforce right it might have started out simple uh perhaps is oh we're just gonna use it for sales um generation but I mean if you look at where you are eight years later um or at the time you know four or five years later um you don't use Salesforce simply today right use it for everything do you want to do you want to tell us a little bit about kind of what surprised you about your you know um growth and and duration now that you're kind of reflecting on this period of implementation in the 2020s um you know how how much you've evolved since then yeah I mean we still try to I mean it um maybe it's easier said than done but we we do still try to keep things simple um from uh you know so we you know we we're still advocates of declarative config versus code we we do write code for our integrations is kind of the main area we do it and then in in our commerce platforms we do development um we also uh the team is is um we try to stay disciplined and make sure we dedicate the right amount of time to tech debt so we so we work on kind of a couple different kinds of work so we have project work where we're implementing new stuff that are kind of larger initiatives and then we work on small enhancements which are just you know small requests from the business and then we we try to make sure we have a percentage of of time uh dedicated to just tech debt um which is really we're a small team so it's really easy to kind of get consumed with those business facing requirements but I think it's super important to to kind of maintain your house and kind of keep things make sure you make time to to keep the system stable because yeah I mean we've been we've been in the system uh you know six years now and so it definitely over time it gets more and more complex. And then like data like we have a last year we implemented it a data uh really data delete process of what data we can uh purge from the system and so just over time like right when you go live you're not worried about those things but as you continue to mature tech debt and data retention and some of those things become more and more important with everything that was going on we talked about this earlier but with with things outside of your control i.e the pandemic um having that and then maybe the shift from B to B to B to C during that time as more people are working from home um did you have to pivot what you were doing there for with Salesforce?

SPEAKER_04 35:08

Like for example did did commerce cloud take a higher priority did one of the phases all of a sudden make it higher up the list in terms of priority and urgency to accommodate and react to what was going on outside?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

I mean definitely I mean commerce cloud is is a big uh important part um I'm trying to think if there was something specific to the um to the pandemic that that we changed definitely from a business perspective I mean it influenced some of the products uh we kind of rolled out and innovated on so we you know we did uh separation panels and and stuff like that some of that comes to mind um it we we did I mean maybe a night something that comes to mind is we did um implement a perks program kind of a work from home program for companies to kind of give their comp their companies a a perk where they can go on to vary.com with their company email and buy stuff for their home uh and then we did some programs with a couple companies uh related to their work from home uh policy and to help help facilitate their employees to buy furniture for their home office so we did we definitely did stuff like that um you know we still continued uh to lean into the B2B space and and making sure we have processes and procedures in place to help support that part of the business so that that we continue to do that you know to today um so it's kind of across the board not nothing drastic I would say from a technology perspective I mean I I think luckily we were on the the future state platform before that hit it would have would have been a lot tougher if we were on some of the older legacy stuff that we had before we I might be skipping ahead to uh what's next but but um you you you mentioned order management you built in-house um a version of that because it wasn't out at the time but I also know you mentioned you know to to us that's potentially something that's on the roadmap for you guys um later this year going into next um I I guess what do you think were were or are some of the limitations of what you were able to build in-house and and it's kind of I guess what I'm asking is when do you know when to stop building and buy something else uh is is ultimately what I'm trying to ask for our listeners. Yeah so uh I mean the main reason we would look to order management is because uh we would be able to tap into the innovation and and all of the you know to be able to do the same thing that Salesforce order management does we'd have to go spend a lot of time and effort to build it custom and so that's kind of you know really taking advantage of their innovation and and capabilities that they're building for all their customers is kind of you know the key thing. We so we we kind of built our order management system and we have you know enhanced it around the edges but we haven't uh dramatically improved the the experience both for our internal teammates as well as our external customers and so we want to make that you know experience of how they how customers interact with very you know top notch and so that order order management just has a lot of capabilities um that would help us kind of down that journey it would be a lot harder and more difficult to kind of go continue to customize what we built uh to do that.

SPEAKER_03 38:40

Understood awesome so um I do want to ask you a couple questions about your your data practices. How did you end up landing on Del Boomi? It's one of those ETL tools that you know just doesn't get as much traction as as I say some of the other ones. It's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Yeah I mean we we're super happy with it. We uh like I said when originally in 2018 we were on Jitterbit uh and then we we spent a little time on some other platforms um and uh I mean to be honest the the VP of of technology before or a couple before me that I I reported to he uh we both were from Saber and and we use Boomi at Sabre and we're happy with it. And so I mean we we I have nothing but good things to say about the platform. It's been super successful for us and and we do a ton of integration so not only between our CRM and our ERP but also with all of our all the marketplaces I talked about uh and then our our 3PL which um our third party logistics provider the the warehouse where all products are at and so we exchange data with them for every order we have on you know whether you know the status of the order and you know send it to them to fulfill and then they send status back. So so we have quite a bit of integration built out and it's um it's been very successful for us.

SPEAKER_03 40:09

Yeah and it's definitely better than than Twitter bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

So you started you started right phase one or track one whatever you want to call it was sales cloud you moved your accounts and contract uh accounts and contacts over I guess from Net Suite but you didn't build the integration until later um like you planned for that in advance any any struggles like one of one of the one of the issues you run into like if you migrate data from an ERP and you don't do the integration did you kind of end up with conflicts right yeah we how did you guys handle that and that's kind of one of the areas that I think we could have done better uh is is not not necessarily the choice to do the MVP first but just our whole data migration approach. We've gotten a lot better. So now we all of our data migrations we have a lot of SQL scripts and we do a lot of uh processing of the data before the actual migration in in SQL like we so to me like what we talk about is like the ideal data conversion is you do all the work up front and then on conversion day you just press a button and it and it just works. That's a very simplified way to explain it. But um we we didn't necessarily use that approach in the original data migration it was a lot of data manipulation and spreadsheets and you know be lookups and extracts and so it um kind of looking back if I were to do it again I would have tried to do it more like we do today.

SPEAKER_03 41:42

And so that that's kind of so definitely was part of the uh the challenge with with that rollout I mean while I was more asking about I guess the supplemental or the secondary rollout of the integration with Net Suite like did you like plan up front and you have the Net Suite IDs already in Salesforce or do you have to go back match them up?

SPEAKER_01 42:04

Yeah absolutely yeah yeah so we yeah we use the the the primary keys or whatever from Netsuite and and loaded that when we loaded the data in Salesforce and then there was a little bit of obviously matching up and syncing up once we we built the integrations.

SPEAKER_03 42:18

Very cool and I assume well you have to do a secondary migration because people go next week to make new records. Yeah I mean we did yeah so like one time and then delta updates and and we had migrations throughout because we you know first was sales and then you know then was the CX team uh was service cloud so there was some data migration related to that um and so there's been and then even Commerce cloud and and uh marketing cloud there's data migrations involved uh looks like we lost cura hopefully he'll be back um yeah so I mean it it's interesting because it's one of the it's one of the things that you really got to plan um up front right because again what happens you go live then you have a prospect they're in Salesforce then you close that they got to be created in Net Suite the integration doesn't exist because you got to create it manually um got to make sure I guess someone types in the the Netsuite ID manually into Salesforce just thinking ahead um for when you build the integration yeah a lot of lot a lot of planning um has to go into that um so it's also interesting you mentioned start early uh it's actually one of the guiding principles uh in my book when I and then also also all your transformations is code is one of them okay all right we're aligned um yeah it's one of them is um fix code not data if are possible yeah right absolutely um particularly with uh data migration okay let's let's hop on to like yeah some of the some of the lessons learned um so if if if if you were starting Like what would you do different?

SPEAKER_01 44:06

Uh what would I do different? Um so I think it it would be to do some of the things we just talked about. Um I think the the way in sequence we rolled it out uh worked, um probab probably take a little more time. I mean, like you you said, 18 months was fast. So we we could have probably built in some more um more time to make sure we we had we definitely had some folks that burned the midnight oil to kind of to make it successful. So I'm super appreciative of that, but probably baking a little more time, uh focus on like we talked about, focus on data early, make sure we have uh enough resources to build integrations and kind of have that planned accordingly. Um and then in in certain uh work streams, I don't want to kind of get into details, just maybe do a little more due diligence up front before the project kicks off to make sure we're kind of aligned on our you know what what the requirements are and what we want to accomplish with that phase. But I think just address some of the things that are already mentioned.

SPEAKER_04 45:14

Any um light bulb moments uh throughout the the the the project? Any of the six phases where you're like, ah, this is all making sense now?

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Uh light bulb moments. Um more sales.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

Uh I mean, so like like I mean, I'll go back to this. So the you know, the the company culture I think was uh super helpful. Like I don't think we could have done what we did in some companies that I uh in some companies, uh but just to believe it's possible and um you know that that kind of motto and um and open to change and and that sort of thing was was really successful. So we um like I I can just uh picture in my mind some of our rollouts. We had a uh you know, we set up a desk, you know, some of our desk and and kind of a um Apple style kind of walk up and ask questions. And you know, so we spent we tried to we spent a lot of time on change management and communication and and how we supported uh the releases once they went live to make sure. I mean, luckily we're a pretty small company, we're all local here, and so that our majority of us were local here, and so people could just walk up and ask questions. And and so I I think some of those things were uh went really well and would be would be awesome to try to replicate on future projects. But um so that's probably an aha moment.

SPEAKER_05 46:43

Um go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Yeah, well, just um I guess maybe an aha moment was just you know, you buy all this Salesforce uh and you think, I mean, obviously the core stuff is well connected, but we also had demandware and and uh marketing cloud, which are separate technologies. And so some of there were some challenge, you know, you kind of expect them just to be magically connected. Uh so that you know, we definitely boom, he kind of played our jitter bit at the time, uh played a role in kind of doing some of those connections. So maybe that was an aha that at the time it's gotten better over the years, but you know, some of the clouds didn't connect as seamlessly as we'd like. Um so those are probably a couple of them.

SPEAKER_04 47:34

Okay. Um if you had to do it all again, what would you do, what would you do differently this time around?

SPEAKER_01 47:42

Uh Dave just asked that, but um so I so I think it it's uh a lot of the things I've already talked about throughout the um the throughout the podcast. So data, I would uh use a different approach for data. Uh, you know, start earlier, build, uh make sure we had the right skill set in-house to do a lot of the data transformation and preparation uh with scripts versus trying to do it manually in in uh Excel and VLOOKUP. So have a better, more robust data migration plan. Um and then make sure we have the uh the right time and enough resources. We had the right resources, but enough resources for the integration work because we definitely kind of uh overloaded that those resources through the project. Um and then just making sure we we definitely had certain phases of the project where we went in with uh well prepared with kind of pre-requirements ready and kind of a good idea of what we want to do, but some of them we didn't have as much. So making sure we had that in place are some of the key things.

SPEAKER_04 48:48

So you mentioned throughout the episode as well, um, you know some key advice that I think would be good for other organizations, um having solid resources in-house, leveraging the right partners at the right time, um coming to the table with the requirements versus relying on the partner to elicit those requirements. Any other general advice for CRM leaders who who might be uh embarking on a on a on a on a CRM transformation project as things stand at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 49:24

So I I think uh building good partnerships. Um I it's kind of my style, but people may have other approaches. But the the thing that's worked for me is is making sure you build good partnerships with with your with Salesforce, the software vendor, as well as your partners. And so try to set it up and make it a a win-win for both teams versus us versus them or you know, a confrontational uh relationship. So um so I think good, solid partnerships go a long way and kind of help, you know, they'll they'll kind of bend over backwards to to make you successful. So I I think making sure you have that, Salesforce has always been a great partner um throughout my career, but uh you know, making sure those you pay attention to that and then choose good partners that fit well with your company and and kind of build those relationships, I think are super is super important.

SPEAKER_04 50:18

Now the obvious metric I I know you can track is sales, and and I kind of tongue in cheek joked about that earlier, but but um how how else are you measuring success? Is there any is there any other KPI metric that you can use to measure success? Because you didn't necessarily unless you did, I don't know, but it didn't sound like there's a a a user adoption issue of using the CRM or anything like that. So um how how you know if you if you're reflecting on whether Salesforce has been a success in the business, sales is one metric, but any other metrics you're looking at to be able to say, yeah, 10 out of 10 it is, you know.

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Yeah, I mean uh uh obviously uh driving revenue and and saving costs are are always big uh things we we strive to. There's a lot of influences on that. Um but as we go through each project that we work on, uh we we do try to upfront kind of identify what are the key things we're trying to solve, um, and then try to measure it's much more on a smaller scale than than I think you were describing. But but things like uh we we implemented omni channel channel and sales engagement. And so one of the metrics was how quickly are we following up on leads? And so we we kind of set a goal and and then we're able to measure that. Um and so we we just that's just an example of how we try to for projects we work on. We're um better at it on some projects than others, but we we do try to identify what the business value is on um before we embark on a project and and and and come back and circle back and see if we achieved that. And if we don't, why? And then and we've had projects where we've exceeded expectations.

SPEAKER_04 52:03

I always ask this question every episode, so this episode is no different. Um on a scale of one to ten, one being terrible, ten being fantastic. How would you rate um your overall uh outcome with with your Salesforce project?

SPEAKER_01 52:18

So I would probably say um a seven or eight. Uh so seven point five maybe. Um depending on the day. Yeah. I mean, I would say an eight. I don't want to be uh I mean honestly, I I think I I do think it was a big success. It wasn't perfect by any means. And you know, we still uh we still have challenges like everybody, but I mean overall, so every almost every employee in the company uses it um on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, like everyone's and our most most teams are in Salesforce, you know, all day, every day. Um, and a lot of our processes end-to-end kind of live in Salesforce. Uh so I I think it's it's been a success.

SPEAKER_03 53:04

So is that uh that eight on the implementation or the end product or both?

SPEAKER_01 53:11

I think both is kind of what you know, just kind of the the end result as we're you know, as I reflect back now on kind of what we did and what we accomplished.

SPEAKER_03 53:21

So in terms of the end product, um like what features do you think or system change that you need to make change to really like get that to a 10 or like a solid platform?

SPEAKER_01 53:34

Uh so one one of our and I haven't talked about this, but one of our kind of visions for the system going in is we wanted our CX, like the different teams that use Salesforce heavily for it to be their their one pane of glass, their one system of engagement. Uh and so the one thing that maybe disappoints me is it's not 100%. It's um, you know, they do most of their work in one tool, but they do from time to time have to go, you know, pivot to the ERP or you know, go to a spreadsheet for, you know, the to look at some data. And so, you know, that's constantly something that we're we're looking and trying to achieve. Um and so I would I would love it if they didn't do anything. I mean, I think we've done a really good job of it, but I think there's more work to be done there. Um I don't know if that answers your question.

SPEAKER_03 54:29

Yeah, it it does. Um that I mean that that just kind of never ends because uh unless you're like literally deprecating the other system. Um at some point you're gonna have to go like there's so many, there's so many, you know, not just the data, right? It's not just seeing the data, but like triggering processes in the other system, like the account opening process or yeah, viewing the order or checking with the warehouse or you know, all of that kind of stuff. It just never it kind of never ends. Um the promise of agent force is that it's gonna do that for you. They can just ask the agent if it's not there. Um, but we'll see we'll see. That's still yet to be determined.

SPEAKER_01 55:09

Yeah, and then order management, we kind of envision that would that would move a lot of processes from our ERP into for for the order to cash process, move a lot of those into Salesforce. And so that would would help that uh help us achieve that goal. Because they wouldn't have to go to ERP to see it, they would have it all live in the Salesforce core platform. Or or data cloud, I guess. Yeah, or data cloud. Yeah, I mean, so that's the vision. Uh yeah, you're right, you may never get get completely there, but you know, that we still strive. And there's definitely some things that uh, you know, it's like, oh wow, I wish we could I wish we had that uh working as as it should work, but that's kind of a constant thing as well.

SPEAKER_03 55:54

Okay, cool. So uh yeah, so well, like what's next? Where do you see Salesforce evolving um, you know, within very within you know the the industry that you guys are in, which I guess you consider what consumer goods?

SPEAKER_01 56:11

Uh yeah, uh um I mean office furniture. I mean we we sell we sell a lot. I mean we we do definitely sell to consumers for their home office, but a lot of what we sell is to businesses. And they use all of our channels to buy. So some some small small businesses just go on to vary.com and buy 10 desks. Um, so so we kind of a lot of it's to businesses, but so I I think probably like a lot of companies, uh, you know, figuring out how we can take advantage of data cloud and and uh agent force, uh data cloud's not as big of a problem since a lot of stuff is in Salesforce. But I think uh, and kind of the way we're thinking about that is kind of the first step is is cleaning up our data and kind of creating that uh that uh unique customer profile. I can't remember the exact term they use, but uh that unified profile is kind of kind of I think the first step. And then I think a lot of uh other data cloud use cases and then uh agent force will kind of spin off of that. So that's kind of at least how we're thinking about it now. Uh and then as I mentioned, order management is something we're we're additionally looking at.

SPEAKER_03 57:20

Yeah, so uh I was gonna ask if anything you're excited about coming up. Um so putting aside the I guess the Agent Force AI stuff, uh anything else?

SPEAKER_01 57:28

Yeah, I guess the other thing we're and we've been talking to Salesforce about this for a long time, but our our ultimate vision is instead of having two commerce platforms, uh very.com and businesslibrary.com, we'd love it to be one. Um and so we kind of continue to have that conversation with them, and you know, we'll see at some point, you know, we would choose to go one way or the other for both of the functions. But that would just help because right now we have to maintain and merchandise and support two platforms. And so the the goal would be eventually to be on a single commerce platform.

SPEAKER_04 58:03

Good. Um, I know we met um at the Agent Force uh World Tour back into last year after a few years of trying. Um any any any conferences or or events like you know, either in Salesforce or external, unique to your industry that you've got on the the the calendar for the rest of this year, Jason? Dreamforce in October. Will you guys be there?

SPEAKER_01 58:27

Uh that's kind of TBD at the moment. I I would love to go. Um not quite sure if we'll if we'll be able to make it out there this year, but uh definitely been there many years in in the past and and love to get out there. It's probably been too long since we've been there, but uh would love to, but don't it's not confirmed at this moment.

SPEAKER_04 58:46

Well finger fingers crossed. Um all right, Jason. Um thank you. Uh thank you for sharing your story uh with us on the CRM Success Show today. Um a lot of ground we covered on this episode, so thank you again.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

All right. Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate the invite.

SPEAKER_04 59:04

Um absolutely anytime. Um for our listeners, uh please do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show for more episodes featuring leaders like Jason uh who are shaping the future of the CRM.