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_05 0:28

Welcome to the CRM Success Show with a deep dive into CRM Success and Failure, delivering real stories with real impact. Today we're talking with Young Lee, Senior Director of Business Systems at Wocast. So welcome, Jung.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Young, great to uh have you on the show today. Why don't you start by giving our listeners a quick overview of your background uh in the Salesforce ecosystem, please?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Yeah, um I've been doing this for a number of years. Uh, was formerly an employee at Salesforce a long time ago. I think that's kind of how it started. Uh started as a Salesforce admin uh and has moved have moved up my career managing various applications, uh, have been at some notable startups, uh tech companies as well. And now I lead a team at Flowcast, uh managing Salesforce as well as a few other applications as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:20

Perfect. What do Flowcast do?

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Uh we make accounting flow software. Uh and we're branching out with other products. We do like some compliance stuff, uh obviously in the AI space as well. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Perfect. Well, I'm sure we'll we'll hear a bit more about them later on. So one of one of the topics we're going to cover today, Kion, is around the idea of migrating to a new instance of Salesforce. Why that might be, should you do it? What are some of the pain points and things to kind of keep in mind as part of that journey? So uh over to you, Matt.

SPEAKER_05 1:53

Yeah, so as uh as Kiero alluded to, I I believe you've done this at um what was the name of the company?

SPEAKER_01 2:00

New Relic.

SPEAKER_05 2:03

Sorry, say it again.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

It's uh New Relic.

SPEAKER_05 2:05

New Relic, that's right. So yeah, tell us tell us a little bit about why you guys decided to. I think it sounds like you abandoned an old org, moved your data to an org, clean code base. Um, so yeah, so tell us a little bit about the decision. Why why'd you guys decide to do that? Um a typical decision, or you did it for like unique reasons.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

I mean, it was it was a number of reasons, right? Like, and I think we had chatted about this before. I think there's a couple reasons that you don't really have a choice, right? If you change licenses or there's like a mergers and acquisitions, I think this is more of a scenario of like a business deciding like our instance has so much tech debt, or there's so many issues. Should we move to a new instance? And there's a lot of factors involved when you try and decide that. But I'll go back to why we did it in New Relic. New Relic, we were moving to a consumption-based pricing model, which is really complex. Our instance was also really old and had a lot of people that had worked in there. We had a lot of integrations. Um, it was a very complex ecosystem, and there was a lot of data um and just a lot of complexity, and just nobody really knew. Like the team that I managed that managing that was like 20 plus people, virtually actually none of them were there when most of the stuff was set up and implemented, so there's like no legacy knowledge, right? And there were integration points that people just didn't know what it did. Uh just tons of consultants had come in and build stuff, other admins, other developers. And so the the idea was like it would take too long to actually get it all fixed. Now, the other side of that was these a lot of these uh enhancers were built based on legacy processes. So we we just had multiple issues where we need it, we needed business process change, we need some transformation, and we needed cleanup, and we needed tech debt elimination, and we needed to like remove the shroud on the mystery of a lot of what things did. Things would break randomly and nobody would know why. And it would just take us a long time to sort of discover and fix what the issues were. And in terms of like, was migration successful, it was a huge success. Like, we did it on time, we did it successfully. I mean, the planning process was really intense. I mean, we spent over a year planning it, right? Uh, and we had incredible stakeholders from an executive level that understood how to get it done. So, from a completion perspective, it was very successful. Um now, you know, I think post-implementation, myself and some colleagues that have chatted, like, was it ROI there? We're not sure, you know, like and we can talk a little bit more about it, and I'll throw something out there to you guys later about sort of like the challenges of like doing more of a tech deck cleanup longer tier approach and some of the pitfalls of that versus like this big bang approach. I think for New Relic, if if you want to measure it from a dollar standpoint, if it's game, it's hard to measure, right? But did they need it? I think so. Like there was so much like business process transformation that was needed that there's a cost that I don't know that you can associate, say dollar for dollar, this is what we got to to the change that happened, if that makes sense, right? That's what people would say. I'm not sure that the ROI is there, you know. Like it was more of a there's a human factor that needed to be addressed from a process standpoint. I'm not sure that could have been done without doing a full re-implement. And and people forget, like, you've got to reimplement everything. We had Marketo, you can't just re-point it, you've got to re-implement Marketo. And our our sales stack was huge, and you have to re-implement all that, you know, and move tons of data. We are also restructuring our data and re-architecting sort of our our data model at the same time, as you probably should do. So it wasn't just like a list and shift, you know, like which normally isn't, right?

SPEAKER_05 6:32

Right. So um generally a lift and shift would be more kind of that license change type thing where you don't really have a choice. Um, you want to downgrade your licenses, and you just can't change the version of Salesforce, right? The license types um that you have. So you have to migrate to a new org. So in your case, I mean it sounds like the unknowns would be more of a concern almost the fact that they exist than the decision to just move to a new org, right? So, how do you how do you make how do you come to the determination that these unknowns are safe to throw out? Um, I assume that's part of your year of planning.

SPEAKER_01 7:15

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, like I I kid you not, part of the plan was let's just shut off the API and see what happens. Like it was it was to that point. There were a couple of endpoints where we're like, we we're not sure if anybody's even using this. Let's and when we got to the we had this plan of like going through and starting to just turn them off to see what happened. And there were some that we were like, it nothing happened, like literally it'd been set up seven, eight years ago and had just been running, and nothing was documented, you know. But there were so many of those that like the amount of time it would have taken, you know, um it would have just taken so long and and so much time. When at the same time, remember, we're going through a transformation as a business in terms of our go-to-market strategy, right? So it was just sort of like this perfect storm of things that needed to happen. Um, I won't name the name of the company, but um, I was in discussion with another company who was considering the same thing. Um slight competitor, I would say, bigger than us, uh, that actually decided to do a seven-year cleanup plan versus doing a full reimplement. There's there's a huge cost from a uh a resource standpoint too. Like I don't think I think people underestimate how much time is involved in getting something like this done, like decision making, like every, like every when you think about like code that's written, right? You need to categorize it. Let's say you have to, let's say it's just like you get you have like Apex Sprawl, and you've got to sort of document what each like trigger class does, right? And then if you want to re-architect, you have to really understand the process behind it. That that alone takes so much time, right? And so like it involves like every team. And so for us, because it was such a big endeavor, I mean, we did quota relief, I mean, we had to go to the board, um, all the execs were involved. And again, like thankfully, we had incredible exec support, which which I think was key to its success. But because this was like kind of like a not a have to, like the license change, like it was more of a business decision. If you don't have that, like you it could lead to disaster uh for sure. And I mean, think about it, like it let's say you live in a home, right? And you're like, we want to move, but you hire a developer and they're gonna build a house. How many things can go wrong with that developer? Contractors are late, permits are late, you know, you get the wrong framing, they put in the wrong electrical system, right? They put in the wrong wiring, and then it gets delayed and delayed. It's it's the same concept, right? And except now it's not just you and your wife, it's like your in-laws, your friends live with you, like a thousand other people live with you, right? That all need to move over, that all want different things. And so, like you this is why I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of resources that are required from a time perspective of just people meeting, right? Not to mention the actual technical aspect of things.

SPEAKER_05 10:26

So though do you approach it, it sounds like you approach this from the technical side. Let's do an analysis of what code is written within Salesforce, um, as opposed to taking it from the business perspective, sitting back down with your users, understanding what they do on a day-to-day and then most design.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

I wouldn't say that. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't say that. I I think I'm a business process first. Uh I think when you what I'm saying is anytime, anytime I've seen, and I've talked to a number of companies that like are considering this, like the first thing they always say is like there's so much apex sprawl, right? But a lot of that is due to like a misunderstanding of like the business process, like things have changed over the the course of the company's like maturity, right? But people just sort of like write code in a certain way where it's not efficient or architect correctly. But in order to make anything like this successful, at the core, you've got to understand the business process, and a lot of times you've got to change that business process because a lot of companies just run into this thing where they've just been doing something for so long, or and this is like another big problem, they've adjusted their process due to technical limitations, right? And they're just like, we do it because we couldn't automate something in a generic example, and so you have to address those issues. We're like, well, what if we could automate that? What if we could fix this? What would your process? And sometimes they're like, I've not thought about this, I've been doing this for three years, you know. So that again, that also takes so much time, right? But for sure, I'm and this will probably bleed into like a career conversation that we're gonna have later, but um I would say I would anchor more on, I'm more focused on really understanding the business process that the technology can be solved for, right?

SPEAKER_05 12:26

Um yeah, so so going back to this, so it sounds like this is no different from I migrating away from some other CRM platform, UpSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, um niche, right, in niche industry CRM. Right? So is there is there anything different you would think, or more complex or less complex? It's important to think moving from Salesforce to Salesforce instance is easier than moving from a completely different CRM because oh, the objects are the same, the mapping is the same.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah, you know, it's a it's an interesting question. I think it depends, right? Like, like I'll talk through it a little bit, right? Like if you're let's say you're moving from HubSpot, we'll just use something generic. Sometimes when you move to a new home and you're forced to look at like a different canvas, you get less resistance on change, right? They're like, oh, this is all new, so we have to do it differently. But if you're moving to the same thing, sometimes people just are more resistant to change, and so that's like just a different challenge when you have going from sales for sales, though, like what we encountered a lot was well, I used to do it this way, I want that again. And we're like, well, that that wasn't working, like that caused issues, so you we've got to change that, you know. And so when you move to like a different CRM platform, sometimes it's it's the change management sometimes is easier. Um, you just get less people that are, you know, the I used to do it this way, I want it, I want it back, you know. We got that a lot. That was like one of the biggest challenges that we had.

SPEAKER_05 14:02

Yeah, I think when people move platforms, they're more open to change. That is true. You do believe it or not, sometimes even when you're switching platforms, um they say, I know it's in Salesforce, but make it work like dynamics.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Oh, I believe it.

SPEAKER_05 14:17

Yeah, um, it's never fun, and it and it's so much coding, and it's sometimes for for the stupidest thing, you know, like the way the lookup works, and it's some obscure thing. So now you're writing a custom lookup, you know, like a custom lookup widget. Um yeah, uh, yeah, that kind of stuff happens. Okay, so um let's go on back to the planning. What so let's walk us through this. Okay, I gotta do I gotta do an org migration um from Salesforce, or maybe some some other org. Uh, how how do you go about putting together this plan? Um, your plan of attack, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Uh, I think it also depends on size uh stage of the company. We were a public company approaching. I mean, New Relic's over a billion dollars in revenue now, but at the time we were approaching 500 million, uh, and you know, just over 2,000 employees. So this is something that this wasn't driven by myself. Uh, this is driven by an exec who I think, like, from a visionary perspective, like had really strong opinions and I think understood that we need a radical change. And so he was able to get the exec team on board, then you go to the board, then the planning starts. Uh, and he did all right.

SPEAKER_05 15:39

Can I ask about that? Uh just a bit more when you say you needed radical change. Um, were they just simply so much tech that you're scared to touch things and then used to request something takes too long? Or was something more impactful?

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Uh business process. You know, it's it was uh a tech company that had gone public with a lot of folks that worked there a long time, and and you know, like any company, like they've been doing things the way they've been doing things, but at the same time, we're now changing like our pricing strategy, which is a big change. Um, and some of the processes that we were following needed to change, right? Um, and it wasn't like all just on the business, it was a lot of things were done just because there was technical issues, or it was just built that way, right? And but you're so busy and you're so focused on growth that it is hard, and this is why I say from a dollar's measurable ROI perspective, sometimes it's hard to quantify, like, yes, this increased our revenue or saved it, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_05 16:48

Like, no, no, I I just get it. Just sometimes just the sanity of knowing that they think gonna break, um, so I can sleep at night. I don't have someone say, Yeah, I look, I can I completely get the headspace part of it. It's not all dollar than cents, it's I can focus my worry, let's say.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

Well, I mean, like something else, like a seven-year plan of like, hey, periodically something's gonna break, and I'm gonna start taking away stuff that you're used to for like seven years. Like, eventually, like people are just gonna potentially get grumpy, unless you and I'm I'm sure you can like mitigate some of the disruption that that happens. It's probably actually less disruption and probably infrequent for that to happen, but I mean that that is a possibility, right? Uh, and the change management is just like drawn out much longer, uh, versus sort of like a big bang.

SPEAKER_05 17:37

Yeah, it's harder because you're in flight, also. And that that leads directly to my next question. I didn't and I do want to finish your plan. I'm sorry for cutting. Um, so that so this is the big thing, right? I gotta change my pricing model. It requires a serious system change. Okay, so now what do you do? You're gonna tell your executive board, yeah, we gotta re-migrate to new CRM org. That's a two-year project. Please put your pricing strategy uh on hold.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

No, no, the pricing strategy like that that continued that did not get on hold. Uh it was more it was more uh explaining the the cost if we don't do anything, um, explaining that to the board. And and I I'll take zero credit for that. That was all the exec that that drove this that that was able to do that. Uh, I think from a business standpoint, I think luckily this person had a bit of an engineering background, uh, so really understood the challenges that we had. Um, and so he was able to really convince and articulate the the pitfalls of not doing this, you know, from a business standpoint. Um and so he was the one that like you know did the amazing job to convince uh all the other execs, the board, obviously all the sales leaders, all the CS leaders, everybody, right? Um, and so that that was like the first step getting all the decision makers, all the key people bought in. And so obviously you'll get budget, you'll get any relief on like resourcing. I mean, it was it was a costly, costly venture, you know.

SPEAKER_05 19:13

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. So um, so what did you what did you do? Like you you modify the current org for the pricing change while you're redesigning the new ones?

SPEAKER_01 19:22

We did, we did actually, yeah, yeah. Um, we implemented usage in the current org. Um and then like none of that slowed down. Um, and then we did a full migration. Um and and that that was yeah, I think the the moving of the data was what took a long time. Um, I mean configuring the the new instance uh took a while, setting up the integrations took a little while. Um, but actually moving the data, actually migrating Marketo also took a long time. Um that it just like the sync took so long just because we had so much stuff. Um like it there was a span of a week where we couldn't use it basically.

SPEAKER_05 20:06

Yeah, my yeah, let's hop back to the to the um to the plan.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

So and then like once we got exec green light, it was meeting with the Salesforce exec team. I mean, I could you know, uh could we hired a consulting team, they brought in all their architects. Uh this is not something that like we internally did all of our own planning on. Like we hired somebody, um, we heard some notable folks that have been in the industry a long time. Luckily, again, this exec uh had a lot of connections. Um and so we got like the big dogs did a certain consultant company and a bunch of execs from Salesforce to sponsor us. We were a strategic client at that time too. Uh, and so we spent months and months planning. Uh, we at one point when we we we did a lot of internal planning of like, okay, what is it gonna take? What do we think it's gonna take? Like who needs to be involved, like how much money, and then we would engage with the consulting company and you know, getting proposals like SOWs, you kind of your traditional like SI engagement, right? Um takes a little bit longer because the scope is so much larger. Uh, meeting with each and every vendor uh in advance, like meeting with Marketo, learning that you can't just repoint it, and uh meeting with other customers. I mean, we met with a number of other customers that have done it. Um, some of it helpful, some of it not. Like somebody I think met somebody with AWS who basically did a lift and shift. And I was like, we're like, Why'd you do that? And they're like, Oh, there's just like some code sprawl or something. Like it his actually didn't make sense, but it was like super easy and successful. Uh, and it wasn't like a license change or like an MA. Um, but for most, there you Cases in their uh instances were a little bit smaller, so they didn't feel as much pain, and obviously, sales for that's who's who they're gonna connect you with, right? Like the successful ones. So we did that, met with customers, met with all the vendors, and that actually takes months and months and months, right? Because you're talking all your cadence tools, your enrichment tools, like what does it take? You know, licensing at the same time, you're also dealing with like renewals, like like the sales team is still like acquiring new tools, and you know, there's like the business is still running, right? None of this stops. So you're you're you're learning for each and every vendor. Like, how do you re-implement? Can we repoint? Do we get a new instance? How do we migrate all the data? How do we remap? Like, so for every vendor, you're having these meetings, and so you're documenting all that, you know, and again, at the same time, you're still doing all the day-to-day, week to week sprint planning for your normal work, right? This is prior to actually kicking off the actual implementation, so that's why I'd say it took over a year of planning. Um yeah, so and again, our our instance was very, very complex, and and there was a lot of tech debt um and a lot of data. And and we, you know, our product is fairly complex as well, and and um so that complicated things, and and we had a really mature like data science team, and so like we the amount of data that was moving back and forth to places was was complex, and so that's sort of why it it took a long time, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:44

How how long was the project end to end?

SPEAKER_01 23:48

I would say two and a half years. Um I tell that to people sometimes that if like are familiar with it, they're kind of in shock. I've heard three three to five years is kind of the average. Um, we didn't know any better, like this is like all of our first times. Um, but it was it was some long, long hours.

SPEAKER_05 24:07

How how old was the org?

SPEAKER_01 24:10

I don't remember. It was it was one of the older orgs from my understanding, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Hence the legacy data, a lot of data, data debt, etc. Makes sense. Um, a couple of things I I wanted to um ask Jung uh as you were kind of sharing the plan and and those kind of things. Uh so just to backtrack again slightly. Um I'm I'm curious, were there any signals you would you would highlight that's that either you or the executives felt yes it's time to go on this migration of a new instance initiative? Like what was the the trigger items? I know you talked about kind of the new cost model. Was it simply that or were there other factors involved?

SPEAKER_01 24:53

Oh, you mean the pricing model change?

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Yeah, was that the only driver, or were the business?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

That was just more of a business change. I mean, I think we were one of the early uh companies that understood that's sort of how you drive. I mean, everybody's moving to more of a consumption or usage-based model, right? I mean, even at Flocast, we've we just recently switched over to that. Um, but for our product especially, um, this is back in like 2017. Um, it made absolute sense uh for us to do that. Um, so like we didn't sell like for our product, it wasn't it didn't make sense to be have a seat-based uh product. It was it was very much more of a usage uh type of thing. So really that wasn't really the driver for it. It was really the the pain that a lot of people felt on a day-to-day basis to get things done. And there was, you know, we had like 2,000 users um across the entire business uh in there.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

So simplifying the org was a key driver. Um you potentially use user fatigue and user adoption were declining, and yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Um and so that it was just really hard to get resolved in our current instance.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Um you mentioned sorry, go oh no, go ahead. As I say, you mentioned uh one of the key drivers that the executives carried to the board was around the idea of cost avoidance versus cost savings. Um any insight on how you how they they you, the team, went about measuring those and saying, look, you know, this is a cost if we don't change.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

I mean, there were times that you know, and I wasn't involved in every single aspect, but that I was involved in a lot of it. We would measure like how long things would take to do. Um, and like um we would look at things like um, you know, lack of visibility on data and the impact to deal close, you know, uh data discrepancies um that would happen, um, and things of that nature. But I remember doing an exercise where we would literally count like clicks, how many clicks, how long things would take to run. Um, there were there were some significant issues, like things would take too long to like render uh to open. I mean, we had like iframes and all sorts of stuff in there, right? And so there were some genuine, I think, cost issues uh from a productivity standpoint. So we tried to measure everything we could. Um, but I think that honestly the biggest driver was like if we we had the oldest instance, you know, like one of the older instances, we had so much tech debt, and they kind of knew like the company had been through a number of changes uh internally, etc. Um, I had just started, like uh you know, when when this project kicked off, so like our team was pretty much almost brand new. Um, and we had hired as we went along too, which is kind of crazy. Like, I think we started with like three or four people. Um, you know, by the end of the project, we were like 20 plus um just on the go-to-market side for systems. So yeah, we were like hiring people mid-project that we need help. Um, but yeah, it wasn't like the pricing model per se that really drove that change. Um, it was more just the impact of all the system issues that we had.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

Understood. Okay, if you had to do this again, and maybe you will in the future, uh, I I would like one thing you would repeat and one thing you would do differently.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

I probably won't do this again in the future. Um not bad. Uh I'll be honest, like I would dissuade uh unless it's like absolutely you're just you walk in and it's just like monumentally disastrous, I would honestly persuade like companies not to do it. Like it there, it takes so much. Having gone through it, it takes so much. Like, um could let me put it this way like if you have a newer company that has a young instance of Salesforce, they're like, it's too complicated, can't figure it out. Guess what? Like, because you have a newer instance, you probably have less data, it's probably gonna be easier to clean up, right? But like if you don't have the right staffing, it may seem impossible, but those are easier to clean up, right? Now, if you have an older instance that's just like like cleanup is gonna take years, right? Well, those are even harder to re-implement. Like, so like and and I don't know that like personally, if I would want to be on that journey again to like re-implement, do would I be open to doing the cleanup? Yeah, like that's something that you can plan for doing an ongoing basis. Um, it just again, like especially in this economy now, like the money you would have to spend to do it, like I don't know. You know, maybe if it was back in 2015, 2016, when everybody's making a lot of money and and you can it people weren't as uh scrutinizing that kind of spend, maybe, but yeah, right now, like I I wouldn't do again. No, what would I do differently? Um what I would do again is the approach that our exec team was uh took was very much an MVP MVP approach, and they were ruthless about it. I mean, like there was virtually no scope creep. If anything, we we kept cutting things, and that literally was what made it successful. Now we had a very large backlog after, but that was manageable. That's something you can negotiate like when to do things and you have time to do discovery, but taking an MVP approach, I think, is absolutely critical to doing something like that successful. That's something I would definitely do again.

SPEAKER_05 31:05

So, yeah, how do you do that when the system is line? So MVP works really well when it's a net new system, so anything is better than nothing, so I can give them an MVP. But when they have a fully functional, feature-rich system, and then you tell them let's go back to an MVP, you get a lot of you get a lot of pushback, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:27

It's uh yeah, no, we got a huge amount of pushback. You're absolutely right. Uh, there's a lot of campaigning and education and and also uh honestly discovery to figure out what can and having honest conversations about like what do we absolutely need for people to do their jobs, you know? Like um a cadence tool, you know, like it's kind of critical for BDRs, I would say, right? But like does like an enterprise AE absolutely need it right off the bat, you know, like maybe not, right?

SPEAKER_06 32:03

Um does that they have it today with that issue, right? Is to have it today.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

Well, no, again, having a very honest conversation, right? Like BDRs, they're like 70% or whatever, 80% of their day is sending emails, right? Enterprise AE, maybe not. So very having a very tough conversation with um and negotiating with that with that sales leader of like your team will not have it day one, they will have it on day 15 or day 10, right? And so we we had a lot of negotiating on that kind of stuff, right? Um, a lot of it had more to do with automation than tools, honestly. Like we had again, like when you have an instance that old, you typically automate a lot of stuff, and so you know, we we we we started with sort of like here's the bare minimum that you need from a data standpoint, and you're gonna have to manually input this stuff for a while, you know. Uh very generic, I know, but like that's sort of the approach we took. Um and it, I'll be honest, it it did work. People weren't thrilled, like they weren't like, they weren't like, yay, like have to manually input this, but at the same time, there a lot of the feedback was wow, this is a lot cleaner. We also paid a little attention to a lot of little things, like we didn't just go in and and take zero feedback on user experience. We also like really focused on like page layouts, clicks, user experience, right? Because if we were moving to a new instance, the whole point is to make it better for the user, right? It's not just make it work better. So a lot, so going back to the consulting group that we work with, we did tons of workshops, like all day workshops, getting like um user feedback. We had sales reps in there, you know, learning how they worked in in the sales resources. And so you build that, and then we brought like um user process folks in from the consulting company uh and really redesigned sort of like the process um and really tried to optimize that. And so that's sort of way I say like it's sort of processed first, uh, and then but there's so much planning that does go into the technology.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

So you you briefly touched on it there, but um, the last question for this segment is I guess any key indicators that you, the business track to basically showcase the migration was a success.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Uh we were uh, you know, just to be very transparent, we were a date-driven project. So hitting the date was was our win. And so um, and so that that was what we tracked on at all costs. Yeah, and we did.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

Love it. Yeah, sometimes simple, simple is is better, right? You know, let's let's get it right.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

I mean, yeah, kind of you know, work streams that we would track and everything. Um we I don't know, I don't know if we were lucky, but most of that success that stuff was successful uh in terms of all the work streams that we did.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

Great, love it. All right, so why don't I shift the focus of the podcast slightly? So um talk a little bit about you and your background. So uh for our listeners to recap, you've been in the ecosystem 20 years, give or take, uh, without making you uh feel older than you need to. Um and thanks to Karen for the episode. I know you've got a bit of a flu as well, which we we joked about with down to old age. So um so two decades, right, in a Salesforce ecosystem, and and you uniquely actually started your Salesforce career at Salesforce itself. So um for most, they they they go to Salesforce if they're lucky to work at Salesforce fortunate enough later on in their career. So um you started at Salesforce 20 years ago. High level, how has that ecosystem evolved from then to present day for you, from what you observed?

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Yeah, um, it's been an interesting journey. You know, it's funny you talk about age because 25 years ago is when I worked in my first tech company. And prior to that, I worked at a bank doing like customer service. And I was like, I need to get in tech. Um, and a friend of mine got me a referral and I got a job doing software support. Um, from there, like I got another referral in the sales source. I had I spent, I think, the my tenure at Salesforce trying to explain to people what I did and what sales back then nobody knew what it was. Like, what is Salesforce? You sell something? And I was like, No, I don't don't sell anything. Like, I mean, when I joined Salesforce, it was like I think 1400 employees that just gone public a few years prior. Um, so I mean, this is a long time ago. This is back in like 2005. So back then, like there was no career path. It was like if you were not an engineer or a PM or something like that, people didn't know what you did. And so I spent a few years there. I was, I was um back then, I was it was called Premier Support, but I was an account manager, technical account manager, technically. I was doing like relationship management for like 21 plus customers in the financial space, doing their admin work as well, as well as being like a subject matter expert for for a couple topics, you know, do client visits. And so again, this is when we're told now you have a different TAM, you have a different RM, you know, you have a CSM. We sort of did all of that in one um back then. And so, you know, I got tired of being the escalation point because like every time we had an issue, you know, I've got 21 customers that are like upset, and so I was like, I want to go on the customer side. So um at that time, and this is the interesting uh part of the maturity of the the industry, is I only knew of like and through uh word of mouth, there was one recruiter, and she used to work at Salesforce, and she was like, There's no recruiters that understand Salesforce, uh, and I'll tell you a story about that later, but and she was the only one that specialized in recruiting for Salesforce Admins. So I connected with her and she got me a job at Wells Fargo Insurance as a Salesforce Admin. So I went customer side. Um, and even at Wells Fargo, I think my title changed yearly because they nobody knew. And they and here's the crazy thing. I think they had like 30, 40 instances of Salesforce uh being used in various ways. Um, and there was a guy there uh in my later years that I think had the understanding that this is a thing that's growing, Dreamforce started getting bigger, um, and he created like a you know a success org, etc., a customer excellence thing, and uh he started trying to unify it, and they started consolidating more. So he sort of had the right vision for that there, but they they had no idea what to categorize me as, you know, they were like, you're not an engineer, you're not like like a BSA, like you're so like again, people just had no idea um what I did. And I remember walking into um um a staffing agency, and I remember the woman looking at me, and I told her the salary I wanted, and she looked at me and she laughed. She goes, You're never gonna get that. And she goes, You're out of your mind. Literally, her words were you're out of your mind. I don't need and she goes, I don't even know what you do. And I and I left and I was like, That's crazy. And then like a month later, I got like the exact salary I wanted, and I got a sales for seven job. But that's sort of where the industry was. Like, you know, this is back in uh 2008, I think, right? Um, versus like now there's like full-blown, like you can have a career, you know. I've I've worked for a VP of business applications before. Um, I've seen VPs of business applications become CIOs, even uh, and on both sides uh of the spectrum, like meaning I've seen I when I look at like sort of uh resumes and careers, I've seen folks that like uh there was a CIO I briefly worked for. He was uh he owned business applications on the finance ERP side, had actually never managed it on the go-to-market side, like meaning Salesforce. He became a CIO. Um and on the flip side of that, there's folks that you know have been more in the Salesforce ecosystem that transitioned on to being a CIO as well. So it's kind of an interesting thing, right? Um, I've also seen like Salesforce developers become full stack engineers or integration engineers. Um, it doesn't directly translate, but because I think um the industry has shifted where a lot of the engineering principles have been applied to sales. Because like back in the day, like we didn't you didn't even have like change sets like the way you deploy, right? Now you have literal DevOps tools and integrations to GitHub and Cheer, all you know, like we like my team, for example, we operate like an engineering team, you know. Um, we use DevOps tools and and we follow engineering principles and agile methodology. So some of that can translate if you want to do like a career shift. Um, so it's changed dramatically. Like now, yeah, if I mention what I do, I think I was at like uh a charity auction from my daughter's school uh a couple years ago, and literally sit next to a guy and say, What do you do? And we're kind of trading, like, oh, this is and he he was kind of being like, Oh, this is kind of what I do, but he thought nobody would know. And I was like, dude, I do the same exact thing you do. Like, we had the same job, ironically. Um, which like you know, 10-15 years ago, you would never run into that.

SPEAKER_02 41:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

So it's yeah, grown quite a bit.

SPEAKER_02 41:56

So so you've got defined careers, you've got the opportunity to make a full career in Salesforce, like you know, it's been the core focus for you over the last 20 years. Um, it's taking you to places um, you know, like Uber, for example, um, and you know, a bunch of different SaaS software companies on in the Bay Area, at Shopify as well, um, and currently at Flowcast. So, but also I like what you're saying, it's a lot more it could be used more now to even transfer outside of the Salesforce uh domain in terms of skill set, right? You talk about software engineering, maybe you might start as a Salesforce developer, but then end up in full stack software development. And who knows, go on to be a CTO um uh at a company. So more defined now than perhaps when you started out. Any any other uh differences you observed in you know, obviously more recognition and mainstream kind of you know, people being aware of what Salesforce is. Even um to your point, my my uh my mum saw a uh advert with Matthew Mahanahean is and said Salesforce. Isn't that what you do? What's this actor talking about Salesforce? So there you go. You know, so to your point, it's more recognized, right? So um any other you know, observations.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Yeah, uh it's not just uh from an engineering perspective, too. I think like all the other uh functional roles like PMs and and whatnot, also like you you have like a full stack team in terms of roles, uh so that that's changed quite a bit. Um, and where it goes from there, like I'm not sure. Um like do we become like Oracle? And we're just I mean it's huge now, right? Um, and so that's I I feel like in in the last few years we're sort of like at this point where Salesforce has gotten really big. Um there's still some legacy stuff. Like something that I noticed is like where a team like mine sits. Uh like back in the day when you first hired your first sales of admin, like the the Sales off team would just hire somebody. Like they're like, they're the only team that really supports it. It's for the sales team. So uh let's just hire like a sales force admin, you know. And but now you have like IT departments that are like, no, this is like a technology team, and but then you still have companies that are like, nope, this is a like revenue function. Um and that in and I used to have a strong point of view because like I was really happy in an IT department that it should belong in IT, but you know, I think over the years I've softened on that a little bit. Uh I look at like HR systems a lot of times. Like HR systems teams like live in HR a lot of times, uh sometimes finance too, right? Um and it and I think it goes back to the the mindset of like these are business supporting functions that should really know the business, right? And so sometimes like you could have a company that's a little more distributed and not so centralized, sort of like in the the older model, I guess. Um but there's pros and cons both ways, like there's also some huge advantages of having centralized in IT. Uh because we do work cross-functionally a ton with like a lot of our IT partners. With like I work a lot with like our infra guys and identity management guys and um security, especially security and compliance, like a ton. So there's just like a lot of synergies to to be on the same team as those folks.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

Uh yeah, okay. So what what what about um if we're looking at kind of trends? Uh Maz, I think you had a quick comment on that actually.

SPEAKER_05 45:35

Yeah, no, I just want to say that I think I think that's really why Salesforce grew so big, was their um when they first started their initial their initial tactic was to sell to the business, not to the technology technology department. Um and they kind of just got in on the ground floor, there was no software, so they didn't need clearance to install anything, everyone already had a browser. So the cloud approach combined with a yeah, just like you know, put it on your corporate card, um kind of gave it to the hands of the business. And then I I guess starting uh probably close to 10 years, not quite, IT department started wrestling this away because they were left dealing with the data that was in that system and cleaning up the messes there. Uh the compliance stuff started popping up all over the place, and that ended up in their purview. So they started pulling it back. Um, but it's one of the reasons Salesforce has been so successful because it's always been a heavy focus on the business first and then the technology second. Whereas when you're looking at accounting systems like you know, the the board wants their report and they know exactly what they want to look at, and the spec is very easy and clean, and then they really don't care what happens with a CRM if these guys are in there, right? So they care, the business cares a lot more. It's not a back office function, right? And I think I think that's a big part of it. And just to add on that, I think that's why a lot of these people who who do well balancing that between the business and the and the technology side end up going very far in their career in terms of these leader superstitions because it's it's so valuable to be able to talk to um to both to both those worlds. Um yeah, I had a question in there, but I forgot what it is, but go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

No, I think you could also ask like something like what what's one thing that you would you know do or give advice for somebody like that that wants to be successful in this industry, like um in my opinion, like the technology engineering sales can be learned, right? Like that's just certifications, classes, whatever, right? Um, but people I think I think the more successful people in this industry are the ones like yourselves that really know the business, right? Uh understand the business that you're supporting. Because you can write great code, you can know how to configure the app, but if you don't know what you're building for, like it really doesn't matter. Yeah. So that's like the that's like a that's a piece of advice I I try and give to everybody that I work with.

SPEAKER_04 48:12

Thanks.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

Um spent a little bit of time reflecting. I I want to spend a little bit of time forecasting, let's say, um factoring in current demand. We're talking AI, data cloud, etc., complex security integrations and so on. Um, what what kind of roles do you think will grow? What kind of roles do you think will shrink or perhaps be reinvented? And then the follow-up question for that for you, Hyung, is do you think we're leading more towards uh deeper specialization or more hybrid generalist type of roles?

SPEAKER_01 48:47

Um I think I think the industry in terms of sales service has already been heading towards more of a specialized type role. Like on my larger teams, I have uh typically have pods. There's like a post-sale, pre-sale, marketing, CS, partner specialist team, right? Uh, and then like you have CPQ specialists or CPQ architects. So I think in general, it's it's heading that way, it's just gonna continue to because like the complexity just increases, right? Like back in the day, CS was kind of an afterthought. That is not the case anymore. CS is quite complicated, and depending on what other vendors and systems you use, uh, you might need somebody dedicated that understands that architecture, that business process. And so I think specializing is definitely a trend. Um another thing is with with all the AI stuff, you know, like I haven't seen it hugely impact our industry yet. Um but I suspect like whether it be through making our developers more efficient using some of the AI tools for developing, um, I'm not sure that like um the Salesforce AI product for at least from a sales perspective is ready. Um so I haven't really seen that make a huge impact yet. Um but from uh from an impact to like uh a team that supports Salesforce, I haven't seen like any trends in terms of like how that's changing yet. Um it's also kind of tough right now here. Like if you think about it, um where the economy is, I think everybody's just so focused on like saving money that in terms of like innovation and in changes from a career perspective and that type of thing. It's kind of clouded by the fact that like everybody's just trying to be efficient and save money, right? So kind of a tough time to say this is where I see it going because what I see happening now is just everybody's just trying to save some money, you know, like the role is tight.

SPEAKER_02 50:51

On that topic then, Hugh, uh, what about like one of the trends we've seen has been where businesses don't have the luxury of admins, BAs, PMs, engagement managers, and so on, they've merged certain skill sets together. The most common I've seen has been admin roles have become less about tickets and fixing tickets. It's become more like that business analyst, business product owner partner to the business. Do you think then, therefore, in this cost-saving, broader economy? Um, again, there are exceptions to every rule, but do you think you'll see more of that? Like if you're planning your org chart for 2026, you're gonna merge those skill sets.

SPEAKER_01 51:32

I'm in that situation now. Like when I started as an admin, I was a BSA, a PM, an admin, you know, the security representative, like everything, right? Like I was uh one admin for a thousand user or right uh and then I we borrowed a Java developer to become our Apex developer, and he learned Apex. That that's all we had. Um, and then you know, you fast forward a number of years, and I I had a BSA, I had a PMO team of BSA, BSAs, TPMs, product owners, you know. Now I've got a manager, two admins, two devs, and one architect, you know, on for the sales for side. Um, and no there's no discussion. I'm I have zero headcount for next year. Like we're not hiring any BSAs. We um and so I think I don't think it's a trend of where like the industry is at. I think it's just more of a a reaction to like the economy and the cost uh cost cutting.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

Um yeah, I think um I know something we we spoke about in the past off offline, but we've we've been busy this year in particular with the emergence of uh the near shore market, as and that's mainly cost-driven, right? Um, you know, consolidating US-based hires to uh get two for one basically in Latam, for example. Um that's a big trend at the moment. Um but um okay, so I guess it's not all doom and gloom. So so um keen to point that out. But but for people planning their careers in the next 12, 18 months, as a leader that's hired hundreds of people in the past and will continue to hire in the future at some point, I'm sure. Uh, what skill sets would you recommend professionals kind of fine-tune and hone in on to stay relevant in this 2026 job market?

SPEAKER_05 53:21

Um Yeah, just to tack onto that question. Do you think do you think the market is moving a little bit back towards trackable trades over specialty?

SPEAKER_01 53:33

Yeah, I would say so. Uh just because like you don't get four headcount anymore. You're you're I know somebody that kept losing headcount, like existing headcount every year. Um and uh just because like you're you're not getting I'll give you a real example from when I was hired. Like when I had a larger team, like I was hired for like a Salesforce, I'll use Salesforce Admin as an example, hyper focused on just their their technical skills. And they are were they a whiz at configuring? Do they know every aspect about the platform? You know, like that's all I was concerned about. And then, you know, we get feedback after the panel, they're like, no, best communicator, whatever. Like, don't worry, we've got like we've got Josephine that's gonna like rock the requirements and she can talk, she knows how to talk to the admin and whatnot, right? That was not the case at Flowcast. Like, we if we were gonna hire somebody, we needed somebody that could communicate, that could understand requirements, that could, you know, engage with the business. What was their personality like? Umaz's point about the jack of all trades, like are they organized? Like they're gonna have to, they're not gonna get PM support for small implementations, right? Um, and it's just because of a headcount thing. Like now, are they a true VSA PM? No, they're not, but they are gonna need more of the soft skills that I probably wouldn't have looked for in the past. Um and that's just sort of the situation we're in. And we're we're as a company, we're doing really well. Um, but we're just being very cost conscious, you know.

SPEAKER_02 55:11

Um I think I think I hear that a lot from from candidates. Uh, one of the frustrations is um, you know, those that maybe are in having a bit of a tougher time seeking new roles, it's like, you know, the biggest thing is they get they feel like these customers are looking for unicorns, right? Uh especially kind of been been spoiled, you know, in 2021, 2022, where you know, it was send a resume, the hired kind of kind of almost, right? You know, maybe one quick 15-minute telephone call or something. Um, so I guess for those individuals that might be struggling a little bit more, soft skills, right? It's a term that's thrown out all the time. I I've had it as feedback. You know, I'm looking for somebody with stronger soft skills, communication skills. I get what that means, and these people get what that means, but what does that mean in reality, right? Is it they're better interviewers? Is it they're coming more strongly referenced and recommendated recommended through mutual connections? Any anything you would look for from a packaged soft skill perspective?

SPEAKER_01 56:10

Um references are after the fact probably somewhat important sometimes. Uh, but I think it is the communication skills. I mean, I know that's a very generic thing. Do you know how to talk to people? Uh, do you know how to show empathy? Can you manage tense situations? Can you manage like unreasonable customers? Uh I mean, I'll ask a question like, how do you manage like an outrageous request? You will get that. You know, give me 50 checkbox fields. How do you respond to that? You know, like you don't want the person to go, you're you're crazy. You want the person like, come in. Like that sounds like a tough challenge. Like, how can I help you? Blah, blah, blah. Like, what is this for? Like being someone that can figure out, like, hey, how do I navigate the conversation where I'm still helping this person uh solving their problem without pissing them off? You know, yeah. Because like people are, you know, like if you have empathy too, like, and this is this goes back to communication and also um self-awareness, at the core, if you have empathy, you'll you'll realize this person has asked for this because they have some pain somewhere. There's a pain point, right? It's not just an outrageous ass, they're they have something that they're struggling with. So then if you can take that point of view, you don't lose your temper, you can come off much more empathetic, and your communication skills are better. So when I say good communication skills, those are the things. There's some things that like um that have to be learned or taught. Some people inherently have it, but the ability to ask the right questions and and like speak effectively, right? Um those are also all important. If you're somebody that is just abrasive, like you're gonna find it challenging, like frankly speaking, right?

SPEAKER_02 58:07

Yeah, it's continuous development, right? Mass, you got a question?

SPEAKER_05 58:11

Yeah, I was just saying that uh in today's world, particularly with email communication and chat GPT, a lot of people are using it to words to me. Um, and that it could help, except that when you meet them in person, they're like, I've been talking to all this time. Um I know I've definitely I've definitely had ChatGPT word to miss um because I'm a New Yorker, very direct and to the point. Um then when dealing with people, let's say Midwest, they're not necessarily accustomed to that. Um yeah, it's an interesting, you can just throw your email and say, you know, anything offensive about this, um, fix it for me, and you know, kind of just of that kind of stuff. So uh I don't use it too much though, but it's it's interesting to see how that might lessen the need for a strong uh EQ emotional intelligence.

SPEAKER_02 59:01

To your point though, what what do you do when you're on a a live video conversation like this, right? Uh that's where it kind of goes down. I I I've seen a scenario where you know everything's great over email uh and then you speak to that person, it's like I can't even hear a word they're saying, right? Um so so um yeah, it it's it's a delicate one. I think um to your point though, Jung, I think it's about these interviews for admin roles. Yes, the technical let's say admin roles are for example, yes, their check clients check in the technical skills, of course. Can you build flows, going through all that kind of stuff? But it's the uh how I feel, tell me kind of you know, a scenario, a time when to your example, you know, you you would handle an obscene request, how you would go about it, and make sure that I think these candidates have those examples are able to articulate those examples like that, right? Um not having to rack their brain for five minutes to try and come up with uh a real scenario where they were able to add value to a finance user, for example. Um so so last couple of questions for you um as we as we close out the episode. So um I always like to ask this if you could rewind and start again, you know, that type of thing, um, your Salesforce career. I'm I'm curious if uh you know any decisions you'd perhaps accelerate, any kind of proactive choices you would make to get to where you are faster, maybe, or skills you wish you developed earlier? Um any general lessons you could you know share with our listeners that they might be able to apply to their own career?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:39

Um I mean, I mean, this is more on a personal level. I there were a couple startups that I mean, this is so ridiculous. Uh my couple of regrets are not joining a couple of startups that that pursued me aggressively because I didn't want to commute. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:56

That's valid. I'm sorry, that's valid.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:58

Back today it is as well. I had just left a long commute and they hit me up right after, and I was like, I just literally had lobbied to move offices, and I was dying on this commute.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:11

And jobs I turned down simply because I had to drive in Northern Jersey and it would cost $35 a day to cross the bridges between the Verzano and uh and the Gonzalo.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:22

You know, and I I'd be stuck in traffic and it would it was so stop and go. I remember doing the math, like how many minutes a day I was spending, I was losing in the car. Um and so, but that, but you know, in hindsight, like I should have I was young, I was in my 20s. Like I should have probably thought about like if I was approached now and those companies were presented to me, I'd probably jump in a heartbeat, right? Um, these were like companies that had big IPOs, and it's also that's actually why I took the Uber job. Like I know about Uber, like I was I was an early adopter, like I'd paid 25 bucks to take you know a short ride home in San Francisco because I was like, this is an amazing idea. Like I think it's gonna be something. Um, so I took like a huge demotion. I was like a senior manager managing like you know, decent-sized team, went back to being an IC admin uh to go work at Uber. I didn't know it was an experiment at the time either. I was like, this sales thing is like an experiment. So I was like, it's gotta work, else I don't have a job. I had a kid at the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:33

Um no pressure there.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:36

That's like my biggest thing. Like, um advice to anybody in this career now, like I would look more for like the opportunity if you're really early in your career. Like, I would I would I the advice I always give is what can you learn uh from this role, right? And do you have an opportunity to learn and grow? Because you will if you're early in your career, this is not your last job by any means, right? This is the job that's gonna set you up for your next step, right? And and sometimes people lose sight of that over a really small amount of money. Like I've seen people take a different role that's gonna pigeonhole them, there's no growth opportunity for just a very small amount of money. And I was like, you have a great manager over there on the other side, you're gonna learn, you're gonna do lots of stuff, you're gonna touch everything. I was like, I would take that, and they're like, Oh, but it's 10 grand more. And I was like, it's not that much, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:31

It's um it's crazy because obviously you can imagine I've seen that time and time again. Um, and I think there's a few things on the commute piece that resonates, and and um but but but main mainly primarily I I I believe it's in the grand scheme of things of a let's say the average person works 30 years, right? Um is that two, three years really going to make a big difference? It's less than 10% of your time at a company, and and also people are happy to pay, well, might not be happy about it, but they pay 50 to 100,000 a year for education, right? In the formal sense, in terms of bachelor or whatever, but won't take a five, 10k pay cut to do one or two years of education and at the end of the year get back to that level anyway. So it is a short-sighted um opinion, and I see it a lot with people, you know, they bounce around from companies, you know, 12 months here, nine months there, and it's like they're all remote, and you know, I don't believe anybody can learn as well remotely on the um versus on the job in person. Like I'm a big believer on that, and you know, there's obviously certain times in your career where you might push one way, lean one way or the other, but um, it is a big thing for 2026, is the return of office, and every every week you see another big company, you know, hey, this is this is it, take it or leave it, you know, and happy to let their rock stars leave if they're not going to get on board with five days a week, right? So it's funny you you mentioned that from you know 20 20 20 years ago, but it's all still a relevant topic today in in today's market going into 2026, right? That kind of yeah, that commute, you know. I think you can see it negatively, like I'm losing 60 minutes or whatever, but you know, there's other stuff you can do at that time. Call your loved one, you know, on the commute or you know, listen to a podcast or decompress, you need that mental separation from rolling our living rooms, right? You know, working five days a week. So um pros and cons, like you say.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:27

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:29

But I think on that note, that's a wrap. So, Hyoung, uh, I'd like to say thank you for um participating in this podcast. I know we first uh tried to get this uh you know in in motion maybe about a year ago, but we got there in the end. So thank you for your time.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:44

I appreciate it, it was fun.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

And uh hopefully we'll have you back again in the future. And and for our listeners, please do not forget to subscribe to the CRM Success Show for more episodes featuring leaders like you.