SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome! You are listening to the CRM Success Show, where you will hear from CRM executives who have overseen some of the most interesting and complex CRM implementations. Your hosts, David Mossri and Kiro Whitey, will be bringing you real stories, real insight. Follow along on social media for updates on new episode releases, exclusive content, and much more. Enjoy the show and thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_04 0:31

Welcome to the CRM Success Show. Today we're talking with Pam Hannett, uh VP of Salesforce Strategy and Execution at Liberty Bank. So welcome, Pam.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

Absolute pleasure. So um so so Pam, uh obviously you and Mazgo go a while back. Um how how do you guys know each other?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Oh, it's gotta be at least 12 years, right, Maz? 10, 12 years?

SPEAKER_04 0:56

Uh no, not quite. I started I started at that SI, I think 2017. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Oh, then I'm way off. I mean, I started back that far. Yeah. Um, yeah, we worked together at uh NSI um working on some banking projects. Um and we found our way back to uh to each other through another SI uh working on another banking project.

SPEAKER_04 1:24

So this time obviously a little bit more a different relationship, right? Where it's more of a client uh consultant relationship as opposed to being on the same team. Um but it's a nice, it's nice regardless.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yeah, me being the one that's deciding how that work gets done is a little different than being the one that's actually doing the work.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Um well give our listeners a little bit of an idea, Pam, who may not know you. Um just give us an idea of your background in Salesforce and um your role at Liberty Bank, all high-level stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah, absolutely. Um I go back, uh I I was a recovering banker uh that turned into a consultant. Um I was in banking for about 14 years, worked for a couple of uh community banks here in New Hampshire, uh, where I met Salesforce uh at the second community bank. And uh at the time uh Financial Services Cloud didn't exist, and my bank didn't want to buy sales cloud, so they bought me the platform, sent me off to school, and told me it was time to go and learn how to build, um, and built some really cool things on the platform for my bank. And uh Salesforce, the team there had told me, hey, you know, you should really consider being a consultant. So uh about 10, 11-ish years ago, maybe, I became a consultant. Um, somebody that was building really cool stuff in the basement of a bank, all of a sudden now is running a a um a practice for consulting practice in New York City, which was pretty cool. Um I was, let's see, in consulting for about 11 years, um, onboarded over 135 institutions to the platform in that time, worked for multiple different SIs uh and also worked at Salesforce. I tell people I took a coffee break over at Salesforce. Um I had a um uh a non-compete and uh they had an opening on the product team uh that looked really cool running the roadmap for banking and lending at the time. Um and uh worked with a good friend of mine over there and uh really enjoyed kind of uh some input on the product. Uh recently, about a year ago, I decided it was time to go back to banking. Um and I happened to meet um the SVP of innovation here at Liberty Bank uh at a dinner I was hosting in Napa at uh Dreamforce last year, uh two years ago now. And uh they had just bought Salesforce. Uh they were still in the honeymoon phase of buying Salesforce. And um, you know, they were just a very innovative bank. Commitment to innovation here at Liberty is like no other. Um and uh I saw the writing on the wall, it was time for me to make a change, and I'm excited to be leading the Salesforce uh program here at Liberty.

SPEAKER_02 4:45

Amazing. And Liberty, for those that don't know, uh on the East Coast, they're based Connecticut, correct?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yes, absolutely, in Middletown, Connecticut.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Perfect. And I did a little bit of reading just in terms of size prior to the podcast. Uh they manage around 8 billion in assets, 50 offices across um, you know, Connecticut and Massachusetts, um, home mortgages, business lending, the the usual type of stuff that you would typically expect uh from a regional bank, correct?

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Yeah, absolutely. And we're a mutual savings bank, so we're owned by our depositors, which is key. And our commitment to mutuality is is uh again, like no other, um, you know, lots of banks will say that and then they'll be acquired. Uh Liberty is is got a really long-standing commitment there, as well as their CEO and COO, and they're all committed to staying the way we are.

SPEAKER_02 5:38

And a no affiliation to Liberty Liberty Liberty, the annoying commercial, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Only the park bench that we have in our commercials, they're very similar.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Yeah. Good, good, good, good to make that differentiation. So um, so I know um Maz is going to talk a little bit more about the core use case uh for CRM uh in banking and Liberty Bank, but before we do that, just give our listeners a sense of we we know a little bit about the size of the business, but what about the size of your Salesforce footprint today? What does that look like? How many users? How big's your team, that type of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah, absolutely. Um we have uh Financial Services Cloud, or do they call that Agent Force Financial Services now? Uh we have about 700 users. Uh we have Marketing Cloud, we have Shield, we have MuleSoft. Um, I could keep going. Um we have Tableau. Uh our commitment to innovation is is key, right? So we wanted to take the approach of we're going to innovate the entire bank, uh, not just one line of business. Umriginally, um, when Liberty was looking at Salesforce, they were going to invest in managed services with an SI longer term, uh, but going through the process early on, they realized that it may be best for them to hire an internal team. So um, and we'll get into that, I'm sure, but um my internal uh center of excellence for Salesforce reports into the business, uh, the COO, um, through the SVP of innovation here at Liberty. And we currently have seven folks, uh, and we're looking to add a couple of more. So we're a growing team. Um, and I like to tell everybody we're revenue architects. Uh, we're not technical folks, but we're revenue architects looking to you know really take Liberty to the next level.

SPEAKER_04 7:42

Awesome. So um so uh a lot of our listeners obviously aren't in the pin source space. Um I would hope most of them are familiar with what banks do. Um but why don't you give us a little bit about how Salesforce or how CRAM system would be used uh within a banking environment? I'm assuming you consider yourselves commercial banking, right, as opposed to or retail banking.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

I think we're a good mix of everything. You know, we have a good footprint in retail banking, we have a great footprint on the commercial side, small business, uh as well as our investment services. So our um scenarios cross all of those lines of business. It's really breaking down the silos that sit between them. Um so thinking about it from a product point of view, we're really around the 360-degree view of the customer. And if anybody tells you you can get that, your MVP, they're lying to you because you have to build a 360-degree view, and you have a lot of disparate systems at a bank, and it takes time. Um, and so we're looking for the 360-degree view of the customer. We're really thinking about how do we take enterprise-wide a referral management program. Um, Liberty Bank has a one-bank philosophy, and we really want to create that culture of collaboration so that we can really provide our customers with the best um ways of referring business across all of Liberty Bank. Um, and then opportunities, of course, having a consistent pipeline management system across the bank as well. Uh, what does that mean? Yes, we're going to uh in the longer term do bidirectional integration to loan origination systems so that we can use Salesforce as the primary system of record that's going to take information and move it directly in to create those loans so that we can have one automated way of getting uh from the lead to fulfillment of those loans. Uh, but ultimately out of the gate and MVP, we're looking at uh referrals, we're looking at uh opportunities, we're looking at activities, interaction summaries, uh, we're looking at uh shield, of course, because in banking, shield is a hundred percent net necessity. Uh and for those that tell you it's not, it's that it needs to be, uh especially if you're close with your info security team.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Shield, uh, because I actually am not too familiar with SHIELD. Um, so I I I see that's their platform encryption part of Salesforce Mass, right?

SPEAKER_04 10:30

Yeah, Shield is uh is what you would call a enhanced security product outside of the core security features of Salesforce. So for example, out of the box you might get six months of and I don't know, 25 fields of auditing like where the track changes. Shield will like give you all of them and track it indefinitely and give you like platform events of like uh an alerts of like, oh, you had a weird login, or all of this kind of advanced IP tracking, uh enhanced encryption, as opposed to just standard field level encryption and that kind of stuff. Even something as simple, I think, as encryption at rest might not be there with core Salesforce and each yield for.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yes, you're absolutely true. Do you mind if we go back on that one? Because I think there's some that I missed there because if I were to say, where are we going? Uh out I call it the most uh MVP minimum valuable product, not minimum viable product, because I think it has to be valuable to the bank out of the gate. We're looking at um true referral management, true customer 360, um, looking at it from a perspective of breaking down the walls between lines of business, being able to see consistent, transparent pipeline, see the conversions uh of referrals to actual opportunities and be able to track that all the way through to production. Um, you know, we're we're doing things around relationship plans for the commercial business. We're also doing something called the Discovery Guide, which is uh a financial health assessment for our customers to be able to create automation that allows us to automatically uh distribute referrals across the organization directly from the conversations that they're having at the branch. So there's a lot of exciting things coming out of uh our MVP one. Um I think you know, really measuring the value of MVP one is going to be important. And I think oftentimes banks, you know, the six months, nine months later, they go, Well, did I get, did I see any value from that? And we're really gonna put a stake in the ground and determine what our KPIs are for our MVP so that we can measure were we successful.

SPEAKER_04 13:00

So uh would you mind sharing some of those KPIs? Are they like revenue targets such that like um let's say increase your referrals between departments, or is it more of speed that a referral can hit?

SPEAKER_01 13:18

I wish I could tell you those, but those are actually for our steering committee next month to determine. I'm providing them three pages worth of ones to pick from. Um, but ultimately, I think it's gonna be all of those. You know, ultimately we want to be able to see uh referral conversion metrics, being able to see our highest performing areas of the bank, be able to see that we're actually providing cross-sell services across the different lines of business, be able to actually open up uh and see the transparency across the pipeline. Uh and I think that's something we have struggled with is you know, we tend to all work in Excel worksheets. And this is not specific to Liberty, this is across the entire financial services industry. Uh, Excel is something that everybody loves to hold on to with everything they have. And ultimately, you know, we're going to break that down and really put everything in one place so that we can actually see how we're talking to each other and how we're serving the customer.

SPEAKER_04 14:25

Yeah, you know, a few years ago, this is this was one of my favorite days of all time, Microsoft uh announced that they're they're going to end macros in Excel. And the entire financial services industry just had a collective meltdown um on that one day. Oh, it was it was funny. Um, and I think it just almost immediately backtracked. Um, like yeah, yeah, there's probably more apps written on uh on Excel macros than any other platform.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

One of the first banks I ever worked with, and this is years ago, um, they had 120 spreadsheets that were running their commercial division of their bank. They did not have any other system, and this was running origination, this is everything, 120 spreadsheets. Can you imagine one formula? What would happen if that formula was wrong? What that changes across all of those spreadsheets. And it's it's kind of crazy. Uh and you know, everybody has their own spreadsheet too. So nobody has consistency across a shared spreadsheet either. So, you know, we're making changes, uh, and it's gonna be exciting.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

So I think that's uh that's a great point. I think, and I think it's a big problem across uh across the whole industry. Um and you you kind of hinted on it earlier on with the silos, right? So um so for example, you have your uh your credit card sign up system, and maybe you have your checking account system, and maybe that's different than a business ECH approval. I don't know. Um and then right, it's it's it's it's almost an issue of how do you get that customer 360 when it is um when it is spread across, right? The the yeah, so yeah, what did you tell us about about that problem, how you guys are are tackling it, or how you think about it at least.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

I tackle it by inventorying all the systems and understanding where our data is, um, and what does that data do? What value does it provide? What's the impact to the customer so that we have a better understanding? And you know, I have the benefit of have done consulting for a long time to know that you know, most people that hear the demo that Salesforce does as you did, the 360 view right out of the gate. Um it doesn't work that way. You have to build it, you have to be strategic about how you build a 360-degree view of the customer, and it includes everything that your individuals are putting into Salesforce as you continue to move forward with Salesforce too. So, you know, I think our way of looking at it is that the the more strategic we are about how we look at our current data systems and bring those all together to be able to build the 360-degree view, the more value it provides to the end user, which is ultimately going to convert to value to the customer because now I know more as an end user about my customers than I ever did before. I spent time with a couple of different contact centers in my time in consulting, and ultimately it took nine to 15 different systems for them to service a customer. That's insane, you know, and they do it with pure artistry. Those contact center reps are amazing how they can go from one system to one tab to the next tab, but they shouldn't have to because they should have a strategic 360-degree view of that customer. And that's why at Liberty we're taking the time to really assess what do we have in MVP, what are we going to do in MVP2, and so on, because ultimately it takes time, it takes the data, and it takes engagement with your technology team, with your core banking teams across the organization to build it.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

So playing devil's advocate, like everybody talks about the 360, so super important. Um, but if your departments are selling separately and relying on referrals, right? Hey, reach out to Dave, he wants a credit card or thinking about uh buying a car or a second house and um or maybe needs a business loan, right? And all of those other different departments or divisions, where does the 360 view come in? Like who's who's using that? Right. I mean, I can get it like if you're dealing with, let's say, a wealth advisory. I don't know if if everybody has a wealth advisory division, but they do right. Well, that makes perfect sense, right? Because I have a rep and I and my job is to look at the customer um holistically, right? And and okay, what are your life goals and um how are you planning for retirement and your kids college and et cetera, et cetera. But when you're talking about banking, particularly dealing with interdepartment referrals, right? How where does that come in? Who's looking at the customer three, you know, holistically?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Well, everybody is. I mean, look at commercial banking, right? Commercial has some of the most complex relationships across any bank. Being able to see all of the participants that are part of, let's say, a multi-level organization where you have, you know, a primary organization that has multiple subsidiaries, that have multiple beneficiaries, multiple signers, multiple uh guarantors across all of those organizations to be able to see individually what they are doing with the institution is strength. Being able to actually understand how the customer creates more uh wallet share is really important. Are they talking to my branches? Are they talking uh to our wealth teams? Are they talking to our contact centers? Because ultimately they may be complaining to the contact center when they're overworking with me on a brand new multi-million dollar loan. You know, I need to be able to have the transparency about what they're doing across the organization. From a retail perspective, I want to be able to make sure that I'm not referring somebody that already has wealth management to wealth management. You know, and I also want to know if I'm trying to send something to somebody that's already passed, you know, because ultimately you need to have enough information about your customers and your prospects to be able to speak intelligently about them and with them and with your business partners across the bank.

SPEAKER_04 21:17

So is so it's part is part of it is like anyone should be able to refer to any division when looking at a 360. So if someone's coming in for I don't know, a mortgage, um they like they would immediately know like how does it work?

SPEAKER_01 21:39

A lot of yeah, a lot of different institutions do the do it a little bit differently, right? Because ultimately some will say I record assets held away. I I ask my customer, where are where do you bank other than uh your current institution you're talking to, so that I can understand where the external relationships are. So that's part of that 360-degree view too. It's not just the relationship that you have with your bank, it's the relationships that you have with other banks as well. If you're asking the right questions and gathering the right information, you're building a much more valuable 360-degree view than just, you know, I have my financial account data from my core banking system. Yeah, that's one piece to a much bigger puzzle. So if I understand that maybe my customer has three CDs at Bank of America that have $250,000 a piece in them and they all mature in 60 days, yes, I have an opportunity there to bring those deposits over to my bank. If I don't ask those questions in order to build my 360-degree view to better understand the customer, then I can't do that. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 22:57

Yeah, yeah, that makes I think that makes a lot of sense. Um so let's so how how so to do this, do you need all the data in Salesforce or are you heavily relying on swivel chairing? Um swivel chairing is right, the idea of toggling between between apps, and do you like kind of enable the swivel chair with within the app to make it easy to swivel chair if that makes sense, right? So we can click and launch, let's say. Um and then just to add on that, assuming you're starting with swivel chairing and then slowly pivoting towards native, assuming, which is a big assumption, um, is there a strategy to doing that?

SPEAKER_01 23:44

I think what everyone assumes is they're not going to swivel chair, right? Because they bought Salesforce, Salesforce told us that we wouldn't have to swivel chair anymore.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

Did Salesforce tell you that?

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Thankfully, I knew that that wasn't the case. Um, but oftentimes that is the perception when you buy Salesforce, I will have everything here. But it takes time, it takes uh strategy to be able to bring everything in in order to not swivel chair. So you have to be strategic about how you do it. You have to know what are the systems that they're going to have to access in during that time. So you have to have a roadmap and you have to understand, okay, I'm gonna have core banking out of the gate in MVP. I then need to go to my origination systems and be able to do bidirectional integration to those systems so that I can keep my folks, uh, maybe my origination folks inside of Salesforce so that they can enter their application. The application gets sent out to my origination system, and then all the changes come back to me uh in Salesforce as well. Then I have to look at, okay, well, what's next? You know, do I need uh um, let's say, Zoom info or another third-party data system to bring in more data to enhance the existing data that I have so that I have a better understanding of my customer. You know, you have to have a roadmap to really understand what you're looking at over time. How long is it gonna take me to get to that 360-degree view? Because it does take longer than turning on Salesforce. And, you know, I always like to say if you don't have the right gas for the car, you can't drive the car. So, you know, ultimately we have to have a data roadmap in place. We have to know where it's coming from, we need to know where it's gonna go to. We need to know that it's gonna be valuable to the team that's going to be using it as well. The last thing you want to do is put a bunch of data in the system that you're never gonna use. So, thinking about it from a value standpoint, you need to make sure that what I'm putting in is going to create value.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

On the topic of other systems, um, given your extensive banking experience, Pam, I did want to ask you your thoughts if you would share on Encino, um, because you would talk about kind of swiveling other systems. It it is not completely unknown to see orgs that have financial service cloud along with Encino or perhaps Core Cloud and Encino, et cetera. Um, I'm sure you've seen orgs that have had a combination of everything, including Encino. Well, what's been your personal thoughts on the product? Does it still, in your opinion, still have a place in a 2026 tech stack for financial service organizations, banks, etc.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

That's a tough one. Um, there are so many institutions out there now that are looking at building themselves. It's that builder-by kind of mentality because they've they've taken the steps to creating centers of excellence like Liberty has or uh development teams internally to be able to build workflows on the platform. But um I was in the first 10 customers that Encino ever had. Uh, I knew those folks back before they were a company. Um it's grown a ton in that time. Um, you know, I think that um oftentimes the feedback that I got from customers was that it was a little too complicated for them. Uh, and there were too many moving parts. Um, banks have a tendency to like things that are fairly simple to uh configure and get out on the street and get it moving. Um but ultimately what Encino does for commercial lending or treasury, uh, when you implement it, if you don't take the time to identify your inefficiencies ahead of time, it exposes them. And you find yourself automating inefficiency in your loan origination process or your treasury onboarding process. And if you don't take the time to fix it, um you know, it can be really tough to go live because ultimately you're just adding more steps to the process that you already had.

SPEAKER_04 28:23

Um so pivoting back to to what you were saying about um doing everything in Salesforce, right? Whether that's a claim or not, that's you know, it's necessarily relevant. It's probably let's say called a dream. Um I think that was a big part of the MillSoft acquisition, right? With its whole API layer to tie things together. Um and now synonymous agents, be it Agent Force or or or a QuadBot even. Um that could potentially help do away with disproval sharing. Um you guys put in any thought about that, or is this like a 2027, 2028 type thing?

SPEAKER_01 29:05

We're looking at late 2026, early 2027 for a proof of concept, probably late this year. Um that said, um when you talk about AI and banking, uh in reference to us, we're a 200-year-old bank, right? And um we have a lot of data. So taking the time to really understand what we have and how it's structured is going to be really important as we continue down the path with AI. I think we need to, um, as an industry in financial services, we need to recognize that, you know, data is not pristine in these organizations. And, you know, anybody that tells you that it is doesn't know the data well enough to be able to say. So I think it's really important uh for institutions across banking to be really mindful about the expectations it has on AI, especially if you haven't done the work to understand the data.

SPEAKER_04 30:15

So one of the biggest um concerns, let's call it, with AI, particularly in heavily regulated industries like banking, um, is the bias of the of the AI specifically. Um and then when you're talking about um like loan approvals. Um any concerns about that or just gonna be test it, test it, test it, and make sure it's not?

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Oh it's gonna be a lot of tested, tested, tested. Before AI uh ever hits uh customer facing at Liberty, we're going to be doing a lot of uh work making sure that we're cover we have coverage there. Um I work closely with our info security team on a day-to-day basis. And this is going to take a lot of time. It's going to take a lot of planning, and it's going to take a lot of understanding before we're ready to ever put this out to the customer. Um, you know, what does that mean time-wise? I'm not sure. Um, but ultimately, um, I think a good partnership between risk, compliance, infosecurity, the Salesforce uh Center of Excellence, and understanding what those use cases are and the business is really important to be successful here. So will we get there? We absolutely will. Will it take time? It absolutely will, but will we do it right? There is no doubt Liberty will do it right the first time.

SPEAKER_02 31:48

Amazing. On the topic back on to Liberty. Um, so one of the things we learned as we did our podcast brief was that uh Liberty began their journey October 2024. You had joined March 2025, you're about six months in, um, and you very quickly leveraged all the years of experience in on the consulting side to basically come to the decision that you know it was a time for change and sought to replace the current the the vendor that you uh that the bank were using at the time. So um vendor replacement is obviously a big topic in the ecosystem. Uh decisions are sometimes made outside of one's control and you have to kind of make do with what you've got and try to navigate the best out of maybe a bad situation. So I guess what would be interesting for for listeners um would be were there any indicators at the time of you coming into that implementation that perhaps uh highlighted that they weren't performing. Um what were you looking for uh from a was it just kind of as simple as missing a go live or or or were there were there other kind of factors that went into it, Pam?

SPEAKER_01 33:07

And I think there were a lot of factors that it went into it. I think if you look back and and kind of take a take the pieces apart and try to figure out what what really happened. I think we started um with a recommendation from Salesforce for specific partners. Um, Liberty uh went with the recommendation from Salesforce. Um every partner will tell you that they have financial services industry experience. I think it's really important to pressure test that. Uh, if you're an institution that's talking to an SI partner, interview the people that are going to be working on your project. Take the time to understand what they've done, review their LinkedIns to make sure that that is the case. Um and you know, I think what happened here was um Liberty was relying on the partner uh at the time to leverage their expertise in deploying Salesforce to banking. And I think um at the time the SI was uh in a bit of a compromising position where uh they were making some moves in the industry as well. Um and I think you know they had some um attrition. So some of the original people that were going to be deployed to the project were no longer there. Uh, and I think you know that ultimately um ended up being end of the downfall is they didn't have the consulting experience on the team. So ultimately they weren't, they didn't have the people really to tell them how would you do this in a bank? You know, what would the best practice be for referral management, or what would the best practice be for uh opportunity lifecycle management and commercial banking from the Salesforce perspective? So I think what happened there was, you know, things kind of happened out of sync. We were doing uh data discovery before we were doing actual discovery. So, you know, they were doing data mapping before they even determined, you know, what was actually going to be built. So I think there were things that just kind of happened because the team was trying to uh better understand what they were doing from the SI side. And then you've got a team internally that's relying on that team in order to be successful, right? Because ultimately they don't know what they don't know. And and that is consistent across the industry. Oftentimes uh banks will purchase sales force or another tool that you know they they expect that the partner that they're implementing with is going to be the one that's gonna tell them the right the right path to go down. And in this situation, they just weren't the right folks to to tell them. And when I came in, I spent time uh with the SI, spent time with the Liberty team. I kind of came in with a a consultant mindset and tried to figure out where the the gaps were and could we close the gaps with the existing partner, or did we need to exit that relationship?

SPEAKER_02 36:37

You had mentioned that interviewing was one of the ways that you perhaps could do your due diligence and you know make sure that the resources um that the partner are presenting are legit, right? And that goes with with any vendor, right? Vendor, partner, staff org, whatever, right? Um, that's one of the ways that you can go about that. What are maybe some other methods um that you could do to kind of pressure test the the these partners? Because I think obviously a lot of companies they do rely on the intros that Salesforce make. Obviously, that's part of the game in itself, right? Um and if you're doing Salesforce for the first time, you might not necessarily know uh or you might get overwhelmed with the amount of options that there are on the App Exchange uh for implementation partners. So what would your advice be to maybe other leaders around pressure testing PSIs of choice or which are referred, and then also doing your own due diligence to maybe seek some other partners that might not have been insured um in the first instance?

SPEAKER_04 37:43

Yeah, just a tack onto that question. Um Salesforce usually comes with a bunch of recommendations. Um how much weight should be given to that to that to Salesforce's recommendations.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Yeah, that's a the uh that's a tough one because ultimately uh there are really good partners and there's not so good partners um out there in the ecosystem. Um, I think everyone is out there trying to be better, but I think it takes the talent to be better. So it anybody can sell anything. Um, and frankly, that's the reason that I uh retired out of consulting was that I could sell the point of view for Salesforce for banking, but oftentimes throwing it over the fence to teams to deliver, there was a gap. Um, and if you're not a part of the team actually delivering, you lose the context of what happened in the sales cycle. So I think going back to what you were saying, Mez, I think um it's important to hear out the people that Salesforce recommends. But I think what Kira was saying is really important. There are other ways to leverage uh the information, right? And go out and, you know, there are groups within the banking industry that uh for mid-sized banks, uh for some other uh banks, credit unions, even, where you can talk to other institutions uh that have done Salesforce. And some of them have been wildly successful, some of them not so much. And it's important to have those discussions outside of references, right? Um, and ask them, how did it go? Why did it go that way? What do you think went well? What do you think didn't go so well? Um, why do you think it was successful? You know, what what would you do differently? What would you have on your side versus, you know, maybe not having them before? You know, I think in our case, um, you know, if we had to do it over again, we would have probably hired a subject matter expert earlier. On uh, I was uh blessed enough that they chose me. Um, but ultimately hiring that person on before going down the road of actually uh signing with an implementation partner is really important because you need to have the right conversations uh internally uh to be able to better understand what the issues are that you need to solve for in the implementation. So, like I said, I've worked for some great partners and some not so great ones. And I think across the board, it's easy to sell Salesforce. Salesforce is the best tool on the market when it comes to CRM and it's a great development tool. It's the implementation services that are hard to sell because you need to understand the day-to-day workflow of the banker that's actually on the ground doing the work. Uh, and you know, you're inviting them into your home and ultimately they're coming in and telling you your baby's ugly. You've got to be okay with that. When that SI comes in and says, really, you should think about it this way. And oftentimes the SI is just coming in saying, What do you want? And I can tell you the banker doesn't know what they want because they never had Salesforce. If they did, then they may have a point of view. But if they didn't, that's where things just fall apart because they're just order takers at that point. And I think looking back on where Liberty was when I got here, that was exactly what was happening here.

SPEAKER_03 41:39

Okay, so that's the advice. Hire Pam.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Okay, or someone like hire a PAM.

SPEAKER_03 41:46

Right, a Pam.

SPEAKER_04 41:50

Um yeah. So uh uh I don't I don't recall who one of our one of our uh one of our former guests they gave us the advice that was that when you're when they're doing the sales pitch, um demand that the same people who are doing the pitch be on the team. Um is that is that um doable, say that is that feasible advice?

SPEAKER_01 42:12

I think it's great advice. I think the odds of it happening are very low because those people are there.

SPEAKER_04 42:21

I want to meet the team.

SPEAKER_01 42:23

I absolutely do. They will they will sell it to you and that happens, and they will tell you they'll be on there, and they may show up here and there, but and I say that from my own personal experience because I've been sold to projects before. Um, and you know, ultimately I don't end up doing that. So, you know, you have to you have to sell the things you believe in, and when it gets to a point that you don't anymore, that's when it was time to to back off, and that's what I did. Because ultimately I wanted to see a bank be successful, and I'd seen too many at the time that weren't.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

Is there a get-out clause that you've seen that customers can negotiate as part of their engagement in that scenario, or if certain parameters aren't hit during the engagement? Um, you know, is that starting to become something that you might suspect to see a bit more of in 2026?

SPEAKER_01 43:23

I don't know. Honestly, I don't believe they have that, especially on the Salesforce licenses. Um, but I do think you're seeing more SIs now that are putting in clauses of um uh outcomes-driven payments. Um, and I think that is something that you should demand. Um, you should be able to see real outcomes of the work before you pay for it. So I think it's really important to be able to measure the success of what you've done with your partner. So that would be a good recommendation for the industry, if you're talking with an SI, make sure that they can prove that they were successful implementing this for you before you end up paying for the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

I think that could be a Mazda, I think that could be a podcast in itself.

SPEAKER_04 44:17

Um maybe it will be legality problem that you have to define you have to define success up front. Right. And um Pam, you know very well SIs are very good at checking the boxes that will get them through the contract when not necessarily hitting the let's say the the the underlying intent or the underlying goal. And they're their defense, they have to do that, right? You have to make sure you check those boxes and then you try to okay get to the next to the next finish line. You know so i it's a classic example because I you know I'm in data migrations they do a lot of them so I will say you migrated all the data and it matches the mapping doc. And then they'll say oh the mapping doc is wrong. That's what you're doing and then and right and then you're gonna you're you're basically back to I don't say you're in court but you're back with you know negotiating how do we fix this. So um it's not easy to define success up front particular particularly when you're dealing with a moving target multier multier projects um you know the turnover also often on on the client side too and and then the priorities change.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

I think that's the biggest one to emphasize is that sometimes maybe when that statement of work was signed it could be with a certain VP or C suite member they move on maybe the new person wants to get a lay of the land and you know maybe doesn't prioritize the Salesforce project as high as others. So to be fair to SIs there's a lot of things outside of their control too um but I like the idea Pam and maybe maybe there's a future where there's a bit of a hybrid scenario of everything to keep everyone happy um the the the the topic of um raising that conversation so so you you you went in this this vendor's already six months in you maybe given it a couple of months lifted the hood understood what what the size of the cost of the failure to implement let's say is is looking at how did you on two sides how did you bring up that conversation internally to whom you reporting to um and then how did you communicate that externally to the partner to say sorry guys unless you're able to did you give them a chance to rectify it or was it straight cut throat we're moving on.

SPEAKER_01 46:39

I'd like to say it was a dry run um and not necessarily a failure. We spent a lot of time um with the SI and working on uh ways that we could find uh a positive outcome before we had to separate uh and it just wasn't moving in the right direction um and you know that how how that all went down of course I have to plead the fifth um but um ultimately um you know we parted good ways uh we were um it was very professional um and I'm sure they will be very successful uh in other engagements um but we did spend a lot of time post that kind of reviewing what went well and what didn't go well so that when we uh re-engaged with another SI, which we did, um that we spent the time uh and the due diligence talking to multiple different SIs uh and choosing a path that was a little bit different. Ultimately we were sold a um a project engagement um and now that we had program management and our own project management and we had the beginnings of our center of excellence team uh we decided to go with a managed services team from another partner uh because we knew what we wanted now. We knew what good looked like um and we knew exactly what our MVP should be. So we decided to go with a managed services partner um that has been uh successful with um working with us uh going forward so I I think we will be safe in saying we will go live in Q2, um which is exciting um and you know uh oftentimes uh my direct supervisor and I go back and forth he says what date and I keep telling him Q2 um but ultimately um choosing a partner is not just a technical decision it's a cultural one um you have to be able to see the world the same way and you have to be open to working together with people that are not necessarily um doing it the way you would do it and I think that oftentimes um you know partners will come in and dictate how things need to be done um and I think um financial services teams need to be more proactive about telling them their expectations of what it should be because you know they may not know what it should what it is they may not have ever used Salesforce before but they know what their expectations were because Salesforce set them in the sales cycle so they should be able to clearly set the expectation with the partner out of the gate so that and hold them accountable to those expectations Salesforce in some cases recommended them.

SPEAKER_02 50:08

So you know hold them accountable to the expectations you set with them what um in terms of I think it brings us on to a perfect segue into our next topic uh which is what does a good partner look like in 2026? So you've worked with five, six different SIs in your career um you mentioned maybe uh around the statement of work and and packaging that and I think you really made a good point about how it's not just a technical fit it's also a cultural fit as well.

SPEAKER_01 50:40

What else would you say you look for in a partner in 2026 and using all your years of experience working at multiple SIs what do you think a good SI should offer a customer um in today's market up front a uh a vendor management plan a really understanding uh that banks uh and financial services organizations are highly regulated industries they should come to the table with the answers to the InfoSec works worksheets that they get long into the sales cycle understand the problems that bankers have with procuring uh software and services if you come to the table with the answers early then you build trust and credibility with the institution but you also are uh a cut above you understand what's what's going to happen when you come in there is scrutiny uh there is compliance there is regulation there's regulation like no other so it's really really important to put that out there in the beginning um come to the table with a clearly defined point of view but also make sure in that point of view that you have references to back up that point of view so if you come to the point to to the sales cycle saying that you're gonna do an end-to-end implementation of financial services cloud marketing cloud mule soft you need to come to the table with a reference that has done all of those three things because ultimately that's where the rubber hits the road you don't sell yourself your customers have to sell for you and for banks and credit unions and financial services companies rely on the customer don't rely on what people are telling you you need to listen to what the customers are saying. Find your own references as a customer that's what LinkedIn's there for. Post on LinkedIn and say hey we're considering buying such and such even if it's outside of Salesforce. Ask for people's references on product on services because you know everybody has an opinion um whether it's a good one or a not so good one everybody has one and it's really important to hear those out because references are great but they are also strategic. So it's really important to take the time to do your own due diligence. On the SI side uh don't overcommit and don't sell things you can't deliver I mean ultimately you really need to come to the table with the things that you're good at be you know I I've heard before some should be a niche player some shouldn't you know if you're really good at one thing really do that well and come to the table for that. And if you do that well then the other things will come behind it. But if you don't do that well then you know you can't look to get the rest of the business. So I think it's really important not to try to do everything. You can't be good at everything.

SPEAKER_03 53:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 53:53

You know and be honest about the fact that you're not good with everything or hey I don't have a marketing cloud practice we do work with this other partner that does be honest about it instead of you know just in the background contracting with others and saying that they're there. So you know I think transparency is key coming into 2026. Access to information is available for really smart buyers. So it's really important to be honest in the sales cycle what you can do and what you can't.

SPEAKER_02 54:31

100% um the famous old saying overpromise under deliver right um it applies to a lot of things what about advice for like maybe an SI who I've got two questions. One would be advice to an SI who maybe wants to get into more um fin serve maybe they've done the odd fintech client but they haven't worked with a credit union or a bank what would you say to those those guys right because that I guess the temptation might be then to over overpromise just to get you shot um and the second question would be how much you mentioned recommendations and things like that um how much weight do you put into like the app exchange and the project number of projects completed because in theory that's what that area should be. Yeah exactly right that's the whole point of it no so um you know do you have you in the past taken that into consideration is it worth looking at or or not uh let's start with the app exchange no okay I don't think it's worth looking at um and reasoning for that is if you go through the app exchange you'll see 90% of the partners out there either have 5.0 or 4.5 to 5.0 or nothing there's nothing in between so there there is a reason for that um can you go back to what was the other thing you said uh advice to perhaps uh partners that are looking to do more in the space uh because I think sometimes it's like a candidate right you know um that you know they get dismissed for not having banking industry experience but they're still a good Salesforce admin right um some partners again especially there are some key players that maybe have had the market dominant share for the last five ten years and maybe getting a bit comfortable uh on the laurels a little bit sometimes you've got to give a shot to the new new kid on the street you know to to kind of they want it more right they're more willing to go above and beyond to make it work because they're more hungry for the business.

SPEAKER_01 56:33

What would be your advice to those who may not have the industry card to to pull out as as often um we've done a big project for the biggest bank in the US for example let's say banks and credit unions and financial services companies if you're honest with them where you are they like to partner and when I say they like to partner they like to partner with honest partners that are willing to tell them the the good and the bad you know if you have the talent but you don't have the experience you may have you have to make investments in that um in that implementation or in that engagement so that you can get the business but ultimately if you go and say hey you know I really think I can do well with this can you give us a shot if it's a small project or you know a short engagement and you can make some concessions on cost to get in but I know banks and credit units I've worked with them for years they're more than willing to take risks on new relationships because that's where they come from I mean they are they're relationship banks they they want to build small businesses. So you know be honest and and tell them upfront hey you know I'm really I'm really just getting to start out but I've got all of this back in uh experience doing these things uh you know I'm a small business trying to get in it could we do something small for you to establish our our relationship oftentimes you're gonna get it you're gonna get a yes because you were upfront with them and told them ahead of time. If you try to portray yourself as a bigger organization that's when things start to fall apart.

SPEAKER_02 58:23

Maybe the unsexy projects uh to begin with to test your name there and then then move forwards.

SPEAKER_01 58:28

Um conscious of time I did want to quickly ask you about your time on the partner advisory board uh for Salesforce um two questions on that um what does that role actually entail and how much did it benefit you during your career would you say I think it was great because you had access to um different folks inside of Salesforce the stakeholders um you know the GM for financial services the head of product for financial services cloud they would come and present you would learn what's coming um before the ecosystem would uh have it hit the ground um you had feedback you had the ability to give them feedback on new product um and uh new features that were coming out so I think overall it was a great board to be on I also think um you know it's nice to be able to say you participated in that from an organization standpoint from a resume standpoint I think it's always good to have something like that on your resume because it shows that you have the ability to uh network at that level ultimately I think it is important Salesforce has a a huge marketing machine but oftentimes the details get missed in that so having uh an in like being on a partner advisory board kind of gives you the ability to have a better understanding of what may be going on. This the tough part is not every partner gets invited um but the ones that do usually have the ability to really kind of take their point of view to another level with them.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:19

So overall you'd you would recommend it to the people that have the chance is definitely something that you feel like you got your personal ROI out of your time. Oh absolutely yeah awesome um final thoughts on what's next what are you what what are you excited about? I know people uh who want to hear more from you can follow you on LinkedIn you post some great content there uh around um some of the stuff that's keeping you busy um and general thoughts on on the ecosystem i i've enjoyed a completely most recent post but what is next for you and Liberty excited to say going live um that's going to be a big one for us uh we've worked really hard and the entire uh liberty cast of teammates has you know participated in this all of our change champions all of our um technology team um everybody at the bank um has has taken the time to spend time with the RCOE to help us better understand how the bank works um for me personally I found a home you know I think um it's it's tough to uh always find a home um I I was born out of banking I was uh in the school to work program back in high school became a teller uh did the drive-thru window and all the way through to network engineering spent 14 years doing that and now just coming back to banking has been uh a bit of a a homecoming for me um but I'd like to see the rest of my career be here at Liberty um and uh with my team and I'm excited to say a lot of the team that I had also came with me so that's exciting too so um I was able to talk them out of consulting and and come back into banking with me.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:17

So no I'm looking forward to building a really long innovative career here at Liberty um and uh doing lots of really great content for banks and credit unions because I think oftentimes um they're the ones that need to be able to hear what other people are doing uh and hear those best practices. But yeah don't hesitate reach out I'm happy to have a conversation anytime.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:44

Amazing um well with that Pam uh all the best uh for the UQ2 Go Live and uh a big thank you from myself and Maz uh for volunteering your time today uh and giving our listeners a little bit of insight into your background and Liberty Bank.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:59

Appreciate you thank you so much