SPEAKER_00 0:02

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 Kira 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_02 0:28

Welcome to the CRM Success Show. Today we're talking with Arman Pirek, Director of Salesforce Implementations at Rockwell Automation. Welcome, Arman.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Thank you guys for having me.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Amazing. Arman, nice and easy to begin with. We always like to start our episodes giving our listeners a little bit of context on who is Arman, uh, what are you up to, and what's your journey in the Salesforce ecosystem look like so far?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Awesome. Uh yeah, so currently uh I am leading the Salesforce implementation within uh RACO Automation. Uh I lead the development teams and architecture team that is supporting the platform. Uh, been here for about two and a half years. Uh, it's been an awesome journey, uh, building out a lot of cool stuff. Um, and my journey, though, into what I am doing now has been quite interesting. I actually started on the business side. I used to lead a contact center team and was the primary stakeholder essentially when we were migrating from a you know in-house built SharePoint site form thing uh into case management for Salesforce or within Salesforce. Uh that was quite the journey. You know, I was able to uh provide the requirements and build other training and all of that kind of fun stuff, um, and kind of saw it firsthand on how to implement um, you know, uh uh Salesforce and make sure that the business process uh stays good and find opportunities where you can to make it uh more seamless. Um and then given that I always wanted to get into IT, I used that opportunity to kind of you know poke around and reach out and try to find some opportunities. And that's how I found out about product management. Um and actually going to talk to some of the people in product, uh, I was Googling like what is a user story? I didn't even know what that was. Um, so I really came from like that kind of a level of uh understanding in the space. Um, and that was the first role that I got product management uh or product manager. Uh I helped uh over those seven, eight years as a product manager, uh, build out a number of capabilities supporting really the sales and service, uh, various different service types, uh, various different sales, outside sales, inside sales. Um and it was an awesome fun journey. Uh learned a lot, and uh this was an opportunity that came knocking to uh take what I've learned and help uh you know bring that into Rockwell uh and build it out here.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

So and that's the last two and a half years, that's what has been keeping you busy at Rockwell. Um for our listeners who maybe don't know what Rockwell do and how big they are, how would you kind of summarize that to them?

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah. Yeah, uh I had to explain that to uh some of my family when I just started. Uh, because uh, you know, if you're in the manufacturing space, uh Rockwell is a leader there. Um so Rockwell uh specializes, uh they're essentially the global leader in industrial automation. Uh we work with uh a lot of manufacturing companies and and sell software, services, and hardware, uh help them keep their uh you know, manufacturing plants uh up and running. Uh there's a lot of great work, uh especially now with AI in that space. And uh, you know, I think Rockwell is thriving in that area right now.

SPEAKER_03 3:37

So amazing. And how does a company like Rockwell leverage Salesforce as a platform? What products are you, you know, happy to work, what products are you using, how many users, that kind of stuff?

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yeah, yeah. So we've been on uh quite a journey for the last two and a half years, and there's definitely uh, you know, more to be done. The primary is sales cloud, service cloud, you know, opportunity management, lead management, um, and then on the sale uh service cloud, you know, your typical case management, uh knowledge management, and then all of the you know, bread and butter specific to Rockwell um uh within there as well. Uh we do leverage some of the CPQ capabilities um as well, um, as well as some of the external uh experience cloud uh capabilities as well that we have right now.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

So we're not gonna go too much into team size because we're gonna cover that later on in the podcast, um, as one of the topics will be building big teams. But um I think also what's really interesting uh for us having you as a guest today is uh both your experiences in the Salesforce ecosystem come from very much Fortune 500 companies. Uh, we're gonna probably touch a little bit on Granger and your decade there as well. Um comparatively, how how big were they uh in terms of size and employee count revenue, your Salesforce instance there?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah, uh the Granger uh uh the Granger Salesforce ecosystem was quite big. I mean, it was pretty mature. Um by the time I left, I think we were doing maybe 70,000, 80,000 cases per day. Um, you know, we had a solid footprint from a user base. It was maybe 15,000 or so um um at the end uh before I left. And obviously, the you know, when you look at Big Fortune 500 companies, uh a lot of the core capabilities are kind of common. You know, you have your sales teams there, service teams, uh, but then the you know, the nuances of how some of these companies work and do business is really where you get a lot of the bang for your buck when it comes to Salesforce, because you can obviously tweak the capabilities into such a way that um you know supports the exact business needs. Um so yeah, I mean it was uh it was it was it was a lot of um the interesting thing from a Granger perspective is we built out a lot of really cool custom capabilities. Um and you know, when you whenever you build custom, obviously there's a lot of trade-offs that you're making there. Um, so we we definitely were able to get creative, especially during like COVID times, where you know, speed was uh so critical to be able to still run our business or the Granger business and support the uh the customers as needed.

SPEAKER_03 6:10

So fantastic. So so Granger, we're talking like 25,000 plus employees, 18 billion revenue, high level, um rock, well, a bit bigger in terms of employee headcount, 20, 26,000, revenue about eight and a half to 11 million, uh billion, sorry, uh for anyone. I'd be a bit worried if it was million. You might not be uh billion. Yeah, that would be in trouble. So these are you know massive, for very much Fortune 500, probably higher uh you know, businesses that uh are leveraging Salesforce platform. Fantastic. So you talk about nuances. Uh I'm curious. Question for you what is the the biggest nuance between the two companies that you work? Uh both Fortune 500 companies, both similar headcount, massive billion dollar you know, industries. Um, but what was the probably the biggest nuance between the two?

SPEAKER_01 7:04

I think the the biggest uh biggest difference for me, uh, which has been you know uh definitely a learning moment over the past two and a half years, is uh Rockwell is a lot more global of a of a of a uh you know employee base and and our users from a Salesforce instance are global, uh, where Granger was you know North America focused, and we did tap into Canada uh at some point. Um uh but the primary uh difference is global, and that adds so much more you know complexity into the business processes and then even go lives. You know, you've got uh different um laws that employers had to abide by when it comes to technology, especially nowadays with AI. Uh, you know, so working with council, legal council was you know definitely uh uh a new challenge or uh you know within Rockwell that necessarily was not the biggest problem or or or a problem really uh at Granger side.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Were both organizations legacy Salesforce customers, or was Salesforce a relatively new newer newer concept for for the businesses?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

Uh yeah, at Granger, um by the time I hop on hopped onto the ship, uh we were moved, we had already or Granger already moved from SAP uh CRM to Salesforce, and uh you know I kind of helped take it from there. Within Rockwell, you know, we're still uh relatively early on within the Salesforce journey. Um, however, you know, the CRM concept is not new, as well as we've had other uh platforms that we used um for for the CRM tool.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

So were they custom-built CRMs that you used in the past or another big thing?

SPEAKER_01 8:38

No, they were all yeah, big yeah, big names. Um, you know, obviously, you know, they were all customized uh to the capabilities needed, but um no homegrown custom CRM kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 8:50

Got yeah you mentioned customized uh orgs environments um at the moment. So you mentioned manufacturing. I'm I'm curious if manufacturing cloud was an option for you guys at any point, or is it currently being utilized at all, or are you sticking to kind of the core cloud platform and because of your own customization?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Yeah, great question. I think right now it is uh primary core uh that we are using. Uh I believe there's a snippet within the manufactured cloud that we have started to uh dabble in, but uh primarily it is the you know standard sales, uh sales, so sales service cloud, core capabilities kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 9:27

So perfect, fantastic. All right, so uh I guess in terms of Granger, there was a lot of commerce type product initiatives that you were you were overseeing. Still core cloud was at the core, as you'd expect, uh, within that, but you're also doing a ton of different uh you know projects during your time there. What what was perhaps one of the most interesting projects you personally enjoyed uh during your your 10 years at Granger?

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Uh yeah, I I always go to this one because it's my favorite. Um we built out the, or I keep saying we, it's a 10 plus year uh habit. So at Granger, we as the team uh built out the uh text messaging capability uh for our sales teams uh during COVID. Uh it was actually kind of launched right around uh when COVID was heating up. Um and we did it as a custom development. Um, you know, it was a capability we we we needed. Uh we spent the time to look at all the different app exchange options, and Salesforce also had a digital engagement SKU or something along those lines that they were trying to offer up. Um but you know, as we've spent the time to take a look at how the capabilities work, the App Exchange partners, what they do, you know, we kind of felt like, okay, well, not to oversimplify it, but that seems like something we can definitely build uh in-house. And uh that's what we did. So we built the the UI using as much standard Salesforce as we can. Um, and then uh you know, we worked with uh with Twilio uh because they have the you know API packages that you can use to send out text messages, and it worked out in our favor that just uh prior to that, another team implemented uh OneTrust, which is a uh compliance uh or had stored a lot of our compliance um information. So we kind of uh you know connected the the uh to that as well. So this way when sales folks wanted to text somebody uh from a compliance perspective, they would right on the screen have the ability to see whether they can text them or not. Um so you know, I think for me the reason why that was also such an awesome project is it was a lot of learning, it was new for for a lot of us. We you know went from maybe spending having to spend three to 300 to 500k a year on a third-party solution. We built something that, you know, I think you know, an annual cost for those text messages was like 20 grand. So it was uh it was a huge benefit. Uh and then the second uh cool part that I always uh really liked is because it was right around COVID, uh it was we essentially leveraged the framework uh to help uh when it comes to uh curbside pickup. You know, customers come up and they want to text it there there. Uh that framework um was used for that and it allowed us to deliver really quickly because we had you know we built it for uh for for scale. At that time, text messaging was not really used anywhere other than like people, you know, just texting customers from their phone, which is not uh something you want to uh you you know you want to have. So so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

So it brought basically everything, communications into one centralized platform that could be tracked, I guess, is is most importantly keep keeping uh lowering the risk of sales reps moving on and all that knowledge from inside their their mind, their personal devices into a centralized uh you know CRM way of tracking, um, which makes sense about all sorts of things.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

And compliance. You know, you add a compliance because as long as people have access to their cell phone and are leveraging it because they still need to help their customers, that's you know, one of the common things that we saw. People go above and beyond for their customers, and that might mean that they were gonna text their customer, right? Um, and you know, it really shut down that whole compliance area um as well.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

So on the topic of compliance, I know one of the things you mentioned, uh, the differences between global businesses and US-Canada focused was compliance legislations, different rules, different laws. What would be your advice for other leaders that maybe are going from a US focused business into a global business that maybe you wish you had known two and a half years ago that might have saved you some time?

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Uh talk to them day one. Um, you know, I think it's uh it's one of those things people, you know, we all get excited for the work we have to do. And uh, you know, we we I feel like you know, learning is we tend to kind of think about some of these uh items that we have to kind of check off a little bit later in the game, and then you're you know uh kind of scrambling to to you know break that barrier and and get some uh alignments. Uh so I would definitely say, you know, if you've if you've got to deal with some of these things, it's better to kind of figure it out early. And then also like uh I'm always a big fan of like I want to know very specifically what the law says because as you guys know in Salesforce, you know, there's a million ways to skin the cat. You can do so many different things, um, different ways. And you know, I I've always said, like, what is the actual verbiage that we have to abide by so we can make sure that we implement it accordingly? Because the last thing you want to do is, you know, you spend two months building something uh to meet some sort of compliance uh uh need, and then you know, you showcase it to a lawyer or whatever, and then like you miss the mark because you assumed uh too many things when it comes to the compliance, right? Compliances are generally very black and white. Uh so the the the more you know about the compliance piece you have to do the better.

SPEAKER_02 14:48

So when you say talk to them, you mean the lawyers or international lawyers?

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Uh no, I just mean like you're you know, whatever company you're working for likely has a legal team uh that is guiding you through some of these or like HR um compliance teams that will guide you through um you know some of the regional laws that you have to abide by. No, I I I would not suggest going straight to a uh uh international lawyer without your company uh well obviously that company. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:22

Um so so how do you keep up with the compliance? Because I know you're talking about doing SMS, and and I feel like SMS have its own set of rules that are also incredibly complex. Um and I feel like every other I don't think it'd be a week, but every year there's definitely new laws around when you're allowed to push uh push an SMS message out, um, probably because of just the incredible volumes of spam that's been going and it's getting worse with uh with AI generated messages. So yeah, so how do you stay on top of it? Is it on you or is it on the legal team they come to you and say, hey, these are the changes that are coming in, prepare for that?

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Or yeah, I I mean I would say it's kind of both, but um what I would uh encourage is as long as we are or whoever is you know leading the implementation is uh providing accurate and you know up-to-date information on what is being built, uh, it does allow the companies, you know, HR and legal teams to uh assess new laws that come up, right? Like as if if somebody doesn't know that we built out a text messaging capability, they're not gonna know to come to us and say, hey, you know, we have a new law that's passed, right? So, you know, kind of to my point earlier, we all get excited about this new cool stuff we get to build. And, you know, if you don't check all those boxes early on, you will be in a position where, you know, changes later on now are gonna be a much bigger thing. Um then, you know, if you do it in partnership along the way, it does lead for a better future, which to the same exact snare you're talking about. You know, if there's legal changes, they know that you have a text messaging capability and they know who the leader in that space is and they know who to reach out to and get connected to. So um, you know, plus if I because I'm sure uh whatever we hear in the news about you know some new law or whatever, you know, uh my experience tells me the legal team has been aware that you know these rumors are coming and the laws are coming and so on. So they likely have you know are much more prepared to handle, but that's why I put the ownership on both, right? Because we we have a role to play there as well.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

So yeah, um I I think I think too often uh development teams play like if the compliance guys aren't coming down on me, I'm not rocking that boat. Um basically. So they kind of wait right away for the complaint to come in. Um so at at both Gregor and Rockwell, um you build your own teams at those places?

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Um uh mainly at Rockwell. Uh within the uh Granger space, um, I had different uh uh different teams, but never like uh kind of built them uh from scratch, kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

So Rockwell, you did.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. Inherited some folks and then kind of had a uh pretty big uh you know shift from over the last two and a half years in terms of teams and who we have here.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

So when you started, right? So you they were on on uh uh SharePoint, I think you said, right? And then you're moving to Salesforce. Did you have a Salesforce background at that time?

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Uh at Granger, no, I did not. So I was my only background was just like I liked IT stuff. I had built some mobile apps just for fun, just to kind of uh learn it. I went to school for like networking and telecommunications, uh, didn't really spend much time there. It was just I was already working in the contact center as a manager there. And um, so my experience was zero around Salesforce. I was just you know very comfortable in terms of how uh you know our businesses work, business process works, what opportunities we had in there to make it more seamless. Um, you know, uh, which I think led to a very successful rollout. I mean, you know, I remember day one, we had a lot of people freaking out, like, oh my god, this is new, what is happening, right? Um, to like day three, people were like, This is amazing, uh, which to me was a huge success of all the work uh that we put into the the rollout.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

So okay, awesome. So then so then at Rockwell, you were already pretty founded, uh well, well knowledgeable. Yeah, and then you were building a team over there. Um and you you when you started to build your team, you were already in the director role, or you you were like still product.

SPEAKER_01 19:25

I took the no, I took the director role when I came to uh Rockwell.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Okay, yeah. So that makes more sense is they give you the ability to build a team. It would be interesting if they let product managers um build their own teams. Um I haven't I haven't seen that, but it but I I thought that's what you were getting at. Um and uh it'd be really, really interesting. Probably could probably could work well. So yeah, so tell us about that. How did you go about um you know building a team? What were you looking for? Like, how did you decide on the roles that you need?

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Yeah, I mean, uh definitely uh started off like we already had kind of a template by the time I got here of like hey, the you know, number of teams that we had and so on, based on the the roadmap we had. So uh started off very typical, you know, dev, BSA, QA, uh architect role. Um and um so like the the role part, I kind of already knew what what you know the standard, but then uh a lot of it came down to like, well, where do we go? How much of this do we hire in-house? How much of this do we hire in-house onshore or offshore? We have a very large footprint in India within you know for Rockwell employees. Um, so that was the question. And then also how much of it is you know, contractors. Um I think uh initially when I uh you know when we got going, you know, a lot of the the folks were contractors. Um, and then over time, uh, you know, we we established, you know, kind of where we were heading, where I wanted to go. Uh, and now we are at a point where we have a very healthy like 70-30 uh split, 70% uh internal and then about 30% uh external. Um you know, when I started, I think that number was significantly the other way around and probably even uh higher numbers. Uh so oh, I mean, over the last two and a half years, I've been, you know, I think we have about 100 uh employees uh in you know in the different build team roles. Um a healthy mix of uh onshore and offshore. Um so yeah, I think it's been uh very successful.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

The Salesforce team's not 100, you're talking to users, not the Salesforce teams, not 100 people.

SPEAKER_01 21:31

No, no, the employees that that build Salesforce build teams. That's QA's BSA architect.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Uh we have a hundred people are working on on modifying Salesforce code or or testing it?

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Uh yeah. Very close to it.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

So how how do you how do you how do you start you structure that in into into pods? You assign them to business groups?

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Yeah, we have yeah, we've got we've got pods. uh that are kind of focused on different areas within the kind of uh you know some of the future state stuff we have to build out so uh one is around sales one is around service we've got an experience layer we've got a cpq layer uh we've got a big uh footprint in terms of uh product um not product sorry uh production support um obviously you know with the with the amount of stuff that we have uh that we're building and the and the footprint of our of our uh platform uh you know we need a lot of people to be able to support it as well and then we have our own DevOps team uh as well so so dev ops uh and then we have uh sorry I forgot one we have an experienced cloud uh team as well so dev ops other deployments are these other teams all would go through DevOps for deployments or they do their own deployments uh they work with DevOps to to to get the you know the code all the way through and and um what about regions the CPQ team would cross regions or you would have like subteams right because it's global uh yeah yeah you mean from a build team yeah um all of it requirements gathering too oh yeah yeah yeah so the the primary like stakeholders we work with in terms of uh you know kind of just driving the capabilities requirements and so on generally their leads are uh kind of you know North America time zone uh but we do flex uh we've got people that are you know having to jump on calls with folks that are based in in Asia or or or in Europe as well we've got some SMEs that we work with uh that are based out of Europe so uh yeah I mean that's been the challenging part or you know the the learnings trying to trying to balance and make sure that you know you're meeting the people at the time the day that is most relevant and and you know uh applicable for them and not making sure everybody's joining whenever CST time zones uh a lot uh you know allow so yeah so how how do you how do you go about building a team that size and maintain quality hires at the same time uh yeah so we have uh on my team we have uh a handful of uh people leaders essentially that are the ones that are managing these teams and growing them um I think a lot of it comes down to um the the folks that we have that we leverage that we work with so from an external perspective the contractors uh we we have our established relationship we work with them and they kind of know who we want and what kind of things we look for. So that definitely helps. And then we have like I said we have a a whole team uh that's based in India that you know uh it's a pretty big uh uh shop down there in terms of um the number of people that we have there and and they help drive a lot of the the talents uh because they obviously also know what we want what we need there those folks are on their teams as well so uh so that's been uh definitely a driver but look I was you know not sugarcoated like there's definitely times where you know uh you had to interview seven people before you found the eighth one that was uh solid uh we have you know and the number of people that we've had not every single person along the way has been a uh um you know uh a hit and we've had to let some people uh roll off the program uh or the project a little bit sooner than anticipated obviously so um so yeah I mean there's definitely challenges in that space but that's kind of what we're trying to do uh to leverage um you know uh try to minimize as many misses as we can so okay so you have multiple people leaders assigned to each of the various teams yep um do you try to standardize interview processes assessments um that kind of stuff across teams or you do kind of let each team or each people or person leader do um what they feel bad um yeah I mean I'm big on standardization but I also don't want to cookie cutter some things uh so each of the people leader uh kind of has to go through some sort of like general like hey we need to have somebody vet the the candidate first and then like a second round where it's more like a panel. You've got a uh kind of uh a tech person like a let's say a dev lead is on the call we've got somebody on the call who's more like you know asking questions about culture and what kind of uh person this what kind of uh culture this person will uh kind of uh help grow um and um you know but what questions they ask and uh what details they get into I kind of leave that up to the teams uh to drive so so a couple of questions uh for you on the the hiring piece so uh both both personal and uh also just in terms of best practice but um I I guess from a personal standpoint obviously this wasn't an overnight process but it happened pretty quick um how did you adjust and take on the pressure of being responsible for a hundred people were there any yeah I mean sometimes being responsible for two or three people it's a different kind of stress right um to have to have a team of a hundred a budget and and things like that you know you were used to obviously having direct reports before but not to scale so we we see we interview a lot of you know leaders on this podcast and many are in similar positions right they've been put into a director role and growing a team of 30 40 50 people in a couple of months right and I think a lot of people don't talk about that you know how challenging that can be because it is not positive line like that right so were there any adaptations you had to make to to to in order just to do your job you know yeah that's uh that's a great call out um yeah I mean I think it will for me was something that um I didn't also kind of um realize until you know about halfway through this journey of like oh man I was setting up like a quarterly team meeting and then when I got to the you know end of my uh list of people to invite I realized how many people were there uh then I was kind of uh you know started thinking about that but you know I try not to let that um you know be a a a constant thought in my head because ultimately uh I'm confident in the people that we've uh brought on and I'm confident in what we're doing that we'll be successful and as long as uh you know we all do the you know do our job in in terms of um uh our roles within a program I know we'll be successful uh but yeah I mean um you know being responsible for a hundred people or uh or so uh is definitely um a thought that's crossed my mind a few times especially as you know big programs there's always you know um issues that come up and uh you know it's just like I'm I need to make sure that you know at the end of the day these people are successful and not just you know to me I I I um you know I've had the pleasure of working and currently work for some really awesome uh leaders uh and I always try to uh look at that as a primary thing and and the way we impact people and day to day is much more meaningful than you know looking at story points and like how they implemented some workflow. Like it's it you know the personal connections we make with people uh and the growth that we can help them have in their career I think is uh you know far more uh important than all the other you know X's and O's that we have to go through or ones and zeros. So I think over the last you know two and a half years like my focus has been in not just like let me just bring in on some people and let them rock and roll but making sure that they're successful, making sure that we kind of have some of that understanding of like where they're trying to go and making sure that when they get to the point of like I am ready for a new uh opportunity or the next opportunity that we've put them in a position to be successful.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

So yeah so um I'm a super big fan of like the personal management uh style where where you're really invested in your people's growth and their knowledge um even to the point where it's extending that you know they're gonna leave at some point and you want them to succeed you know on their next role even if it's not with you. So so you know I can get how you can do that you know with a small team or even a team of 30 people 40 people but how like how do you scale how do you scale that up um you know where your team even feels that you know they care about you. Right one of the biggest complaints people get about working at Fortune 500 companies is like I feel like a cog and a machine you know nothing but a gear. You know and if I get a little bit worn out they're just gonna swap me for another one and wait till it wears out right so yeah so how do you how do you how do you manage that um yeah it's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

I mean I think a lot of it has to come start with culture. So like I said I work for a great leader who kind of instills that into into us um and then you know I try to do the same thing for my direct uh reports and then you know uh kind of uh uh you know within their teams the same thing but you know I I try to make sure I get out there and and talk to the folks and I'm big on like if I have an opportunity to talk to somebody on one of my teams like I don't want to ask them about the story that they did or or talk about some like different aspect like I'm very interested in people's life like uh you know uh any vacations and and and family things and I always tell the people like you know when I talk to you I don't want to just talk shop I want to talk about you know oh cool I saw you went on a trip to blah blah blah like tell me more about that and how that was and um trying to have you know a lot more meaningful uh meaningful connections uh you know I was um able to go to uh India last year for my first time uh and meet a lot of my folks over there and that was that was awesome because you know that really took the um took the perspective of like you know uh somebody who you don't know don't necessarily see and then when you're there you I I got to learn so much about everybody and you know the different parts of India they're from and and and so on. So um you know I I think it's you know us as leaders it's very easy to kind of just get stuck in the day to day and trying to deal with all the different things that we have to deal with. But uh you know I think any any time we can invest into just knowing our teams and talking to our teams um I think is uh is very important. Not to say though like you said it it is not an easy task to say just you know uh just to say what I said and do it. You do have to be very intentional with how you uh you know spend your time and where you spent your spend your time uh in terms of getting to know your team and and kind of growing it. But I think as us as leaders too uh I will I will say too like we have to be vulnerable too like we can't uh you know we have to be uh open to share a lot of things that uh you know maybe uh we aren't always sharing with everybody at work and I think that will kind of create a culture where people then feel like okay it's not a bad thing if I throw out a a joke in a meeting or I throw out some pictures from my family trip or whatever um within a within a team meeting where you know generally people are coming there and try to try to get some answers and and and move on into the next uh next meeting so so um so yeah that's it that's a great point so so this is an area I actually struggle with very specifically um because because uh I know your guys are global company right so and you and you mentioned you have teams in India um so specifically with junior employees in India where everything you just said is almost a culture clash there right it's almost like they're told don't speak up wait till wait till you turn wait till you turn I even try to talk to them one-on-one sometimes um and even on a one-on-one call it's very hard to get them to open up um it's it's almost like everything's great I love it here super fantastic no worries I'm on top of one and and it's almost like they're pivoting to status reports I'm like I'm not asking status right I got all my means to get status right um it's just the check-in call and it's it's it's like a foreign concept um and maybe it is I don't know so any any tips or tricks help me uh no I I I can totally relate I mean I've been on some one-on-ones and it's just like look it's been six minutes I'd love for you to kind of open up and and and try to get some more uh things out of them um but yeah I mean I think for for me what I always go back to is sometimes in these situations like you try to you know I I I try to go into some more of my personal stuff and kind of get them to see that like this is much more of a meaningful conversation or meant to be much more of a meaningful conversation. I think for me like uh India as a as a country and culture is fascinating. You know I have a lot of folks outside of work that I'm friends with that are from India. So uh I just lean into like my lack of uh understanding of all things India so like you know I I generally like to find out like what part of India they're from and then there's generally some stories there and and kind of you you get to learn more about people and where they come from that way. And I think that for me has been great. Like you know uh um I would say for for the India folks that's been awesome especially you know when I was able to get go there and see everybody um and then now coming back like when I see stories online or in the news I'm like oh okay I have such and such that's from over there so now I might be able to reach out because I'm like hey I heard you know this is happening in your in your area um and stuff like that. So I think it's honestly it it's not an easy thing overnight to kind of build out some of these things but um you know opening up the the the conversation past the the work and the typical like how's life and how's the weather there um will kind of you know get some of the meaty uh some of the meat on the bones so it's building deeper connections right on a on a one-to-one layer I think is really important I I think um you know I know Maz mentioned his challenges with with with India but for me personally I uh I struggle with the um the teams I've managed in the past I I just want to talk about work you know that's that's that's what I I kind of want to you know you're right you have to like make yourself uh you know emotional emotionally involved with them so they feel like hoping to share what's going on with their lives um I am a status report person right you know let's let's talk about all stuff and I don't I don't care if you went out this weekend I don't you know that's good for you like you know move on so um you look management's not an there isn't an art to management everybody's got a different style and others I think leadership is can be different things like you could be a leader a yellow jersey leader and lead from the front but management is a different is a different topic like you could be a captain in a sports team doesn't mean you have to like know the ins and outs of everyone of your team right but you can lead from the front and then there's management I think is a different uh some people are great people managers right they know everything that's going on about their employees' lives and things like that so where where are you are you a strong leader or a great manager?

SPEAKER_03 37:02

It's it's an interesting topic and I think there are different things that don't necessarily go um hand in hand. Anyway um wanted to talk about um so India it sounds like you guys have a physical office for all your Indian uh based employees correct um yeah what about domestically uh are your contractors and full-time employees uh local to you in Chicago are they remote or uh no and I mean nowadays after COVID uh it everybody's pretty much remote. We do have a few folks that are nearby an office and you know they do go in but um stateside everybody's uh everybody else is pretty much remote uh we do have some folks in Latham as well um they're near an office so they do have to go in but uh you know we even the contractors um or full-time employees majority of it is just you know remote so which is which you know uh honestly is a whole nother challenging thing in its own like growing a team and making sure that there's that uh you know culture and team camaraderie and then even like from an onboarding a new employee it is very difficult uh or there's a lot of different challenges that you know when everybody's remote where like you know it's easy caro starting Monday guys you know go lunch together now caro doesn't feel like he's some uh you know outsider pinging people hi uh you know it's my day one you know kind of thing so um so yeah yeah Kiro loves Latin America um he's been really pushing it hard right or I know that's the third republic thing as a whole um but every uh every time it's like yeah Latin America is up and coming for Salesforce development yeah absolutely I I big believer in it I think it's the it's the present and the future I've I've said that a few times on on on episodes and um ton of different reasons why um but but but one of one of the things you know we'll talk about now actually is um obviously you're still hiring people um who are remote how do how are you vetting candidates today which is maybe different than 12 months ago with the emergence of AI so AI is can be present from the very get-go right all the way from like their resume that put your inbox could be an AI tailored resume all the way to them actually using GPT to answer your open AI in the interviews to listen and record and tell the message all the way to like their day-to-day job and obviously as a business to innovate you want to encourage the use of AI so where do you draw the line between using AI to get an interview and to then get the job versus encouraging developers and testers to use AI to be quicker at what they do.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

That I think is a very interesting question over to you yeah that's uh that's a good one so I think uh you know in terms of you know interview prep I'm a big fan um you know write up write up your resume uh throw some job description you're interested uh have it ask you questions you know provide answers iterate all that I'm all good for that I think for me where you know it draws the line is you know if you're in an interview and you know you're using AI to answer some questions I think that's kind of defeats the point of the interview and uh it's definitely a problem that's happening in the ecosystem today. I mean I I know you guys deal with hiring too so I'm sure you faced it as well where you know you might hire somebody and because in the interview they said all the right things and they get on and this person does not know anything that they talked about on the interview. You know I've I've I've witnessed that myself so you know it it's it's definitely a challenge. You know I'm not necessarily in the day-to-day the interview of the devs and QAs and BSA so um you know I I I I know my team has uh struggled with that they've tried to change some of the you know the interview styles and the things we do uh I think it's better now I don't think we've had too much of that noise uh for you know for the past maybe six to seven months uh so things are definitely improving now when it comes to using AI you know outside of all of that I'm all for it I mean I think it's uh if you work in IT uh you know I think this tool is not going anywhere and even outside of IT obviously AI is not going anywhere um but uh you know I think uh the the role that we have as leaders is making sure that our teams are um able to adapt to it uh in a meaningful way right like I I I always say AI to me and the uh the knowledge and uh uh ability to use AI uh is like a broad spectrum you've got people that just get it every problem they come across they think of AI how can they use AI and uh that kind of stuff uh outside of work are likely building some stuff just for fun right and you've got you know folks all the way on the other side who are just like they're not comfortable with it they don't even really know where to start and and maybe we have some tools that you know Microsoft Copilot is a is a common tool that big enterprises have and you know you'll do email you know email summaries um and that's their bread and butter that's what they're comfortable with and so on. And you know I do think that within the next I keep saying one to two years but I think that timeline keeps shrinking. I think within the next six to 12 months employees that are not regularly using AI for like as you know many different things of their job outside of just that email summary I think that gap um is going to be pretty significant and you're gonna be able to quickly uh you know identify who's really not there because their peers who maybe have grasped it are going to be so much more ahead. And I think that's the role that we have as leaders. It's not just about you know yelling you know not yelling but I was trying to come up with a uh the right word but like just saying like hey everybody has to use AI everybody has to use AI use AI more use AI more it's like all right well where are you within the spectrum and what things uh what is your um barrier to using AI? Because there are some folks you can give them 500 different AI tools and you know uh all the money to spend on tokens or whatever and you're not gonna get anything out of it. Right. So it's how do you make sure that uh as a leader you're you're taking your team along for the journey even the folks that are maybe not fully grasping it.

SPEAKER_03 43:02

I think that's that's uh that's a very big uh job uh for for leaders for 2026 so that's it's a it's a fantastic point and a call out I think um it's a race as we know all the way from the companies itself and the capabilities that AI is offering but also for candidates um to your point I think the candidates that embrace AI quicker and sooner will be rising to the top of the list right um and there are some people maybe that are thinking is it worth the effort to upskill an AI let's say they've got five years left four years left you know of their career and they're kind of at the tail end right you know it must be tiring to then have to go and learn another technology you just thought I've got five years left I just you know I just want a steady paycheck for the next five years. So you know whereas people who are going to like university today are being brought up with AI around them right it's it's it's it's normal for them As it is for us using the internet, right? So it it's very difficult. Um I think going back to the building team perspective um uh with AI, I guess it's other than than them not being able to do their job, are there any other indicators very early on, Armin, that you and the team have discovered when you know someone's just not gonna work out?

SPEAKER_01 44:22

Uh specific to AI or just in general as well. In general, yeah. Um I think the the other one aside from just like being able to keep up from a technical conversations, uh, my my biggest red flag is like you know, somebody who's very uh disengaged very early on, right? Like I know you you know, as new people, uh, you know, there's tends to be a little bit of a hesitancy of like speaking up early and whatever. But you know, I think it's very important for uh when you have new people on the team to do some sort of uh sanity checking probes, even within the first week, right? Like they don't necessarily need to have the answer for how to solve some complex flow that's been around for three and a half years and it's got 50 different boxes, right? Uh, but like making sure that they can conceptually follow with the conversations that are being had and some of the next action items or whatever. Um, I think that is very key to test that early on. Um, because it gives you time to course correct, or it kind of gives you some potential like warning signs, right? Because if this is how week one is and week two is no no different, then you know, odds are it's just a domino effect. Now, I'm not saying put your team new teams through grueling tests the first week, right? But um, you know, you you you have to kind of start doing some of these sanity checks uh earlier on. Because as you guys know, at the speed that that we're all trying to move, uh somebody not you know uh doing uh their uh workload uh is quite the um you know can come become uh a burden on everybody else. And you know, these decisions uh if we if we make them the wrong ones, um uh, you know, in terms of hiring somebody who's not able to uh do the work um are costly from a timing, from budgeting perspective. So uh the sooner you know, I think the better. Um and that's kind of uh you know my thoughts there.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

So um one of the the bigger concerns, at least on uh you know within the tech community, is that um kids nowadays, I mean kids in college, they're learning to code with AI and they feel like that they're not learning the fundamentals at all. Um and that coming a couple of years, you're going to have a serious lack of architecture skills or people who can actually vet the AI's code um manage it. I I don't know if you've if you if you're running into that if or if you've been hiring more junior level, entry-level um types, is that something you're starting to see, or have you not bumped up against it?

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Uh no, uh sorry, no, no, I have not seen that yet. The reason why I'm laughing is my son is 16 years old, and uh, you know, when we're talking about what he wants to do career-wise, uh, you know, we were talking about IT, and you know, and I was thinking about like, you know, what what if he said he wanted to be a developer? Uh and and how much coding should a developer nowadays uh need to learn? Uh, right, and and because that's something that um obviously AI has been uh you know very useful for. Uh, and I'm not saying that in terms of like uh, you know, devs are going away anytime soon. I'm completely on the opposite side. I think we're gonna need more developers than less in the future because you'll be able to do more uh with the tools that that are gonna be you know available for us. But yeah, I haven't we haven't necessarily seen it yet, but I can definitely relate because I've spent some time thinking about it, given where you know how my kids are. So um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Yeah, everyone's thinking about it. Um, yeah. So yeah, every parent, especially. No, no, in the industry, it it's in the industry there there's a a thought that you know people who have done the hands-on stuff is just gonna become invaluable because it's almost like you're the last generation who's gonna do it. It's almost like finding welders a few years back, right? You couldn't find any welders.

SPEAKER_01 48:17

Well, the one I go to is like uh as a as a taxi driver, right? 10, 15, 15, 20 years ago. What made you a great taxi driver is your ability to know where 420 West LaSalle is, right? Like that was your bread and butter, you know it right off the bat. And eventually maps started getting rolled out and so on. And I am certain in that time too, you were looked at like, oh, this guy needs a map. I don't need a map, right? Um, and now you're at a point where it's not just that, it's like how can you leverage the tools you have? So I do think uh, you know, um knowing how to write the code is not going to be a uh uh critical uh skill as it is today, but I think uh being able to leverage the tools we have uh in a meaningful way to solve real problems, I think that is gonna be the the bread and butter of of where some of these roles are going to towards. So one of the bad uh example, but no, it works.

SPEAKER_03 49:12

We get where it where it comes from. Um one of one of the roles we wanted to discuss, uh, and we'll do so very quickly over the next five, 10 minutes, is is the role of product management. Um and obviously, given your background, it's an area that you feel passionate about. Um, it's where you uh got your career uh break and start, and it's allowed you to be the director now of 100 plus people. So um in your opinion, um, where does product management sit within a typical Salesforce org? Or where should it sit if you have a different opinion of where it sits today?

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Yeah, I mean I think uh I I do lean on um product roles uh being in IT. Um I know that's not necessarily you know uh a common thing across across the board. Uh I would say I'm more concerned that like you know companies uh continue to have product uh roles regardless of where they sit. Um but I do think uh historically I've seen it work really well uh within the IT space, uh, more so than um other alternatives.

SPEAKER_03 50:18

And in terms of I guess the product management piece, because we are seeing our side, you know, again, AI has got a put a role to play, but more admin roles are turning into like more product owner type roles, right? They're kind of being upgraded and given a new fancy title. And we we have seen the the the demand for product owners, um, and obviously the natural path is admin BAs for that that have moved into that into that new skill. In your own org 100 people, um, how many I'm just curious, how many product owners, product owners, product managers do you have in your team?

SPEAKER_01 50:58

Yeah. Um, title-wise, I think uh the answers uh doesn't do it justice because we have a number of uh different roles that kind of play that space uh and drive a lot of like how do we evolve from uh uh business processes and set priorities and so on. So uh, you know, that kind of a role uh or uh you know we have uh almost a dozen um or dozen-ish uh for the work that we're that we do. So um yeah, we definitely have uh uh people that are playing in that space. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 51:30

And why do why do you think it's one of the roles that are least advertised in our ecosystem? Because obviously they exist, but you know, you see admin roles, you see dev roles, you see QA roles, you see even business system analyst roles, but you don't see as many product owners. Why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_01 51:48

Um I I think there's probably a number of different uh reasons. I think the one of them is I don't believe that this is a traditionally well-known role. I remember when I got the role and I would introduce myself for years for years, right? I was like, I'm a product manager, oh, you're a project manager. Like, no, it's very different. Then you have to give in the background. If you look at you know, um a lot of the the common uh uh roles that like high school kids learn about, it's be a developer, right? Like I had a lot of conversations with my son in terms of like, look, you can be in IT and not be a developer. Here's some roles, right? Like even UX roles, like uh oh, what is that? And and you know, just trying to explain some of these things. So I do think uh, you know, it's not a mainstream popularly known role, even if people see product manager, right? If you think of some of the Apple uh um uh reveals, right, they'll introduce somebody in the tagline is product manager, but I, you know, I'm I'm certain a lot of the the common folk outside of IT don't necessarily really understand what that role is. Um, and then um I think the the the role itself, even within IT, you know, I've heard some of the you know the jokes before, right? Like it's not really you're not really in IT, right? It's not really an uh a tech role. Um or uh uh you know there's comments about value of that role and so on. And I think some of that really comes down to, you know, uh the role does flex quite a bit from company to company, depending on you know the team structures and what they're trying to accomplish. So certainly it's not this, you know, it doesn't look the same across the board everywhere. Um, but uh yeah, I think those two are probably common drivers, right? Also, the the third one I'll just add, maybe similar to point one, is if you go to if you're trying to go to school, there's a lot of like computer science and so on and engineering courses and and and whatnot. You know, I I spent time to uh to go to product uh you know, as a product manager, wanted to go to school. I wanted to take a course and those kind of things. And there's there were very seldom options. Uh this is you know almost 10 years ago at this point. There's very seldom options of what I can find. I think there's a little bit more now, but you know, again, it's not a mainstream known role, I think. In in and and I, you know, the companies that do it really well, um, I think really uh reap the benefits.

SPEAKER_03 54:01

And I guess where we probably should have started on this topic is what does a product manager role mean to you? Um that might have been a good starting question. So, how would you um define a product manager? Because I think that's something challenged. Like, you know, the the meaning of the product manager, I mean, you touched on the project management piece, uh, you know, uh even when I take calls with customers, I I say, do you really want a product manager or are you you just basically everything you're describing is project management? So in your words, what exactly should a product manager do in a sales for specific ecosystem?

SPEAKER_01 54:37

Yeah. Yeah, great question. I think uh what I look for from like a product management uh perspective is somebody that essentially plays the the in between, in between the sales or or the business side and then in between the the build teams. Um I think there's a lot of times where you know um I looked at a product person to really go figure out what is the problem that is being solved because the request that's coming through doesn't feel like it's you know it's not really clear what the problem they're trying to solve. And I think that product role is really good at understanding the business process, understanding kind of what it can be and how to how things are changing the industry and where things should be going from uh even from a business process perspective. Uh somebody's telling you, like, hey, I want to do case management from ground up, and they're not talking about you know classifications and AI and these kind of things, right? Like, that's some of the roles that a product manager can play. Um, and then I think um just to uh touch on that too, like the product, I want them asking why. Why do you do that? Why do you do that? Well, why do you do that part there as well, right? Like that's where a lot of those uh bodies are buried, and and then you can uh you know simplify a lot of the business processes there as well. Uh, and then from a build side, you know, specifically in Salesforce, what I always look for from a product perspective is like we have to be really careful when we customize and when we don't customize. Um, and you know, from a build perspective, sure, yeah, we can do those requirements, but we really need somebody to be able to say, like, this problem that we're trying to solve is really meaningful, and it is worth us taking on whatever technical debt or taking on an extra month, two months of development work to customize it because the benefit is uh is worth it. Um then um obviously, you know, prioritization. Uh you can do so many things all the time, and then when you're supporting business processes, uh really having somebody who can uh differentiate, like, yes, let's go after that new thing, or like, hey, yes, we'll we'll take a few uh stories this sprint to adjust an already existing capability. Um and then the the last one, I I you know, I'm a big fan of trying, not trying, I'm a big fan of incremental releases. Um, and I look at product in the in to have the ability to take a look at like where we want to go, and then being able to like conceptually bucket it out into stepping stones, right? Like, well, this is what an MVP could look like, and then we can build off of that, and then we'll add the the other thing and so on. I again that's something I look from uh from a product perspective as well.

SPEAKER_03 57:09

So great, great insights, and and and thanks for sharing those. Um, last question on the product piece. What what do you think is the biggest advantage coming from a product management background had on your career so far?

SPEAKER_01 57:23

Oh, um, yeah, I think I know there's many, but just one. Yeah, yeah. Uh I I will I will go back to the why question. Um I'm I I want to know why we're making the decisions we're making. I want to know why we do that, like and just being told, like, well, we've been doing this for forever, like this way, it to me is never good enough of an answer. I want to know why. Like, what is the specific thing? I try to get down to like the black and white, uh, try to take any assumptions out of it. And I, you know, I learned a ton of that during my product days because if I'm designing the thing and I need to make sure it gets built to a certain way, I can't make too many assumptions along the way. I need to know exactly what's happening and why. So um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:04

Yeah, so uh technologists or developers or whatever you want to call them, um, they absolutely hate corporate politics, probably more so than almost any other any other group. Um, and one of the things they look for in a good product manager is that they're a good representer of the business, so they can deal through this one funnel and they don't have to sit there and negotiate between departments, right? Um, I think that's a massive benefit of the product of the product manager, that they're really setting the roadmap, um, guiding the the technology teams, helping them understand the core goals, what the target is, um, and the good technology teams are just absolutely superb at executing, right? So you're setting the vision and unifying the vision across the business, and then they have a single representative who they can work with, um, and becomes immensely, immensely powerful role. Um, at least that's that's from the the perspective of uh you summarized it well.

SPEAKER_01 59:01

I love it. I agree, I agree.

SPEAKER_02 59:04

Yeah, um we're getting a bit short on time. You always like to ask um, you know, about you know how you guys are using AI, how you guys are planning on using AI. Um, not necessarily just from a Salesforce perspective, but uh just overall, uh in general, you guys view it as a threat to the business, an opportunity in the business.

SPEAKER_01 59:24

Yeah, so I mean it's it's a yeah, it's a huge opportunity. I mean, we we touch on many different areas within, you know, in terms of how our how we go to market. We've got hardware, software, and services. Obviously, uh AI is gonna be a key role. And we've already been uh uh well established within the AI space in terms of you know our offerings. Um what I try to focus on in you know in terms of how we're gonna use AI, where we're going with AI, is a lot more from like what I control on my day-to-day, which is making sure that my build teams are uh leveraging AI, that they're uh not just uh leveraging leveraging it from a uh you know build perspective and coding, but like you know, how we write stories and how do we grow them and how do we go through testing um with uh I think a untapped uh potential uh really across the the environment, not just at Rockwell, is like how do you build tools for yourself, right? Like historically, if you needed a tool for your build team, you gotta go buy one, it's a hundred grand a year or whatever, but like nowadays, and then you have to build your processes to that tool. Nowadays, you can probably spin up a tool for yourself and host it internally for you know somebody clipping around for two days worth of uh prompts, right? So um, I think that is really where AI is gonna uh grow quite a bit from uh you know from a development perspective and just kind of like the behind the door, uh you know, behind the wall.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:45

So uh Salesforce Headless 360 is now about two weeks old. I played around with it a bit. Um, have you got a chance to to play with it?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:55

Uh I have not. I have not a had a chance to play with it. I do plan on doing so, but um, I've been uh reading a lot on it, and it's very interesting what is gonna happen with uh Salesforce Headless.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:07

So um so coming from an integrations guy, uh it's really cool to see it it it it like you don't you don't you don't have to build an integration. So I have uh like for example like let's say you have it you have it tied to some other agent or your or like an MCP that's just even reading your docs. If you can like Salesforce IDs in there, you can just tell it a log a call for me. And it does it because it's basically taking the IDs and just going and typing it in, but I mean it's hitting the API, but you're not building a pipe. Um so I think those kind of use cases um are good, we're gonna see a lot more of them. Um, where again, if you're working in your AI environment, more of the chat thing, right? Um, so a lot of these kind of order order takings type stuff, right? Where you know, hey, make me an order, open a case. You don't have to really build an agent flow for it, you can just use the Salesforce MCP. Um, I mean it's I don't think it's quite there yet, but it got pretty close pretty fast. So um yeah, somewhat exciting. So uh what's next for Arman and for Rockwell um this coming year? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:20

Uh keep keep keep rocking and rolling within our Salesforce uh journey. We've got some big uh deliverables coming uh this year, big O lives that we have planned. Um, and then uh for from from my side is continue to tap into all the day-to-day new updates that come out in AI space and making sure that you know not just uh the team is successful, but that I am keeping up with uh the trend as well. So uh not to be too cliche, but all things AI, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:47

Will um we bit dream force this year? Is that on the list?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:51

Uh that would be awesome. Yes. Um last past year I did not go, but I did have a number of my team members uh that went. Uh I've been so many times that I try to give people opportunity who haven't necessarily gone um more so than than you know me going for the 19 times.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:09

So yeah, that's fair enough. Um all right. Well, Aman, uh thank you. Uh we really appreciate you taking the time to sit down and and talk to us today on the CRM Success Show. Uh great episode. Um, I feel like we could have gone for another hour or so, but um maybe maybe in the future we'll have you back for a part two version. So uh thank you for your time. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:32

Yeah, thank you guys. Appreciate you.