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cover of episode Clicks, Not Code: Transforming Digital Experiences with Salesforce

Clicks, Not Code: Transforming Digital Experiences with Salesforce

2022/11/29
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Smart Talks with IBM

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Malcolm Gladwell
以深入浅出的写作风格和对社会科学的探究而闻名的加拿大作家、记者和播客主持人。
P
Phil Weinmeister
Topics
Malcolm Gladwell: 本期节目的核心是探讨Salesforce平台如何帮助企业在无需编写代码的情况下创建数字化解决方案,从而解决企业在数字化转型过程中面临的软件工程师短缺问题,并提升客户体验。 Phil Weinmeister: 作为IBM咨询部门负责Salesforce产品团队的负责人,Phil分享了他独特的视角。他解释了如何将咨询项目中客户的需求与产品开发相结合,构建可重复使用的解决方案,并为未来客户提供服务。他强调了数据在提供良好客户体验中的重要性,以及以人为本的设计理念,即从最终用户的需求和目标出发设计解决方案。他详细介绍了Salesforce平台的低代码/无代码开发能力,以及如何通过点击而非代码来构建和定制解决方案,从而使业务人员能够自主创建数字化解决方案。他还分享了IBM如何利用Salesforce工具帮助企业提高效率,采用数据驱动的方法,并满足行业特定的需求,例如为制造业构建基于Salesforce平台的合作伙伴关系管理(PRM)解决方案模板。Phil还强调了对变化持开放态度的重要性,以及勇于打破旧的做事方式,才能更好地拥抱创新和新技术。 Jacob Goldstein: 作为节目的主持人,Jacob引导了与Phil Weinmeister的对话,并提出了关于Salesforce平台、低代码/无代码开发、以人为本的设计以及IBM如何利用Salesforce工具帮助企业进行数字化转型的关键问题。他帮助观众理解了Salesforce平台的功能和价值,以及低代码/无代码开发方法的优势。 Phil Weinmeister: 他详细解释了Salesforce平台的低代码/无代码开发能力,以及如何通过点击而非代码来构建和定制解决方案,从而使业务人员能够自主创建数字化解决方案。他分享了IBM如何利用Salesforce工具帮助企业提高效率,采用数据驱动的方法,并满足行业特定的需求,例如为制造业构建基于Salesforce平台的合作伙伴关系管理(PRM)解决方案模板。他还强调了对变化持开放态度的重要性,以及勇于打破旧的做事方式,才能更好地拥抱创新和新技术。他分享了自己在Salesforce平台上构建解决方案的经验,以及如何通过撰写博客、书籍和在线课程来分享知识和经验,并培养创造力。他认为商业创造力需要开放性、好奇心和资源fulness,以及与他人合作的意愿。他分享了在Dreamforce大会上与同事合作演示Salesforce和Slack集成的经验,以及如何通过平衡工作和生活,以及高效地利用时间来保持创造力。最后,他还表达了对以消费者为中心的设计、低代码/无代码开发和可解释的AI等行业趋势的兴奋。

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Introduction to Salesforce as a platform that enables businesses to create digital solutions without writing code, focusing on its low-code/no-code capabilities and the role of Phil Weinmeister at IBM.

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Hello, hello. Welcome to Smart Talks with IBM, a podcast from Pushkin Industries, iHeartRadio, and IBM. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. This season, we're talking to new creators, the developers, data scientists, CTOs, and other visionaries who are creatively applying technology in business to drive change. Channeling their knowledge and expertise, they're developing more creative and effective solutions, no matter the industry.

Our guest today is Phil Weinmeister, Head of Product, Salesforce Americas at IBM. Drawing on IBM's offerings and expertise, Phil helps businesses craft better digital experiences for their customers, employees, and business partners. A lack of highly specialized software engineers is a major challenge for companies trying to improve their digital experiences.

So using the Salesforce platform, Phil teaches people with little or no technical background how to make custom digital solutions on their own without needing to write code. On today's show, you'll hear Phil's thoughts on human-centric design, unlocking the potential of the low-code, no-code approach, and how IBM Consulting powers digital transformations with the Salesforce platform.

Phil spoke with Jacob Goldstein, host of the Pushkin podcast, What's Your Problem? And former host of NPR's Planet Money. Jacob has been a business journalist for over a decade, reporting for NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Miami Herald, and is the author of the book, Money, The True Story of a Made-Up Thing. Okay, let's get to the interview. Just very briefly, sort of, what's your role at IBM?

Yeah, it's a good question because my role is a bit unique. So I work for IBM Consulting, which is a consultancy. Salesforce is one of the platforms that we deliver services for. My team is a product team. So we're like a product organization within a consultancy. And I head that team up. So, yeah, it's really cool because we get to combine everything.

The client needs client problems that are brought to us through consulting engagements, but we're ultimately product development. So we get to build solutions. So kind of love the sweet spot that we're in there. So basically businesses have problems and you build solutions for those problems.

For those problems, but also thinking about future clients. So we build it so that we can reuse it in the future for different clients. So that's what makes it a little bit unique at the consultancy versus typical engagement. You solve a problem and you move on to the next problem. But we solve it while taking a step back and saying,

Well, what are similar problems that other clients that could be solved through the same application that we build, if that makes sense? It does. And I think we'll get into some specific examples, which will really help everybody understand. Can you just talk a little bit about the kind of challenges around digital transformation that a lot of businesses are facing right now?

There are a few things that I've personally seen quite a bit, one of which is that businesses simply don't have the data they need to provide the right type of experience. I mean, at the end of the day, customers want something very easy. And ironically, it's actually somewhat hard to provide an easy experience. A lot of experiences are probably overthought.

over-engineered and that creates this divide between an organization and their customers. I mean, organizations want to know their customers, they want to know their partners, they want to know their employees. And if they do that right, it's a game changer. It's absolutely transformational. But without that, and that's all data-centric, data-driven,

You don't know your customer. You can't give them what they want because you don't know who they are. There's a phrase that I know is important in your work and that I want to make sure we touch on here. And that phrase is human-centric innovation. Tell me what that means, you know, in this case and more generally in your work. Yeah, absolutely. So when we think about a solution, especially with digital experiences, we are always thinking about

Who is the end user, right? And with the digital experiences, you know, one thing I like to say, I do a lot of presentations at Salesforce events, and I've spoken on the topic of personalization a few times. I think it's useful to start with where things have been and where we're coming from, which is really a one size fits all web experience. And that still exists today.

throughout the web in quite a few places is this is a dissemination of information right it's a push i have information i want to get out or i have actions that i want you to complete and i'm going to set up an experience to you know get the information you need or do the things i want you to do and we're seeing that the demands have significantly changed right customers

expect a lot more these days than simply one size fits all. So the direction we're headed towards is starting with that end user and really thinking about who is this person? What do they want?

What are they trying to achieve? And starting from that perspective. So the audiences that we're building a solution for now become more critical than ever. And they're not an afterthought, but instead, who are these audiences that are going to be part of the solution? We do things like

journey mapping, right? Where we walk through the flow from beginning to end. What does their experience look like? What do they want at each stage? And we have to think about that in the solution. So you mentioned Salesforce. Salesforce, it's kind of a funny thing, right? In the world of business, Salesforce is this gigantic company that has

It's transformed software, it's transformed business in a lot of ways. But outside of kind of enterprise scale business, lots of people have never heard of it, right? Amazing. So just like very briefly, what is Salesforce?

You know, it's been a complete game changer. It is technically, it's a customer relationship management platform. And that though, I don't think really captures what it is. And when I describe to people I know, technical or non-technical, I describe it as, this is a platform on which you can run your business. For me personally,

It's been completely revolutionary because I came from an organization at the time that had everything custom built, homegrown, which I think was a little bit of a sense of pride at that organization. But what was happening was...

Everything required hundreds of hours. Any change was a major project, super costly, and things broke when changes were made. And when I started on the Salesforce platform, I think the biggest thing that stood out to me was

The low and no code development capabilities that business minded people who are not necessarily technical in the sense that they write code can now be empowered to actually deliver solutions. So I think that's how I'd say it. It's a platform you can run your business on. It is that single source of truth. It's the interface that your employees are going to interact with on a daily basis to get their jobs done.

So there was a phrase you mentioned in passing. That phrase was a low-code or no-code development. And I'm glad you did, because it's one of those phrases that I've been hearing, and that sounds kind of amazing, but I also feel like I don't quite get. So let me take this opportunity to ask you, what is low-code or no-code development? Well, I love the question, because I'm personally very passionate about this.

Coming from where I was before at an organization that had, like I said, custom-built solutions, any change...

to the digital experience required code. That is where I was coming from, and that's where a lot of organizations are coming from today. So what that means is you are always 100% dependent on a technical resource to make that change. However, when you want to make some basic changes, some, let's say, some process automation or some update like that that maybe isn't wildly complex,

it is fairly limiting to not be able to actually implement any of these changes yourself. So when we say low or no code platform, essentially what that means is there's another phrase that's used by Salesforce, clicks, not code. So think about it this way. Salesforce has done all the hard work and written many millions of lines of code behind the scenes to provide an interface where through clicks, we can essentially create

build a solution. So I wrote a book a few years ago called Practical Salesforce Development Without Code, right? It's still development. You're building a solution that can be implemented and drive value for a customer, but it is literally through clicks. Now that doesn't mean it's, you know, always super easy. It can get pretty advanced, but literally through clicks, you can do that. So that, that's a completely different way of thinking.

And when you say clicks, you just mean you're using like a graphical user interface. You're pointing and clicking at different buttons, dragging things around. Just to be clear, when you say clicks, that's the kind of thing you mean, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. It sort of democratizes the technology a little bit. And I think the biggest thing, though, is you have all these smart business people who

who are business minded in, you know, throughout the world who don't necessarily code. And it just allows them so much more ability to drive change is, is I think what we're seeing. So it's, it's a great thing. And I, and I personally love it because it gives us more tools in our arsenal for sure.

You work for IBM at kind of the intersection of IBM and Salesforce, right? I mean, can you tell me about the way IBM uses Salesforce tools to help businesses improve, become more efficient, adopt a more data-driven approach?

Yeah, absolutely. We're approached for a number of different reasons. A lot of times we work with organizations who are coming at us with industry specific requests. They have needs. There's quite a variety. So we have, we are set up to have experts in each of those areas, right? Business experts, technical experts, and we've gone through,

a number of solutions in each of those paths. At the same time, then we have more horizontal experts as well who are Salesforce technical architects, for example, business analysts, those that know the platform.

By combining those, we can not only understand what's needed in those industries, but the reality is you have to know the platform well, right? You can't just come in with industry knowledge and try to build a solution on the Salesforce platform without knowing it very well. And it's now just so massive. There are so many clouds, they call various products under the platform umbrella clouds, right?

And these are Salesforce clouds, right? Salesforce sort of mega products. Exactly. You know, it started with sales cloud, service cloud, marketing cloud. There's philanthropy cloud, consumer goods cloud just launched, right? Higher education cloud. There are all these different areas of expertise. So it's that combination of the industry knowledge, platform knowledge, and

And then you mentioned human-centered design and thinking, really trying to putting the end user at the center of the experience and thinking about their journey and then designing a solution that at the end of the day will deliver what they need, keep them happy, and keep the business moving along.

So that idea of combining industry-specific knowledge and Salesforce-specific knowledge seems really interesting and powerful. Are there any specific examples of that in action that you want to share? Yeah, sure. So we...

Recently, we built a manufacturing solution on the Salesforce platform. Essentially, what this was, was based on the industry expertise. So we internally, we met with individuals who had

expertise in manufacturing. The audience here for these organizations was their partners. So the concept was, how do we deliver a solution, like basically a PRM solution for the manufacturing industry? What does PRM stand for?

partner relationship management. So manufacturers often are interacting with suppliers, distributors, all those. And that's a common need, especially digitally. And you can imagine this is one of those areas that was widely neglected for many years with either very poor or non-existent digital experiences, right? So we met with industry experts internally to understand what these use cases were,

Then we took a step back and looked at how we could leverage this on the platform. So the solution we came up with was essentially a template. It was a digital experience template that organizations could employ themselves

really with a few clicks. Obviously, they would have to configure it, they could customize it, but it was a rapid accelerator that allowed for these specific use cases. For example, distributing and assigning leads to these distributors, providing reporting metrics on opportunities or leads, all that type of data

we provided and it was a template so they could start quickly, right? Get up and running in a few weeks and then leveraging our professional services, they could customize it as well. So they would work with us and they could provide their, you know, individual client needs and take it from there. So that's one example of a solution that we built that again,

took the industry needs, but also it was married to a platform-specific technology. If you were trying to boil it all down and you wanted to give just one tip for a business that's trying to improve their digital experience, what would that tip be? I would say that you would need to be open to change and be open to breaking away from

the old way of doing things. I think, I think a lot of times customers can hurt themselves by being tied to

what exists today, right? Maybe for cultural, political reasons at their company that maybe they feel like, you know, they've invested so much in a solution already that they want to try to get as much out of that as they can. But I think being open to the innovation, being open to new technology, I think makes a world of difference because if the client is open to a new solution, they're

and we come in and we can listen to them, really anything is possible and that's where I think the biggest changes are made. So while it may sound very simple, I think that would be my number one tip is just be open to a new way of doing things. Phil mentioned certain areas of business like manufacturing or distribution often neglect the digital experience.

By finding and connecting experts across IBM, Salesforce, and the clients industry, Phil helps businesses bridge these gaps in their digital experiences and remain cognizant of their human end users. The clicks not code approach becomes so important here because it empowers almost anyone in an organization to create human-centric digital solutions.

As Jacob and Phil continue their conversation, Phil explains how he got involved in teaching Salesforce to begin with and how he cultivates creativity in his professional life. So I want to talk some about creativity and I want to start with your writing.

And you're teaching, right? You have a blog about Salesforce features and the Salesforce platform. You've written books on Salesforce, CRM, online courses. I'm curious how you sort of got into writing and teaching in the first place. Yeah, it's a great question. When I first started building solutions on the Salesforce platform,

I was very excited about that, being able to do more than I ever had been able to before through the clicks, not code approach. And I started sharing what I was learning with other employees. Personally, I feel like

It's a benefit to everyone and it's a benefit to myself. So I started communicating to other employees, you know, little tips and things like that. And one employee of my company said, Hey, have you ever thought about writing a blog? And I hadn't, I thought that could be kind of interesting. So now about maybe eight to 10 years ago, I started sharing some tips, you know, here's how to solve this business problem using Salesforce, that type of thing. And

It was surprising to me how quickly it was picked up and people would respond and say, hey, this really helped me out a lot. And then one day I got a phone call from a publisher and they said, we want to start

publishing books that have to do with Salesforce, would you be the author of the first book we're going to publish on Salesforce? And he said, you can call me if you think that, you know, I'm pranking you or something. Cause I was, I was like, where, you know, it's pretty surprising. So my first thought was, you know, Salesforce has a lot of help documentation and,

what would the benefit of another book be? You know, so I kind of went through the, is this really going to help anyone out? And it's been awesome. I really put my heart into these books and I try to communicate as clearly as I can. I use a lot of visuals, a lot of examples. So I walk people through, you know, with actual data and it's just been amazing because so at this point,

I've sold over 7,000 books, which to me, that seems like a lot, that there are a lot of people out there that are using it. And I've received a lot of feedback from people who have said, you know, this really helped get me back on track or this helped me learn this concept and really made a difference in my day-to-day job. And that just, you know, kind of fuels the creativity more, right? It's just an exciting thing to see. It's the best part of writing is getting that feedback. So...

I'm curious to you, you know, what does creativity look like? How do you think of yourself as a creative technologist slash business person? So I would say that creativity in business is definitely related to just being creative in general. And I think that for those who are creative, you know, in the business world, they are probably creative just across the board in their personal life, right?

I think it's about being open, it's about being inquisitive, and it's being resourceful, at least for me. Also, one thing that is unique about this ecosystem is there are a lot of information sharers and there are a lot of collaborators. And so just being willing to talk to others and work with others absolutely is a piece of that too.

Because I learn a lot from other people. I mean, I learn a lot of new ideas, seeing what others have done. And so we kind of build on each other's shoulders. One thing that I'll mention is, I think sometimes being creative actually is just

being able to ask the right questions, right? If we go in maybe slightly arrogantly thinking, you know, this is all just, I'm coming up with all this in my own mind, we're missing out a lot. So I, you know, I try to be open to others' thoughts and work with them on things. And so just being able to solicit

What's in other people's minds and then have conversations about it, I think is one way that I come up with new ideas too, is asking people the right questions and then, like I said, listening as well. I'm curious about what you have learned from these collaborations. Clearly, you're bringing things to the clients all the time. Are there examples of skills or insights that you've recently had thanks to these partnerships? Yes.

Yes, definitely. So I recently was at Dreamforce, which came back in almost full effect after a few years of being on pause because of the pandemic. Dreamforce is the big Salesforce gathering. You got it. Yeah, it used to be.

North of 150,000 people in San Francisco for a week. They toned it down a bit, only 35,000 a few weeks ago, which is still pretty large. It's extraordinary how big the Salesforce universe is, right? People who are not in kind of enterprise software business applications universe. It's like this giant force behind everything we touch. We just don't know it, you know?

Exactly. Yes, it is actually very, very large. So it was a great opportunity for me. I was selected to speak at

in a few sessions. So on stage at Dreamforce in front of different audiences, which is very cool. And I was asked to be a part of one particular session that had to do with Salesforce and Slack. And so a colleague of mine, Jared Kingston, who I would also call a definitely a creative mind and a great collaborator,

He and I worked with Salesforce and Slack to deliver a session around, it was called Build the Way You Want with Slack and the Salesforce platform. The whole idea was to show the different ways that Slack could be used, whether it's with clicks, with code, to deliver solutions. And so speaking about collaboration and me learning new things,

This was a great example of that because we took different roles on this presentation. And I learned a lot from my colleague, Jared, because he and a seasoned member of his team built out some actual solutions. So we're very keen on live demos in our sessions. So we do, I've done a lot of presentations over the past few years, and I very much am a supporter of live demos.

live demonstrations on the Salesforce platform. That's one of the great things that we can do with it is instead of just going through slides and trying to convince people of the great things that can be done, why don't we show them live? You actually do the thing. You actually do the thing right there on stage that you're talking about. Exactly. And it really resonates. People love to see you doing A, B, and C, and then they see the end result. So, um,

He and his colleague built out this solution with Slack, showing how you could automatically post to Slack, automatically spin up a channel for collaboration. All of this that was part of that session. And it was great because I learned quite a bit through it. So we collaborated together.

I learned from him. So that was an example that's a little different, right? It's not working with a client, but it was working with Salesforce and my colleague, and we were able to deliver a great session.

So a slightly more personal question, but one that I think will be useful to a lot of listeners. And that is, you have four kids and obviously a big job. And I'm curious how you sort of fuel your creativity when you get busy with everything. How do you keep going? How do you stay creative? Yeah, well, you are absolutely right that life gets busy. And

Yes, I have four children. Three of them are in sports right now that are very active. So that's another thing. And obviously, parenting at any age is nonstop. As you have teenagers, those needs just deepen into different things.

And also, you know, my Christian faith is important to me. So I'm very involved in my church and I lead a couple of groups there. So that's another activity that takes up some time. I don't have a lot of free time. And so I actually get asked a lot, like,

How in the world do you get this all done? I don't even, I can't even get my normal stuff done and you're out there writing books. I would say a lot of it has to do with balance and efficiency. So I'm sure like you, Jacob, I, you know, I like to use my time really wisely. That means trying to use my time as efficiently as possible. That doesn't mean never taking a break, right? Sometimes I need to take a breath. Maybe I,

Play the piano for a few minutes, throw the ball around with my kids, or sometimes I just want to get some wisdom from my wife. But all these things work together to really give me a very balanced, satisfied life.

personal life where it gives me that energy when I need it. So I think balance and efficiency, like I said, in personal life and in work life are really what allows me to continue to be creative, collaborate and have energy to do so. I will admit, though, there are some nights where I just, you know, I just crash down on my pillow and that's the end of the day. But

Yeah, it is hard, but I think that work-life balance is so critical.

It feels so good to crash down into the pillow at the end of the day. Yes. I find. I don't know what it means, but it's a nice moment to just lie down and go to sleep. I find. It is, although now as I get older, like many people, sleep doesn't come as naturally as it once used to. So waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning when you don't want to, it's not fun, but that's just part of life. I'm in that club. I'm in that club. Yeah.

Last thing, what are the trends in the industry that you're excited about? What do you think is coming that's exciting? For me, some of the things that we've talked about are actually what I'm really focused on. So the focus on the consumer, right? The focus on...

the humans that are using our applications, that's going to continue this emphasis on no and low code development. Again, you know, custom development's not going away, but there just continues to be so much happening there. And it continues to open up what non coders are able to do. And I just, I think this is really changing business for a lot of people.

Explainable AI. So that's something that Salesforce is stressing a lot, right? The ability to take something as complex as artificial intelligence and actually make it accessible. And that's an area that I need to explore more on the Salesforce platform. I've dabbled a bit in that, but there's a lot to learn there. So I'm excited about that. And I think all those things I just mentioned really all point to

the democratization of technology, right? Just allowing people who maybe weren't able to leverage it to the fullest extent to leverage that more. And that's exciting to me. So those are some things I'm excited about. It was great to talk with you. Thank you so much for your time. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jacob. I appreciate it.

I share Phil's excitement for greater democratization of technology. And Phil's work with Salesforce and IBM Consulting is a step in the right direction, empowering businesses to create better digital experiences. When a company has the right tools to modify the digital side of its business, it can create new solutions on its own, deploy those solutions on its own timeline, and build human-centric digital experiences that meet its unique needs.

When it's easier for anyone in business to build a friendlier, more customized digital experience, it becomes easier to do business, period. Smart Talks with IBM is produced by Matt Romano, David Jha, Royston Berserve, and Edith Rusillo with Jacob Goldstein. We're edited by Sophie Crane. Our engineers are Jason Gambrell, Sarah Bruguere, and Ben Tolliday. Theme song by Gramascope.

Special thanks to Carly Migliore, Andy Kelly, Kathy Callahan, and the 8 Bar and IBM teams, as well as the Pushkin Marketing Team. Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Gladwell. This is a paid advertisement from IBM.