The Salesforce platform can empower businesspeople to create digital solutions without writing code. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell takes on this topic with Jacob Goldstein, host of What’s Your Problem?, and guest Phil Weinmeister, Head of Product, Salesforce Americas, at IBM. They discuss human-centric design, the low-code/no-code approach, and how IBM Consulting powers digital transformations with the Salesforce platform.
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Hey everyone, it's Robert and Joe here. Today we've got something a little bit different to share with you. It is a new edition of the Smart Talks podcast series, which is produced in partnership with IBM. This season of Smart Talks with IBM is all about new creators, the developers, data scientists, c t o s, and other visionaries creatively applying technology and business to drive change. They use their knowledge and creativity to develop better ways of working, no matter the industry. Join hosts from your favorite Pushkin Industries podcast as they use their expertise to deepen these conversations. Malcolm Gladwell will guide you through this season as your host to provide his thoughts and analysis along the way. Look out for new episodes of Smart Talks with IBM every month on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And learn more at IBM dot com slash smart Talks. Hello, Hello, Welcome to Smart Talks with IBM, a podcast from Pushkin Industries, I Heart Radio and IBM. I'm Malcolm Glabwell. This season, we're talking to new creators, the developers, data scientists, ct o s, and other visionaries who are creatively applying technology and 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, had a product Salesforce America's 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 ib AM 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 nprs 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 it's a bit unique. So we're for having consulting, which is a consultancy. Salesforce is one of the platforms that we um deliver services for. My team is a product team, so we're like a product organization within a consultancy, and I had that team up. So yeah, it's really cool because we get to combine 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 I 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 that's what makes it a little bit unique at the consultancy versus you know, 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, are similar problems that other clients, UM, 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 help us everybody understand. Um, 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 personally seem quite a bit um, 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 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 partner, 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 and that phrases human centric innovation. Tell me, 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, one thing I'd like to say, do a lot of presentations at Salesforce events, and I've spoken on 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 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. Do 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 and simply one size fits all. So that 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 the audiences that we're building a solution for now become more critical than ever and they're not and after thought, 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, uh, you mentioned Salesforce, and Salesforce is It's kind of a funny thing, right in the world of business. Salesforce is this gigantic company that has transformed software, has 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 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, um, it's been. It's been completely revolutionary because I came from an organization at the time that had everything custom built, homegrown, which I think it 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 is stuck 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 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 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 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 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 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 lower 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 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 what 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 made, right, Yeah, exactly, exactly right. It's sort of democratizes the technology a little bit. And I think the biggest thing though, is you have all these you know, smart business people who are business minded in throughout the world who don't necessarily code, and it just allows them so much more ability to drive change, 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 of IBM and Salesforce, right, I mean, can you tell me about the way IBM uses Salesforce tools to 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 sales Force 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 and these are these are Salesforce clouds right, sales right, so megap products exactly. You know, we 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 it's that combination of the industry knowledge, platform knowledge. 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 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 of us, how do we deliver a solution like a basically a PRM solution for the manufacturing industry. What CRM stand for Partner relationship management, So UH, manufacturers often are interacting with suppliers, distributors, all of 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, and 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 a digital experience template that organizations could employ 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 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 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 that 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 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. Film mentioned certain areas of business like manufacturing or distribution often neglect the digital experience. By finding and connecting experts across IBM, Salesforce and a client's industry, Phil helps businesses bridge these gaps in their digital experiences, and Jermaine cognizant 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, Field 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 want to start with 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 and 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, a little tips and things like that, and one employee 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 ten years ago, I started sharing some tips. You know, here's how to solve this business problem using Salesforce, that type of thing. And you know, it was surprising to me how quickly it was picked up and people would respond and say, hey, this this really helped me out a lot. And then one day I got a phone call from a publisher and they said, you know, we want to start publishing books that have to do a 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, Because I was, I was like, where, you know, it was pretty surprising. So my first thought was, you know, Salesforce has a lot of help documentation. 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. Um, 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 seven thousand books, which to me that that seems like a lot. That there are a lot of people out there that using it. And I've received a lot of feedback from people who have said, you know, this really help to get me back on track, or this help me learn this concept and really made a difference in my day to day job. And that just you know, kind of fuels 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 how do you think of yourself as a creative technologist slash business person. So I would say that creativity and 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 nation shares 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 learned a lot from other people. I mean, I learned 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 of 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 you know, 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 what you have learned from these collaborations. Clearly, you know you're bringing things to the clients all the time. Are there examples of you know, skills or insights that you've recently paid thanks to these partnerships. Yes, definitely. So. I recently was at dream Force, which came back in almost full effect after a few years of being on pause because of the pandemic. Enforce is the big salesforce gathering you got it? Yeah, it used to be north of a hundred and fifty thousand people in San Francisco for a week. Um. They toned it down a bit, only only thirty five thousand. Um, you know a few weeks ago. 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 um, it was a great opportunity for me. I was selected to speak UM 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. UM and so a colleague of mine, Jared Kingston, who I would also call a definitely a you know, 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 you know, 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 UM, a seasoned member of his team, built out some actual solutions. So we're very keen on live demos in our sessions, so we we do. I've done a lot of presentations over the past few years, and UM I very much MS supporter of live demonstrations on the Salesforce platform. That's one of the great things that we can do it that 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 results. So um, he and his colleague built out this solution with slack it, you know, showing how you can automatically post a Slack, automatically create a 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 it was, you know, 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're we're able to deliver a great session. So, uh, slightly more personal question. But when then, I think I'll 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 how you sort of fuel your creativity when you know, you get busy with everything. How do you how do you keep going? How do you stay creative? Yeah? Well, you are absolutely right that life gets busy. Um. Yes, I have four children, three of them are in sports right now that uh, you know, are very active, so that that's another thing. Um. And obviously parenting at any age is NonStop. As you have teenagers, those needs just deepen into different things. UM. And also you know, my Christian faith is is important to me, so I'm very involved in my church and i'd lead a couple of groups there, so that that's another um activity. It 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, 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 you need to take a breath. Maybe I play the piano for a few minutes through the ball around with my kids, or um. Sometimes I just want to get some wisdom from my my wife. Um. But all these things work together to really give me a very balanced, satisfied personal life where it gives me an energy, um when I need it. So I think balance and efficiency, like I said in 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 crashed down on my pillow and that's the end of the day. But yeah, it is hard, but um, 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. I don't know if it's I don't know what what it means, but it's a it's a nice moment to just lie down and go to sleep. Fine, it is, although now as I get older, you know, like many people, sleep doesn't come as naturally as it once used to. So, you know, waking up at four o'clock in the morning when you don't want to is It's not fun, But that's just part of life. I'm in that club. I'm in that club. Last thing, what are the are the trends in the industry that you're excited about? What what do you think is coming that's exciting for me. Some of the things that we've talked about are are actually what I'm really focused on. So the focus on the 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 co development again, you know, custom development's not going away, but they're just continues to be so much happening there and it continues to open up what on 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 UM. 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 there's a lot to learn. They're 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 UM weren't able to leverage it to the fullest extent, to leverage that more. And that's that's exciting to me. So those are the 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 Fiel's excitement for greater democratization of technology and fills. 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 jaw, Royston Deserve and Edith Rousselo with Jacob Goldstein were edited by Sophie crane Are. Engineers are Jason Gambrel, Sarah Brugair and Ben Holliday. Theme song by Gramascope. Special thanks to Carlie mcgliori, Andy Kelly, Kathy Callaghan and the Eight Bar and IBM teams, as well as the Pushkin marketing team. Smart Talks with IBM is a production of Pushkin Industries and i Heart Media. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Malcolm Glabwell. 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