Mike Boyle: Integration is always a problem for companies. They worry about it. Can it be done? How do we do it? Talk to me about how your team helps customers with integrations for their Salesforce systems.

Joel Cajigas: Integrations are very important because they’re what connects the dots. In today’s day and age. Most companies have more than one system that they use to operate and that integration is key. One of our longest-tenured customers had an integration in place and there were always these little issues that kept coming up and they were distractors. And unfortunately, some of our engagement hours were going towards quick fixes or workarounds. To this. Our team worked with the customer and said, hey, let’s take a step back. Let’s do a health assessment of your integrations. Let’s map everything out, and see the flow of data. And by doing so, we were able to identify some of the upstream limitations and issues that were being reflected in sales. Once we were able to identify and kind of diagnose the issue, we’ve worked with our partner, our customer, to put together a larger, more comprehensive corporate data structure and strategy to make sure that the upstream items are addressed. Right, because just because we’re seeing the issues in Salesforce doesn’t mean there’s Salesforce issues. And so being able to pinpoint where in the process we have to make the fix is sometimes a challenge. But one of those things that our team prides itself in chasing and finding. Right, not the short answer, but the right answer.

Mike Boyle: Well, much like integration, data management is also at times, a concern. Is it possible for you to describe a situation where the team helped a client improve their data quality and m management through managed services?

Joel Cajigas: Yeah. And they go hand in hand. Right. Integration and data management are very important together. One of our largest enterprise-level partners has over the years accumulated a vast amount of systems and tools to connect all their pieces. Right. Obviously, consolidating that into an integration tool like Mulesoft was the first step. So we recommended a project, and we got that going. Once the implementation was complete, we kept running into some issues on the data side, most of them data quality issues. So in a very similar fashion, we took kind of a step back. Let’s follow the flow of data. And we found out that there was a governance type of issue where it’s not the system so much as the controls in place to prevent or allow changes to be made. And because there are so many different systems that work together, if we don’t have the right kind of control in place across all of the systems, a change in System A can create a problem in System B. And so once we were able to again figure that out and map it, to our customer, we settled on, hey, your data management can be addressed through some governance structure. So we just kind of took a step back. We mapped their Wild West approach that they had and who owns what. We settled on a more streamlined version of that and we had, put the checks and balances in place to prevent changes that disrupt the massive integration system in place.

Mike Boyle: Well, from data management, the next thing to think about when you’re thinking about plans for the future is scalability. Businesses grow. So can you talk a little bit about how managed services ensures a client’s Salesforce environment scales to meet their growing needs?

Joel Cajigas: Scalability is one of those tricky things to nail down in this particular business because there’s no right answer for how and when we scale. We want everything to be super scalable at all times. But the reality is that building everything for the growth that may come carries some risks. If you are building for growth that never materializes. You spent resources into a system that did not recognize that growth or value. And so when and how is one of those questions that we kind of need to have our pulse, our finger on the pulse at all times. And so, you know, our team focuses on value streams for customers, one of the key ones being, so what we do is we bring best practice conversations and we have those roadmap type of activities, kind of an eye on hey, what are the projected growth targets? Or how are we trending towards the established growth targets? Do we need to start making decisions on, hey, we might need to build over here we might have to take a step back to grow this because now is the time, but it’s finding that balance, the risk-reward, because if we spend too much time making sure that everything can scale at any point in time or every time, all of a sudden you are maybe in a system that you never see that growth and you delayed maybe some benefits for your team that prevented the growth in and of itself. So our team focuses on having the right conversations because there’s no magical equation that says, now we need to be scaled. So let’s keep our fingers on pulses that stay connected and understand, is this the right time and evaluate kind of the risk-reward. I think we’re at a good point to pursue that. And so maybe the next quarter we’re going to focus on changes that allow us to scale versus efficiency gains

Mike Boyle: Well, these days, Joel, as you know, it doesn’t matter whether you’re running a household or you’re running a business, cost effectiveness is always going to be top of mind. Can you maybe share a client, story where managed services has helped them to optimize their Salesforce investment?

Joel Cajigas: Well, one of the customers or partners that comes to mind is one that their main reason to join the platform was to streamline their billing process. They have one of those mass billing cycles that happens maybe twice a year, three times a year at most. And these billing cycles are responsible for about 30 million in revenue. So they’re massive. This is when they bill. And obviously, there’s a lot of human hours that have gone into it. With those human hours come the human errors. So streamlining it was important, but it’s so massive that in one fell swoop it’s impossible to get all the business logic. So after their original implementation, the next time their billing cycle came up, there was still a lot of manual intervention necessary throughout that process. Right. We were able to iterate once or twice with understanding where we still had those m manual interventions and our team was able to address those correctly. What is an exception versus what needs business logic? And I’m happy to report that maybe the last two cycles have gone from anxiety-inducing weeks of dread to an almost non-event. And it’s freed up their team to focus on driving the business forward. So we’re saving, you know, every single time, maybe upwards of, four or 500 hours of time spent just billing. Creating invoices and sending them. That has been streamlined and it’s allowed our partner to go chase other more exciting goals than that.

Mike Boyle: People might be a little bit surprised by this statement… That managed services go beyond just the technology. Talk to me about an instance where our team has provided valuable strategic guidance to a client.

Joel Cajigas: We had a partner reach out with kind of a typical conundrum in the space, which is I call it the chicken before the egg sequence. The customer knows they need to change a process. They are not experts in the technology to know what it should turn into. And so if we’re not careful, the conversation goes something like, hey, I don’t know what I want, but I want to change it, what can it do? And then the technical side of the convert, the response to that will turn into, well, it can do just about anything, what do you want it to do? And so we can kind of go in that chicken before the egg spiral and it wastes time and resources. So when our customer came to us with that, we kind of shifted our approach and just said hey, let’s try more of a prototyping concept where the very first cycle is about establishing the objectives of the change you want, and then let us propose some very limited bills so you could see some of the ways that it can be addressed. So after our first cycle, the customer saw a couple of the options and we ended up settling on kind of a hybridization of two or three options. Once we had the approach down and what the context of the build would be, then we settled on diving much deeper into the actual requirements of the build in the context of what the solution would look like. And that really facilitated a solution that was not something that either of us thought of initially when we set out, but it really addressed all the issues that they had and it brought benefits that weren’t expected. At the moment, the third cycle is making sure it’s production ready and then we rolled it out to production. But it was a process where asking the right questions and the kind of order necessary is what allowed us to get to the right technology. And it was a very engaging and fun process for everyone involved.

Mike Boyle: The last question I have for you, Joel, is, you know, the philosophical crystal ball kind of a thing… but I think it’s important that as somebody who works with clients day in and day out in the managed services space, what do you see on the horizon? Emerging trends in the Salesforce managed services space and how you’re preparing for them.

Joel Cajigas: It’s a great question. Looking back, the biggest challenge, maybe the last couple of years for managed services in the Salesforce space was dispelling the notion that it was just a support engagement so that the last two years it was about demonstrating that, hey, there’s a lot of enhancement and building and guidance that happens and growth through managed services. And I think we’ve dispelled that notion. Now, looking ahead, I think it’s about becoming a little more efficient and effective in that process. And while I think going back to the point earlier, the technology, the build, we’re getting pretty good, all of us, our customers and us, in understanding the development cycles for things to, be built and turned around. But it’s those ancillary parts of the process, the things that grease the wheels for us to pick up the work and complete it. There’s maturity that needs to happen in that space, right? So what processes do we need to have for each engagement and customer to help plan or prioritize, or fast track when we need to fast track to scale some things back when there’s uncertainty, so we’re not spending resources unnecessarily, understanding the risk tolerances and what we can go chase, and where we need to be cautious. Right. Building the structure around the development, that’s where the maturity is coming. Our team focuses very much on those kind of governance-level questions, and we invest very much in software development, lifecycle capabilities, as well as methodologies to be able to offer variations of that per customer. Right. If every customer is a little different and they don’t all have the same kind of resources or structures, well, then there’s no one magical process or methodology that addresses everything every time for everyone. So our team is focused very much on having that flexibility to adjust our processes where needed and still within established methodologies. So it’s not the Wild West or any crazy jungle version of this, but within those methodologies, so that we can customize ourselves or be flexible to work with our customers and the things and the ways that make the most sense for them. And that is what I think the next couple of years look like. It’s maturing as an industry, both our customers and us in that particular space.

Mike Boyle: Joel Cahigas, Director of AdVic’s THRIVE Managed Services. Thank you for joining us today. This was fun. I know I’m walking away with a, much deeper understanding of how MSPs can benefit companies. And so thanks for coming by and giving us some real AdVic client use case examples. I enjoyed it. I hope you did, too.

Joel Cajigas: I had a great time, Mike, thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure every single time.

Mike Boyle: I hope the audience enjoyed it as well. And speaking of the audience, if you want to learn more about today’s topics, I’m going to be putting some helpful links in this show’s episode notes to guide you a little bit more along the managed services road. I’m Mike Boyle from Ad Victoriam Solutions. Thank you so much for joining us for the Ad Victoriam Salesforce Simplified podcast. Our next episode. You got it. It’s just around the corner.

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