Scott Billows (00:02.252)
Alrighty, Matt, here we are.

Matt Hui (00:03.943)
Episode nine, I think episode nine.

Scott Billows (00:05.614)
episode.

So, nine, correct.

Matt Hui (00:11.047)
Yeah, hey, we're almost at the magic 10 number.

Scott Billows (00:14.019)
Yeah, we're getting there. We're almost there. but this is actually part two of an episode we released last time. And we, in that discussion, we started talking about Salesforce, the Salesforce partner relationship, how a customer chooses a partner. On the last episode we covered

Matt Hui (00:16.733)
Yeah, right on.

Scott Billows (00:41.548)
organizations or prospective customers that are looking for a partner for doing a new implementation. We did cover a little bit customers that have already implemented Salesforce before, have had a successful implementation, and for whatever reason have opted to look for a new partner. But I guess the second part of this

Matt Hui (00:50.249)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Billows (01:10.326)
discussion today is really talking about what happens if you are an existing customer, you've made a decision to proceed with a Salesforce partner, and you are somewhere between the start and the completion of your project, and things are not going as planned. And I think we'll, you know, set this up maybe with the following.

Why does an organization, why does a customer need a Salesforce partner? And so why don't you unpack why an organization would need a Salesforce partner.

Matt Hui (01:51.719)
Yeah, so I mean, the options here is you have a partner or you don't have a partner and you try to self implement, which for those who don't know, that's trying to do the configuration yourself. So what are the benefits and what is the necessity for having a Salesforce partner? One, I mean, there's time efficiency. Doing a Salesforce project and implementing a Salesforce solution takes time. Being able to map in industry expertise.

just is so much more time efficient and also cost efficient. I think that's a really important piece to capture as well is partners, a good partner, will have done this implementation many, many times. So they'll be able to find time efficiencies, time savings, cost savings, and also be that voice of this is best practice, this is what we see other organizations do, and be that counterbalance, if you will. Beyond that, the Salesforce partner.

Again, a good Salesforce partner staying up to date on the latest technology. And Salesforce is a technology company. They're always evolving their product. So they have spent their time, effort, money to stay on top of these products, the partner, so that you don't have to as an organization. So you're relying on their expertise and them taking their own investment time to stay sharp, to stay certified, to stay knowledgeable on these things. And I really understand is something going to be

Deprecated in a year's time or where is the industry heading as pertains to such-and-such technology? So I would say those are some really big components as time-saving cost-saving While it might not look like okay the alternative here is I can implement it myself and save money upfront What's not often thought about is the wall the time the time sync that this can take? Oftentimes especially in a nonprofit organization this project or implementation

is being done on the side of your desk. being able to do your both primary role in addition to a Salesforce project successfully, and the keyword being successfully, it can be very challenging. So that's why we get brought into it lot of opportunities and get the privilege of working with lot of organizations is our expertise and just having done this so many times. So did I miss anything? There's Scott.

Scott Billows (04:11.338)
No, I think you've covered why an organization would need a partner. Let's talk about that organization has picked their partner and they're again somewhere between start and completion of project. Things may not be going the way they expect it. They may not be going as planned. That can manifest itself in a variety of ways. One is

Matt Hui (04:34.013)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (04:42.016)
There's just a cultural misalignment in terms of the resources that have been assigned to the project by the partner. They don't gel with the organization and their resources. Another example may be the understanding that the partner had of the customer's business requirements was not aligned to...

customer's same understanding of those business requirements. In a scenario like that, there are very legitimate cases as to where there is that misalignment. But then there are other examples where the customer is being told that the partner didn't understand the requirements. that may or may not always be completely true. In some cases, the partner may have

Matt Hui (05:14.514)
Yeah, happens.

Scott Billows (05:35.507)
not asked all of the right questions and maybe they're identifying it as a misalignment of scope, but there was a failure on the part of the partner through the sales cycle to more accurately understand the requirements. And there's a handful of other reasons why a customer may find themselves in a situation where they're

They feel they've made a wrong decision. They have a partner that they're just not gelling with. The path that they're on, just don't see how they're going to get to the finish line together successfully. they're in a tough spot. And they're in a tough spot because in many cases, they selected a partner after doing their due diligence.

They've got approval internally from either their leadership or the board or others and now they find themselves in the difficult spot of having to have an internal conversation about we may have picked the wrong partner and we may need to go back to market to find somebody. first and foremost, that's a very delicate

position and situation to find oneself in. I guess I'd like to unpack that a little bit in terms of what options that they would have going forward. And maybe I'll just kick that off, Matt, and then pass it over to you. So the first one would be if you are sensing, if you're feeling, if your spidey senses are such that

you think you may be going in the wrong direction, I would strongly advise that you immediately try to remedy with the partner that you have. Switching, lifting, not so much lifting up what you're doing, but sort of upending what you're currently doing with the current partner and going and doing that with another partner.

Scott Billows (07:56.486)
in many cases is going to take more time. So whatever end date you had in mind, sort of add to that because that is probably unrealistic. The budget that was established, maybe it can be done within that number, but chances are it's going to end up costing more. There's just all the inefficiency that your organization has been working through as you've been going through these phases of the project.

some of that may have to get redone. And so the effort on the part of your team is going to, you're going to be asking your team to, you know, maybe in some cases sort of do what they've already done. So if there is a way to get it back on track, we would strongly advocate for that. you know, that we're not trying to ever put ourselves into a position where we can get in between a customer and a partner. You know, we want customers to be successful. And if they've made a decision to go with a partner,

We strongly advocate for you to continue going down that path. if you're looking for another voice to just bounce ideas off of, we can do that. We can have a conversation. It won't cost you anything. And we're not going to try to wiggle our way in between. We're going to really do our best to help remedy and ensure that you can keep going. But there are cases where there is no remedy.

Matt Hui (09:13.192)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Billows (09:22.89)
And Matt, I'd love to hear from you in terms of advice, things that we've seen before. How can a customer who's in that situation, how can they go back to market, if you will, to find the right partner? And how best do they separate from that partner that they're currently working with?

Matt Hui (09:47.101)
Yeah, I think you said something earlier that I'd love to unpack before I answer that. You said if you get the gut feeling or spidey senses, I'd love to qualify that and just what things to, what are some red flags? What are some things that, okay, if this is not, if you're not getting this level of service, that you should either be asking about it or some of your senses should be going off. So number one, and I see this a lot,

If there's zero documentation about what is being built, requirements that have been gathered, what this partner is going to be doing, that is one absolutely necessary because what it does, when there's zero documentation, it creates this level of reliance that really inhibits your ability to be self-sustainable. So number one, if there's zero documentation, red flag number one. Red flag number two.

If you're noticing that the progression of the project, your budget is being wound down, but the project progress is not being made in a proportional fashion, you know you're probably going to run out of money. You're going to run out of budget before this project gets complete, in which will typically manifest itself in some sort of additional change request or change order. that is, again, that sometimes can be a result of inefficient spend of that said budget, but that is something that should be asked about or brought up.

and could be a flag if your project is not progressing but the budget is still being wound down as well. Another piece, if the team that you're working with is constantly changing and the resource continuity is what we call it, think about it this way, is just inefficient. The knowledge that's being passed from person to person, the relationship that's being built from person to person, it's very difficult to pick, start.

Scott Billows (11:24.008)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Hui (11:39.547)
stop, start, stop. So that is another red flag that I would say is look for a partner that prioritizes resource continuity, that you have a central point of contact there. There's not resources that are gate-kept from your ability to ask them questions. I'm an advocate for efficiency and making sure communication is efficient, but when there is a revolving door of who you're working with, that can just totally inhibit your ability to successfully achieve what you're looking for.

in this project. those are a few red flags that I would say. The technical piece, you're hoping that this partner has the expertise and is sharing with you the latest and greatest that would fit your needs as well. But another good litmus there is if they're not certified, if they've not done projects in this space, you gotta start asking yourself and think to yourself, are they learning on your dollar? Because that's not...

That's not right by a client. those are four kind of red flags that I wanted to just share and things to consider. Now, back to your question. What happens if you find yourself, you've started, you've selected a partner, those spidey senses or one of those flags are met and it's not being resolved. Well, what can you do? You had mentioned try to resolve it with that said partner. Oftentimes there's some type of remediation that can occur because you're right, timeline will get pushed, budget will get pushed.

when you're trying to bring somebody else into there to clean up. And that's what it effectively is. It's trying to salvage what's already been done to get some value and then take it forward. But if you find yourself in that situation in which you're needing to salvage, I think a couple things that you want to make sure that you have in place before is documentation, understand what has been done because that will make it more efficient when you bring into this next person. So we actually get brought into a lot of...

lot of situations and scenarios in which there's some level of dissatisfaction with a prior partner and we are picking up the pieces there. So to go about and initiate that there's similar to our previous episode there's a couple places or channels that you can go find said partner. If you are feeling dissatisfied and there's no ability to resolve and you're in salvage mode and damage control mode, one I encourage you to speak to your account executive.

Matt Hui (14:04.06)
to make them aware of said scenario, but also they may have an ability to reference or share with you, hey, this partner might be a better fit here. They actually have experience, so they're a really good ally that you can have as a customer. Talk to your account executive. Second, doing your independent research and utilizing Google, utilizing ChatGPT, utilizing Gemini, being able to service that, doing your independent research on the Salesforce AppExchange as well to find a partner.

Those would be two good starting points as channels on where do I go next? Should that not be met? And ideally by that point in time, you know what you're not looking for. You know what's not working and that will be your first question to ask to this next partner there. they adopt the agent? Sure.

Scott Billows (14:49.563)
Yeah, yeah. Maybe I'll add a third to that. so you've highlighted, you know, have a conversation with Salesforce. You know, I agree that's an important thing to do. You know, the AE, your AE at Salesforce may have been the one that recommended the first partner. So there are certain limits that Salesforce is going to have, you know, based on the experience of that account executive. Number two is you'd referenced, you know, some of the different channels that

that a prospective customer can go and find a partner. And so, you know, while that is true, you know, I'm making an assumption here, this may not apply to in all cases, but the criteria that was used to select the partner may, in part be resulting in the situation that the customer is in. you know, I'm very sympathetic to

an organization that they have this vision, they have this goal, they see Salesforce as the path forward. They're introduced to a partner and that partner fails them for whatever reason. it's often not the fault of the customer, they're just trying to get a project completed. so many of our customers that we work with, they don't do this on a day-to-day basis, maybe the last time they...

Matt Hui (16:17.094)
Yeah.

Scott Billows (16:17.294)
implemented a technology solution was, you know, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, and this is just not their day to day. So that third option that I was starting to identify is coming back to if there's a way to salvage it, and even if there is not, getting a third party, like a third party project manager, somebody who is not emotionally wrapped up in the details of your project.

can look objectively and is not there to mediate, but is there to hold the client and the partner accountable. And so they can also help in the more objectively the evaluation process of picking that next partner. So you might be looking for somebody who has done.

software implementation. doesn't have to be Salesforce, but software implementation work before. They've been a project manager, maybe on larger projects, and they understand the complexity that goes into these projects. Because when projects fail, when, and what we're talking about right now, if a partner has failed to deliver on what the customer expected, it's not always the fault of the partner. There are

I'm putting myself sort of in our own shoes here. There are scenarios that come up. There's things that you just cannot possibly foresee that had we known before, we would have not advised in a particular direction. But it's how that partner chooses to respond to that and work with the customer. And there are, in certain cases, customers, we would call their

their implementation level as you know, there's an immaturity around implementation because again, they don't do it every day. So how they're holding a partner accountable, how they're evaluating the performance of the partner, that may not be the best framework and a third party project manager or consultant, someone who's objective and can look at the situation and provide advice.

Scott Billows (18:39.397)
That can be another way to do it. again, that is something that we've got involved in in the past where a project has failed. The partner is no longer at the table and an organization has reached out to us and we've come in and in a case like that, we don't immediately say, this is no problem. We can help you with this. We want to evaluate to make sure that

that the situation that you find yourself in is one that we can actually find a way out of together. And so if you were to have a conversation with us about a problem implementation, we would provide you with objective and honest advice around can it be salvaged or what parts of it can be salvaged? What impact is this going to have?

to timeline, to budget. In some scenarios, it's taking the whole of the project and sort of cutting it in half or cutting it into pieces to say, if we want to maintain a go live date or at least around a go live date that you had originally planned, well, we may only be able to go live with a portion of your project. So my challenge to those that are listening to this and who find themselves in this situation, if you're in that situation,

there's going to need to be compromise and flexibility on your part as much as there is on the part of the partner that you're either working with or the future partner that you're gonna work with. So these are challenging situations, but they happen all the time, unfortunately, and know this, there is a path forward and you can get to where you wanna get to. And if you...

are interested in having a conversation with us about it, we would be happy to do that. And we'll provide you with just like real objective perspective on your situation and help point you in the direction that it's gonna get you to where you wanna go. with that, Matt, know, any, yeah, any closing thoughts on this pod?

Matt Hui (20:49.894)
Yeah, digital transformation doesn't have to be painful.

Matt Hui (20:58.108)
Yeah, technology should be fun. Digital transformation should be fun, should be exciting. And the second that that's not true, I mean, you want to do this, you want to work with somebody who shares that same passion, passion for seeing that change. And when that's not true, I mean, that's a real good reflection point. So I would say that technology is, mean, change is scary, but it doesn't have to be painful. It should be exciting as well.

I'll wrap on, that's my kind of last two cents on that. Having seen successful implementations and what makes for a successful implementation. thanks for doing this, Scott.

Scott Billows (21:37.41)
Awesome. Well, we've covered over the last two pods, a really important topic. so this brings us to the conclusion of episode number 10. so, Matt, thanks for doing this today, and we'll look forward to doing the next one soon. Thanks, everybody. All right.

Matt Hui (21:56.133)
Okay, great. Thanks, Scott. All right.