Episode 12 Transcript:

Scott Billows (00:03.112)
Matt, welcome back. We've got another episode today and excited for this conversation. We are episode 12 and we've got a year in review to talk about. So I guess just to sort of align a few things here, our fiscal year wraps up at the end of August. And so when we think of our year,

Matt Hui (00:04.974)
Thank you, Scott.

Scott Billows (00:30.132)
We're not in sync with either the calendar year or the Salesforce year, which ends at the end of January. So we've got all these competing years that we're working through. for us, we're at the end of the year and excited about the, I guess now the year that we're in, fiscal 25, 26, and all the great things we're going to go and accomplish. So we've got a bunch of things that we can

We can talk about in terms of the year that was and where we're going, what, how's your week, how's your week going? What's, what's, what's some of the latest, what's going on in your world?

Matt Hui (01:11.79)
Yeah, you know what, as you're saying, it's not aligned with Salesforce or the calendar, but you know what it is aligned with? The school year. Which always makes for a really fun, fun summer, trying to get people on calls, trying to meet people with vacations and whatnot. But no, my week has been great, Scott. I was in a great little ski village just north of Vancouver called Whistler. Beautiful place. The water's great, the temperature's great. I don't do a ton of skiing, but...

Scott Billows (01:18.131)
There you go.

Matt Hui (01:40.674)
I would imagine those who do would love this place. You're a big skier. You've probably skied Whistler a thousand times.

Scott Billows (01:45.789)
Yeah.

I have, It's a time of year that we're talking about though is not ski season. guess unless you go up on the glacier, which I've never done in the summer months, but certainly in the winter months when everything is in full bloom and there's snow flying and it's nice and cold. yeah, Whistler's awesome in the summer. And I was up there a week ago and it was very much what you described, nice and.

A beautiful spot, nice and cool. The air quality is amazing. And I find that any allergies that I have seem to go away when I'm in Whistler. So I'm not sure if that's due to there not being any pollen in the air, what's going on. But I always feel better when I'm in Whistler.

Matt Hui (02:35.576)
I would agree with that, yeah. No allergy medicine for me,

Scott Billows (02:41.297)
Alrighty, well, let's talk about, I guess this boundary that we've just crossed over into the new year, as I think you've described it a great way, which is it aligns with school year. Beginning of September, I actually feel like is more of a start of a year than maybe in January. I know January is, for most, is the start of the year, and I guess it is the start of the calendar year, but.

in terms of actually things, of people back from vacation, business sort of re-engaging. September really marks the kickoff in my mind. And so I guess somewhat conveniently our year starts then, but let's just rip through a few of the highlights from last year and just unpack some of the wins that we had in terms of.

things we accomplished as an organization and things that our customers have accomplished. what's the first thought that pops in your mind when you think of the wins from last year?

Matt Hui (03:39.544)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Hui (03:53.103)
Well, I think we should do it this way, Scott. I think we should just go back and forth. You share a win, almost rapid fire. Back and forth wins. see who's got more at the end of it. But no, I'll start with the advent of AI, or the real.

great adoption of AI over the last year. We've seen a ton of benefit for this, for our customers, but also for us internally as well. Things that we would have had to do manually before and would have driven people crazy, would have driven the team, just they don't feel productive in doing that, be it documentation or whatnot. The real uptick in AI has been an absolute game changer, both for our customers and for us as well. So that is one of my big...

wins from the last years, figuring out how AI fits into the fabric of the organization and how we do things. Your turn.

Scott Billows (04:45.094)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So first one here for me would be a nonprofit cloud. So when I think about last year, or I guess, you know, our last fiscal year just wrapped up. maybe the year before that, nonprofit cloud, we were hitting some limits in terms of, customers' appetite for this concept of moving from

NPSP to NPC. Salesforce was trying to figure out how to sell it. The feedback we were getting from the EEs is the cost of implementation was higher. I think that's all just been figured out now. mean, the last time I heard about NPSP was months ago, and I think that was maybe in a previous recording that we did just comparing some of the differences. But yeah, I think we're just

Salesforce NPC now is just where everybody is either at or where they going and it's much smoother in terms of some of the challenges compared to some of the challenges that we had the year before.

Matt Hui (05:57.613)
Yeah, and it's great to see the progression of the product as well with the latest advent of the volunteer management solution. It's just becoming more and more, it's gotta be a default for organizations. That is where all your investment is going as well. So I would, I love that win. I agree, and I'll make sure not to bring it up again later. I know if you got it. But I'll grab the baton back from you, Scott, here. I think a big win takeaway, just a thing that I saw over the last year, which,

maybe a theme for our clients and our team was just this notion of doing more with less. I got a firsthand opportunity to see clients who, over what had been a tumultuous year, be it economically, be it a variety of reasons, natural disasters, just being resilient and figuring ways out.

figuring out how to do things without the funding, without the resources that they were perhaps accustomed to. And what I've really seen is almost this top of pile action in that the people who are able to innovate and innovate being where do you get donations from? Where do you get funding from? How do you deliver program for half the cost? Stuff like that. I'm seeing just this separation exist in which unfortunately I am seeing a lot of nonprofit organizations out there that

with the inability to innovate, they're really struggling. But on the flip side, I'm seeing those who can innovate, those who can leverage technology, those who can figure out how to do things in half the time, make things more efficient, while also scaling impact and value. I'm seeing so much separation there. So just this notion of doing more with less, it's almost like a problem to be solved for our clients. certainly they have...

thrived and enjoyed that challenge of, what do we do now? And it's almost that gets them back to that grassroots mindset of, okay, how do we do this? Are you seeing that as well?

Scott Billows (07:53.423)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I, I, yeah, for sure. I think there's, you know, even just how I described, NPC and just it's, it's now, everybody's got their arms kind of wrapped around this, the future. I think the nonprofit, community as well as even, even some of our public sector clients, you know, the, the last couple of years, have been challenging for many of them.

And I think now people are just, they've settled in their minds, this is the way it is. We've just, we've got to innovate our way through and out of this. so there's just, the pause button has been removed and the play button has been pushed and people are moving forward, which is exciting to see. When, for me is, when I look at this year that's

been just our partnerships and we've always had partnerships, but it just really feels like we've sort of turned that dial up to eight or nine in terms of just the value that we're getting from partnerships. And I know Matt, you've worked very hard in developing many of these and growing these partnerships, but it's just exciting to see the

enthusiasm of our partners in working with us. Salesforce historically has been our number one partner for, I would say some obvious reasons, but it's all the partners that are around that, be it industry partners or technology partners that have either apps that they've built or other services that they provide. And in the past, I would say we've had

very strong relationships, this past year has just been, it's been on steroids, if you will. And so it's been really exciting to see.

Matt Hui (09:58.19)
Thank

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because not that it was on my list, but I think you said it's at an eight or nine out of 10 and I could not agree more. And when I think about partnership as well, I think one thing to say your partner, it's another thing to act like your partners. And the big difference I've seen over the last year is, mean, partnerships, it needs to be bidirectional. It needs to be providing value for both as well. I think that...

that messaging and that value proposition has been shared in that, back to this notion of doing more with less. I think it's enabled us, it's enabled our partners to get in front of clients, get in front of organizations without having to spend as much time, effort, resources as well. And being able to do that, can just scale, you can scale off of that mindset, you can scale off of that tangible, I'm spending less to go do this as well. So that has been.

super exciting and also just to see that the faucet has turned on absolutely and that again, it's one thing to talk to talk, another thing to actually show up with business. So I'll grab the wind stick back for me and that I think the appetite for face-to-face or as I like to call belly-to-belly, but the appetite to be in person has gone up at least certainly for me qualitatively.

Scott Billows (11:06.606)
Yeah.

Matt Hui (11:25.44)
significantly over the last year. I think if you flashback two years ago, three years ago, where everything went on halt, nobody, no face to face, no back to office, none of that. And then you go one year forward and there's a little bit of, okay, I'm a little bit more comfortable at home, a little bit more comfortable on a screen, and the benefits of being virtual to today. It's almost this feeling of the craving of in-person experience and in-person, I've noticed, and that's where I believe relationships get.

be it forged and fortified, just that in person. That's when you get to understand somebody's intention. That's when you get to understand why somebody does what they do as well. So I've seen it and we've had the great privilege of seeing our clients in action at their offices, in person, meeting them. And I think it's also been a big focus for us as well in that it's one thing to step in as a technology partner and say we're gonna solve all of your technical problems.

Scott Billows (11:55.181)
Yeah.

Matt Hui (12:23.522)
but the reality is we're solving technology problems but also people problems as well. And you don't get a true sense of that until you meet somebody face to face. So I don't know if you've seen the same on your side of just this ratcheting up of appetite to, we gotta get back face to face, we gotta get back in person. Have you seen that?

Scott Billows (12:33.043)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. absolutely. mean, think if you know, the time horizon that that I'm thinking about is the last five years, you know, March of 2020. No in person to, you know, gradual in person to. And I would argue that this this.

sort of default to, hey, we can meet in person, but I actually prefer to meet online because it's more convenient. To now, we went through Zoom fatigue and webinar fatigue and it's like selling motion, online selling motion fatigue to, I feel like we're totally back to where we were back in pre-2020 where it's just customer events and in-person is

where deals happen. I was actually, I was out just maybe to sort of click on that for a second. I was out for dinner with a friend, you know, in a totally unrelated business that he runs. And he was describing just the, you know, in their world, just how deals are done on a handshake. And you can only do a handshake when you're in person. So,

It's pretty cool to see. And I would say the evidence of that has been another win that I'd love to share is just the customer events that we've done this year and just the engagement that comes from these things. so we're always doing events. We're always trying to engage with prospects and customers and build community.

We've had some fantastic events over the last 12 months and excited for the events that we've got here in the fall. And as we look into the winter months, the ones that we're planning for right now. So I would say those are big wins and they're big wins because we get to bring organizations together and just see the spark that gets ignited between.

Scott Billows (14:56.237)
executives talking about the challenges that they're having or the wins that they're celebrating. It's pretty cool just to be in the room facilitating, but not actually driving that conversation and letting our customers drive that conversation. I've got some real memories this year of just awesome customer engagement that is...

It's just such a pleasure to be part of. So that for me is a big one.

Matt Hui (15:29.538)
Yeah, yeah, I recall a recent nonprofit executive dinner that we did in LA, just the amount of folks that came up to me after just saying, I am so grateful that you did this. I think the reality is you got a lot of organizations all doing something pretty similar, all trying to solve the very similar problems, and nobody really pulls them together and stitches them together unless you're part of some.

kind of group or alliance or whatnot. There's no real intentional community fostering and sharing of ideas. I think, I mean, over, over bread over dinner, fantastic, but just getting people in the same room, the amount of gratitude that came out of that is, I mean, it's, it's not only exciting, it's also very fulfilling as well. Being able to be part of that room and realize, Hey, I don't need to, I don't need to sell inside here. I, I think the real value here is just people meeting one another and people.

Scott Billows (16:16.096)
Yeah, I agree.

Matt Hui (16:26.176)
sharing ideas and saying, you're not alone. I struggled with that as well. So speaking of events, I'd be remiss in not chatting about one of the big events this upcoming year, a big event that Salesforce puts on called Dreamforce. So I want to spend a couple seconds just double clicking on that because I think people understand what Dreamforce is or understand remotely what it is, but maybe don't understand how to participate in that. So maybe we spend a couple minutes here, Scott, talking about.

Scott Billows (16:55.135)
Yeah, sure.

Matt Hui (16:55.47)
Dreamforce, so in October, and feel free to color in the gaps, I'm sure I've got many here, October 14th to 16th, Salesforce hosts what I believe is the largest non-profit conference, and granted it's other industries as well, but largest conference, tech conference, called Dreamforce. And they host it right outside their Salesforce head office in San Francisco, and they put on a whole big show.

This year I was looking at the headliners for those who listen to music or care about performances. They've got Metallica performing and they've got Benson Boone performing. So they're able to bring these really A-list performers and singers and they make this whole event of sharing their technology upgrades and updates and big things they're trying to accomplish for this upcoming year. So last year there was a real big focus on Agent Force. This year they'll probably share something similar.

But Dreamforce, October 14th to 16th, they transform everything. There's a lot of great sessions, there's a lot of great, it's just a great opportunity to meet people as well. And we'll actually be there as well, Scott. But I wanted to just talk about that for those who didn't know what Dreamforce is or maybe heard about it and don't really know how to participate. any gaps that you want to color in there?

Scott Billows (18:14.345)
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's interesting to tell you how you presented that because I mean, I've been to Dreamforce many, many times and I'm very aware of what Dreamforce is and but it's actually interesting. I know in own Slack this week, there was some messages from one of our team members who had been meeting with a customer and they had expressed interest in going to Dreamforce and were

inquiring as to what to expect. if you've been to Dreamforce, you know what to expect. It's busy, it's crazy, it's a very, very big event. If you have not been to Dreamforce, it's absolutely worth exploring. And if you need any tips on how to get hotels and what sessions to attend, you can certainly reach out to myself or Matt.

be happy to help you. For our nonprofit clients, I don't know if there's still a discount code, but there has been in the past. I'm sure there still is a discount code available, so you're not going to pay the full fare to get into the event. And it is absolutely worth going. And I would strongly recommend, if you're going to go, to go with more than one person. there's just the ideas that you're going to get and the

the connections that you're going to build, doing that in a small team within your organization is really of value. for those that can't go, because not everybody can make that time commitment or that financial commitment to go, Salesforce does a really good job of doing this online. just a plug for doing a community type event, maybe that's just your organization or maybe you get together with a few organizations and you

You allocate some time for your team to participate in some of the events that are running in San Francisco. I don't know if Salesforce stream everything live. They probably don't stream everything live, but all of the big keynotes, like a lot of the sessions will be streamed live on their platform. So you can find out more about that just by going to salesforce.com and they'll be.

Matt Hui (20:25.794)
Yeah, the main stage.

Scott Billows (20:37.61)
a lot of info in terms of how to access the online events. So I'm excited about this year. We've looked at Dreamforce a little differently over the last handful of years. It used to be something that we made a pretty big investment in, sending a bunch of our team and that we had a lot of customers going. And then we went through a bit of a season where

not as many customers were going and so we sent fewer people from our team. But this year we're going back and we're doing it a little differently. And so more to come on that. I don't know if we're ready to make all the announcements about what's going to happen, but yeah, we will be there and it's going to be a fun week in San Francisco and lots of opportunity to engage with customers and the community.

Matt Hui (21:32.91)
Yeah, I love that you said go with a pair. It's kind of like, and I would liken it to, for those who've never been, it's like going to Disneyland, but for tech. You don't go to Disneyland by yourself. Well, I mean, I suppose you could, but it's so much more fun when you go with friends. Yeah.

Scott Billows (21:49.528)
So awesome. Well, hey, let's just spend a couple of minutes and do some forecasting in terms of kind of what we're excited about for this new year that we're in. And we, maybe I'll kick it off. I think we've got a lot of really, really good momentum. We've got a number of customers that are through their phase one.

summer through a phase two, they're getting huge value from the investment and they want to do more. I mean, it's always the thrill of closing a new customer is, mean, I don't know if you'll ever sort of match that with closing second and third deals with existing customers because that hunt and going and finding new opportunities is so thrilling. it is so satisfying when

our existing customers are coming back to us and saying, hey, we had such a great experience. Your team was so great to work with. And most importantly, the value that we're getting from the investment is so high that, you know, that phase two and phase three that we had initially talked about, we want to proceed. so I know we've got a bunch of those lined up here for this year and it's exciting to be in that spot. you know, maybe to my earlier comment,

It's exhilarating closing any opportunity with any customer, but it just kind of hits differently when it's with an existing customer who's, you're so entrenched in the organization, you've just got the trust of that organization. almost feels like you weren't expecting the opportunity to close, but as long as we're doing great work and they're getting great value,

they're going to continue to want to transform and so they come back and ask for more. So I'm excited about that.

Matt Hui (23:56.995)
Yeah, I'll chime in here in terms of what I'm excited forecasting. To your point, you mentioned phase one, phase two. I think this year we will see some of our largest digital transformations and Salesforce projects go live. And why I'm excited about that is we get to tell the story. We get to tell the story of transformation of how Salesforce or technology has really solved and be able to help quantify that as well. And I think...

One, it allows us to spotlight the that we work with. But two, it's good to be able to have hard, tangible metrics to say this is what it has done. And I'm really excited for this year because I think that's in the mind of our customers, that is the biggest thing they're trying to overcome when they're making this initial purchasing decision is what is the ROI on this? What is the impact that this will have? So this year we're gonna see a lot of that.

We're see a lot of success stories. We're gonna see a lot of, let's share the blueprint. Let's help fill out that blueprint because it's going to allow us to share that same blueprint for way less cost, way more efficiently with other organizations that are similar. So that's what I'm excited about this year is again, that you use the word momentum, Scott, but we're just cracking that door open. And I think it's like having a set of master keys to all of the other rooms inside that house here.

Scott Billows (25:23.185)
you

Matt Hui (25:23.32)
We've now finished up that key ring here and we're gonna be able to open that door to these other opportunities once again, they're live and once that value proposition is hardened and solidified there.

Scott Billows (25:35.749)
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, listen, we could go on, I'm sure at length about things we're excited for. You know, we're, just at the start of the year and we've got some great plans and we've got a phenomenal team and we've got amazing customers. So, you know, I think we'll, as we, as we navigate through this year, we'll, we'll share more updates in terms of progress and sort of what the wins and the, and the losses and the lessons learned.

in implementing Salesforce for our customers. So Matt, I think with that we'll sign off and just, guess if anybody is listening to this that wants to learn more, you can learn more on our website at belmarcloud.com. We would love to have a conversation with you and be that about Dreamforce or about a project that you have in mind or just even talking about some strategy, things that you're thinking about within your org and things you want to do. We'd love to...

be a partner and help you through that process. thanks for listening, Matt. Thanks for doing this and we'll see you on the next one.

Matt Hui (26:41.464)
Sounds good. See you, Scott.