The truth is that although all businesses have established workflows of some kind or another, they aren’t always recognized as such – and they’re not always designed with intention.

People sometimes confuse workflows with processes, which may be part of the problem. Businesses rely on a host of processes, of course, from the process of recruiting talent to the process of fulfilling orders.

A workflow is best understood as all the steps or tasks that employees take to complete a process from start to finish.

Here’s an easy visual that makes this easy to understand: imagine a small fire breaks out somewhere in the woods, or near a campsite.

You don’t want to wait for the fire department to arrive and have it grow out of hand. Fortunately, there are a number of cups, bowls or buckets on hand.

You and your companions form a line between a nearby river or pond and the fire. The person closest to the water fills their bucket and passes it to the next person, who sends it onwards until it reaches the person closest to the fire, who dumps the water on the flames.

This “bucket brigade” is a simple workflow. Those within businesses can be much less linear, and are not always well understood by the people charged with carrying them out.

Much like mapping out the customer journey is a good first step in improving the experience you deliver as a company, workflows need to be created with strategic outcomes in mind. These could include lowering costs, driving more efficient growth, or exceeding expectations by creating “customer magic.”

Another big difference with business workflows is that they work best when paired with automation. Technology reduces the potential for errors or delays, while allowing people to make use of their creativity and social skills.

Let’s dig in a little deeper to see what kind of common workflows tend to exist within small businesses, and how to develop them to become better organized and consistent in how you operate.

First: Spot the workflows that are already there

Whenever you hire a new employee, regardless of the job you’re doing, the onboarding process involves showing them how things get done around the company. In other words, you have to explain your workflows.

This can be a highly valuable exercise because it forces you to look at your workflows with fresh eyes. Rather than wait for a new recruit to join your small business, think about how you might talk about the following:

• Launching a new marketing campaign: The workflows here might cover how you establish your goal or target audience, developing creative assets, getting them approved, running the campaign through the right channels and then measuring the campaign’s effectiveness.
• Closing a sale: Once a customer has reached out, what happens? Maybe a sales rep meets with them, then arranges a follow up to go over questions or objections. Perhaps they have to develop a quote and run it by the customer. Once the customer signs off, there are probably invoices that are sent and paid. This is the kind of workflow that makes revenue flow.
• Resolving support issues: How do customers ask for help? This workflow could start in a contact center, social media, or even in person. Maybe each issue is logged in an application. Then it might get routed to an expert on the team. Once the issue is resolved, the ticket is closed.

This is by no means a complete list. Consider the workflows behind processes such as getting someone a new smartphone or computer, booking a business trip, or dealing with a product return.

Second: Ensure your workflows allow you to execute

What distinguishes a good workflow from a bad one? It comes down to building in some essential elements.

This starts with understanding what the workflow is intended to achieve. Sound obvious? Ask multiple employees why a certain process runs the way it does and you might be surprised by the answer. Make sure everyone is aligned on what success looks like, and how the workflow will get you there now.

Next, confirm who should be involved in each workflow. Larger organizations may have sizeable departments, but in small businesses people can wear many different hats. Avoid workflows where it’s unclear who should be collaborating on a step or task, because it might mean it doesn’t get done. Automation helps a lot here as well, especially when everyone is using a unified platform where the data relating to a workflow has been centralized.

Technology can also assist with managing workflows so they happen in the proper sequence. A marketing campaign shouldn’t begin running, for instance, until the creative assets (like ads) have been approved by the right stakeholders.

Third: Analyze workflows for continuous improvement

Using automation can allow many steps in a workflow to happen without human intervention, but that’s just part of the value.

You should also be using technology to see where workflows aren’t operating as efficiently as they could, or where they are creating friction within the customer journey.

Workflows are never one-and-done, but they can become that way because people get comfortable with the status quo. That’s where change management comes in.

As a small business leader, part of your job should be using artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics to step back periodically. The workflow you established when your business first launched might have worked well, but is it optimized for the conditions of your business today?

When you have to create new workflows to support emerging processes, meanwhile, technology can help model what-if scenarios that allow you to anticipate where things could break down. You should also test out workflows before making them a standard part of the process, gathering feedback from customers and your team.

Trying to establish the path forward? Where there’s a will, there’s a way – and there’s also probably a lot of workflows to power your small business forward.

The post What Is A Workflow? And Why Your Small Business Needs One appeared first on Salesforce.

So, what does it mean to put the employee first? Increasingly, it means more than just payroll. And while perks are great, that’s not necessarily what employees are craving either. Above all, employees want to feel valued and empowered. They want the autonomy to do their jobs in the way that works best for them. They want their job to be fulfilling.

In this article, we will explain what the employee experience is and how it impacts the customer experience. We will then provide tools to help employees feel enabled, empowered, and engaged.

What is Employee Experience?

The employee experience describes an employee’s perception of their work and role at a company, from the initial interview until the exit interview.

Often abbreviated as EX, employee experience is based on holistic factors. These factors include employees’ access to technology and other tools needed for their work, physical environment, opportunities for growth, and the overall workplace culture.

A positive employee experience translates to increased job satisfaction. And increased job satisfaction has a number of positive impacts on the employee and the company. Satisfied employees are more engaged, more productive, have better work quality, and exhibit lower absenteeism rates.

How Does Employee Experience Affect Customer Experience?

Recent studies have found a strong statistical link between engaged, happy employees and satisfied customers.

A 2020 study done in collaboration with Forbes Insights and Salesforce found that revenue growth is directly linked to employee experience. This is true even if customer experience was not prioritized. Companies that have both high employee experience and high customer experience are growing almost twice as fast as those without.

In another large study, researchers established a clear link between positive employee experience and increased revenue. It analyzed several metrics to get to employee satisfaction, including self-reported employee well-being, within-team diversity, formal training, and the use of appropriate technologies. It then found that if an average store with customer-facing employees could move from the bottom quarter to the top quarter in positive employee experience, revenue would increase by more than 50 per cent.

Strategies to Improve Employee Experience

Because employee experience covers so many areas, it may be difficult to decide which avenues a business should prioritize. Below, we provide several strategies to increase your company’s overall employee experience.

Give employee experience surveys

The first step to knowing how to improve the employee experience is to give your team an employee experience survey. This will allow you to see where your company is already performing well and areas that could stand for some improvement.

During surveys and data collection, pinpoint your top priority as a company. For instance, are you seeing a high level of turnover? If so, you may want to focus your efforts on understanding data received from exit interviews and surveys.

After you have collected and analyzed the data, come up with a plan. See where satisfaction is lagging and make concerted efforts for improvement.

Allow for flexible, remote, and hybrid options

Workers crave the flexibility and autonomy of remote work, along with the lack of commuting time. A recent Morning Consult poll for Bloomberg found that 39 per cent of American adults would consider quitting their job if they no longer had the option to work remotely. For Millennials and Gen Z employees, that number was 49 per cent.

Offering flexible work hours — or working outside traditional 9-to-5 constraints — is also a major selling point for workers. Flexible hours give employees autonomy to decide which hours they work best. It also allows space for mental health, physical health, and family obligations. All of which can boost employee wellness and job satisfaction.

It turns out that offering remote options is not only good for employees, but it’s good for the company, too. Numerous studies have found that productivity is actually higher for remote and hybrid employees. Remote workers also tend to be more effective at their jobs.

However, in order to succeed in offering a remote work option, it’s important to make sure your employees are properly supported. They need access to technology, data, and other tools to do their jobs seamlessly. It’s also important to commit to building a strong workplace culture that is felt even from employees’ dispersed locations.

Use collaboration tools to help employees work together

While flexible work arrangements can be a crucial step in feeding employee autonomy and satisfaction, they are not without drawbacks. One major drawback is that collaboration can be more difficult when employees are not located in one central office. This includes both formal collaboration and those informal “water cooler” conversations that help foster a sense of community and off-the-cuff brainstorming.

Technology can help make up for that loss of in-person community. Of course, post-Covid, we are all familiar with an array of video conference technology. But other tools can help foster collaboration as well. Shared documents, for example, allow for groups to live-edit content and leave comments on each other’s ideas. You can also consider using a group chat platform to mimic that casual water-cooler-type conversation. Have a “question of the day” for employees to respond to and learn about others. Or schedule a regular virtual coffee chat to decompress and connect.

As you add more virtual meetings that are not strictly work-related, be sure to give your employees the opportunity to opt out. Zoom fatigue is real, and sometimes employee satisfaction is best achieved by turning off the screen.

Create transparent, seamless communication

Clear communication is always key, no matter the size of your company. But particularly as employees are going remote or hybrid, it’s more important than ever to ensure clear and seamless lines of communication. These channels allow for employees to quickly get the knowledge they need to do their jobs effectively, receive and give mentorship, and build community.

Consider what types of communication are best for your employees. You may want to consider social networking tools to share news and ideas, daily updates from upper management, and digital signage for critical announcements. All of these will help ensure that communication is transparent and knowledge is easily transferred.

Promote personal growth

Most companies offer opportunities for professional growth. But what about personal growth? According to the Harvard Business Review, more than half of employees want opportunities for personal growth, too.

Personal growth can be found through a wide range of opportunities, from yoga, to language lessons, to understanding personal finance. You can offer a stipend to pursue personal growth. Or offer the opportunity for employees to teach other employees about what gives them personal fulfillment. For instance, one employee might lead a session on learning how to knit, while another leads the team through a guided meditation.

Invest in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) initiatives

A study by the Kapor Center found that a negative workplace culture significantly affects the ability to retain underrepresented groups. In negative workplaces, underrepresented people are more likely to face microaggressions and to have their judgment questioned. Over time, frustrated by the lack of support received from their employers, people leave.

DE&I starts before the hiring process, with a recruitment strategy focused on diversity. But it does not stop there. It includes equal pay, promotion of qualified candidates from all backgrounds, a culture of inclusivity, and a true cultural transformation.

While DE&I is not easy work, it is necessary and transformative. A culture of inclusivity leads to an increase in innovation, problem solving, productivity, and overall satisfaction.

Conclusion

Clearly, the employee experience is crucial to hiring and retaining top talent. By investing in ways to increase autonomy and empowerment, you show your employees that they are valued. That sense of fulfillment is then reflected in your public-facing roles, as happy, supported employees create happy customers.

The post How to Improve Employee Experience — And, In Turn, Customer Experience appeared first on Salesforce.

And yet, the cold, hard numbers of data and analytics aren’t always an easy, sexy sell. If you’re looking to build a data culture for your company, you need to carefully plan your approach — especially if you sense any hesitation within your organization.

Below, learn why data is essential to your operations and how you can get your team on board.

What is Big Data?

First, let’s break this down a bit.

Data is a collection of analytics and other insights. It can consist of both internal and external sources, such as customer email addresses and client purchase history, or online ranking data and public records. “Big data” refers to larger or more elaborate datasets. For example, big data from a customer loyalty program or an IP address can help a retailer discover information on a customer from their homeownership status to their online habits to their purchasing preferences. These datasets can help you analyze past business moves, influence your services and offerings, and plan accordingly for future decisions.

And, in case you were wondering, data isn’t going anywhere: The volume of global data creation is growing and expected to explode in the years to come. In 2025, the amount of data created, consumed, and stored is expected to reach 180 zettabytes.

Not only are companies increasingly pouring resources into data and related job roles, 92.1 per cent of businesses reported that they are seeing returns on their data and artificial intelligence investments, according to the “Data and AI Leadership Executive Survey 2022” from NewVantage Partners. This is no trend. Businesses are leaning into data, and for good reason: It’s becoming more sophisticated, and therefore, useful for their organizations.

Why Data is Important to Your Business

A “data culture is a decision culture,” according to “Why data culture matters” by McKinsey Quarterly. It’s not about racking up datasets for the sake of doing so, but rather collecting, reviewing, and acting on this data to fuel better decisions for your organization.

At a high level, this data collection can help your business in several ways. It can:

• Open your eyes to what’s working — and what’s not. No need to guess or rely on anecdotal feedback when you have hard data to refer to.

• Serve your customers better. Data gives you a detailed portrait of customer behaviour. You can cater to your clients with personalized product recommendations, marketing, and more.

• Forge a path forward with your business. The information you collect can forecast opportunities to expand or pivot, if needed.

But for this information to be truly useful, you need to figure out why and how to use it. At a glance, you’ll want to do the following:

• Figure out which metrics you want to track. And get specific. Don’t decide to “just” track your social media efforts — choose which specific channels you want to track and what that will look like.

• Form a plan — or plans — to track your progress. Establish SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bound) goals and weigh your progress over time.

• Decide on a reporting method and schedule. Choose what you want to report on and how often you’ll review your results.

After you tick off those boxes, plan to address the results from your data. If something isn’t tracking correctly — or you’re seeing results that surprise you — investigate it. With key data on your channels, industry, and market in your hands, you’ll be able to improve your company that much more.

With all of that said, a data culture can still be tricky to build and get people to rally around — sometimes the concept seems too vague or big to tackle. However, with the right approach and messaging, you can make data a mainstay in your workplace.

7 Ways to Build a Data Culture

Here are steps you can take to get your company on board with creating and embracing a healthy, data-centric setup.

1. Share the why. Don’t keep it a secret — let your organization know why data is integral to your operation and success. Show the why and how of what data can do for your company, staff, and customers. Consider using data stats and visual aids to help get your point across.
2. Set the tone. If the C-suite and top executives embrace a data culture, the whole team will recognize its importance. Get buy-in from the top, and then make it known across teams that embracing a culture focused on data is where your organization is headed.
3. Mindfully build and equip your team. Decide who you want to bring in on the ground floor of your data collection, analyzing, and reporting efforts. Bring together colleagues across departments who are versed in or work adjacent to data. Make sure they have the training and tools they need to succeed to be data literate as well.
4. Educate your remaining staff. Share information around big data, the tools you’re using, and any dashboards you’re building. You can also suggest or provide free and low-cost resources for any interested employees — maybe even budding data analysts — to increase their skills in this area. Pull back the curtain, so to speak, so your entire organization can get on board.
5. Explain the benefits. Beyond serving your customers, data can inform you of your internal operations and improve them, too. If having access to more data will help workers streamline reporting or eliminate mind-numbing tasks, let your team in on the details. Employees who understand a clear benefit to their day-to-day tasks will have an easier time getting invested.
6. Disclose the results. Back up your investment and share how turning toward a data culture is impacting the business. Show how the data tells a story, and connect your processes to performance. Set up a timeframe to assess and distribute your findings, and do so regularly.
7. Encourage experimentation and feedback. Give your team the freedom to experiment and learn when working with big data. Ensure everyone feels safe to offer ideas, provide critiques, and share their experiences working through this information.

Conclusion

It is essential to set up a workplace where people understand the importance of big data and are invited to participate in how it’s carried out, whether they’re on the sidelines or on the ground floor.

Proactive and predictive data collection and analysis can help your business. With this information, you can get clearer on your customers’ wants and needs and your industry overall. With the right data collection, tools, and procedures, you can plan ahead, adjust, and pivot as needed.

You can ease into integrating data — begin by getting buy-in at the top and start to educate your team before hiring a dedicated staff of data scientists, for example. But being data-driven should be part of the fabric of any organization that wants to expand and evolve.

If you’re looking to grow, make more informed decisions, and stay competitive, then making data a part of your company culture is a smart move.

The post How to Build a Data Culture in Your Company appeared first on Salesforce.

When the pandemic first emerged a few years ago, for example, many companies hurried to launch significant digital projects. Small businesses might have brought their first web site online, while medium-sized firms expanded their use of e-commerce. Other brands adopted additional digital channels, such as social media or the use of video conferencing to consult with customers and each other.

All of these sprints into digital are well worth making – but true digital transformation involves much more.

The ultimate goal for companies of any size should be to enhance the customer experiences that surround their products and services, and the employee experience that makes them possible. To do that, you need to digitally transform the way your business operates – not just by using digital tools and cloud computing, but by optimizing core processes through automation.

If likening digital transformation to a marathon makes it sound too overwhelming to pursue, take heart. Much like the wide range of age groups and backgrounds you see among the runners in the average marathon, digital transformation is an opportunity open to any business ready to approach it the right way.

Even the most basic research will tell you it’s a bad idea to sign up for a marathon without having a plan in place, for example. In the case of digital transformation, there are several best practices to bear in mind:

Determine the best training regimen

To run a marathon, you likely want to start training early, knowing you’ll need to commit to running a certain amount of time on a weekly or even daily basis before a big race. Digital transformation is no different, in that it requires strategic thinking and in some cases developing new skills.

Once you’ve identified areas where automation should bring business benefits – running marketing campaigns or sales forecasting are just two examples – you’ll need to think about the team members who will be affected. What kind of reskilling or upskilling will put them in the best position to make use of the technologies you’re introducing into their lives?

Look at resources like Trailhead to begin getting your best people in good shape for working in an automated environment.

Stay fueled and hydrated (with data)

Marathon runners don’t train or compete on an empty stomach. They also learn to make sure they drink plenty of water to avoid getting overheated throughout the course of a race. Digital transformation is fuelled by insights that come from data – but it has to flow as naturally as water throughout the rest of the business.

A platform like Customer 360 answers both of these needs. It centralizes customer data so that everyone on the team can have one trusted platform from which to make decisions. It also connects to applications that help automate tasks like nurturing sales leads, following up on customer service issues and more.

Check the conditions before you start

Running a marathon on a bright, sunny day feels very different from running one during a thunderstorm. You’d probably change what you wear, and any other gear you’ll use during the competition.

Small and medium-sized businesses have to think about more than the weather as they plan digital transformation. There are short-term issues like high interest rates and supply chain disruption, for instance, but also ongoing challenges such as their average cost to acquire customers and employee turnover.

Assess the state of your company across every relevant area of operations and performance. Look for where the gaps are and consider where automation could speed up your ability to close them.

Break the marathon into manageable chunks

When you start a big race, you often aren’t able to see the finish line from where you’re standing. That’s why it can be helpful to set up milestones you want to reach along the way. This helps generate a feeling of progress that can keep you motivated over a longer distance.

Digital transformations are the kind of marathons that benefit from chunking, too. Look for quick wins that help prove the value of the initiative for the team. This could be as simple as deploying a chatbot to automate the process of answering common questions or complaints from customers, or replacing sales spreadsheets with a CRM that helps reps get at customer information from wherever they are.

Skip the medal and focus on your overall performance

Just finishing a marathon is cause for celebration among most runners, especially if it’s their first race. However they also tend to look at how they placed based on their age group or other demographic grouping. They might even consider how running the marathon has changed their overall health.

The metrics for digital transformation will depend in part on the kind of business you’re running, but another benefit of automation is the level of analytics and even artificial intelligence (AI) you can leverage to calculate return on investment (ROI).

In a recent global survey of customers, for example, Salesforce found 88% of those who embraced automation increased business value. An even larger majority of 91% increased team efficiency – making them ready to pursue even more ambitious growth targets.

As your company discovers the power of automation, it’s possible your digital transformation won’t have an official end. Instead, you realize there’s another, even more exciting portion of the race still to run.

The post Why Digital Transformation Is A Marathon, Not A Sprint appeared first on Salesforce.

Needless to say, consumer goods businesses are at risk when things don’t go as expected in the supply chain. Here’s what you should know about the intricacies of the supply chain — and how to strengthen your consumer goods business amid uncertainty

Supply Chain Steps

There are five basic components of a complete supply chain: planning, raw materials, manufacturing, delivery, and returns. Each link in the chain has the power to launch a business ahead of the competition — or weaken its market position.

Planning

Essentially, planning involves any strategy or actions you take to match the output of your supply chain to customer demand. It’s everything from designing products to be easily manufactured, to maintaining appropriate staffing levels. In addition to having visibility into the various stages of your supply chain, proper planning requires keeping up with — and often, predicting — consumer demand trends, which have been particularly volatile amid fluctuating employment levels, stagnating wages, and inflation. Now more than ever, consumer behavior has been harder to predict.

Raw Materials

Obtaining the raw materials to create your products seems simple, but you’ll likely have a choice between multiple vendors, regions, and quality levels to source from. Sourcing materials may be a game of trade-offs: speed versus quality, or high-cost; local materials versus cheaper, more time-consuming international materials.

This link in your supply chain can face many threats. If your electronics business relies on semiconductors, fluctuations in international relations and politics could put your supply chain at risk. Meanwhile, a coffee roaster might have trouble sourcing beans as rising temperatures could eliminate 50 per cent of coffee-growing regions by 2050. Just as concerning, inflation has affected everything from lumber prices to shipping costs — which factor into your bottom line. In April 2022, the prices of raw materials in Canada rose 38.4 per cent year over year.

Manufacturing

As a consumer goods company, manufacturing is your business. Whether you create complex products that require separate machining, assembly, testing, and packaging steps, or your products and processes are more streamlined, you’re at the heart of the supply chain. That means your efficiency will be affected by how effectively you’ve planned and sourced raw materials for your business. But it also means that, more than any other supply chain component, your business has likely been affected by recent labor fluctuations.

When COVID-19 lockdowns went into effect, Canada saw massive layoffs, especially for in-person positions like those in manufacturing. But since January 2021, job vacancies across Canada have more than doubled as businesses struggle to fill positions to keep up with post-pandemic demand. Companies that do have enough staff still struggle to train workers quickly, and unskilled workers tend to produce less while using up more resources — which can impact your time to market and bottom line.

Distribution

To keep your business moving, you must keep your product moving. Getting your goods on shelves is critical for products that consumers want to buy in brick-and-mortar stores, while maintaining efficient delivery lines is critical for goods sold online. Both require careful logistics — which has been yet another supply chain challenge.

Rising gas prices and labor shortages have hit the trucking industry hard, while climate change has both drained busy waterways and flooded critical ports.

Returns

While increasing customer satisfaction can minimize them, returns are a part of every consumer goods business. Providing an inexpensive way to ship products back to you presents many of the same logistical challenges as delivering them in the first place — with the added pressure of a lost sale. Often, the first links in your supply chain are to blame for high return rates. If you have trouble predicting consumer demand, sourcing quality materials, or hiring experienced manufacturing labor, you could see an increase in returns that reduce revenue and repel customers.

Guarding Against Supply Chain Issues

Understanding the links in your supply chain is a critical first step in guarding it against disruptions. But there are some ways to further protect and optimize your consumer goods chain, including visibility, agility, adaptability, and alignment.

Visibility

Keeping your supply chain visible to you and your business associates is critical in keeping each part humming along and working together. If you’re like the 99 per cent of consumer goods companies that accelerated their digital transformation in the last few years, you’re off to a great start. If not, consider digitizing your manufacturing and sales process so you can track more data points, easily see trends, and share critical findings with your team. Pay close attention to fluctuations in customer demand and manufacturing efficiency over time, and how these are affected by seasonality, labor shortages, inflation, and more.

Then, start digging into your vendors to better understand how trends affect their businesses too — or risk becoming one of the 23 per cent of businesses that cite lack of visibility of supplier risks as the most vulnerable element of their supply chain. For companies using only raw materials like lumber, petroleum, or corn, better visibility could mean simply communicating more with your direct suppliers. However, if your business uses materials that are goods themselves (such as semiconductors or glass bottles), you may need to dig into the companies that supply your vendors. Keep asking questions and connecting with vendors until you have the full picture.

Agility

While it’s tempting to optimize your supply chain for efficiency, it’s possible to be too efficient. Focusing on lowering your inventory days of supply (a key efficiency metric) could leave your business susceptible to shortages — which 76 per cent of Canadian businesses experienced in Q2 of 2022.

Instead of putting efficiency on a pedestal, elevate agility as a primary supply chain goal. Upstream, that might mean retaining relationships with several diverse vendors to bake in some redundancy. If your textile producer in China struggles with government sanctions, your Mexican contact might be able to pick up the slack and keep you running.

Downstream, agility could mean diversifying how you distribute your products. If COVID-19 lockdowns prevent your customers from seeing your products on store shelves, find ways to step up your online presence and partner more closely with delivery services.

Adaptability

Once you’ve optimized your supply chain for short-term agility, you’re not done. To thrive amid long-term shifts, stay open to strategically adapting your supply chain over time. Doing so could mean the difference between constantly reacting to supply issues and building a more resilient chain altogether. If you’re one of the 72 per cent of businesses globally that have seen environmental supply chain disruptions, for instance, consider switching to vendors outside areas prone to floods, wildfires, or winter storms.

Consider long-term trends at the other end of your supply chain too: customer behavior. More and more, consumers are demanding socially responsible supply chains behind the goods they purchase. Nearly 6 in 10 consumers say they want sustainably produced foods, for example. Adopting more transparency and choosing socially responsible vendors could give you an edge over less-aware competitors while helping you avoid potential public backlash.

To adapt your supply chain for long-term success, you’ll need to look at how your current systems work and consider your long-term strategy and vision. Finally, consider the needs of your ultimate customers: those who will actually consume your products, not just the stores that will sell them.

Alignment

The key to aligning your supply chain is creating equitable partnerships in each link. You might split the costs — and profits — of raw materials with the vendors that provide them, for instance. Or you might charge a vendor for providing low-quality parts if a customer returns a less-than-satisfactory product.

Aligning the links in your supply chain means getting clear on what your priorities are. Is customer satisfaction your North Star? Or would your business benefit more from a shorter time to market? Build your partnerships around meeting these goals and bake in shared success — or failure — to your contracts.

Conclusion

Global supply chains face a variety of challenges for the consumer goods companies that count on them. And supply chain threats come in many forms — from pandemics and climate change to labor shortages and inflation to war and political unrest. Keeping your supply chain agile, adaptable, and aligned amid these challenges isn’t easy, but it can help you weather the storm. Start by increasing the visibility of your current supply chain, then strengthen each link in the chain as needed.

The post How to Prepare Consumer Goods Businesses for Supply Chain Challenges appeared first on Salesforce.

“Managers everywhere should use this crisis to take a fresh look at their supply networks, take steps to understand their vulnerabilities, and then take actions to improve robustness,” Harvard business professor William C. Shih advised in the Harvard Business Review.

This article explains how supply chains work, the common causes of supply chain disruptions, and how businesses can navigate supply chain ups and downs.

What is a Supply Chain?

A supply chain refers to the network of companies involved in the production and delivery of a product from start to finish. This network includes:

• Companies that manufacture the materials used to make an item

• Companies that create packaging

• Logistics companies that move parts between factories
• Truck drivers who deliver completed products to store shelves

Supply chains are crucial for modern business because one misstep can result in weeks or months of delays — as many consumers have recently seen.

There are six common types of supply chain models, including:

1. Fast chain: Businesses with a shorter market lifecycle, such as fast fashion, often use this model. It relies on a heavy investment in advertising and fast-moving products.

2. Continuous flow: Established companies use this type to keep a steady supply of products on store shelves.

3. Efficient chain: Companies in highly competitive markets leverage this model to reduce waste and inefficiencies.

4. Agile: Niche organizations often use this type to ensure safe delivery, but it can result in higher costs.

5. Flexible: This supply chain model is easy to scale up and down based on seasonal changes.

6. Custom configured: This custom-designed model borrows features from other types of supply chain management, especially continuous flow and agile. It’s often used for prototype manufacturing or small runs of specialty products.

What Are The Main Stages In A Supply Chain?

A supply chain is an interconnected series of organizations and people that turn supplies into products or services and deliver them to the end user. For example, the stages of a toy company’s supply chain may include sourcing wood from a tree farm, turning it into lumber, carving and painting toys, creating boxes, packaging them, and delivering them to big-box retailers or e-commerce warehouses.

While the exact steps vary by company and product, the key steps include:

• Sourcing Material: Finding the materials needed to create a product.

• Refining/Manufacturing: Turning materials into items; may include several manufacturing plants.

• Assembling: Putting the pieces (sometimes from different factories) together. This step may include logistics to deliver parts and packaging from various locations.

• Selling: Marketing and selling of products to end users, which may include stores, consumers, or warehouses.

• Delivering to End Users: This step may include organizing trucks, boats, planes, or other forms of transportation to deliver items to the end users.

In each step of the process, things can go wrong. For example, a global computer chip shortage stemming from a failure in the sourcing material stage has recently impacted the supply chains for tech gadgets, including cars, phones, and computers. Shipping issues and labour shortages have further exacerbated the issue.

What Events Can Disrupt Your Supply Chain?

A supply chain functions like a metal chain holding up a wrecking ball — if one link is broken, the entire process falls apart — and the consequences can be disastrous. And, like a rusted chain, the modern supply chain can have hundreds of weak links.

Let’s consider the most common causes of supply chain disruption, then review strategies to prevent supply chain breakdowns.

Digital shifts and trends

Digital shifts and technological trends can have a strong impact on supply chains — even in areas less related to technology. For example, a shift to cloud computing may eliminate the need for physical servers managed by companies but could result in other problems such as labour disruptions.

Global health crises

COVID-19 highlighted the vulnerability of supply chains unlike any event in recent memory. Lack of labour, shifting consumer needs, and increased online shopping caused ripple effects that impacted supply chains worldwide. As our world becomes more connected, more global health crises may impact supply chains.

Material supply issues

When companies can’t resource raw materials to make physical products, the consequences can be far-reaching. Shortages of natural resources, such as water, dramatically impact the supply chain. Natural disasters, war, and diseases in crops or animals can cause these shortages.

Labour supply issues

Many people think lack of supplies like wood, metal, or computer chips is the greatest danger to a healthy supply chain. In fact, labour supply can be just as devastating — if not more so. When companies don’t have people to work in their factories, drive trucks, or stock shelves, the entire global supply chain can come to a grinding halt. Illness, economic factors, or a lack of knowledgeable hires can cause labour shortages.

Inflation

An increase in inflation can reduce spending and raise interest rates. These trends can increase material costs and change consumer trends — which can have far-reaching consequences for global supply chains.

Natural disasters and political conflicts

Natural disasters and political conflicts can destroy materials (including food) grown in limited areas. For example, Ukraine exports a lot of grain. With the country under turmoil, grain supply has been disrupted for many countries. Natural disasters can also disrupt oil production, which results in economic and supply chain issues.

How to Create a Resilient Supply Chain

To thrive on the ever-changing global stage, modern companies must prepare for supply chain issues before they occur. While predicting every global crisis or natural disaster isn’t possible, these tips can help you create a more resilient supply chain.

Reduce inefficiencies

The more links in your supply chain, the more vulnerable it is. Reducing inefficiencies and streamlining processes can reduce your exposure and reduce costs. For example, streamlining transport logistics means you’ll have fewer shipping companies to deal with, which can result in higher revenue.

Invest in elastic capacity

A major cause of supply chain disruption is the inability to adjust to surges in demand. Imagine that a trucking company needs additional storage during the holiday season. Increasing the fixed storage capacity by signing a year-long lease for a warehouse may leave those buildings empty during the slower season.

However, if they rent portable storage units on a three-month basis, they can quickly (and affordably) scale storage up and down as business needs change.

Have a backup plan for suppliers

Relying on a limited pool of suppliers can devastate your supply chain. Take, for example, the impact on the formula industry in the United States after one plant was shut down. While the shortage was the result of several issues, access to more suppliers could have alleviated the pressure. Protect your supply chain by sourcing additional suppliers now, so you know where to turn. Consider brainstorming supply alternatives, like the businesses that moved to selling chicken thighs when wings were more expensive and harder to find.

Create flexibility in your labour force

A flexible workforce allows businesses to easily adjust to changing business needs. Consider methods for making your workforce more flexible by sourcing freelancers or contingent workers and cross-training current employees. When things change — for example, if your entire warehouse crew catches COVID-19 — your organization will be able to quickly adjust to maintain operations.

Leverage automation and digital solutions

Digital transformation is helping businesses automate rote tasks, which has supply chain benefits as well. When employees spend less time on manual tasks, they have more time for cross-training, researching suppliers, and spotting other inefficiencies in the supply chain. Digital solutions also provide access to more data, which you can leverage to spot business opportunities.

Communicate with customers quickly when there’s an issue

Despite your best efforts, some supply chain issues may be inevitable. When they occur, communicate with customers promptly and explain the issues. Outline the events that resulted in delays, what you’re doing to prevent the issue from occurring again, and how your organization will make it right. Customers know some challenges are unavoidable and are more likely to be understanding when you notify them promptly.

Conclusion

With recent disruptions in global commerce, it’s more important than ever for business owners to effectively manage their supply chains. The tips in this article can help companies understand their supply chains better and learn to be resilient in the face of inevitable disruptions.

The post Supply Chains 101: A Guide for Modern Businesses appeared first on Salesforce.

If that sounds like too simple a formula, let’s break it down a little:

When people feel great when they’re working, they’re probably more likely to work harder. Faster. With a greater attention to detail.

People only feel great at work when a few key elements are in place, though.

It can start with a sense of purpose, which a company might define in its mission, vision and values. When a sense of purpose is genuine and clearly articulated, the stage is set for an employee experience in which everyone understands the value the company is trying to provide.

Feeling great about where you work doesn’t end there, however. It also stems from how well employees feel they’re supported to achieve the objectives their employer sets out for them.

Perhaps they were hired because of a particular skill set, like an ability to tell compelling stories as a marketer or a proven track record in closing large sales deals. If they only spend a tenth of their time using those skills because they’re mired in manual tasks, though, they’re not going to feel great. They’ll feel bored or even resentful.

Companies that prioritize employee experiences recognize that beyond manual tasks, they need to move their best people away from repetitive tasks, or those that could be done on a larger scale by a machine rather than a human being.

Automation’s role in creating a great employee experience has sometimes been obscured by the other benefits it brings. For employers, automation can mean an ability to streamline key processes, improve safety conditions on job sites, gain visibility into operational performance or reduce costs.

However automation is just as important to pursue if you care deeply about the health and well-being of your workforce. People who get stressed out – or reach the point of burnout – can wind up missing work for a prolonged period or leave their job entirely. It can hurt their careers and the ability of their employer to achieve its mission.

Automation can’t solve every employee experience problem, of course, but it can offer powerful capabilities in a number of areas. These include:

Optimizing Workloads

When you look at the day in the life of an average sales rep, what do you want them to have accomplished at the end of each day? Is it better that they filled in the rows and columns of multiple spreadsheets, or that they talked to a record number of customers and prospects?

What about customer service agents? Will they feel motivated and driven to go on yet another hunting expedition for customer data across disparate systems?

Automation centralizes the most important information you use throughout a company. It also takes away what employees often secretly (through rightfully) refer to as the “grunt work” of their jobs. In doing so, automation serves as a way to give them the kind of workload that’s more suited to their education and career background – the qualities, in other words, for which they were hired in the first place.

Introducing Flexibility For Varied Lifestyles

The original one-size-fits-all model of having everyone show up to the same location for eight hours a day is no longer universally relevant. Attracting and keeping the best employees now requires recognizing that some employees will want to be able to work successfully from anywhere.

Automation helps support hybrid working models because it means many areas that once required employees to be on-site can be done without human intervention. Other tasks that still need a person involved can be done remotely. This can range from quality control processes to collaborating with coworkers.

As a result, those working in companies with advanced automation in place may be in a better position to attend to their personal wellness, whether it’s going to the gym or taking some time for meditation.

Carving Out Time For Professional Development

A thriving career means committing to lifelong learning. If employees have to use up all their evenings and weekends to take courses, however, they risk winding up being too tired by the time they’re back on the job.

Automation can come at a time of transition within many companies and sectors. As redundant tasks get taken over by technology, for example, employees may find themselves responding to new, emerging needs from customers and coworkers alike.

This is where upskilling and reskilling becomes as beneficial to employers as it does to individual employees. A company where staff are given dedicated hours to pursue professional development is the hallmark of a great employee experience.

Discovering Deeper Insights

Automation isn’t limited to robotics. Technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are allowing businesses of every size to not only handle tasks, but learn as they do so.

Just think of a chatbot as one example. As a tool deployed on a web site, chatbots can answer many of the routine questions that might have led customers and prospects to reach out to a contact centre in the past. At the same time as it’s providing those answers, though, that chatbot is also collecting invaluable data about the kinds of problems customers are encountering, and precisely how they ask for help.

This kind of insight can become the basis for new ideas employees will come up with in terms of new products, services and processes to enhance the customer experience. This is some of the most fulfilling work you can do, and it makes for a great employee experience as well.

With the right kind of automation, employees can stop “griding” and breathe a little. They can take steps to protect their mental and physical health. And they can challenge themselves to raise the bar on the work they and their company do.

Automation is not just worth exploring – it’s imperative for companies that want their entire team of employees to flourish.

The post How Leadership Can Use Automation To Enhance The Employee Experience appeared first on Salesforce.

A health and wellness company looks at the feedback coming in through a chatbot it uses for customer support and introduces a mobile app to help customers keep track of their fitness levels.

A travel firm removes two out of the three steps that were previously required to complete an online booking because, thanks to tools that show how its web site is used, that’s clearly what customers want.

These are all examples of data-driven decisions. In the most successful companies, they are not simply isolated incidents. They speak to a consistent approach taken across sales, marketing, customer service and other business functions. It is a mark of a data culture – where an organization prioritizes data as a key input into business strategy.

According to a report from consulting firm McKinsey, 15 to 25 per cent of EBITDA increases owe

their financial performance to the data culture they’ve developed. That’s because data allows companies to accelerate:

• Efficiency: Data can be used to identify processes that are slowing employees down, or creating friction in customer experiences.

• Productivity: When data is close at hand, team members can find answers to common questions more quickly, and make faster progress on solving critical business problems.

• Innovation: Data doesn’t just give a window into what happened in a business and the market it serves. It can also indicate where customers have unmet needs, which can help inform the design of new products, processes and experiences.

For many Canadian businesses, the problem is not a lack of data. It’s trying to effectively collect, manage, analyze and report on the right data. It becomes part of the culture when everyone – no matter the functional area in which they work – can act upon to further business objectives.

What data brings to each business unit

A good way to begin developing a data culture is to envision the impact of data-driven decision-making across the disparate stakeholders that make up a typical company. Some of the most common examples are as follows:

1. Sales

Reps used to rely a lot on their memories of previous deals to win more customers. This can work when you’re dealing with a small account base, but data becomes transformative as you scale.

By using a CRM, for instance, reps can share what they learn about customers in a centralized system that shows the most likely way to close more deals. This data could include customers’ most common objections (and how to overcome them), products and services that are trending in popularity and even what kind of bundles or configurations of products and services resonate most.

2. Marketing

CMOs often have great instincts for what makes for compelling ad creative, but data provides an additional layer of knowledge to deliver even stronger campaign results.

Think about how artificial intelligence could assess the likelihood of customers to click on a digital or social ad, for instance. CMOs and their teams could then use marketing automation to A/B test different versions of the same add, social post or e-mail subject line.

3. Service

Agents might be great at troubleshooting product issues, but their jobs become harder than they should be when they’re spending too much time scrambling for the right information.

Most of us have probably experienced situations where we’ve reached out to a company for help and have had to repeat the same purchase details (or even our names) over and over. Data-driven service takes all that unnecessary detective work away from agents, allowing them to focus no what they do best.

Why a data culture makes for a better customer experience (CX)

The most valuable data in any organization is really customer data, because it allows a company to take those relationships further than they’ve ever gone before.

A data culture will ensure, for instance, that customers aren’t greeted generally when they log into their account, but with their name and pointers to what they might need based on previous interactions. It will solidify best practices such as only reaching out to customers through the digital channels they prefer (such as e-mail or text message instead of phone calls) and will provide promotions that reflect their purchase histories.

Smart companies will also develop a data culture with an eye to improving employee experiences. Everyone on the team, no matter their role, should know where to find critical sources of information. They should be well trained in how to share data with other departments and ensure silos don’t get in the way of best serving customers. A data culture will also encourage employees to measure everything they’re doing in order to continuously improve their performance.

Keeping your data culture strong

How do you sustain a data culture over time? By committing to it over the long term.

Data needs to be treated as a source of value – not just by those on the front lines but those in senior leadership roles too.

Investing in technologies that make it easy to visualize and make use of data also fuel the culture, because employees feel empowered and motivated to tackle bigger challenges.

Data ultimately becomes associated with a company’s culture when you can tell stories about it. This isn’t limited to the way your business used data to avoid risks or make more money. Share stories about how the people all over your organization tapped into the power of data to redefine what excellence in their role looks like, and how the company achieves success.

You might not use the term data culture very often within your business. If you’ve put in the effort to develop one, you probably won’t need to – the link between data and the way your company operates will be obvious to all.

The post How Data Culture Can Transform Your Business appeared first on Salesforce.

There have been companies in every industry that were first to market, offered a great selection of products and services, delivered a great customer experience but which ultimately lost ground to rivals.

Sometimes this is due to highly competitive pricing, in a sector where customers are more sensitive to costs.

In other cases a competitive firm might invest more heavily in marketing to ensure its brand is top of mind among potential buyers.

There are firms that will hire as many sales reps as they need to close more deals than the rest of the industry.

The long-term path to growth for any business is being alert to these competitive pressures the moment they begin to surface, and then taking action accordingly.

This might have been a little easier to do in the days when most companies were limited to running brick-and-mortar locations. They might have been able to physically see what was going on at nearby competitors simply by looking across the street. Word of mouth also travels fast, and so locals could tip off a business to competitive threats.

Our increasingly digital-first world has made gathering competitive intelligence a lot more complicated, but also more important than ever before.

Even the smallest businesses might now be competing with companies ten times their size. The competition is also no longer confined to other businesses in their neighbourhoods. The rise of e-commerce and digital experiences mean rivals could be popping up to win over customers from all around the world.

The largest companies sometimes have entire teams focused on gathering competitive intelligence, but don’t let that put you off. Businesses of any size can make this a discipline and develop it. As you do so, you’ll probably find you’re able to stay one step ahead of your rivals with greater ease and sophistication. Just try:

1. Mystery shop the competition

Retailers have a long history of employing “mystery shoppers” who act like real customers and research the positive and negative aspects of purchasing from their own stores. One of the advantages in the shift to digital channels is that you can apply the same concept to your competitors.

This could be as simple as setting a schedule to visit your competitors’ web sites, browse their product and service pages and even make a small purchase to assess the seamlessness of their e-commerce and fulfillment experience. Use this as a benchmark to boost your own firm’s performance.

2. Set Up Alerts For When Competitors Make News

Companies once employed third-party services to clip articles out of newspapers and magazines when their brand’s name was mentioned, as well as those of their rivals. Search engines like Google have made that process far simpler. You can just enter a competitor’s brand name and get an e-mail alert every time they are covered by the media, publish a blog post or issue a press release.

To be on the same side, don’t just enter the competitor’s name but their best-known products and services. Get more of out of your investment in search engine optimization (SEO) by creating alerts about industry terms so you hear about new competitors, too.

3. Join Your Competition’s Digital Audience

Do your rivals send out a regular e-mail newsletter with new product information, tips and insight? Subscribe to it using an e-mail alias and make sure your newsletter is just as helpful.

Do your competitors post videos on YouTube? It’s okay to add to their viewership count if you’re learning something to make your own business better.

Do your competitors host podcasts? Listen in and learn what you can about their vision, best practices and long-term strategy.

The bottom line: Monitoring any and all of the channels where your competitors are creating content.

4. Read Reviews And Track Social Sentiment

Consumer-focused companies can thrive or perish based on the feedback they get from review sites like Yelp. The same is true for business-to-business (B2B) firms whose customers post on sites like G2 and TrustRadius.

This content is often freely available and can tell you a lot about whether the customer experience your competitors are delivering should make you nervous.

There’s a similar treasure trove of competitive intelligence on social media platforms. This includes Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and even LinkedIn. Search up your competitors’ names and any related industry hashtags. You’ll soon see what customers are praising (or complaining about).

5. Visit Hiring Sites To Keep Tabs On Hiring Trends

The most successful companies not only compete for customers, but for talent. Just look at what kind of career opportunities your rivals are posting on recruitment and job sites.

If they’re looking for data scientists, for instance, that may be an indication they’re becoming more intentional about how they analyze and act upon information. Do their job descriptions include lots of perks and benefits you’re not offering? Make sure your employee experience is strong enough to retain your best people. There are employee review sites that are well worth visiting for the same reason.

6. Download Competitors’ Case Studies And Testimonials

People feel more confident about spending money with a company when they see their peers doing the same time. That’s what make case studies and testimonials such powerful marketing assets. They can be great avenues for gathering competitive intelligence as well.

Pay close attention to what ultimately tipped the scales in your competitors’ favour, especially with the kind of marquee customers or VIP consumers you’re trying to target.

7. Get The Truth About Competitors From Current And Former Customers

Much as you might wish it were otherwise, many people buy from more than one company in the same sector. There can be all kinds of reasons for this – but you won’t know unless you ask.

Conduct regular surveys with your best customers, or invite them for virtual roundtables or focus group-style conversations. They may have some horror stories about your rivals, but ask about the reasons they’ve stayed with the competition, too.

Gathering competitive intelligence isn’t just a smart idea. It’s a vital part of becoming (and remaining) a market leader.

The post 7 Quick Ways To Conduct Competitive Intelligence appeared first on Salesforce.

Just as organizations across Canada and around the world have embraced hybrid models that help employees work successfully from anywhere, Dreamforce 2022 has been designed to offer a virtual experience that complements the one in-person attendees will enjoy.

Thanks to Salesforce+, even those who didn’t manage to get full conference passes to Dreamforce in San Francisco can binge on 72 hours of live broadcasting and more than 200 sessions they can watch on demand. In doing so, you’ll be unlocking access to critical insights and learnings to address some of today’s toughest challenges.

Among many Canadian business leaders, for example, the path to growth has become a complex juggling act. There are concerns about changing macroeconomic conditions, such as inflation and an impending recession, that could influence customer demand. Supply chain disruptions haven’t fully been solved yet. And even if employees aren’t officially resigning, they may be among the “quiet quitting” phenomenon where they put in as little effort as possible.

Dreamforce can provide a foundation for developing a strategy to contend with these headwinds. It’s not just a typical technology conference but a place where the greatest minds in business collaborate and share ideas. This includes those leading well-known brands as well as high-profile achievers such as Matthew McConaughey, Jane Goodall, Bono, Al Gore, Jennifer Hudson, and more.

Data from a 2022 survey of past Dreamforce attendees makes a strong business case for registering and participating via Salesforce+. A majority of 87%, said they learned something during keynotes and breakout sessions that helped accelerate business growth. That’s probably because 86% said they walked away from Dreamforce with a plan to solve business challenges by driving innovation. Even more, or 89%, said they discovered efficiencies that saved them time and money.

You can follow in the footsteps of these business leaders by registering for Dreamforce today, and creating an agenda for yourself to maximize the value you get from participating. This includes:

1. Redefine What Success Looks Like In Your Role

Today, everyone in the company is expected to be data-driven and customer centric, at least ideally. The reality is that many traditional roles are still going through a process where automation is replacing manual tasks and processes, creating opportunities to focus on higher-value activities. This is true whether you’re leading a functional area within the business, or are part of a team.

Use Dreamforce as the place you draw a blueprint for taking your role to the next level. This is easy to do based on breakout sessions that hone in on the specifics of working in sales, marketing, service, commerce, IT, development or architecture. Even partners can get professional development to become a bigger part of their ecosystem.

Remember that success in any field requires breaking down silos and working across functions, though. Think about recommending attending Dreamforce via Salesforce+ to collages in other lines of business to drive greater alignment company-wide.

2. Discover Innovation and Insights to Move Entire Industries Forward

Depending on the kind of customers you’re serving or the products and services you’re selling, delivering an outstanding customer experience requires particular expertise. Dreamforce offers programming that includes tactics applicable to any company, as well as those operating within the nuances of a certain vertical market.

Many of the latter sessions are led by practitioner Trailblazers who can speak in a relevant way to their peers. Within the Manufacturing Track, for instance, experts from Sonoco will talk about how they are boosting efficiency with an automated supply chain, onboarding renewables faster with grid computing and future-proofing the company’s revenue stack.

For car makers, meanwhile, there is an increased urgency to build direct-to-consumer businesses while driving customer and partner loyalty at the same time. Dreamforce’s Automotive Track will cover it all with speakers from firms like Volkswagen, which is building on its move to a Digital HQ by rethinking supply chain management.

There is a similar sea change happening within the companies that make and sell the items we shop for as consumers every day. If you’re running stores that need to tap into APIs or extend your brand into Web3 with NFT cloud software, VF Corp. will be on hand to walk you through its journey in the Retail Track. Closer to home, DECIEM will be speaking in the Consumer Packaged Goods about creating extraordinary omni-channel experiences for consumers based on their feedback.

3. Stay Current and Recapture Your Creative Spirit

Bringing your best self to work is a multi-faceted endeavor. You need to be aware of the latest trends that matter to your employer and its customers, but you also have to avoid being so heads-down that you ignore possible sources of inspiration.

Dreamforce 2022 will kick things off for those watching on Salesforce+ with a daily show that provides the latest news from Salesforce and its partners, featuring celebrity hosts and special guests. After hours, though, Dreamforce Tonight provides a virtual connection to the magic that has been the event’s hallmark for the past 20 years. It will be a good reminder that some of our best ideas come to us when we’re having fun.

Best of all, the Dreamforce 2022 experience doesn’t end when the in-person conference wraps up after three days. You can continue to log into Salesforce+ and catch up on any and all of the content you missed that could further your success.

Dreamforce is no longer confined to a single space – just as there’s no limit to what you could do with what you learn if you attend from afar. Register now.

The post Didn’t Get Tickets to Dreamforce in Person? Experience the Magic from Salesforce+ appeared first on Salesforce.