Surrounded by innovation, we took to the 42nd floor of the Leadenhall building (aka the Cheesegrater) for our industry focused event, in partnership with Salesforce, MuleSoft and Tableau. Sharing industry insights and the latest innovations which are helping organisations unlock the power of their data, we were delighted to be joined by so many customers looking to start or continue their digital transformation journeys.
With the London skyline in view, our very own David Kurtanjek kicked off the proceedings, welcoming all to our event that set out to showcase how MuleSoft and Tableau work with the Salesforce Customer 360, to unlock data and drive true business change.
Focusing on Connectivity, Automation and Visualisation
UKI leaders of MuleSoft and Tableau respectively, Justin Wilson and Simon Quinton led our amazing keynote. Sharing their take on the macro economic background, how the current climate have placed increasing pressures on businesses such as rising interest rates, rising consumer expectations and hungry competition; all of which highlight the growing need for business agility. Justin and Simon explained how the Salesforce platform enables customers to leverage their most precious asset, their data as a weapon to power richer experiences for both customers and employees, to gain and maintain a competitive advantage and ultimately accelerate faster growth.
Remarking on a common observation, often the challenge organisations face isn’t with the volume of data they have but in what they can do with it, resulting in them being data-rich but insight-poor. With MuleSoft focusing on connectivity and automation and Tableau transforming data visualisation, it’s clear just how important their role is within the Salesforce Customer 360. Facing up to the reality of the complex technology stack many organisations work with, MuleSoft is Salesforce’s integration solution that helps unlock data to drive customer centricity with personalised communication and streamlined processes. Meanwhile, Tableau is Salesforce’s intelligence and analytics platform and helps visualise and present data in a way that allows everyone across the team to make data-led decisions, spot trends and react faster.
Continuous innovation ensures Salesforce, MuleSoft and Tableau are supporting customers to become and remain agile in this ever-changing market. The recent announcement of Genie at Dreamforce is a prime example. Genie enables teams to build multi-system automation that drives efficiency, powers AI with data from any system and connects data in real-time for faster action, without sacrificing security or governance.
Inspired by Customer Success
Following on from what can be achieved with MuleSoft and Tableau, we explored what has already been achieved by some of our MuleSoft and Tableau customers and the impact that a multi-cloud Salesforce org has had on their organisation. Each at different stages in their digital transformation journey, we heard from Ian Robbins, Head of Analytics at GXO, Judith kleine Holthaus, Head of Data, Insight and Innovation at The Office Group and Ryan Goodman, Head of CRM at Forterra on their experiences.
Opening the conversation and reflecting on the changes their companies are going through in the new digital-first world, Judith perfectly summed up the shift in attitude, quoting “the conversations about data and AI now is like asking a company in the 1990s if they’re going to have a company website”. Judith continued to share how The Office Group’s data strategy is driven from the top and building trust in their data is a top priority and that is something their current implementation has supported. The excitement surrounding the positive impact digital transformation has had on the business was clear to see. Since implementing Tableau as part of their Salesforce solution Judith reflected that at The Office Group “conversations aren’t focusing on what’s happening, more what we are going to do about it”, which is fantastic to hear.
Meanwhile, Ryan from Forterra explored how they have innovated at pace, introducing an initial pilot phase only 18 months ago to now already developing subsequent phases to further reinvent their processes. Explaining how their wide product range enables them to be data-rich, but with Tableau they have eradicated their issues with siloed data while MuleSoft connects their ERP system into their org creating a single source of truth. Expressing their objective for their Sales managers to be “meeting ready”, the multi-cloud solution encourages self-sufficiency and enables teams to deliver faster responses and a better overall customer experience.
For GXO they are in the very early stages of their journey, and Ian confessed his commitment to “bringing sexy back to data” as they build out their journey. Already they’ve identified the importance of using their data to go from subjective to fact-based decisions. Collecting their data and having a visual single source of truth in Tableau will have a huge impact on how they have better customer conversations.
As they look back on how far they’ve come, we asked them for their top tips that have influenced their journeys:
- Take a step-by-step approach – the potential for what can be achieved is so great that it’s important to step back and think of the journey in phases, building in time to reflect and manage the changes within your organisation.
- Tailor to different abilities within your team – understand and listen to your users, it might mean keeping it simple for some and offering a more in-depth, complex option for those seeking a greater understanding.
- Be resilient – the journey isn’t a straight line and remaining open to the insights of others will continue to enable growth and will shape how you make your data work for you in the future.
- Assign an owner – communication between users and developers needs to be managed so having an overall project owner will help maintain clear and effective communication.
- Embed users early – bringing in stakeholders in the early stages can support adoption later on and kick-start the change management process and ease resistance.
- Align methodology – the journey has no finish line so being open and agile to the latest innovations as well as the response from users will help shape the bigger picture of your digital transformation.
- Bring in the experts – understanding that external hyper-collaboration with innovative ecosystems can be needed to unlock the full potential and might be key to deliver novel solutions. Adopting a #oneteamonedream mentality could help propel you through the next steps of the journey.
- Let the data do the talking – success breeds success so letting users see the value they are getting from the data will help encourage the adoption of the new data culture.
Secrets of Implementation Success
After exploring what can be done, and why we should kick start our automation and analytic journeys, it was then time for the how. Marcelle Braithwaite and Kayleigh Forde from our Customer Solutions team shed light on their experiences of working with countless customers on their journeys and shared a few of our secrets to success. Giving an overview of our 5 pillars of success, they spoke about the importance of digital transformation, which is echoed by industry leaders, knowing even the cost of doing nothing will result in being left behind. These 5 pillars are:
- Exploring new business models, processes and revenue streams by “cross-pollinating” a digitally native mindset to ‘traditional’ practices and ways of working to create business value, something we focus on within our Business Hacking Studio.
- Putting the user at the heart of the solution, something we focus on in our UI/UX Studio as we take a 360 design approach from mapping and researching to building and testing, considering the user at each and every stage.
- Focusing on user adoption, an area that can have a huge influence on the success of an implementation, we introduce effective change management and training through our Cultural Hacking Studio where we can help empower people and align them with the new business goals.
4. Can’t forget about data and with our Data Studio we help align the business strategy with the data strategy and platforms whilst also envisioning how data can be a product. We want to ensure the safeguarding and future-proofing of your data is a core pillar of your implementation. - Sustainability, once a nice to have is now a defining factor in what the business stands for and how customers perceive the business. With our Sustainability Studio, we are empowering twin transitions of digital technology and sustainability helping to align ESG operations.
Before we wrapped up the event, our final sessions explored the unique requirements and experiences for the Property, Travel, Transport and Hospitality, and Manufacturing industries. Uncovering the status of each industry and highlighting the unique challenges they face, whether they be from an economic, labour, customer service, or supply chain point of view, to help us highlight the opportunities businesses within that sector have to drive true business change. Discovering the ways in which MuleSoft and Tableau can work with Salesforce to overcome the gaps in traditional approaches and reinvent current operations.
With our event coming to a close, conversations and product demos continued surrounding the possibilities for innovation and reinvention that MuleSoft and Tableau can deliver as part of the Salesforce Customer 360. The sun may have set on our Unleash the Power of Your Data event but for many customers, the journey and transformation has only just begun.
We were delighted to see so many customers join us and a huge thank you to everyone at MuleSoft, Tableau and Salesforce for supporting this event, as well as our fantastic sponsor Highspot.
If you’d like to discover more about MuleSoft and Tableau and how you can Unleash The Power of Your Data, please get in contact with us today.
