Andrew Bournos With CloudGaia

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for high velocity radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:13] Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one today on the show, we have Andrew Bournos with CloudGaia. Welcome, Andrew.

Andrew Bournos: [00:00:24] Hi, Lee, thank you for having me on the show. Nice to hear you.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Well, I’m excited to learn about what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about cloud Gaia. How you serving, folks?

Andrew Bournos: [00:00:34] Yeah. So we’re a what’s called salesforce.com consulting partner. We’re a professional services firm based in Latin America, largely in Argentina, but in other countries as well, with a long history of relationship with the software as a service company called Salesforce.com. So we help other companies who license Salesforce to implement Salesforce for their various divisions and and needs around the globe. We work in the enterprise space largely, but for mid-sized firms as well. So that’s what we do.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:10] So now what was the kind of the history of the company? How did it, how did it come about? People were using Salesforce and finding that they couldn’t kind of ring out all the value and they needed help doing them.

Andrew Bournos: [00:01:25] Yeah, you know, as software firms get larger and particularly into the enterprise space like Salesforce did, maybe like, I don’t know, six seven years into its existence, it started to see that it needed a more robust support system of consultants, and they began to engage the large consulting community. You know, the centers of the world and PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte Digital and all those, you know, huge firms that have massive the most didn’t know this, right? Know those firms came out of the the tax preparation business, but they have become much larger and more profitable in providing professional services to help their clients. You know, whether it’s Coca-Cola or General Motors or what have you implement various software technologies? So interestingly, the founder of salesforce.com, Marc Benioff, worked for Oracle Corporation and was senior enough that the first check written to start salesforce.com was by Larry Ellison, who is the founder of Oracle. Now, Salesforce has become this twenty nearly billion a year in revenue firm twenty two, twenty three plus years in the making. And you know, I was a client of salesforce.com for a couple of companies from the early days, as were the founders of Cloud Gaia. And so we go way back, you know, well over 15 closer to 20 years of experience as clients of Salesforce. And when you license this technology, it became more and more flexible. And with that comes complexity. And with that, because, you know, you sort of have to look to some experts to become, you know, a help to your company and implementing and broadening the reach and the implementation of this incredible tool that that’s that lives in the cloud. So the founders of Cloud Gaia, like me, go way back. And we’re not only clients, but we’re implementing Salesforce at companies that we work for and began to see the great potential of becoming a Salesforce partner, a consulting partner. And that’s what we did with Cloud Gaia about six years ago. But the firm’s history goes back, you know, like I said, well over 15 years

Lee Kantor: [00:03:46] And and going back into that history and kind of having the roots in Oracle, Oracle has a robust ecosystem of consultants and people helping those the people who are using Oracle get the most value out of Oracle. So it kind of makes logical sense now that you explain the history that Salesforce would kind of follow a similar path.

Andrew Bournos: [00:04:10] Yeah, it’s pretty amazing. And you know, they did a study about three years ago, Salesforce, that showed that for every dollar a client spends on investing in the license cost of licensing Salesforce, and again, they’re approaching twenty seven billion or more now in revenue for every dollar spent on that upwards of six dollars or spent with consulting firms in implementing and customizing and enhancing and getting, you know, a more broad, robust deployment of Salesforce across all of their different divisions and needs. And Salesforce has become this great platform in the cloud that you can quickly develop software applications for every department, from legal compliance to services to sales to operations, you name it. And it’s very robust in extending your reach with your own customers. So if you’re you have channel partners or, you know, referral partners or you have vendors that are supplying you, you know, a particular raw materials to make your product and or service. You can extend and people have been and companies have been extending Salesforce to work not only internally within their own company, but with those channel partners, with those vendors. It’s an exciting space and it’s been a heck of a ride, and it continues. Salesforce is growing like a weed, and as a consequence, there’s been a great capacity constraint in the market for skilled Salesforce professional service resources to help these companies in all their needs. So it’s a good problem to have. We’ve got a lot of demand and there’s never quite enough people to fulfill the demand.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:45] Now is your work primarily folks who are veteran Salesforce users who have maybe used, either tried to attack this internally and realize that they don’t have the the team on board internally and they have to kind of outsource? Or is it something that these are brand new Salesforce people and they didn’t realize how complex it was going to be.

Andrew Bournos: [00:06:06] It’s a bit of a mix. Often that can happen. But as the technology has matured, particularly in the enterprise space, the large corporate space, the folks that run these Salesforce programs, they know the game right and they know that there’s no way I’m going to hire my own internal team exclusively to implement Salesforce. I’m going to ramp up and build and implement. And then as I, you know, go into more of that maintenance mode and supporting the application, I can ramp down on the consultants. But the more experienced folks know that they’re going to need consultants. So what happens is often there’ll be a joint almost, you know, pursuit, if you will, if it’s a brand new client to Salesforce between a consultancy and the Salesforce account executive or executives who are responsible for selling Salesforce licenses. Often, they’ll team up with a consultant like us to help scope, estimate, build the approach, understand the concepts, help the the company understand the concepts, and even often, you know, create proposals that would allow those senior executives to present to the sea level and the board of directors at these companies. Hey, this is what Salesforce is. This is what it can do for us. Here’s the proposal from Salesforce, as well as from the consulting firm, so that we know the full total cost of ownership of Salesforce, not just the licensing cost, but the investment we need to make with consultants to help implement it, and often involves helping them calculate the return on investment and the why. Behind the what like, why are we doing this? You know, are we going to make money and doing this? And that’s ultimately our job is to help them get a high return on investment on their investment in Salesforce.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:54] Now you mentioned that a lot of your works at the enterprise level is there are certain industries or niches that you’re working with more than others or is this kind of industry agnostic because it seems more and more folks are gravitating towards Salesforce?

Andrew Bournos: [00:08:08] Yeah, certainly. Salesforce is agnostic there in every industry and sub industry and, you know, globally around the world, we are experience just I think serendipitously was historically in retail consumer packaged goods as well as finance and manufacturing and energy. Now we have a smattering of customers in different industries, some of them being Salesforce itself. We actually do some development work for Salesforce when they when they have a need that, you know, perhaps they’re just behind on a release and they need some more people. But yeah, that’s been our experience financial services, manufacturing and energy and consumer packaged goods and retail. But, you know, Salesforce is applicable in every industry and when there’s a need for us to step up and help implement in a different industry, we certainly do. And we’re always happy to do so.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:01] Now, when you’re working with a new client, what is typically that kind of part of the transformation that you’re helping them achieve because you mentioned that they’re already probably veterans in Salesforce, they’ve already kind of done that, been there, done this. So how are you coming in and what is the pain that they’re having, where cloud Gaia is the solution?

Andrew Bournos: [00:09:21] And that’s a great question. Digital business transformation is, is is doing just that. It’s transforming businesses and particularly at a greater pace post-COVID, where there was a need for not only, you know, ecommerce solutions between the company, their product and the people who are, you know, the companies and and people who are purchasing products through, you know, through mobile enabled and highly responsive e-commerce solutions. But there was also a need very quickly to ramp up remote workers where people are staying at home during these troubled times. And Salesforce was full bore a part of all that. And as a consequence, we ourselves, like I said, we have majority of our folks are Latin America based. That’s our value prop. Position bringing Latin America, you know, good time zone based resources to the North American market for a less expensive price, but at a premium service. But we ourselves had to do that. We had to shift our employees to their homes and make sure that we were connecting like you and I are connecting through the internet today. So, you know, there’s been this great shift that has increased in velocity and in need to a digital world.

Andrew Bournos: [00:10:43] And Salesforce is a very big part of that. And we’re we’re always talking about that with our clients. Sometimes it’s as simple as, you know, we’re not using Salesforce at all, and we need some workflow automation. So that party understands what Party B is doing. And there’s these alerts and notifications that keep us all on the same page all the way to, you know where this like brick and mortar type of organization historically, and we need to digitize our business to some degree or to or to fully and transform our business into the modern 21st digital age. And Salesforce is a big component of doing that with many, many clients around the world. And as such, we have to be able to understand those things. You’ll draw out the ultimate goals that the sea level of these companies have and help the mid-level managers that are running these programs translate those strategic goals into bite sized chunks and achievable application development, delivery and support. So that’s that’s it’s been exciting time now.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:48] How do you help the clients kind of get out of their own way because a lot of times they think like, Oh, I’m, I’m buying them investing in this solution. So check that box. I’m good. And then when it drills down to the actual people who are the ones that are using it, it’s like, Oh, great, here’s one more thing I have to deal with. Here’s one more thing that’s taking me away from what I what they’re really paying me for. And, you know, and they don’t really fully embrace it, and they look at it as a hindrance rather than a tool that’s going to help them and the company.

Andrew Bournos: [00:12:20] That’s such a great, insightful question. You know, it really comes down to UX, what they call user experience, and you want to make sure that you get a high adoption rate from your internal users early. So you have success early and that builds momentum into a sustained, successful program. So a focus on user adoption and the, you know, sort of with them what’s in it for me, right? If we’re dealing with a a service organization and you have these contact center agents that are going to be, you know, receiving inbound phone calls and their computer screen pops with the right information. And it’s got these multiple sections to the screen and they’re seeing the history of what that client has said and done with them, what open ticket or case they’re working on now, the online transactions, the, you know, instant message chat history and the transcripts of that. If all that is like bang right in front of that service agent, that service agents going to have what we hope folks need to have using technology, which is that wow moment like, wow, holy mackerel, like we were, you know, I was swiveling my chair between three different systems to service our clients. Now it’s one single pane of glass. I see what I need to see to help the client and I resolve their issue more quickly, more efficiently. And it was easier for me as an agent and it was a great experience, a user experience, a UX for the client. Ultimately, that’s what it comes down to. If you’re going from current state to future state, that future state better be at least envisioned to be a higher level of experience better, quicker, faster, more efficient and an enjoyable experience which often we can achieve the opposite with technology. So you really got to focus on that UX.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:10] And then can you share a story of maybe a client that you work with that was having a challenge, maybe explain the challenge they were having? Obviously don’t name the name of the company, but explain the the challenge that they were having where when they engaged your team, they were able to maybe get to a new level that they didn’t even imagine was possible.

Andrew Bournos: [00:14:30] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’m thinking of one. I happen to live in Connecticut and there’s a company here in Connecticut that’s doing gangbusters around the world and increasing pace. And you know, they had licensed Salesforce a number of years ago and really didn’t have a consulting partner and implement it. And such as often can be the case. It sort of fell a little flat. They didn’t have the you know what they thought they needed right away, which were they call them KPIs. Key performance indicators like a dashboard of reports that show the sales organization and the sales managers, as well as the salespeople, how they’re doing versus their quota, what they’re selling when they’re selling it. Are they on track? Are they off track? You know, that’s sort of. The standard one hundred one concept that at least on the sales organization side, they can have about what sales force is. Well, as soon as we start to engage with them, they saw the potential for bringing in their customers into this platform because after all, when you think about Salesforce or any cloud solution, you’re literally launching a web browser and you’re logging into your software. Well, we know that our customers do that, too. So why can’t they see what we permissioned them to see and do what we permission them to do into our Salesforce org so that we’re collaborating with our customers? And next thing you know, this company began to see how not only is this about our own internal statistics, but what we’re doing with our customers, but we can bring our customers in through a portal product that Salesforce has called experience cloud used to be called communities.

Andrew Bournos: [00:16:06] They rebranded it, I think, very well talking about user experience, and we showed them how not only sales, but now we’re spinning up service. Cloud Cloud is the code word for Salesforce’s products, right? So they had sales cloud. Now they’re diving into service cloud, and we’re going to get their service organization up and running on Salesforce. And now the vision is the third step is bringing their customers in through a portal so that they can collaborate around this information, whether it’s presales or sales or post service support. And in so doing, you’ve got this seamless end to end ecosystem that’s very exciting that really and sometimes one plus one equals three. Sometimes it equals 30 where holy mackerel, sea level sees, you know, light bulbs begin to go off and flashes of light like, wait a minute. That’s a whole new approach to the way we are doing business and in so doing it sometimes and in this case with this company is opening up their mind to the potential of tapping, you know, entire new markets and in some ways, working with their customers to develop new and better products in a much more collaborative sort of high tech, high touch approach that in real time brings these ideas to the fore and again, lights those light bulbs up where you’re not only doing something that’s embracing the future, but you’re energizing your company.

Andrew Bournos: [00:17:29] Your people are excited to come to work. They’re they’re working with their customers more collaborative way. And truly, that’s when it’s not just digital business transformation, it’s sort of people transformation, right? The art of the possible becomes real and people get excited about the company that they’re working for, working with the customers that they’re working with. And that’s when really, it’s very rewarding for us because it’s extremely exciting to go from. We’re just going to get a dashboard up and running and now we’re talking about, you know, really transformative stuff and what a pleasure that is. And Salesforce enables a lot of that to happen. And I think that’s one of the reasons their secret sauce is they, you know, they they get they get people energized. After all, a company is a collection of people. And if you love your work and enjoy what you’re doing and you’re excited about the future and the technology help you do that, then that’s that’s just great stuff. And that’s win win win all around.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:26] Well, it’s exciting that a firm like yours kind of has these working partnerships with Salesforce and then your clients then could leverage those partnerships for themselves. And it just it, you know, everybody wins when you have that sense of community and everybody’s kind of reading off the same song book, you know that everybody is speaking the same language. It really helps with communication. It helps with clarity. And it and these kind of partnerships, I think, would really could take a company to a new level. If they really understand how to leverage it and to have a partner like your team, it seems like that helps kind of smooth out that learning curve and and and help them achieve success a lot faster.

Andrew Bournos: [00:19:13] Yeah, indeed. Yeah, it’s often it’s often about just broadening the horizon, having conversations where you can idiot and talk about, like I said before, the art of the possible and in so doing, connect the bottom up daily work that’s being done, you know, creating requirements and user stories and working in, you know, project management software to retire points on sprints and all that stuff that we talk about every day in the consulting business. And then, you know, talk more broadly about what’s the where’s the world going? What is it that we really are? And what is it that we do? And what are our customers want from us? And how do we get to a level where you know what we imagined our business was is something entirely or at least partially different in a much better way. And those are that. And then if we can connect the top down strategic art of the possible conversations with that bottom up work being done every day and connect the two in the middle, that’s when magic happens and. It’s a lot of fun when it does.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:14] Now, can you maybe share some advice for folks that maybe have Salesforce and aren’t kind of wringing out the value that they could? Is there some low hanging fruit that they could be doing today? Is there some action that they could be taking today, you know, outside of calling your your team, but just something that they can do that’s in their control, that can help them?

Andrew Bournos: [00:20:36] Yeah, I’d say there’s two things in the same vein of that bottom up and top down from the bottom up approach. Salesforce has this health check that you can initiate as a Salesforce administrator of your Salesforce.org, you know, and you’re logged in to the admin side of the system. You can trigger this, this, this health check, and it gives you all of these great sort of statistics and graphics and insights into how well or perhaps how much better you can be utilizing everything that you’ve licensed from Salesforce. So I’d say from the sort of granular level start there, get a health check. That’s something you can review with your Salesforce account executive and or your consulting partner. If you don’t have one like you said, you know one can always reach out to someone like us and then from the top down, take a day or two days, take a weekend, you know, and whether you’re doing the whole sort of like, you know, go out in the woods and the dude ranch and, you know, eating and getting excited about, you know, and rope climbing and all that like like people do to sort of broaden their their thoughts about business or, you know, just go have a cup of coffee with a colleague or two or by your by yourself and think about the most admired companies that you have in your mind and or the highest technology. You know, this sort of the companies that deliver a real high tech approach, but that you enjoyed it was high touch and think about those businesses more than your own.

Andrew Bournos: [00:22:18] Think about those businesses, talk about them, talk about what it is that makes those businesses successful or what it is that you truly enjoy about it and don’t stop with just the first level when you say, Well, why ask your colleagues or yourself, why is it that I feel that way? And then ask why once more go at least three levels deep on the why? Why is it that I felt that way about, you know, the first level of thought about that company? And then why is it that I feel that way or conclude these things about the second level? Ask yourself why at least three times what that does is it allows you to begin to think strategically from that top down. And in so doing, that’s when potentially light bulbs can go off and you can parallel it to your own business. And in so doing, you can do what you have to do to be successful in delivering cloud based applications. You have to have that top down strategy and you have to have a bottom up, you know, tactical approach with a partner or with a team that’s done it before you do those two things together. And like I said, you meet in the middle and that’s where the magic happens.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:26] Well, congratulations on all the success, Andrew. If there’s somebody out there that wants to learn more about your firm and how you can help them get the most out of, you know, this big chunk of software that they have invested in? What’s the website for you guys?

Andrew Bournos: [00:23:44] We’re cloud geeks. Cloud G, A.i.A. You can there’s a contact us form and we’ll be happy to get back to you if there’s something we can do for you. And boy, this has been a lot of fun. Lee, thanks for having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:56] All right. Well, thank you for being a guest and thank you for sharing your story. This Lee Kantor we’ll see, y’all next time on high velocity radio.