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Episode 13: Rohit Kumar Salesforce Career Conversation with ROD. Listen to Rohit talk about his career journey, to become one of only a handfull of Salesforce CTAs currently in India.
[Below is a transcript for your benefit. Please excuse any typos.]
Lee Durrant: Hiya. It’s Lee Durrant here. Welcome to another RODcast. I’m joined with Theresa again today. Today we’re interviewing Rohit Kumar, who is a Salesforce Certified Technical Architect based out in India. He’s one of only five CTAs in India which is quite interesting, I think. We get to chat with him about his career. Hope you can bear with us.
Lee: Welcome to Rohit Kumar. Thanks very much for joining us. How are you?
Rohit Kumar: I’m doing well. Thanks for having me. How about you?
Lee: Yes, we’re good. Teresa is with me.
Theresa Durrant: Hello.
Rohit: Hi.
Theresa: Good to meet you.
Rohit: Same here.
Theresa: Excellent.
Rohit: Hope you’re safe.
Theresa: We’re very safe.
Lee: We should say again for people listening in that this is May 2021, so still very much in the middle of COVID, and I totally appreciate, Rohit, where you are it’s awful at the moment. For people listening, that’s where we are. We’re very safe here, but how about you over there, mate? How’s it going?
Rohit: I think it’s going good. The situation is definitely not good and government is trying its level best to see what best they can do for everyone. We are in total curfew as we speak. I’m very hopeful that the situation would improve in the next couple of weeks. Fingers crossed. Let’s see how the upcoming weeks would be.
Lee: Whereabouts are you, Rohit? Whereabouts are you in India?
Rohit: I am in a city called Bangalore. It’s in the south of India and is primarily referred to as one of the IT capitals of the world. Most large organisations, product-based companies or any companies into advisory, consulting, are primarily headquartered or will have a bigger branch in Bangalore, India.
Lee: Fantastic. Before we go into the questions about your career and how you got to where you are at the moment, I was reading today that India has got the largest worldwide concentration of Salesforce technical talent, which I didn’t know. It made sense, but it’s one interesting stat.
Rohit: One of the advantages we’ve got is that India has one of the largest talent pools and is also one of the largest countries with many Salesforce consultants and developers, so we see a good amount of opportunity within the country. A lot of organisations has invested either in Salesforce as part of their digital transformation journey or an implementation partner based in India. Ample amount of opportunity as well for the talent in India.
Theresa: Fantastic.
Lee: I think we’ll start at the beginning of your career then if that’s okay and you can talk us through– I suppose we haven’t started the right way here. If you can just introduce yourself in terms of who you are, what you do so that people will know.
Rohit: Yes, definitely.
Lee: Obviously, we’ll share your LinkedIn profile for people that want to have a look at it after this but yes, if you introduce yourself.
Rohit: I’ll start from where am I today and how did I start.
Theresa: Yes, perfect.
Rohit: Hi, everyone. I’m Rohit. I’m CTO for Venerate Solutions and one of the board members. I’m also one among very few Salesforce Certified Marketing [unintelligible 00:04:08]. From a career perspective, in the early days of my career, I was primarily engaged more into development of India’s first nanosatellite. I was primarily writing real-time operating systems and was involved in the hardcore system development. I always had plans.
Having worked in a engagement where you take three to four years to build a product and launch it, I always had a feeling to explore what’s there in the IT industry and how do I work on something where I can bring in agility and reduce the time to market, et cetera, and contribute quicker. That’s where I started my career into Salesforce and this is somewhere around 2010.
My initial days of my career when I was training and learning myself and I was working with one of the [unintelligible 00:05:13] partner in India. For a couple of months, I should say that I felt quite disappointed and I felt that maybe I’ve made a wrong choice. I thought the platform to be very simple and sleek. This is again, 2010, where a lot of stuff were still coming on the platform.
Within a couple of months of me having that feeling, once I start getting deep insights around the platform and the part of possibilities, I was very sure that I made the right decision. Looking at how easy was it to solve complex business problems and contribute towards different organisational needs of basically transforming them and moving away from legacy apps and all this was just wonderful.
Lee: Sorry to jump in, but were you always technical? Were you doing computer science at college or university or something like that?
Rohit: Yes. I was always technical. I’ve done my engineering from a computer science background. I’ve got a couple of research papers published in Science Direct, et cetera.
Lee: Brilliant.
Rohit: I’ve got couple of papers that was published in the International Science Congress. Initial days of my career I’ve been primarily more of a techy. I worked primarily more on complex system design and development. I moved to IT after having done a lot of work around I would say design of an operating system, et cetera. That’s why having seen the other side of the world and then after looking at the ability to do a fast-paced application development, I really enjoyed what the platform has to bring in for everyone.
Just moving ahead, I joined a consulting company called Wipro. I was there with them for a couple of years. I worked in Europe for a good amount of time. I had associated myself with different organisations primarily in pharmaceutical domain and helped them a lot in different transformations that they could bring in within their sales and marketing processes. That is when Veeva was coming up. Veeva is one of the prominent application change partner.
Worked on that for a couple of years, then I was back in India for some work and Salesforce happened. I got an opportunity to work directly with Salesforce. I spent a good amount of time working with Salesforce in India. Worked with different customers in Australia, UK, travelled quite a bit. Again was engaged in one of the first field service implementations for UK.
Lee: Oh, really?
Rohit: That is back somewhere around 2016. I became CTA while I was there working with Salesforce somewhere around 2018 and that is the year when I decided to pursue my entrepreneurship journey and I decided to move ahead and try something new, try something again from start even though the tech stack was the same but the experience and the journey is completely different.
Now we are there in India and UK, me being a CTO of Venerate. We’re trading in UK and India including Bangalore and we’ve got a branch in another city called Mumbai which is the financial capital of India.
Lee: We need to go back. It’s a good overview obviously, what you’ve done and where you’ve been, but it would be quite interesting to go back to the beginning.
Theresa: We’re just curious I suppose, what was the first thing that got you into Salesforce but more importantly what was the first Salesforce project that you worked on? Obviously, you don’t need to share company names or anything like that but can you give us a bit of an idea of that journey for you?
Rohit: My first project on Salesforce was for a large client, a global customer headquartered in US. From a cloud perspective, it was more around Sales Cloud that we had a lot of solutions built to help them do and plan their sales, to find their sales strategy, do their quarterly target planning, do SWOT analysis and other stuff. I started working with them, spent a couple of months engaging, working and delivering the solution for this client in the US.
Post that, I moved to work with another customer, a global customer with a strong presence in Europe, headquartered in the US that [unintelligible 00:10:38] to me. With them, I think I’ve worked for a fairly long time, and what really worked the best was apart from understanding the technology, when I started working with this client, I got an exposure to their business processes.
When you understand the business of a specific industry and how things work and what the pinpoints are, the chances of you advising them on something, which will be very apt for them is really [unintelligible 00:11:10] and that’s what [inaudible 00:11:11]
Lee: Awesome. Forgive me if I’m asking probably a stupid question, but when you are in India and you’re working on a project that’s in America, what’s the communication like in terms of who’s speaking to the client and getting those requirements and how tricky is that for you to do?
Rohit: This is based on my working experience, concentrating on software conditions and department. You don’t have to, first of all, be with the client throughout all the phases of software development life cycle. Typically, when you are working even from India, what happens is, you work directly with the client and you work from their office for a couple of weeks or months.
Before you understand what is it they need. If I have to split the phases, primarily, the consulting and discovery phase is something that happens on-site. You would have a specific member of your team who would always be there with the customer on-site, hand-holding them, understanding the [unintelligible 00:12:30] process, helping them define the 2D process, and then convert those 2D process to the right platform.
Once that has been converted, it’s more about building the apps, which normally does not happen on-site. I mean, you can choose to do it, but there’s very little that a business can contribute to those [unintelligible 00:12:51]
They’re trying to get the playback sessions that can happen depending on what model you decided to go ahead with. Is it Agile? Is it Hybrid? Is it Waterfall? Depending on that, at the regular milestones, you can go back and do a playback to your business box, and that is something that can, again, happen on site.
Primary is never a complete on-site or a complete off-site kind of work that we do it’s the combination, and how does it help customers is it helps you save on cost. At the same time, it also helps you increase their working hours. For example, let’s say a consultant ends up having some discussion with a customer from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, and this in US time.
Maybe a POC that you might want to do, to go back the next day and discuss again with the customer and take the discussion forward. Having this split where somebody does the POC for you, in India when you sleep, and when you wake up, that stuff is available to you, and then you can go back and, again, present to the client and have a conversation. If you say it’s not just 24 hours, you’ve got 48 hours, so you increase the time that you can invest on specific work.
Again, that studying model, same model that you can see for UK or any other customer where you’ve got a difference in the time zone. Really, if you play it well, you can actually gain more from these time zone differences, and obviously, you can–
For the fact that any project, you need somebody who can understand the business and who can project manage the engagement really well, at the same time, you also need people who can code and develop the apps well. Having somebody local who understands the business really well or having somebody– It could be someone from the same country or somebody who can fly in from any other location to that country, helps, but at the same time, in a country like India where you’ve got huge number of talent pool, and choosing one of techies who can code, build applications fairly quickly, you would also be able to capitalise on that where you don’t have to worry about onboarding 15 or 20 or 30 or time and resources as much as what you will have to worry if not in India.
Theresa: Okay, thank you.
Lee: It’s good to get insight into that, isn’t it? Because I think we speak an awful lot of people that are probably on-shore. It’s also quite interesting to see what it’s like to be on the other side of that. I was just curious, because I know a lot of people that back in 2010, fell into Salesforce rather than chose it. Was that the case with you or did you always plan to get into Salesforce?
If not, when did you decide that was going to be your career?
Rohit: Initially, I fell into Salesforce, but after spending couple of months, I knew that this is the platform that I would want to use. There were a couple of reasons to it. I think when I was initially working on the platform, I came across a really nice case study of what was done for a company called Coca-Cola, using the platform and how the complex problems were solved.
As somebody who’s always wanted to get into the startup ecosystem and do something after having got to know about app exchange and ??? later on. I always knew that this is one of the prominent technology, I would want to stick to for coming in a couple of years, so then it’s been– They will have to look back. I think Salesforce has been, if not the only tech, but a prominent tech that I’ve been working on.
Lee: You look back with hindsight, and obviously, great decision, but I don’t imagine you could have imagined in 2010 the way the ecosystem has grown, and as a result of that, the great career you’ve had. [clears throat] Excuse me.
Theresa: Just out of interest, in those early days or even now, did you have a mentor or a role model that you went to or spoke with?
Rohit: Yes, definitely. On a personal front, I felt that you learn from everyone you meet. I’ve learned from many and got inspired from many. In the initial days, obviously I met a lot of folks in this ecosystem and seeing them grow, et cetera, got inspired, but there are a couple of people who’s left a very strong footprint on my life. I would say one of them is my dad. He’s been my role model, and I have learned the importance of successful execution with proper planning from him.
The other individual who I follow very closely is Elon Musk because he inspires me to challenge myself and drastically work towards my goal. There are a few of my ex colleagues from Salesforce who’s been a very good friend, a mentor, and a role model from one of the person [inaudible 00:18:29]
He was the first CTO in India. He happened to be my coach and mentor who helped me a lot during this [unintelligible 00:18:38] operation. Again, from him and from my other colleagues, [unintelligible 00:18:52] one thing I’ve learned is hard work with true dedication can bring results. It’s just something that you have to follow consistently, and you will get what you want.
Theresa: Fantastic. I think it’s actually really good that you’ve picked a couple of role models as well that are outside the industry sector because I suppose people automatically presume they have to, perhaps, follow somebody who’s been doing the job that they want to do, but actually, being able to look outside that and find amazing traits in other people around you, I think it’s quite a good lesson for all of us, really.
Rohit: Yes. One of the point I always make is being in this ecosystem of technology, technology is meant to solve problems, and you can only solve problems when you invest time to follow what’s happening outside IT, what’s happening in manufacturing, what’s happening in high-tech, finance, or any other domain. When you follow them you also get inspired to think beyond what you can see straightforward, different thoughts in their case studies. Yes, having different people I follow from different industry has really helped me also understand what the next wave can be from a tech perspective, where should you focus and what should be your plan too, more from a product and offering perspective.
Theresa: Fantastic.
Lee: You mentioned that one of your mentors was the first CTA in India. Think it might be worth us talking about that for a second because you’re also a CTA and (apologies for using acronyms) but it stands for Certified Technical Architect, which is obviously– There’s not many of them in the world, there’s a surprisingly low amount of people in India. How many did you say CTAs there are?
Rohit: You’ve got five CTAs in India, just five and it’s been two years since–
Lee: I’m surprised for that number, because when you consider what we said earlier on about having the largest concentration of technical talent in the world over in India, surprising that only five are CTAs.
Rohit: I’ll tell you, I’ll put you the respect about this whole process, the way this exam is constructed. When you get a real time case study and you’ve got to sit down and solve the case study and then go and present to different judges, and then you get questioned for roughly 45 minutes to an hour and then you get 45 minutes approximately. It really tests your skills and your mindset. One of the problem, not just in India, we’ve been trying to look for people in UK as well to grow my team. Couple of problems that I’ve seen from industry is that the focus is more, among techies, still very much their focused. You need to be a CTA to have that mindset of an architect.
Lee: Okay.
Rohit: You have to have this mindset of looking at a larger picture and a bigger vision, rather than just trying to look at how do you solve this specific problem. The other point, I feel is, there’s a rat race going on, you want consistent information, not just you’re working on other exams. Technically, if you look at statistics, look at the stats, you find lot of people who is application or system architect, or cleared other exams. When you speak with them, and I’m telling you after having spoken with almost 300 plus Salesforcers in the last three months to be primarily hired for my operation, I feel that there’s a lot of skill gap, that needs to be fulfilled. It’s somehow, maybe it’s lack of mentoring, maybe the way the ecosystem is coming up now.
I feel that the people have to focus on bridging those skill gap, there’s no shortcut. CTA, I personally prepared for more than two years, and it’s a long journey. You have to spend beyond your working hours, you have to spend at least 3 to 4 hours every day and you need to be really consistent. That requires hard work and that’s one of the point is that, one is the change in the mindset has to happen. You need to stop looking at just certification as way to say that you are good. [inaudible 00:23:35] [crosstalk] that you have the knowledge that’s required, you are good. If you have the knowledge, you definitely will clear CTA or any other such exams in the future.
Theresa: Okay. I suppose in a way that I collate that you’ve worked so hard to earn then, an example like him. It’s been an amazing journey for you but certainly one that you’ve had to be dedicated and very focused on.
Rohit: Yes, one point I say to everyone is, it’s not a reward that you’ve got, it’s more of a responsibility. When you say that you’re a CTA and you walk in and you’re presenting anything to a CXO or any biggest leader, right leader they look at you with lot of hope and somebody who can deliver what’s required. That’s the other reason why if you look at the construct of the exam, it’s difficult. It is made difficult because they expect the guys who are CTA should have that capability of engaging and presenting to CXO and coming up with something which is really nice.
Theresa: Interesting. Obviously you’ve mentioned about the focus now. Is there any other way to help people to get to that role?
Rohit: Definitely. I think the best way and advice I would have is there’s a pyramid that you need to fulfil to go and write the exam. I would suggest spend at least a month in each domain, or two months. You don’t have to try and aspire to become CTA in six months, it doesn’t work as well. It’s okay to take two years, but you invest time in all your– Do a proper planning, invest time and you take a month or two in each domain.
Practice as much as you can. There are lot of case studies available that you can download and practice and that there’s a very vibrant community, where you can just ask for help and many would offer to help and listen to your presentation and guide you. One is, you need to really plan it well, don’t rush through the exam. Second, you need to also make sure that you’re doing it on a consistent basis. It shouldn’t happen that I study today and after a week I’ll pick it up again because of workload. Maybe the principle I followed was try waking up early in the morning, start your day early, maybe 5:00 AM, 4:30 AM.
Lee: Wow.
Rohit: Invest your time maybe till 8:00 AM. It gives you good three hours or three and a half hours. That’s enough, you just study every day in that way and then you go and do your regular office work, et cetera, and then come back, spend time with family. Again you spend the same time in the morning. That is one and it needs to be consistent, but at least one day in the weekend for the preparation and one day just in case you want to spend with your family. Second point I would want to make is let every– Anyone who is wanting to become a CTA, follow your projects. For example, I may be working on a project which has got lot of high or huge volumes of data, there are complex integrations. While you’re working on that project, it’s good to focus on the domains around large data volume integration as compared to you trying to focus on domain.
Something completely different and trying to do multiple things at one role, it doesn’t work. You follow your project and try to make best use of it. That’s something which will really help and yes.
Theresa: Okay. Thank you.
Lee: Yes, that’s excellent.
Theresa: Some sound advice there for somebody looking to take that route definitely.
Lee: I’ll tell you what. I mean there’s no chance me being a CTA anyway, by getting up at 5:00 AM and doing three hours of study. That’s commitment and that’s impressive. Yes, great tips. I’ll make sure I share this stuff, obviously the podcast itself when we put this out. We’ll make sure that we’ll point people on those tips, it’s brilliant. You have another question?
Theresa: Yes, I suppose we’ll go back to your career because obviously I think we touched base on Wipro but you’ve done quite a lot more since then. Perhaps, you could talk to us about your time at Salesforce?
Rohit: Oh yes. My time at Salesforce wasn’t easy. The work culture and stuff was great over there. You get to learn lot in the company. There’re lot of assets and resources available, but again over there I’ll say you will always find different traits. Individual, there’s one who would really care about work-life balance and I think it’s important to have that work-life balance. At the same time when you want to grow exponentially, you have to have some sort of balance or compromise in that and that’s what I had to do. I decided to pick up things that were challenging. I decided to take on more work, because I wanted to, I would say, expedite the growth that I had at that point of time.
My time was amazing. I had great mentors and leaders who were always supportive for the fact that, “You please take the risk, if you want to do more, you do it, we’ll help you if you fail, don’t worry about that.” They got the confidence also because I was willing to do that. A great time, a great place to be. As an individual, I would say, got lot of inspiration and learning and memories at Salesforce.
Lee: Is it hard to leave Salesforce? I imagine for a lot of people, it’s the pinnacle of the–
Rohit: I think, yes, see I left when I was at pinnacle if I have to say. Being a CTA, I could have done anything I would have wanted. It’s definitely hard but then you got to pursue what you want. I was very clear when I left. For me, I always say that when you look back at your career, you should have memories that you should cherish and you should be proud of. When I look back, I’m very proud of the fact that I designed the first nano-satellite of India. I have research papers published in the International Science Congress. I’m very proud of the fact that I’ve done CTA. If I look at 10 years, I would say I just have maybe seven, eight, nine, 10, 15 such milestones. It definitely has to be more than that. It was hard, but when I look at this fact, it just made my decision simpler. I’ve always wanted to do what I’m doing today.
Lee: That leans well into that and what are you doing today? With Venerate, you’re a founder of that company, am I right?
Rohit: I’m of, I would say, partner. I’m not the founder. This is a boardroom company now, and I’m a board member and partner in the company.
Lee: What is it, just for people out there–
Rohit: I’ll tell you. The co-leaders of the company, if you look at them, we all had a great enterprise career. We all worked with fairly good companies, but we could see there were a couple of gaps in the market. For example, they’ve got great management consulting firms like McKinsey, BCT, et cetera. At the same time, we’ve got good companies who are doing really well when it comes to Salesforce implementation and engagement, but there’s a gap of technology consulting.
When you speak with any leaders or any business leader, they will come up to you with a vision. What they expect is, you help me. How do you convert that vision into a roadmap using a platform of your choice. For me, it could be Salesforce, as well as a couple of other platform. We are in the space where we are trying to bridge that gap. We are trying to bridge the gap of technology consulting, primarily focusing on digital transformation space.
We are a platinum partner to Salesforce working with different customers, also a technology partner to [unintelligible 00:32:11] got a strong product and apps which I’ll talk about in a minute. Our focus is helping company transform them digitally and giving them an advisory and consulting experience as compared to an experience of if they have to say that, “I want this.” Rather, we tell them that, “You shouldn’t be doing this because of your vision,” which is maybe improving customer satisfaction. Maybe decreasing your operating margin of cost centers or anything as such.
This is more of an advising and a consulting doing operation. I’m happy to have a lot of leads in these companies, a company who– They come with the same experience and we can deliver the same value to different customers. We’ve been doing that [unintelligible 00:33:06].
Lee: I think you mentioned earlier on you’ve got offices in the UK. I think you said Reading.
Rohit: Yes.
Lee: -the UK market your main market or do you–?
Rohit: UK is my main market. The UK and Europe is my main market. We’ve been working with customers in Canada. We’re working with customers in the US and other countries, but the UK is my main market, the UK and Europe I have to say. Just to say, while we are also based in India, but India is more for the development and consulting and advisors of things. That helps me bridge that gap of advisory consulting, we are here give you the right consulting advice that you need, with really seasoned professionals. At the same time, we also deliver very high-quality products that can help solve and that we will address, that we will make it happen.
Lee: Excellent. I’m just going to ask you, as a CTA obviously which is currently the pinnacle of certifications with Salesforce, where do you stand– We’ve touched on it. I get that, but where do you stand on the whole certifications versus experience question? We as a recruitment company get a lot of people saying to themselves, “I’m looking-
Rohit: I value–
Lee: -a job.”
Rohit: I value experience more than certification. Obviously, if you are a CTA, one question, you have to go through a very hard process, but I can’t value experience more. My interviews are very simple. I let the person I’m speaking to rate themselves and tell them where they are strong. They can pick any cloud, any technology of their choice, and then I would focus my questions only on that technology. I value more on your strength and experience even if you are not certified.
One of the good thing that we’re trying to do is we are trying to get a lot of people from different industry, cross-train them and grow them in this ecosystem. It’s very difficult and in the end you’ve been in the business for long. It’s not that easy to get a very strong architect or a strong technology leader. You will only find limited people within say, physical system. For me, it’s not [unintelligible 00:35:25] division that matters, is [unintelligible 00:35:27] experience. Then, even if you have done qualitative work in parallel tech, we’re always happy to engage across [unintelligible 00:35:36].
Theresa: Thank you. You’ve touched on about cross-training people and stuff like that. We get loads of enquiries from people that are just starting out their career. We’ve always been of the opinion that experience is the most important thing. Certifications are there to emphasise the experience that you have. For people just starting out, getting that experience can be quite tough, so what’s your take on it?
Rohit: I’ll tell you. What we are trying to do is, if you look at Salesforce, 10 years back or 15 years back, [unintelligible 00:36:21]. I’m just starting to look at [unintelligible 00:36:23] aspect. Then we start speaking about [unintelligible 00:36:27], then we start speaking about other components and then we start speaking about something called [inaudible 00:36:32]. The frontend stack itself has been changing, which means even within the Salesforce ecosystem you may not find people who is very strong on [unintelligible 00:36:41], for example. They would have picked it up in the last two or three years.
If you look at the base for it, it’s all based on the latest web development standards and GS framework, so finding somebody who’s done good work, let’s say, in [unintelligible 00:36:57], right, and training them as somebody who’ll be a UI developer is challenge. We’ve done that. Similarly, having and onboarding maybe a strong UI guy, you spend a good amount of time designing enterprise applications and helping them transform into, say, [unintelligible 00:37:15] learn different clouds. Obviously, there will be some sort of roadmap, in fact, isn’t a bigger challenge.
Again, if I look at the acquisition that has been happening, Sales Cloud is almost 25 years so far. Service Cloud is almost 15 years development, but if you look at marketing, Free Service, CPQ, Commerce Cloud, Cloud [unintelligible 00:37:37], these are all new product and it’s very difficult to find people. End of the day, what I’ve realised is we may end up training these guys. They just have to have the right coaching and guidance. Even the guys who’s been in this ecosystem for 10 years, eight years, seven years, I find them struggling with the basic things on different communities that is available from Salesforce.
That’s [unintelligible 00:38:02] are open to this. It’s not that that’s the only way that we– Obviously, we respect experience within this ecosystem, and we go for guys who are really good. Then, we also respect people who’s done good in different other technologies, primarily marketing stacks [unintelligible 00:38:21] who’s worked on similar closed loop with product, et cetera, and we see if we can groom them and train them.
Lee: That’s good. You do it. Like I said, there’s other ways. Like you say, the pond that you’re fishing in is never going to grow so it’s good that you can bring people in and give them that experience. Going back to the question of certifications versus experience, do you still encourage people to get certifications that will just rubber stamp the experience they’ve got?
Rohit: Yes, I definitely encourage people to go for certification. My point is that you should go for certification, but obviously you have worked on the product. Don’t just write an exam for the sake of writing the exam. When you say that you are a service cloud certified expert. The guy who’s interviewing you would have high hope. Even the recruiter will have a high hope when he or she is placing you for an interview. If you can’t answer basic questions it’s just a waste of time for everyone.
Even in my company I have a mandate, and we, as a company, sponsor certifications. We’ve got a mandate that every quarter or every six months you have to write certain exams depending on which role are you in. We provide internal-external training for that, so definitely we encourage that. I want people to be certified, but all I’m saying is, don’t do it for the sake of doing it. You’re not going to win a race over here. You are just using it as a symbol that you know something. Anyone who would ask you a question, if you say you know something. Yes, you will get a preference as compared to others, but then you will also go through the questions and discussion to understand where you start.
Theresa: I suppose it’s a bit like somebody claiming to be able to drive when they’ve only done the theory tests, but not actually sat in the car and driven it.
Rohit: That’s exactly.
Lee: Great way of looking at it.
Theresa: Thank you. Moving on to the future then I suppose it’s something we like to ask everyone. What excites you about the future of Salesforce and why?
Rohit: I see Salesforce has definitely a really strong feature. I see very strong as of ecosystem. If you look at future, what is that is going to be very prominent. You will see people talking about cloud computing and you’re a very succeded economy which is completely going to run on cloud. I see that happening for India as well, that’s one.
The other pillar that I see in the future is AI. AI can be used in various forms in sales, but AI is going to be very strong. The third one is anaytics. Look at COVID and look at how analytics is helping in our general numbers and helping analysis side. Now these are the very strong pillar. Now I will look at Salesforce.
From Salesforce product offering. Salesforce offering is ticking all these three boxes, check boxes for the pillar. You’ve got offering around it and on top of it with the recent acquisitions that’s been happening in this ecosystem. The last to be acquired lot of offerings around industry verticle. I see in the future is very strong and most important for I would say developers and Salesforce. People in Salesforce ecosysytem is accompanying offerings part in open source, now with the Salesforce Evergreen, you will have an option of doing a server list in our implementation.
You can write things on [unintelligible 00:42:04] and [unintelligible 00:42:04] will call it from Salesforce with LWC going open source route. We can now run it on top of [unintelligible 00:42:11] With Einstein acquisition and a lot of AI will be absolutely around it. I see the future is really strong. I feel now is the time where we also stop looking at Salesforce just as a CRM platform, but we should look at this as a platform which can help become heart of enterprise architecture in system or maybe a modern app that can now be placed as the heart of the oral enterprise acrchitectures and systems. I see that within certain capability in the platform.
Theresa: Fantastic.
Lee: Brilliant. I think already we’ve been an hour, so we won’t take up too much more of your time, but did you have any further comments or anything about specifically for people that are probably looking to start their career before we wrap up?
Rohit: My advice for anyone who is willing to start their career, I would say it’s the right time. I would say this is [unintelligible 00:43:12] have more of a hands on experience. Have a consistent reading habit. Learn the fundamentals really well, even for people who want to become a consultant in future. Invest time in different industry offering a lot of knowledge that the platform has. It’s good, and there are good opportunities, but with [unintelligible 00:43:35] and being there and of learning contents. There are a few of you do this and with this put in to a lot of content. The web is full of contents. Just make a start.
Theresa: Absolutely. You got to start somewhere haven’t you.
Lee: Brilliant. Thank you very much for joining us, Rohit. It’s been really useful and hopefully people will appreciate. It’s not been clearest connection, but obviously you’re in India, we’re in the UK, but I think you got some really great points across there and obviously look forward to keeping a close eye on what happens with yourself and Venerate. Thank you very much for joining us.
Rohit: Thank you.
Theresa: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.
Rohit: Same here. It’s been a pleasure.
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Lee: Thank you so much again to Rohit and to Theresa. Hopefully the quality of the connection wasn’t too bad for you guys this week. I hope you managed to get all the excellent information that Rohit passed on to us. If you have any comments or any requests for someone else that you’d like to be interviewed on this podcast, please do reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can also send me an email as well. It’s lee@resourceondemand.com. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you again next time.