Surviving my first Salesforce event

By Hind Adamou, Administrative Assistant

Having worked with Appirio for just less than a year, my first opportunity to represent the company at an event was at the recent Salesforce Customer Company Tour (SCCT) in London. Prior to working at Appirio, I was part of Salesforce’s BizAcademy program and was excited to experience one of the company’s large scale events first hand from a vendor perspective.

Appirio has a large office in London, but it’s always exciting to host visitors from our San Francisco headquarters. I spent a fair amount of time preparing for the week of SCCT and although the week flew by, it was a lot of work to host concurrent events.

Two of the most memorable experiences were Appirio’s executive cocktail party and Titan the Robot’s appearance at SCCT. The cocktail party was held at Sketch, an admirable place to be with unique colours and features. Appirio’s space was beautiful and filled with a positive vibe and the night was consistently over flowing with conversation and cocktails.

Titan the Robot’s appearance came at the actual SCCT event. Prior to the day of SCCT, I was involved in the planning process and had experienced first hand what it meant to troubleshoot on the fly. Having been involved with the entire process, I was anticipating the entire day, but mostly the appearance of a 2.5 meter robot! I had heard rumours he was a bit of a logistical handful, which made things even more thrilling. After Titan’s performances went off without a hitch, I felt a little sense of pride that our planning paid off.

All of the above is just a snapshot of what the week was like and I have to say it was probably the most fun I’ve had while working. I want to say a huge thanks to everyone who made the event a success from team Appirio and of course to the Salesforce organisers too. Now, bring on Dreamforce!!

Surviving Workday Training

by Michael Hitch, Delivery Manager

Deep breath...it’s your first day at Appirio in the Workday practice and you’re headed to the  Indianapolis office. You’ve figured out what to wear, where to park, and what time to get there.  Now, what’s the deal with this training program you’re headed to next week?  How do you prepare for it?  Will there be a test?  Starting a new job can be exciting and nerve-racking all at the same time.  And these are some of the questions you might be asking yourself as you begin your career with Appirio.

Not only are we committed to providing our team with tools and resources they need to be successful, but Workday also requires each consultant to be certified in the focus area(s) they plan to work in. There are a variety of certifications available that range from Core HCM, to Financials, to Integrations with a number of speciality certs in between.  Although a rigorous process, we start all of our new consultants with the Core HCM certification.  This is a three week course that provides each new consultant a well rounded, in-depth view of Workday’s core fundamentals.

The first two weeks are spent at one of Workday’s many training facilities throughout the world, while week three is completed virtually. For the onsite portion, a good majority of our team heads out to the Workday Headquarters in Pleasanton, CA. Here they typically get to know some of the internal employees and just might even get the opportunity to rub shoulders with Dave Duffield or Aneel Bushri.  Whether you end up in Pleasanton, Atlanta, New York, or one of the other training facilities, get ready to learn a lot! The old saying, it’s like drinking water from a firehose, applies here.

The morning of day one starts off with some basic navigation and core concepts but quickly transpires into the creation of supervisory organizations, companies, cost centers, and so on.  Next up, you’ll learn about staffing models, jobs, and positions. The week then progresses through other topics, such as business processes, security, and report writing.

Whew, the weekend is finally here, time for a breather right?  Not so fast...now it’s time to put some of that new knowledge to use. You’ll get paired up with other classmates and will do your own tenant build on a type of company you want to create.  Keep it simple here as you only have two days finish your tenant and be ready to present it to the class on Monday. Once the tenant presentations are finished, the next few days will add to and reinforce what you learned during week one, all summed with by an exam on the last day.

The first two weeks are complete and time to head home!  Now on to week three, which is completed virtually utilizing the concepts you just learned. However, you’ll spend this week learning about tools that will allow you to load the mass quantities of data you will come to expect as you work on client implementations. This should be a breeze, right?  Well, it can go pretty smoothly, but when you start dealing with higher volumes of data, you start dealing with higher potential for errors. Be prepared to comb through the detailed data and keep that coffee brewing as you just might have a couple late nights this week!

Finally, all done and you did well!  Now what?  Well, now you’re Workday certified!  Some of you might prepare for your first client while others may be headed to get an additional certification.  Although the training process is quite intense and can be challenging, it’s a great experience that not only helps us grow personally and professionally, but affords us the opportunity to meet a lot of great people along the way. Definitely a very rewarding experience!

In Business, the Cloud and Politics, Transparency Drives Growth

By Michelle Swan (@michelleswan), Vice President, Communications

This week I was fortunate enough to visit our Indianapolis office and work with the team there to host Indiana Governor Michael Pence and the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) who held their quarterly Board of Directors Meeting at our downtown office.

While he was there Governor Pence signed a bill requiring the IEDC to report to taxpayers and policymakers on economic development incentives. In its simplest form the bill was crafted to provide greater transparency into IEDC activities, but he talked a lot about how it would also help drive economic growth in the State of Indiana – something the IEDC takes very seriously. The State has been pretty successful in their quest too - CEO Magazine just named Indiana the top Midwestern state for doing business and fifth in the entire U.S.

It got me thinking about the concept of transparency and the role it plays not only in growing an economy, but business and culture as well.

Let’s start with its impact on cloud computing. In the early days of “the cloud”, when Ellison was still dismissing it and Ballmer had yet to claim it, the cloud was scary. There was a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt about whether large IT organizations could trust it to run any application – much less core ones. Leading cloud vendors tried to alleviate this by introducing sites like trust.salesforce and Google’s Apps Status Dashboard, which have gone a long way in proving the security and reliability of the cloud. Today nearly every large organization is or has moved to the cloud, but if the vendors hadn’t taken steps like this to facilitate this level of transparency, who know what would have happened.  Just saying “trust us” works about as well in IT as it does in politics.

Transparency has played a similar role in Appirio’s own growth. Every year we do an employee satisfaction survey, and transparency into the business and our business goals usually tops the list. While we don’t have a bill legislating transparency, it permeates our organization across every level.

For example, every other week we hold an all-employee meeting where the leadership team presents where we stand in our business metrics – sales, financials, employee turnover, customer satisfaction ratings, etc. It’s not just “happy talk” either.  I remember many years ago we were having issues with cash flow - as start-ups during a recession sometimes do. Rather than the leadership team locking themselves away in a room to figure out the plan, they brought it up on the all-hands call and put it out to the group to come up with ways to control costs. For the next few months, every single employee worked together to get us out of that situation. We weren’t told what we could or couldn’t do. We knew the repercussions. We were in it together.

Complete transparency isn’t always comfortable and it’s certainly not feasible in every situation, but little things can go a long way. It starts at the top, but to me it’s most powerful when it’s felt throughout the organization. That’s where culture comes into play (although social tools like Chatter and Ideas can help keep things transparent and information flowing.)

Transparency is about more than just open communication though. It’s also about trust. If you can instill trust and respect the trust that people (employees, taxpayers, whoever) give you, then everyone is more engaged and empowered to work towards a common goal. In Indiana that might be economic growth. For Appirio that might be customer success and the growth of our own business.

The last time I was in Indianapolis was less than a year ago when we first announced Appirio would be putting roots down in the city with a new office and cloud development center. We made that announcement in an empty office space overlooking Lucas Oil stadium with a handful of press, former Governor Mitch Daniels and a couple dozen employees cheering us on from the back. Today that office now houses 65 Appirians who are engaged in some of our coolest customer projects and helping to grow CloudSpokes, our 75,000-person global development community. Last week we were also named one of the Best Places to Work in Indiana (#2 in the large company category).

There might be something to this transparency thing after all!

Cloud Education 101

By Sunny Brewer, Associate Consultant

As a college student, the most exposure I had to “the cloud” was using Google docs for groups projects and utilizing the cloud feature on iTunes. I was an HCM concentration in college, but little to none of that curriculum covered cloud-based HCM systems. When I accepted the job as a Workday HCM consultant for a “cloud-based company”, I didn’t really know what would be different other than working from home. Although I knew that Google docs were useful, I honestly did not understand all of the benefits and flexibility that comes along with being cloud-based.

Once I began working at Appirio, I knew things were different. For one, I was a recent college graduate for three days, and I was working my first full-time job....from home. I attended my New Hire Orientation virtually with other recent hires and began my new hire activities. I think it’s safe to say that it didn’t hit me just how advantageous being in the cloud was until I began working for a few months. I attend weekly team meetings virtually, I’m in constant contact with project team members who are 2,500 miles away from me, and this year, I attended my first virtual company meeting. I recently posted a screenshot of my 1:1 meeting with my boss, which was held through a Google Hangout. I am able to be managed by someone who is based in Indianapolis and still maintain close communication through the different applications and services we use. Although some of these things may sound boring or disconnected, it is amazing to watch a company thrive while being able to lower costs.

Besides all of the positives that a cloud-based company offers from a business standpoint, I believe that it adds to our fun culture. Being cloud-based automatically shows that you do things differently, you like to think outside the box, and you aren’t afraid of taking risks. This is part of what makes Appirio so great and such an exciting company to work for. Everyone is challenging the status quo and looking for new ways to be successful.

As I reflect back on my exposure to the cloud throughout college, I can’t help but become a cloud advocate, if you will, to college students. It makes me wonder and question why more can’t get done with the hectic schedules and different commitments students hold. Although we all know what Google docs are, there is so much more to it. Cloud technology is a thriving market that I for one did not hear or learn much about during school. HCM technology, along with so many other areas, is being transformed in the way businesses use it. I think knowledge and education on the cloud could and should be thoroughly developed and implemented into any college curriculum to explain how the space is changing the world.

It's Not What You Say, But It's What You Do - How Big Data has solved the problem of finding true talent in the IT world

By Dan Haigh, Consultant

It’s not what we say, it’s what we do that counts. Have you perhaps heard this saying?  It’s a saying that I grew up with, and it means that actions speak louder than words. Your actions can define you and perhaps provide accurate representation of the person you are; but is it true? Of course it’s true. Think of tasting a great wine, or going to an excellent restaurant. The final judgement you place upon the artists, craftsmen, chefs and vintners is solely based on how good the end product is, as it should be!

Despite the prevalence of this saying and how the quality of the end product will define its producer, employers still rely on what candidates say during the recruitment process. Not only that, but they rely on what is written on their resumes and what their references say- if they ever call their references- and no doubt their references will say something wonderful.  Do employers ever wonder if the resume may have been written by a professional resume writing company? Do they ever wonder if the candidate has taken classes on how to dress, speak and answer questions? In some cases, candidates have done exactly that.  Employers can easily get sold on the polish of a candidate without any regard to his true abilities because they simply don’t know how to evaluate those abilities. This is a big problem when searching for candidates that have specialized skills and talents. In the tech world, this process of recruiting talent is quickly disappearing. It’s about time! Because in my opinion, it just doesn’t work.

I read a New York Times article on Sunday, titled: “How Big Data Is Playing Recruiter for Specialized Workers”. The article discusses how companies are using Big Data to scour the internet looking for what I call “tracks” or perhaps a “scent” of talent that will lead the searcher to truly qualified candidates who, in most cases, have no idea that someone is searching for them or that there are even opportunities that match their talents. Notice how I said “talents” and not degrees, certifications or licenses. It is very easy to search for a candidate of the graduating classes of M.I.T, Cal-Tech, Stanford University, and U.C. Berkeley simply by setting up a booth on career day and waiting for the students to come in search of their dream jobs. But what happens if the talent does not go to one of the top schools, or what if he never went to school at all?  This is where looking for tracks and scents comes in and Big Data is ideally suited to do this.

However, this new phenomenon has broader implications for the workforce and for companies that want to sell products and services. The lesson is that if you want to be noticed as a serious candidate for almost any position of skill, you need to leave tracks; you need to leave a scent that leads to your work, your opinions, and your ideas. You need to contribute to a broader community and do it in a meaningful way that shows quality and value. This is the new “networking”. Potential employers will soon be looking for your tracks and be able to make judgements about you and your abilities without you even knowing it.

In fact, companies will use this internally. They will soon find ways to reward and promote employees by evaluating the internal and external contributions they make. Employees who leave external tracks that drive business will no doubt be rewarded. Moreover, companies purchasing products and services will be doing the same thing. They will look for the tracks to find out if a company is a thought leader, innovative and consistently interacting with customers to improve products and services. Companies and individuals that understand this new paradigm will thrive, while those that don’t will still be writing resumes and meeting with interview coaches or mailing brochures to companies on a stale lead list. It’s time to prove that actions really do speak louder than words.

New Appirians Using Collaboration to Hit Full Speed Fast

By Charlie Cowan (@IamCharlieCowan), Account Executive

I joined Appirio’s UK office in December 2012. Although I was new to the company, I felt like I knew a good portion of the team already. Having been an active Twitter user, I had seen many of my Salesforce Twitter buddies joining Appirio over the past couple of years, and it was indeed through Twitter that I connected with Lori Williams, VP and GM of Appirio here in Europe.

Upon joining the team, I wanted to help ensure that in the UK we were truly Appirio, and not just Appirio Europe, Appirio UK….Appirio Lite; so I’ve made a conscious decision to collaborate as much as possible with our US and Japan colleagues on the work that we do here – bringing Appirio’s collective experience to every single customer in Europe.

The systems we use have helped me feel part of the team in days, rather than months or years (at Appirio you are a ‘new starter’ only for about the first 2.5 minutes!) and I wanted to share with you some of the top ways I’ve been helped in coming up to speed.

Salesforce Chatter
As a new starter, just following and listening to the top 50 or 100 people in the business is so powerful. You get to see what questions are being asked and who is best at answering them. On Fridays, the #fridayshoutout hashtag tells great stories of customer success that week and points me in the direction of new people to follow. I get photos and bios of all the individuals as well - I wouldn’t get this insight from email.

Discussions
We use Gmail and have an email group called “Discussions.” Anyone in the company can email this group with a question- “Have we ever…?”, “What would you recommend…?”, “How should I…?” Project teams around the world get support from the collective mind of 600+ Appirians. I’ve set up Gmail’s Priority Inbox so I always see the last five discussion threads on my email home page. I learn daily about Portals, Visualforce, security best practice, middleware and APIs just from reading other peoples’ questions and answers.

Google Hangouts
I love Google Hangouts. I really wish the whole world was using them. By using them for all of our team meetings and internal calls, Hangouts have helped me build up great rapport with other Appirians across the world in a way I would never have done on an expensive phone call. The majority of communication comes from body language and tone, not just the words you say, so jumping on a Hangout has turned names into friends.

GChat
My productivity is so much higher because of GChat. I always have four or five windows open, allowing me to receive immediate responses from the team across the world. Here in the UK, we’re conscious that our US team comes online later in the afternoon, so I can GChat with colleagues in the evening without my wife becoming too annoyed with me! I’ll often get a nice GChat pop up from fellow Appirian and Twitter buddy John Gorup (@appiriojohn) in the afternoon asking how I’m getting on – I love that!

Twitter
Whilst not a corporate tool, it was Twitter that first got me introduced to my fellow Appirians and changed the route of my career, and I continue to value chatting with the team. The @appirio and @appirioemea accounts are regular retweeters of my blog posts and I enjoy sharing the latest @cloudspokes challenges to developers here in the UK. Twitter helps me stay connected with our global community, and I feel very proud of the company that I’m part of.

These are just a few of the tools that have helped me feel part of the global Appirio team in a matter of a few weeks. Technology has not only been a benefit to me, but the customers I’m working with as well, who know that I have access to the collective experience of 600+ Appirians at any moment.

Reflecting on Future of the Cloud Day

By Kim Arden, Community Engagement Manager

Every year Appirio sets aside an entire day for every employee around the world to take off and invest in the “Future of the Cloud” - projects, charities, and volunteer events that benefit the next generation. This year’s Future of the Cloud Day took place on Friday, April 26.

The pictures, videos and stories are still rolling in, but as the day ends, we can look back over the day and know we had a tremendous impact all over the world.  470 employees spent the day in a variety of ways - 400 of them in teams, 20 on technical projects and 50 in individual efforts.  The sum total was priceless.

As you might expect from the demographics of our company, the largest percentage of our volunteers, 38%, worked with organizations that are in some way related to youth and education.  Take one of the teams in San Francisco, volunteering with the East Bay Youth Consortium’s “I Am Going to College” annual event for Oakland fifth graders.  Inspiring kids to go to college was the main order of the day.  The children were given mock scholarship dollars to pay for tuition and supplies, attend classes like rocket-building, and finally given lunch and a tour of the campus.  Who wouldn’t want to spend the day with this crew?

A sampling of other youth oriented activities included packaging books for shipment to Africa, preparing backpacks, clothing and toys for needy children right here in the US, and transforming a first apartment into a comfortable and homey space for a young adult aging out of the foster care system.

Appirians were in food banks, homeless shelters and soup kitchens all over the country.  Packing, sorting and serving food drew 34% of our volunteers.  In New York City, the Advent Lutheran Church was graced by a group of highly efficient and hard-working Appirians who cleaned the kitchen and storage areas, and prepped food for Friday bag lunches and Saturday meals.  Whatever the reason - the faltering economy of recent years or the typical challenges of large urban cities and small rural communities - Appirians were there with open hearts and helping hands, directly impacting the less fortunate in our world.

The remainder of our employees worked on environmental and beautification projects in parks, cancer support centers, and a home for traumatized children (21%), and other special interests, like helping the elderly and animal rescue organizations (7%).

It was also notably a day when our employees in London, Ireland and Tokyo became an integral part of the total global impact of Future of the Cloud Day.  In Ireland, Appirians not only worked with middle-school kids through Citywise at the Larch Hill Scouting Centre, doing team building and confidence exercises, but they were also able to use technical assets developed in last year’s Future of the Cloud Day projects to build solutions for Citywise this year. And in Japan, our Tokyo team was able to work with Kids Earth Fund, an organization that promotes peace and conservation through children’s artwork. They made up annual reports for the organization's supporters, and picked up and wrapped paintings to be exhibited at various charity events.


   
Of course, Appirians don’t have to be in the same city to accomplish a lot, as evidenced by one of several small technical teams that scrubbed, standardized and migrated over 1,000 records, touching several objects and moving users from Excel spreadsheets to Salesforce.  The fortunate recipients of our efforts were two Massachusetts nonprofits, House of 7 Gables and Power Options, served by Appirians working as far away as Arizona and Tennessee.  Boom!

We asked employees to videotape themselves this year and reflect on the impact they felt they had on Future of the Cloud Day.  Appirian Mark Klinski’s video sums it all up in a very poignant way - large or small, flashy or simple, everybody’s efforts matter. It’s the right thing to do.  Please take a look.