Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we chat with Carlos Umana, Principle Business System Analyst at BMC Software, to kick off the Behind the Customer Stories series for the Admin Keynote at Dreamforce. We’ll learn how he champions productivity in his large organization, and how he picked up admin skills from a developer background.
Join us as we talk about how using the declarative has helped Carlos create scalable solutions for his large organization, and the secret to collaborating with a large team.
You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Carlos Umana.
Going from Developer to Admin.
Carlos started off working at a mortgage company working in research and development, working with smaller CRM tools like Act!. As soon as Carlos and his team found Salesforce, they knew that they had what they needed. “It was hard for me because we were a 100% custom shop from day one,” Carlos says.
“My background is on development, so I had to go from thinking about code to the admin model of clicks, not code,” Carlos says. “That was a game changer because of the scalability of it,” he says. Picking up those skills was tricky, but resources like the Buttonclick Admin and Jeff Douglas “helped me translate that from a technical perspective,” he says. Trailhead arrived a little later in the journey, but it was obvious to Carlos how great of a resource it was from day one.
Working effectively on a team.
BMC is a big organization, so we wanted to know what strategies Carlos uses to manage a big team of admins. “Managing SFDC is a team effort,” he says, “one of the challenges is that there’s a lot of change approval— we need to consider all business units.” There are a lot of different stakeholders, so they need to rely on each other to make sure that they’re supporting everyone.
Governance is tricky over such a large organization. Carlos and his team have a monthly meeting with stakeholders to go over the requests from each business unit. That can lead to adjustments or changes in how the work gets done. “We’re an Agile shop, so we try to deliver iteratively and as fast as possible,” he says, so they can vet everything and refine it. “Sometimes you just need to rely on the people around you and hear them out,” he says.
Carlos’ productivity tips.
Keeping productive with all of these different demands on his attention is tricky, but Carlos keeps his priorities straight. “I try to create a checklist for what I want to accomplish today, where if I only finish this I feel like it was a good day at work,” he says. “I know I have to complete 55,000 things, but these four today would make me feel good.”
As far as favorite apps that help Carlos get more done, he’s a big fan of SalesEdge by Savo, which renders content in your opportunity based on the stage that you’re in. LeadData lead-to-account matching has also been really helpful for leveraging account information on the lead. Finally, Andy and the Cloud’s Declarative Rollup Summaries tool, which improve customization and give the reps the information they need.
What’s “development” in Spanish?
Carlos originally joined the Salesforce Latin America Community to just keep up with what was going on in that region. He’s bilingual, and so he figured he could keep up with the conversation. He noticed, however, that a lot of questions in Spanish were going unanswered. He thought to himself, “I know Spanish, I know the answer to this question, why don’t I just answer this?”
“But when I answered it I noticed there were certain words that were tricky,” Carlos says, and he started to research the translations for Salesforce-specific terms. He’s still working on a specific glossary, but he’s learning and helping people with their problems, too.
Join us for the Salesforce Admins Keynote at Dreamforce!
Tuesday, September 25th at 11am PDT: Parker Harris, Mike Gerholdt, Mary Scotton, Gillian Bruce & special guests will share amazing admin stories, incredible demos, and fun surprises. Join us live in Moscone West or watch online. Add it to your agenda: http://sforce.co/df18adminkeynote
Join the podcast LIVE!
We’ll be taping LIVE at Dreamforce on Thursday, September 27, 11:30 AM in Moscone West, Room 2002. Bring your Lightning Round Questions & add it to your agenda: https://sfdc.co/cl2u6v
Resources
Social
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast we’re switching it up and focusing on productivity. We pull together some of our best interviews of 2018 to bring you the best tips we’ve heard focused around productivity. We talk to Carlos Umana, Principle Business System Analyst at BMC Software, Matt Vickery, Salesforce Administrator at the Washington State […]
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Lisa Tulchin, Senior Curriculum Developer at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about user learning styles and how to use them to create better training sessions. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation with Lisa Tulchin. Choose […]
Today on the Salesforce Admins Podcast, we talk to Ella Marks, Senior Marketing Manager at Salesforce. Join us as we chat about the keys to creating an effective presentation, how to prep, and how to create a strong ending. You should subscribe for the full episode, but here are a few takeaways from our conversation […]
