Key Point: Why would almost 200,000 people spend thousands of dollars and invest a week of their lives to attend a SalesForce conference? I think it partly has to do with the totally accessible movement defined as “From Coding to Clicking,” and the truly millions of opportunities being created as a result.
We all will literally have the ability to create and co-create digital experiences and applications without writing any material software code. Using the amazing platforms built by public cloud based powerhouses like Google and SalesForce, most of us will be able to become data scientists and software “engineers.” IT and business is merging into a fully integrated partnership, and it’s rapidly happening at an individual level as well. When we get the ability to fully leverage these big system platforms, the investment starts to turn into how well you and I can use the full potential of these amazing foundations. Let me give you an example pertaining to SalesForce. To promote this technology mastery, there is a SalesForce certification for almost every role in any organization. When one applies certification competence, we become much more valuable to our companies, others and ourselves. We build more personal equity. I’m going to share a just a few examples of the hundreds of certifications offered by SalesForce through their learning and certification platform called Trailhead:
Administrator’s Certification: Confirms you have the skills and knowledge to customize, configure, and manage a SalesForce implementation.
Developers Certification: Platform Developer 11; gain skill and knowledge in advanced programmatic capabilities of the SalesForce platform to build custom applications on their platform.
Marketers Cloud Social Specialists Certification: Add skills in the social landscape and components of Social Studio; including post creation management, analysis of conversations and reporting.
Specialists Certification: (This would be for executives). Learn how to lead and optimize the full use of the SF platform. And Google has the same “mastery” mentality and learning opportunities.
While these platforms are essentially equal for all, building on top of them is totally unique, customizable and scalable in distinctly different ways for each participating organization. Hence, the more each of us know about harnessing them, the more advantage we and our organizations have.
You might ask, “so what?” Great legacy firms like Microsoft and Cisco have been genius at applying certification learning systems for years. The big difference I’m noticing is that in most cases those certifications were limited or focused on IT or engineering roles. In the case of Google’s Cloud Platform and SalesForce, EVERYONE and EVERY role ideally becomes “certified,” and a power user. Not on every aspect of the full platform, of course, but as the system applies to each individual role.
At SalesForce’s DreamForce 17 conference, which just concluded, 175,000 (that’s the announced attendance) followers descended on San Francisco for four days. It was mind blowing to see the movement and momentum. And when SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff had a fireside chat with Diane Greene, Alphabet board member and head of Google Cloud, their partnership vision sparked a “WOW.” Everything in the public cloud harnessing the world’s leading AI/machine learning, predictive data science and search, etc, all at warp speed as these two giant forces connect to drive exponentiality. Talk about 10X.
The leading companies in attendance at DF17 want their employees to obsessively focus on applying their purpose to customers by leveraging every bit of advantage these platforms and their robust eco-systems provide. In that context – speed, agility and adaptability becomes THE advantage. That’s why the notion of rapidly progressing from “code to click” has huge momentum. Whatever market your company is in; financial services, construction, food services, etc, can be great at providing customers indispensable value. If you want to build your own software platform and apps on your own infrastructure, well, good luck. I’m “shorting your stock.”
Personal Leadership Moves:
- Determine what you will become certified in to make yourself more of a digital expert. Even if your company doesn’t use Google or SalesForce, think about making yourself way more marketable by becoming certified on these or other leading platforms. In most cases, these certifications are online and free.
- Business leaders and all levels of employees must be futurists, humanitarians, innovators AND technologists. What will you put on your resume to demonstrate that you are progressing in the technology category? Every role requires it.
Lorne
One Millennial View: Well, the homework didn’t end with your last earned degree. I’ve taken a few minutes to research what SalesForce has to offer in their Trialhead course department, and you can certainly access a wealth of information. While taking online coursework may seem daunting, you can’t really put “Watched Stranger Things Season 2” on your resume, so balancing your time by binging on a certification may be a great idea. You know, then go back to Stranger Things.>
– Garrett
Edited and published by Garrett Rubis