Salesforce has appointed a new leader to help achieve its objectives of increased focus and growth in the UK market.

Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, former chief executive of Virgin Money and chairman of the London Stock Exchange, will join the cloud giant in the role of UK and Ireland CEO from October, reporting into Miguel Milano, Salesforce’s international president. Paul Smith, general manager of Salesforce in the UK and Ireland will report into Dame Gadhia.

“I’ve admired Salesforce from afar for a long time. This is a different kind of business, with deeply held values and a true focus on transforming the experience of every customer through cutting edge technology,” she said.

“I’m looking forward to working with the team as we continue to invest and support Salesforce’s growing customer base in UKI.”

Dame Gadhia – who received her damehood at the end of 2018 for her services to the finance industry and more specifically women in the sector – will be responsible for driving the next stage of growth for Salesforce’s UK  and Ireland business.

The appointment follows on from the cloud firm’s pledge at last year’s London Tech Week to invest some $2.5 billion in the region over the next five years. That investment will take many forms, including a recruitment drive, expanded office space and building out its data centre capacity.

“Salesforce is working closely with the government to ensure innovation and technology are at the heart of the UK economy. Our $2.5 billion investment will help British companies drive innovation, boost productivity and build deeper connections with their customers, all key drivers of economic success,” Andrew Lawson – Salesforce’s former executive vice president and general manager for the UK – said at the time.

“We know that financial investment alone won’t do that, and that’s why we’re also focused on driving equality and diversity within the industry. Truly innovative businesses need people from multiple disciplines and different backgrounds to solve problems in the most creative and successful ways.”

Around 900 new employees are expected to be hired and on-boarded as part of the recruitment drive and a second data centre is planned for this year – a site that will run on 100% renewable energy, according to Salesforce. 

“Jayne-Anne is one of the most respected CEOs in the UK and we are thrilled to welcome her to Salesforce,” said Marc Benioff and Keith Block – chairman and co-CEO and co-CEO of Salesforce respectively.

“The UKI is our largest market outside the US and with Jayne-Anne’s leadership we are well-positioned to move into the next stage of growth and success for Salesforce, our customers, partners and communities.”

Salesforce has unveiled a range of improvements to its AppExchange marketplace, each designed to help its ecosystem of customers and partners make data-driven, informed decisions much more efficiently. 

There are two key tenets to the changes, one focused on consultant acquisition and the other designed to provide better insight for partners. 

The first, dubbed Consultants on AppExchange, is essentially an enhanced search functionality that matches customer requirements with the appropriate results – whether that be location, expertise, rating and so on.

This search element is live as of now on the AppExchange and was delivered in response to growing demand from customers wanting the information it now presents – previously, the data was only easily located internally, meaning customers had to contact their Salesforce account managers. Now, however, it is very much self-service, Woodson Martin, general manager, of the Salesforce AppExchange told Cloud Pro today during an interview at Salesforce World Tour London. 

The second element, called AppExchange Partner Intelligence, provides higher levels of insight into how customers and potential customers are interacting and consuming what the app marketplace has to offer. For example, partners can see if someone has downloaded a trial version but not used it.

Martin, who has been with Salesforce for 14 years but was appointed to his current role in March, told Cloud Pro: “One of my early observations in the role is that the ecosystem is vast and incredibly rich. One of the questions I’ve been asking is ‘What can we do to open up and make visible more of the richness of the ecosystem to make it easier to do the job of TrailBlazing. 

“Our customers are trying to solve problems in their business and we just need to make it easier for them to do that. So, everything that we’re announcing today is aimed at that objective. Customers are very excited about it and the partners are also excited because in an ecosystem as rich as this one, how do you find your way? And how do you stand out? This is a great opportunity for all players.”

Given that there have been 6.5 million installations from the AppExchange thus far, the ability to derive greater insight into what happens post download will be of great value to many. The app-specific analytical element will be made generally available – with security approved apps – from June, while wider marketplace analytics will arrive this summer. 

“Magnet360 has long been dedicated to ensuring our customers can succeed on the Salesforce Platform, and as the Salesforce economy grows, so has the demand for implementation expertise,” said Matt Meents, CEO and Founder of Salesforce Platinum consulting partner Magnet360. 

“With nearly 90% of Salesforce customers using at least one AppExchange app, making our consulting services available and easily searchable through AppExchange opens the door for us to help more companies with their Salesforce needs.”

While the 6.5 million download figure was – correctly – quoted at the time of Salesforce’s AppExchange announcement, during Martin’s interview with Cloud Pro he said that the firm had celebrated the 6.8 million mark this week. The next milestone? Seven million downloads, which is fast-approaching, according to Martin. 

“If you go to the homepage of the AppExchange – down at the bottom – it will tell you exactly how many people have installed applications. You can actually see, in real time, what’s happening in the ecosystem,” he said.

“It’s pretty exciting because last night it crossed 6.8 million. That’s a milestone and we’re excited about getting to seven pretty soon.”

With more than 5,000 listings – ranging from apps to solutions, components, templates and more – the AppExchange has evolved considerably in its decade-plus life so far. There are more than 65,000 Salesforce-accredited consulting professionals providing guidance to the Salesforce ecosystem via the AppExchange and other routes and the cloud giant is hoping to swell this figure to 250,000 by 2022 – the continued evolution of the AppExchange will play a critical role here, according to Martin. 

The University of Worcester has announced plans to migrate its core financial systems to the cloud, in a move it hopes will help boost efficiency, productivity and accuracy of data processing.

The institution has experienced rapid growth of late and now boasts a student population of around 11,000. With a reputation for its teaching – it is ranked number one in the UK and 26th globally when it comes to quality in education, according to the Times Higher Education World University rankings – it is looking to further support this growth with technology.

Oracle has been selected as the vendor of choice, with the university aiming to deploy its ERP Cloud – which claims to increase control and reduce costs among other things – in addition to its EPM Cloud, which it hopes will provide the agility and flexibility it needs as the organisation evolves.

“We’re absolutely committed to ensuring that our students and staff have the very best learning and working experience while they are at the University of Worcester,” said Paul Guest, principal project manager, University of Worcester.

“A cornerstone of this commitment is having robust IT systems that help us work in smarter and faster ways. Moving to the cloud will allow us to do this, and ultimately help us to continue to grow as an organisation.”

Oracle partner, Namos Solutions, will work on the project as well as providing wider support as part of a five-year managed service contract. The firm is a Platinum-level Cloud Excellence Implementer (CEI) member of the Oracle Partner Network (OPN).

“The University of Worcester is a prime example of how an educational institution can make use of cloud technologies to support growth and innovation,” added Debbie Green, vice president of applications at Oracle UK.

“With Oracle ERP Cloud, the university will be able to effectively leverage the data it holds and work in a more efficient way, allowing it to really focus on growth and the curriculum that it provides to students.”

Salesforce has confirmed that Einstein Analytics for Financial Services is now generally available, in a move designed to help those in the industry make better use of data powered by artificial intelligence (AI).

The new solution, which is highly customisable, works as an add-on to Financial Services Cloud and costs $150 per user, per month, according to the cloud firm.

It is particularly suited to wealth advisors, retail bankers and managers in the sector as it allows them to quickly and easily access customised, data-driven insights about clients to deliver an enhanced and much more personalised customer experience.

This speed, ease-of-use and enhanced levels of intelligence – it will extract data from Financial Services Cloud and other data sources – and sophistication thanks to the use of AI will enable those in the industry to try and keep pace with new market entrants, such as fintech, and a fast-evolving wider sector landscape.

“AI is the modern-day gold rush of the financial services industry, and those that get in early will reap the rewards of this next wave of innovation,” said Rohit Mahna, senior vice president and general manager of Salesforce Financial Services.

Ketan Karkhanis, senior vice president and general manager of Salesforce Einstein Analytics, added: “We’re bringing intelligence to every customer interaction and building products that speak the language of the financial services industry. They’re getting a tailored approach to analytics with the agility of our powerful platform.”

Einstein Analytics for Financial Services has a number of core components including:

• AI-powered actionable insights, which offer financial services professionals predictive guidance on a number of elements including ways in which to boost customer retention;
• Industry dashboards as standard, which templates that a fit-for-purpose and assist with data gathering on clients’ financial goals and activities to better identify key opportunities;
• A way to better analyse data from external sources, thereby providing a hollistic view of customer needs and requirements;
• Industry regulation compliance by default, as all data is hosted in a trusted, secure and compliant cloud-based platform with robust auditing, privacy, reporting and security tools built-in.

A number of financial institutions, including credit union Elements Financial and Royal Bank of Canada are already making use of the analytical extension. The former is embedding Einstein Analytics in its account home pagers to provide more timely insight on members and money flow, while Royal Bank of Canada is using it to better serve its 16 million-plus clients.

“Our work with Salesforce has allowed our credit union to build a data culture where stronger and more accurate knowledge leads to serving our membership with customisation,” added Lisa Schlehuber, CEO of Elements Financial.

“We are proud of the high-tech and high-touch level of service that makes Elements unique and leads to lifelong relationships with members.”

Europe, and the UK, in particular, remains a key market for NetSuite, with much-untapped potential yet so explore.

So says the company’s vice president of EMEA, Nicky Tozer, who talked about key focus areas and milestones during an interview with Cloud Pro at NetSuite’s annual user conference, SuiteWorld, in Las Vegas this week.

“We’re still focusing on growing the UK. It’s a mature market and, actually, the largest in terms of revenue delivery. So, we’re still continuing to grow that. That also has a very mature partner and customer NetSuite sales ecosystem,” Tozer said.

“The focus is pretty much the same, it’s pretty simple: it’s growth into EMEA. When we were acquired, we only had one office in the UK in EMEA. When Oracle bought us, they bought access to our market and probably saw that we have huge potential for expansion and would get a return on its money for that.”

Thus far, the company has enjoyed growth in 15 countries in EMEA, specifically in Western Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But, according to Tozer, in addition to helping ramp up the pace of expansion, Oracle has also assisted massively with R&D, recruitment and onboarding.

“NetSuite has been able to operate business as usual since we were acquired. That’s been huge in terms of continuing our success. It’s actually quite visionary of Oracle, really. Quite often, with acquisitions, they are just consumed into operations,” Tozer added.

“We were the second largest acquisition Oracle has made. We thought that would happen to us as a relatively small fish in a big pond. But, Oracle has allowed us to carry on operating as we have been.”

Tozer was appointed to the role in July 2019, as announced in a blog post by David Turner, senior director of marketing for EMEA. Prior to taking up the EMEA leadership role, replacing Mark Woodhams, Tozer looked after Northern European operations, as well as being instrumental in UK and Ireland business growth.

An 80:20 rule is key to NetSuite’s expansion, according to Tozer. By using a foundational level that exists everywhere, the firm is able to localise or customise on top of that layer, rather than re-inventing the wheel each and every time.

“We take 80% of what we do everywhere else in the world. Someone who needs a single, integrated business platform to run their business and be able to grow internationally fundamentally needs the same thing, whether they’re in Dubai, the UK, France, Germany or wherever. Then you obviously need to add that 20% localisation that makes it relevant.

“But the 80% of what we do is what has really allowed us to grow and ramp up that quickly. Some people call it cookie cutter or you know, or NetSuite in a box, but it’s that kind of approach.”

When asked how the company would ensure it maintains the same levels of service, support and experiences existing customers and partners are used to as it so rapidly expands, Tozer seemed confident.

“One very key metric is renewal rates,” Tozer said.

“If we’re not keeping our customers happy, they will vote with their bank account. We simply can’t let that happen.”

Creative Agency Network M&C Saatchi is using NetSuite’s ERP system to make better use of data and boost debt collection processes in its London offices.

It now hopes to expand its use of the technology, internationally, according to Michael Saunders, finance director at M&C Saatchi London.

The incumbent was mainframe-based, which generated Excel-based reports that weren’t very enlightening. Now, with NetSuite, it’s much easier to slice and dice data and drill down into transactions quickly and easily, Saunders told Cloud Pro.

“Things now happen in a much more timely way,” he said. “We didn’t have much of an ability to look at things by department or look at what you’ve sold in this month, where your spend is versus last year in this area etc. You can spot trends and things going wrong a lot faster. Once we get more of the forecasting elements done, it will improve our kind of month end process. We should have more accurate forecasting.”

Saunders added: “I ran a selection process and we ended up with 15 potential ERP systems on the list. It was a strategic move to go with NetSuite as it’s very easy to build on it and it’s easy to integrate it with other systems. All the other ones we looked at didn’t have as good a UI and didn’t feel like they had as much money being pumped into them.

“It’s a quite simple, reliable system to use. If you gave it to a kid, they could probably work out how to do certain things quite easily.”

There are more than a dozen entities operating under the M&C Saatchi umbrella in London, with around 800 employees. Globally, the organisation has around 2,000 members of staff.

After a thorough selection process that started in 2016, Saunders and key stakeholders settled upon NetSuite as their ERP system of choice for the UK business. The system went live in January 2018 with a two-week training programme initiated to get employees up and running quickly and easily.

The firm also kept its implementation partner, RSM, on board for the initial few months to help ease any teething problems with the user training side of things.

M&C Saatchi has and is growing around the world, but organically and through acquisition so it still uses a number of different ERP systems depending on location and other needs. Using the UK as a test bed, the plan is to try and rationalise the number of systems in use, even if that still results in multiple ERP instances.

“The first stage of the project was always to focus on the UK as we didn’t want to do too much at once. We’ve been on the same system in the UK for 18 years. Now, we’re starting to look at how it can be more of a platform for the systems we use. We’re integrating our budgeting and forecasting tool, Adaptive Insights, into it, and Sage People. All you have to work out is where your master record for each type of information is going to be held. You can get them all talking to each other quite quickly,” Saunders added.

“To bring in a new office of region is not a new implementation. I could almost set up a new subsidiary on my phone right now… Hopefully, that is where we will also see value – we won’t need a professional services team to do a new country. There are economies of scale as you bring more data and more people onto it.”

The UK’s first-ever pet food-as-a-service specialist, PetShop.co.uk, has enjoyed phenomenal growth by running its business on NetSuite’s ERP platform.

The pet supply firm, which offers pet food as a subscription-based service dubbed Bottomless Bowl, has grown by 50 percent year-on-year and now stocks more than half a million pounds’ worth of stock spanning in excess of 10,000 products.

That’s a fantastic cloud success story when you consider that the business was born off the back of a £5,000 Prince’s Trust loan by former City worker Adam Taylor and his now-wife Lexi, out of the annoyance of running out of pet food and the inconvenience of how heavy it could be to transport.

The firm was using multiple different systems in its early days, which it found frustrating and added additional and unnecessary complexity. That’s what led to evaluating NetSuite, according to Taylor.

“We are using NetSuite for ERP, accounting, warehouse management and our pick, pack, and despatch management and we chose Bronto for email marketing because it was owned by NetSuite. Because it’s all under one umbrella, ultimately, nothing is impossible in terms of what we have tried to do,” Taylor told Cloud Pro.

“We’ve been able to grow 50% year-on-year for the last few years. It would have been very difficult to achieve that growth without NetSuite.”

While PetShop.co.uk has enjoyed immense growth thus far, it now wants to scale even further and will be using NetSuite’s many capabilities to support expansion plans.

It’s also building KPIs to help more effectively monitor the health of the business, according to Taylor.

“Our business model is already good, but I like the peace of mind of knowing how healthy it is. Alternatively, it gives us the ability to find if we have lots of leaking holes that we need to fix,” he said.

“We are building all this stuff in NetSuite now so when we grow it will grow with us. The transparency you get using cloud data means you can see instantly how the business is operating.  You can then use that information to steer your business decisions and you can be a lot more bullish.

“Having a business that is entrepreneur-owned has been key to our success. It’s forced us to look at whether we have a profitable model and where we can outthink our competitors and are able to pass on savings to customers,” Taylor told Cloud Pro.

Despite the business’ rapid rise to success, fuelled by technology, Taylor still recognises the importance of the human touch.

“I still write all the emails we send to our customers. We haven’t outsourced that,” he said. “It’s very key for any company to maintain that direct communication with the customer.”

Oracle NetSuite has launched a new benchmarking and insight resource centre designed to make it easier for organisations to make better-informed business decisions and grow using its platform. 

The ERP giant unveiled the knowledge centre, dubbed Brainyard, at its annual user conference in Las Vegas this week, effectively touting it as a game changer in terms of how the industry shares expertise and insight.

Many companies make use of professional consultancies to garner the data their need around technology implementations, but NetSuite felt this knowledge should actually be free, according to Jason Maynard, the company’s senior vice president of global field operations.

“We’re giving away the source code for business growth by providing unparalleled insights into every single critical business process. Companies tell us they want to benchmark their businesses, and we’re going to help them do that with Brainyard,” he said.

“Research firms and other vendors charge for this kind of resource, but we consider it part of our commitment to customer and partner success. We’re not just delivering bits with NetSuite: It’s not just about software; it’s about helping businesses grow.”

Specifically, Brainyard will be powered by insight derived from the company’s SuiteSuccess service and complemented by knowledge garnered from elsewhere in the company, such as value management, product management and solution consultancy.

Those visiting the Brainyard knowledge portal, will be able to access:

• A wealth of business information, such as industry status reports, and qualitative and quantitative research spanning 20 industry principles.
• Benchmarking insight and industry specific KPIs derived from 16,000 NetSuite customers as well we business performance data from FinListics.
• Performance-related advice and analysis designed to help organisations optimise their implementation in a range of formats from how to guides, best practice briefings and more.

Brainyard should help companies focus on the areas that will have the greatest impact on their future success and growth, Harish Mohan, NetSuite’s vice president of global strategy and international operations, told Cloud Pro.

“Part of [a focus on] growth is asking ‘Where should I grow?’ But if you ask any company that question, you’re going to get a list of 50 things. So, we can say that this is, generally speaking, where companies of your size find themselves, you’re in the growth curve and hear are the opportunities and challenges,” he said.

“It was driven by feedback and demand from people evaluating ERP. Companies used to come to us and say they are looking to change A, B, C, D… How is NetSuite going to make us better? Those were great questions and we wanted to figure out how to map that journey for people evaluating ERP.”

Mohan said at first NetSuite considered simply buying in the insight that would help answers some of these key questions, but that approach was dismissed due to the data being locked, too big, too abstract, not scalable or not in the right business language.

“So we decided that we were just going to do this ourselves. We’re going to provide the first business benchmark that is valid for companies and is actually consumable and delivers the insights they want,” Mohan added.

“For companies evaluating NetSuite, we’re providing a service that also gives you a blueprint of how to get from your ‘from’ state to your ‘to’ state.”

NetSuite used its annual user conference SuiteWorld conference in Las Vegas this week to update customers and partners on its roadmap and detail some of the secrets behind its rapid growth and product innovation.

One of the key ingredients to it’s the successful execution of its expansion plans lies in its new parentage, according to Evan Goldberg, the NetSuite’s founder and current executive vice president of development. 

“The more things change, the more things stay the same,” he said.

“We’re being aggressive – not too aggressive – for our customers to take advantage of that. We’re integrating with Oracle products and there are a couple of areas there where it is super helpful to be part of Oracle. The other giant synergy for us is the ability to expand so rapidly internationally. It’s about making sure when we go into these markets we do it in a culturally appropriate way.”

Now it’s part of Oracle, it’s also possible for resources, such as the sales force, to be diverted – both internationally and domestically – to help bolster rapid expansion plans, according to Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. Hurd added that some of the investments that have been made in the last year or so simply would not have been possible without Oracle’s investment. 

Hurd was also quick to pour cold water on suggestions around uncertainty relating to the structure of the company – previous Oracle acquisition targets have been absorbed into the business, whereas NetSuite remains a distinct operating business unit.

“We’re aligned. There is no lack of alignment. There are things to do…. Those are just natural migrations,” Hurd said.

“It’s part of our strategy to give NetSuite all of the possible benefits of Oracle, but none of the downside of Oracle. Let it leverage the best of what it does and the best of Oracle so it can grow.”

The duo also talked about how NetSuite is currently moving over to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) – a process that will take a few years. 

“We’re just a few weeks away from having our first customer live on OCI,” Goldberg said, adding that he believes that will act as a proof point.

“We do all these transitions carefully to make sure they’re not disruptive to customers. We have 16,000 customers. We can’t hire a database administrator for everyone for them to tune. Autonomous will be a DBA for each of our customers and make sure it’s tuned for their particular use.”

Hurd used the conference as a platform to reiterate how his own predictions around cloud – such as cloud apps having AI embedded in the next few years – and how market activity generally is moving in the same direction.

Suggesting “the data is irrefutable” Hurd cited the number of US datacentres closing in the past year and that almost half of development and testing is now carried out in the cloud.

“This is not, in my opinion, a technology. Cloud is architecture, an approach. As an approach it is irrefutable. It has several key elements that are big deals. It costs less. It has tonnes more innovation associated with it without having to add it on to your IT budget nickel. It removes the risk,” Hurd said.

“These drivers are the reason people are talking about cloud 10 years later. This is not a reversible trend. This is more about the speed at which you get to the destination.”