The global Sales Kick-off (SKO) of Salesforce.org, the Salesforce foundation providing services to nonprofits including NGOs, associations and educational institutions (mainly universities and colleges) was held in San Diego (California) on 13 February.
All of the Foundation’s executives, the Customer Success and Product teams, as well as the folk from EMEA, AMER and APAC sales are invited to this event which brings together around 600 people. But in addition to Foundation staff, Salesforce.org Premium Partners can also attend, and S4G did!
The Salesforce tax year ends 31 January, making the SKO, held just a few weeks after close, a good time to go over the numbers from the past 12 months.
Each region discusses its growth and major and relevant market points. Although a wealth of detailed data and lots of numbers are shared, it is sensitive information that we cannot discuss in public, but what I can say is that the Foundation is logging spectacular growth, coming in above the always-challenging growth targets set each year.
More than 37,000 entities worldwide are Salesforce.org customers today.
SKO is also a chance to exchange robust views on what we want to achieve in the New Year: not only global figures broken down by product (i.e., the “what” we want to do), but also the “how” we want to do it.
We go over market trends, the immediate evolution of different Foundation products and their respective roadmaps, proposed marketing strategies and campaigns and so on.
It’s a great way to start the year with a bang, reflecting on how we eventually delivered on what had seemed unattainable the year before and understanding the plan to do the impossible again. And I know what that’s like because it’s what we do every year at S4G as a team!
The truth is, for Salesforce Partners, it is a privilege to attend this event where we not only get the chance to have a quiet word with all our contacts in the Foundation (30-40 people maybe), stepping back from the day-to-day concerns that normally leave us little time for lateral thinking, but also because we can be part of defining the future, align ourselves with the strategic objectives of each area and do our bit to shape them.
During the sessions, we learned some interesting new things about Salesforce.org:
Advances in the NonProfit Cloud:
To give two examples, the organisation is set to include native volunteer management and (and this is what really caught our eye) in a relatively near future (but not 2019) will have native payment management solutions (paypal, stripe, direct debit, etc.).
Evolution in the Education Cloud:
We also looked at the way Education Cloud is being rolled out across different markets and how its components are evolving, both Admissions and Engagement or Advancement.
It was heartening to see that Salesforce.org and S4G fully share the “Connected Campus” vision as a “never-ending” path, as there is so much to do and always something to improve on. There are few industries where Salesforce is such a good playbook as it is for Education.
Not surprisingly, the relatively recent Salesforce commitment to HEDA and the education sector (with Education Cloud, Salesforce Advisor Link, etc.) is producing a true revolution in the sector and powering a strong and steady uptake of Salesforce as a CRM platform.
The all-new Philanthropy Cloud
This is a brand new commitment from Salesforce.org
The solution is designed for businesses to seamlessly implement corporate philanthropy solutions where, for example, employees can access intranets to support different causes in line with their interests and everything is managed automatically and transparently to guarantee a positive user experience (with a CMS content management system and integrable with WordPress and means of payment).
It was so great to share this event with Salesforce.org!
There is no better way to be fully aligned than by sharing things and really being a team (what we at S4G call #OneTeam in our Chatter account).
And a huge shout-out to Salesforce.org for helping the organisations looking to improve the world become more efficient and better.
At S4G we work with organisations from all sectors, but a significant percentage of our clients are NGOs and universities, not only in Spain (mainly Madrid and Barcelona, but also the Basque Country and Girona) but the rest of EMEA.
Salesforce is our passion but so too is being able to contribute to building a better world. Working with Salesforce.org we can achieve both!
