Recently , I had the pleasure of meeting — albeit virtually — John Kelleher , the Area Vice President of Enterprise Sales UK , at Salesforce . The leading VP took the Supply Chain Digital hot seat and openly discussed Salesforce ’ s business model , the company ’ s partnership with IMI Critical Engineering , and the ways that digital transformation has affected global supply chain networks .

“ Back in ‘ 99 , Salesforce was one of the pioneering companies that took cloud-based technologies into businesses . Our initial area of capability was focussed on CRM , Customer Relationship Management , where we supported our customers to establish a customercentric approach to their business models , enabling them to better connect to their customers and visibility across their sales processes . Fast forward twenty years and Salesforce has built a complete 360-degree suite that has extended the capabilities of classic CRM into customer service , marketing , and eCommerce — both B2C and B2B .” More recently Salesforce has made major acquisitions in the areas of integration and analytics with the respective acquisitions of Mulesoft and Tableau . Both maqui brands , they are enabling us to support customers maximise their existing technology investments and optimise cross-functional processes , whilst maintaining customer-centricity .

On Salesforce ’ s partnership with IMI Critical Engineering , John was willing to share his insight . “[ Salesforce has ] got a long-standing relationship with IMI . Whilst our initial engagement was around core CRM , we have built a richer 360-degree relationship with them and now support other areas of capability and are working closely with IMI to extend the relationship further . IMI continues to develop capabilities on the Salesforce platform , and we are working with them on key strategic pillars such as Customer Satisfaction and Commercial excellence to support IMI ’ s sales and customer services pre-and-post sale .” End-to-end , if you like .

John added that “ The relationship is very much based on traditional Salesforce CRM . The reliability is there , and the partnership continues to grow , which suggests we ’ re delivering value for IMI and how they manage their processes . Due to COVID-19 , reps that were out on the street – as it were – have been brought in-house easily because their front office estate is built on cloud-based capabilities like Salesforce . The company was able to adapt to the new sales environment far quicker than they would have , had they been constrained by more on-premise , in-agile technologies . So it ’ s a traditional starting point , but with modern technology , we ’ ve been able to help IMI Critical Engineering adapt quickly in a highly volatile world .”