I’m Michael Krigsman, an industry analyst and the host of CxOTalk.
I’m in Las Vegas at the FinancialForce user event, Community Live 2017.
And I’m speaking with Tyler Gau, Citizen Developer, with Cincinnati Bell.
Hey, Tyler!
How are you doing?
I’m doing well!
Thank you for having me.
So, we’re not going to drill down now into the fact that you speak Ancient Greek.
And Latin.
I don’t want to leave out Latin.
Yes.
Let us not.
But tell us, what’s a Citizen Developer?
So, as a Citizen Developer, I am an employee on the business side of our company who does
development work in our tool.
So, I’m not part of IT, but I do with IT to get solutions that make the most sense
for our users.
And I do have some knowledge of the business, and my expertise is more in the tool.
So, I can make sure that the solution meets the needs of our users a little bit quicker
than we could buy one through the typical IT model.
And the fact that you report through the business really demonstrates the commitment that the
organization has to understand what users require and fulfill those needs.
Mhmm.
Absolutely.
So, that operation side of our business is important.
And, the fact that they put that on the business side, I think, helps to show how much they
want our business to influence what’s happening in their tool.
Now, you’re very involved with professional services automation.
That’s correct.
And share with us what your role in that is.
So, I was brought onto Cincinnati Bell as an administrator for our PSA application with
FinancialForce.
And, through that, I sort of turn into a developer and began writing the code above and beyond
doing reports and things that an administrator might do.
And so, that's really my role with the application.
I do work with the business.
My manager takes requirements from the business, and we work together to design solutions that
meet the needs of the business.
And so, that's what I focus on every day.
And if we drill down into professional services automation, can you describe what are the
goals of PSA?
Sure.
Our overall goal is to be able to seamlessly pass a sale all the way through execution
in the same tool.
So when we implement it, it’s important that we started with the Salesforce CRM, and
went through something that could go from a salesperson.
It could be quoted.
It could then go to the project management team, and be executed for our customers.
It helps streamline things so that we do our work quickly, that we have our data all living
in the same environment.
It provides good visibility both to our upper management and to our sales and project teams.
So, a salesperson might be able to see the project that they’ve sold and better manage
their relationships with their customers the same way that our project managers will be
able to see that they might have a project for an installation coming up soon.
They have better visibility into planning their resources out.
So, it sounds like these tools are really the heart and soul of your operations.
Absolutely.
They really help to create some collaboration between these different groups.
Because they’re all living out of the same environment, it really allows them to get
everything they need from one spot.
And they’re sharing one common body of data.
Yes, this is one organization and inside of it live many tools.
But when we talk about the services economy, which of course, has been the theme of this
conference, it seems that having a common set of data is really a requirement.
That idea that we don't own a server that hosts all of this data, all of our data is
now in the cloud.
All of the data is accessible wherever.
We don't have to be limited to being on a network somewhere.
We can use our mobile phones and go out and use the Salesforce mobile app to log an opportunity
or to log our time card, or an expense.
The idea that we can go and sell anywhere, we can go and work on projects and update
projects anywhere, there's a huge part of selling faster in that new services economy
where we're really providing this service and we're not tied down with just hardware.
It sounds like your users have very high expectations of you.
I think that this has really enabled them, [for] our implementation of this tool, has
really enabled them to ask for more and rethink the way that they are conducting their business
processes.
They see that we can automate more things.
They see that we can make this easier on them, reduce that operations time that they have
through automation, and really allow them to get out and be on the field more and not
spend so much time going through manual processes.
So, you roll out new capabilities, and then they see what’s possible.
Absolutely.
So, they come back to you, and they say, "Hey, can you now do this or that?"
Absolutely!
And we have a list of enhancements that are over hundreds of items long.
And, every time we turn something out, we seem to come back with three or four more
items on that list.
And it's really great.
It shows that they are thinking critically about their processes, about how they do their
jobs and thinking about the possibilities that they have and how they can accomplish
more.
It’s great to have that kind of relationship with your users.
Absolutely!
And I think being in the business is critical for that, where they might not get that in
a typical IT business silo.
That’s one of the challenges of traditional IT.
Mhmm.
Of course!
Yeah!
So, we’re at the FinancialForce user event.
What are you doing with FinancialForce?
So, we have our professional services tool that we're using through FinancialForce, and
we're also rolling out revenue management, the revenue recognition.
We're a publicly-traded company so that the new revenue recognition rolls will be rolling
out this December.
So, before that, we have to roll out our revenue recognition tool.
Why is this so important?
One, it's a rule that we have to have it.
And, it's important that we're using FinancialForce's tool specifically because it is living in
that Force.com platform, so it's living in the same location as our project data; as
our sales data.
So, we [can] not just see that we have a project, but we can also see the margins on the items
that we're selling, and how those are distributed, so it allows us to have better insight into
those things.
And it sounds like revenue recognition is so important for your business, for compliance
purposes, but probably also to understand how your business is functioning.
Absolutely!
Part of those rules is [to understand] the margins at which you're selling different
products in a specific deal.
So, understanding that distribution is important for our company.
Tyler Gau, Citizen Developer, thank you so much!
Thank you so much, Michael!
I appreciate it.
But there is one last thing.
Do you really speak Ancient Greek and Latin?
I do.
What would you like me to say?
Say goodbye!
Valēte omnes!