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Off the back of Salesforce’s annual in-person event, Dreamforce, we sat down with PwC Australia Alliance leader, Adam Lai, to get the inside scoop on his learnings from San Francisco and explore how we can work together with Salesforce to strengthen our combined ecosystems to create and implement market-leading business innovation solutions for our customers. Check out the full interview below!
Tell me about your experience at Salesforce Dreamforce:
Dreamforce is Salesforce’s premier event for its clients, partners and people. As a long-standing partner of Salesforce, we want to keep up to date with the latest changes to the product suite and services, as well as connect with colleagues and clients undergoing customer-centered transformation to set them up for success. After the turmoil of the last two years, it was amazing to reunite with the Salesforce ‘Ohana’ again and to connect face-to-face with clients from around the world.
What was the theme of Dreamforce 2022?
A big theme this year was exploring the benefits of new developments and current capabilities. In one sentence? The pursuit of doing the right thing and doing it well.
How did PwC show up on the day as a firm?
This year, PwC were Pioneer sponsors. We had fantastic representation from the Asia-Pacific region, with delegates from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, SEAC, Korea and Japan in attendance. During the conference, we created an immersive client experience in our Oasis Lounge at the Children’s Creativity Museum, where we hosted meaningful conversations with over 60 unique clients and explored some of the key challenges they’re facing through the lens of our integrated solution portfolio. It was a great balance - the booth served as a place to relax, touch base and get a bit of a break, but was also an impactful demonstration of our partnership with Salesforce.
You mentioned integrated solutions - are these local or global?
Our integrated solutions are unique PwC owned preconfigured solutions and products that are available to deploy via our global network of firms. We prioritise our investment in these solutions with our global colleagues to ensure that we are learning from one another and sharing best practice IP in different markets. As you can imagine, different integrated solutions offer different points of value, but what they all have in common is the motivation to solve industry-specific challenges for our clients that will future-proof their businesses.
Speaking of innovative solutions, is there anything new and exciting on the Salesforce platform that we should keep an eye on as a firm?
Absolutely, there are a few things. First and foremost, Salesforce Co-CEOs, Marc Benioff and Bret Taylor announced a new product called Salesforce Genie, offering a more personalised and real time customer experience capability, it is also available from today, which is a bonus. Another exciting development is Slack’s new collaboration tools, Slack Canvas and Huddle. The demo that they ran was really exciting, as it gave us a preview of new operating models. Another was the focus on NetZero Cloud and Salesforce’s involvement in 1T.org, a platform pledging to plant 1 trillion trees in support of world reforestation. Finally there was a lot of focus on reimagining platform architectures to help us work better with external encrypting systems - something our Cyber team is very interested in.
If you had to capture 3 highlights from Dreamforce, what would they be?
Number one would be the announcement of exciting product developments offering greater levels of integration that will support us to solve our clients’ most important problems. The second is how wonderful it was to connect with our global colleagues and to feel the energy of the Salesforce ecosystem again. Lastly, Marc Benioff put forward an interesting notion, ‘Shoshin’ the Japanese word for ‘beginners mindset.’ He encouraged us to wake up and start each day with an open mind for what is possible.
What is next for our alliance with Salesforce?
Our continued investment in the Salesforce alliance is critically important in supporting our clients transform their customer experience and deliver upon their aspirations. We will continue to invest in industry and functional capabilities to unlock the value of capabilities like NetZero. PwC is really uniquely placed in that we bring together our leading technology strategy, design and delivery capability with our industry, functional and business transformation capability.
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Contact us
Adam Lai
Managing Partner, Sydney and pearls Program Lead, PwC Australia
Tel: +61 400 435 621
