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What I enjoy about working in this industry right now is that at last IT really is the art of the possible. For so long, the CIO's role was about "keeping the lights on". Primarily concerned with putting out fires and fixing problems, IT was rarely able to deliver game changing value back to the business. Even when it was able to deliver it was rarely done quickly. As it's often described, IT was in the business of "no"

But after almost 20 years in the industry, I am enjoying my work more than ever! For so long meetings with customers were about promising the future while apologising for the present. Now, the two are the same. The future is possible right now in the present. More importantly, we can show the customer right there, right then, what those possibilities look like. Not a demo. Not "markitecture". Reality.

Software projects are renowned for blowing out in time or in cost. They have tended to take too long and are often superseded by the time they are delivered. The longer they blow out the more likely it is that key project team members move on, budgets are slashed or objectives change. Most IT projects cannot keep pace with the rapidly evolving digital landscape.

But the latest cloud development platforms - like Force.com, Heroku, Google or IBM Bluemix to name a few - mean that new applications or integrations can be spun up in real time to address today's needs. We have been using this model [infographic below] to help customers understand the process.

CIOs are used to being told by software vendors what is possible, but their next question is usually "what next?" I love the fact that when we meet customers now, since I moved to Salesforce earlier this year, the answer to that question is to get out the laptop, show real demos or even to start building right then and there! The professional fulfilment I get, and my team gets, is tremendous.

Today organisations are facing intense challenges to transform their business to address the digital opportunity ahead of their competition. This is what is keeping CIOs awake, not how to keep the lights on. The kind of solutions and applications we are working through with customers are solving these problems with immediate effect. CIOs can leave our workshops and tell the CEO "we've done it!" These new products and services can be in market within weeks, or days even. It is enabling the phrase ‘fail fast’, a phrase becoming ever more ubiquitous thanks to the Lean Startup movement, a reality. This makes IT not just the art of the possible, but the business of "NOW". There is no such word as "can't". This is career changing for some of the people I am meeting with. It is what we are calling the "Unfair Advantage" and why we see ourselves at Salesforce as delivering a "customer success platform".

Where the power really lies is in the "lean" nature of this model. Change doesn't involve the usual "rip and replace" disruption the industry used to have to manage. Instead new workflows or processes can be spun up in minutes and integrated into the back end easily and simply to leverage the most valuable aspects of existing investments. Iterative change is easy and so new applications can be tested in our "sand pit" environments and adapted so they can hit the market fully fit-for-purpose. Start-ups get this but larger corporates struggle with it. The challenge is no longer technological change but organisational change. Salesforce, and our global ecosystem of Partners, can help customers with that because of our global experience delivering this kind of change.  We often say that once the ‘transformation engine’ that our Platform delivers is put in place then the actual business problem becomes distilling all of the ideas clients as the possibilities are endless.

Our approach to working through the ‘art of the possible’ with clients is tried and tested, the key difference for us is that the Salesforce Platform allows the work to turn ‘possible’ in to ‘real’ to happen immediately.  

The infographic below sums up our approach and beliefs.  We would love to come and work through it with you and help you work at startup speed.

Learn more about the Salesforce1 Platform