Just the other day, I overheard a client from a recruitment agency say, “There’s so much change going on out there, you need to be psychic to get ahead of it. If there was a way of employing a pre-cog, I’d do it.”
For a moment, I thought that was a strange reference. In the 2002 Spielberg movie, Minority Report, the pre-cogs were strange, pale psychics living in what looked like a saline solution wired up to a huge computer. Their ability to see ‘future crimes’ meant they could alert law enforcement so that the cops could arrest would-be perpetrators before they committed any crime. It’s a great idea. But, of course, pure science fiction.
Only, maybe it isn’t. What that recruiter was wishing for exists. No, Salesforce doesn’t have a team of pre-cogs in a secret facility somewhere (at least not to my knowledge), but we do have the power to unlock the future (or at least some of it) from data. Big data. Rich data. In the talent and business services sectors of the economy it’s the key to delivering insights. It enables us to serve our clients so they can better serve their clients. It’s also the key to digitally transforming organisations so they can focus on people – their needs, aspirations, skills, and, of course, talents.
Think beyond CRM
But what’s that got to do with Salesforce? We’re just in the business of CRM, aren’t we? That mechanical database which tracks contacts and all that stuff, right? Sure, we do all that, but we also do so much more. Simply, Salesforce is a platform. It’s an entire digital ecosystem. And it was deliberately built that way from the start. Yes, the brand is known for its expertise in CRM, (we’re probably the name that defines the whole concept) but we actually offer the ability to gather, integrate, and yield insights from huge volumes of data. That’s our pre-cog: the data. Call it ‘big data’ if you want. I like to say it’s ‘total data’ – the data that shows you what’s happened, what’s happening, and what might happen in the future (that’s the precog bit).
So, forget the mechanical definition of CRM. Go beyond the image of spreadsheets and columns of figures and look at the data as people, ideas, possibilities, and new products and services. That, in the end, is what the data should reveal; the things you can do better and the things you can do more of.
Data thrives through emerging technologies
Salesforce’s platform helps you free your people from routine tasks. As one leading recruiter (Graham Halewood, BMS Performance) put it in one of our podcasts, “Salesforce has helped us do much less micromanagement, freeing us up to help our customers more.” The Salesforce platform is enabling his company to contribute to solving the talent shortage that his customers are experiencing right now. It’s the result of a judicious combination of data and automation.
Again, the fact that Salesforce is a platform is important. We enable you to leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to free your employees to focus on serving clients. That means they can focus their talents where it matters most – with people. The tech also makes hybrid working more fluid, effective and rewarding. That, in turn, helps your people balance their working and personal lives.
So, to wrap up the Minority Report analogy, think of our platform as a precog. It leverages data (internal and external) to make you psychic (almost). To see more, go deeper, move faster. Liberate people from the mundane. Unlock talent so that your people (and your business) can thrive on ideas and drive innovation. It’s all on our platform. You just have to think about Salesforce in a different way.
If you’d like to know more about how we can help you know more – contact me directly Richard Metcalfe
Blazing Business Trails
Listen to the Podcast here.
