Simplus’ very own Vanessa Grant, Senior Consultant, will be speaking on October 29th at Tahoe’ Dreamin’! Vanessa is an accomplished consulting professional with over 15 certifications across Salesforce, Conga, DocuSign, and Scrum. We took a moment to chat with Vanessa and learn more about her background, her journey within the Salesforce ecosystem, and what she’s most excited to share during this upcoming speaking engagement.

 

Tell us a little bit about your own professional background?

I started my career out in business operations at a mid-size SaaS organization. One of my main responsibilities had always been to oversee the CRM. After disappointing runs with Saleslogix, Goldmine, and SugarCRM, I discovered Salesforce in 2010 and fell in love. In 2019, I pivoted into consulting and dedicated myself to working exclusively on Salesforce projects. I’ve since then mostly worked as a Business Analyst or Solution Architect on enterprise-level Sales Cloud initiatives. Coming up in operations, I am driven by a desire to help people—and Salesforce helps me make people’s jobs easier every day. What I also love about Salesforce is the community (the “Ohana”) surrounding it and the culture of giving back. I’ve been a Trailhead Mentor since last year and I love supporting events like Tahoe Dreamin’. Salesforce for everyone!

 

How were you selected for this speaking session?

I’ve been making a conscious effort to submit for more speaking sessions since I am terrified of public speaking. This will be my first in-person speaking engagement. The only way to get over a fear is to do more of what you’re afraid of! When the call for speakers went out, I was considering a topic when I received a message from Tracy Greene asking if I’d like to do a session together. Once we met, we discovered a mutual passion for UX in Salesforce work. I think that passion came through in our submission. It also didn’t hurt that the Salesforce User Experience Designer certification came out in June, so UX is a hot topic right now. There is a real push from Salesforce (and ME!) to make quality UX part of every Salesforce project. I would love to see us all designing solutions for people rather than business requirements.

Tracy and I were thrilled to find out that our session, “Avoiding Design Debt and User Frustration,” had been selected. I think something like six percent of the submissions were chosen which makes it even more of an honor. I am terrified to speak, but so looking forward to it.

 

What’s the session going to focus on and who is your co-presenter?

In our session, we intend to demonstrate the importance of good UX and share best practices to avoid “design debt” and increase user adoption (and lower user frustration!). We also plan on touching on the new Salesforce User Experience Designer Certification and the reasons for companies to invest in helping their Salesforce professionals learn how to design. Adam Doti, VP, and Principal Design Architect at Salesforce (and who also helped create the User Experience Designer certification) and Daniel Peter, Salesforce Practice Lead at Robots and Pencils, will be doing the keynote at Tahoe Dreamin’, so I am glad we’ll be helping to drive the message home about the importance of the user experience and some of the cool things you can do with Salesforce to make it better. Ultimately, what’s the point of creating something if your users don’t like it?

I am so excited to share the stage with Tracy Greene, Salesforce Solution Architect at Zenify. Besides their top-notch technical chops, I couldn’t ask for a better, warmer person to make me feel at ease on stage. So glad to have a friend up there to do this with me.

 

What bit of information are you most excited to share through this session?

When I started consulting, I ended up creating my own “Sales Cloud UI checklist” to remind myself of the major things to review at the end of a project to ensure a smooth user experience. I’m looking forward to sharing that with the audience. As important as the “why” is when it comes to design, I think some folks just respond better to a straightforward to-do list.

 

Who is the ideal audience for your session?

Ideally, consultants, admins, superusers, architects… But having taken on BA duties for a lot of my career, I also love the idea of BAs getting more involved in Salesforce UX. As BAs, I think we have a responsibility to advocate for end users when it comes to Salesforce solution building since user adoption is such an important part of our job. Would love to see some BAs in the audience!

 

In five words, tell us why people should tune in:

To see if I faint.
The more serious answer? Your users will thank you!

 

 

You can register for Tahoe Dreamin’ and see Vanessa’s session live here!