Salesforce exec sheds light on ‘Change Management’ theory

Change is the only constant, they say. As corporations adapt to new technologies, the desires from their customers, or even external factors like a global health crisis, mean it has become more important than ever for companies to remain agile and flexible for when things need to pivot in a new direction.

Salesforce, the global CRM software and cloud computing solution, needs to listen not just to its customers, but to the millions of customers’ customers whose expectations might change at a moment’s notice. Itai Margalit, the company’s new Area Vice President of Sales, joined CTech to discuss some of the ways that digital transformation can impact a variety of enterprises and the industry as a whole.

Itai Margalit, the company’s new Area Vice President of Sales

“Some people, I think, mix digital transformation with technology only,” Margalit said. “Absolutely, technology has a lot to do with that, but should any company want to go through a digital transformation process… to invest their good money into technology only, they will probably only achieve very little, if anything at all.”

Margalit argues that digital transformation, somewhat of a buzzword in the industry until only recently, actually exists under the umbrella term Change Management. Described as a systematic approach to the transition of an organization's goals or technologies, Change Management encompasses much more than the updating of technology.

“Digital transformation is actually a collaboration of processes, of leadership, of collaboration, and many other elements, sometimes it comes to the state of mind and organizational behavior,” Margalit continued. “If it comes together with the right technology, then you have really good ingredients to perform most probably a good and productive journey of digital transformation.”

Margalit joined Salesforce in August 2021, and revealed to CTech that he had used the platform in five of his previous companies, four of which he was part of the direct implementation. Today, Salesforce is an industry leader in CRM tools for companies across the world and in a variety of industries. “I can’t think of any customer, whether from size point or industry point of view, that we are not serving or potentially can serve,” he told CTech.

With that potential comes the necessity to be agile in the face of change. As millions were sent to work from home during the pandemic, myriad industries experienced digital transformation in the truest sense: technology evolved, work hours blurred with personal time, and cybersecurity concerns exploded. One way that the world has changed in recent years is the expansion of tools in which customers can communicate with companies - and in turn, how companies can manage the data they have on their client base.

It is this example that Margalit uses to explore what makes digital transformation - and in turn, Change Management - so vital in the early years of the 2020s. It isn’t just making sure companies can handle the change from a technology level, but it expands to how companies interact with the clients and collect the data they might get from a variety of data points, such as social media posts, instant messaging chats, calls, or marketing efforts. The ability to streamline these data points into one place is something Margalit calls creating ‘a single source of truth.’

“If you want to have one single source of truth about your customer, one thing you need to do as part of your change management is actually to make sure that the data regardless of who the user is, will come from the single source,” he explained.

Salesforce is a prominent player in the CRM space today and adopts strategies to ensure it remains so in the future. Notably, last year the company completed its acquisition of Slack for almost $28 billion in order to help it complete its vision of Customer 360 and streamline its single source of truth for customers and its customers’ customers. Customer 360 is the company’s suite that helps manage data in its entirety - achieved through its practice of change management and its ability to anticipate customers’ needs well into the future.

“Not only do we need to keep up, but we also need to lead,” Margalit concluded. “Because Salesforce has always been a leader and we intend to do everything we can to continue being in a leadership position. We invested a lot in knowing what is not relevant today but what is going to be relevant tomorrow and in years to come.”