Alberto Ojedo

There are few success stories among the ones we discuss here with such a special component like Alberto Ojeda’s. He was an  instructor for ISDI CRM and he is now developing his professional activity at Salesforce. Attracted by its community, its philosophy and its culture, he set out to work for this company as a solutions architect.

In this interview, Alberto tells us which are the learning rules of the customizable software and the impact of this technology over companies’ digital transformation.

In the same way that many doors were opened to him thanks to his knowledge in Salesforce, Alberto encourages those interested in specializing in this matter to therefore benefit from the growing job opportunities that are emerging nowadays.

Tell us, Alberto: what was your experience like as a trainer at ISDI CRM?

It has been a brief experience but, at the same time, very intense, which has brought me a totally different personal and professional growth. The students from the MMA, as well as ones from the Salesforce official training, are very demanding. When someone invests in education, they are hoping to obtain quality, so for me, as an instructor, I have to give the best of myself.

Regarding this, ISDI plays a differential role providing an atmosphere of support and confidence in which you can feel comfortable and concentrate on the teaching.

I think it is a pride and a privilege to be able to say that I have taught at the benchmark digital transformation business school in Spain.

What does it mean to you to be a part of the Salesforce community?

From my point of view, one of the achievements of Salesforce as a company resides on the community that has been built around it. The philosophy and the culture of this community encourages more people to access this technology, making it possible to have a self-learning and free training, and resolve queries in a simple and accurate way.

In addition, it causes a feeling of belonging to a group that goes beyond the limits of the company itself, a community where people from different organizations, suppliers, clients, etcetera, consider themselves partners. Just by attending any of the meetups that are organized, you can see that this is indeed the case.

Why would you recommend an initiation in the Salesforce ecosystem?

I would recommend an initiation in this ecosystem to anyone interested in making a drastic change in their career. Whether it is to do something new or different, or to keep on growing, Salesforce is currently going through a big expansion in Spain, where Salesforce itself, and their partners, are experiencing a significant growth every year.

More and more customers are betting on this technology for their digital transformation, which helps them grow. The impact of this growth has two dimensions: the demand for Salesforce professionals is increasing, and on the other hand, it is diversifying. Until not long ago, clients demanded “techno-functional” profiles, that is, professionals who could do a little bit of everything.

Now demand is specializing, and with the current explosion of Salesforce implementation projects support technicians are needed, alongside with administrators, architects and other profiles. So whether it is because you want to climb the corporate ladder, or because you want to continue delving into your technical or functional capabilities, Salesforce offers a highly valued and competitive market.

Now that you are part of this company, which doors do you think were opened to you because of your Salesforce knowledge?

 Before redirecting my career towards Salesforce, I was working in backend development for insurance registrations. I was highly specialized, and those were technologies which had less and less market share.

Recycling towards Salesforce meant to me turning the situation around and having access to a much more dynamic job market. New paths that were closed to me until that moment were opened and I had to take decisions that were difficult on one hand, but on the other were totally privileged, like choosing if I would like to work for a consulting firm, for the end client or a startup.

After doing Salesforce projects for a couple of years, I was so seduced by its community, its philosophy and its culture, that I set myself a career goal of becoming an architect within 5 years.

What do you value most in your Salesforce years and what the future holds?

I think I made very good decisions in those new paths that were being opened for me, because in the end I was presented with the opportunity to work as a Salesforce architect much ahead of schedule.

Now that I have been working for almost a year at Salesforce, I think I took the best of decisions reorienting my professional career towards its technology, and furthermore, I think it is still a very good moment for all those wishing to do the same.

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Why do you consider it advisable to train in the Salesforce technology today?

Salesforce is present in most of the Ibex 35 companies to this date. And because of its subscription model, any company of any size can have access to the same technology that big Spanish companies have for a fraction of that price. It means that wherever you go, with a high degree of probability, you will find Salesforce.

Either because you are a business user, or because you are a developer, incorporating Salesforce skills into your profile makes you aligned with today’s technology and makes your profile more competitive. In Salesforce’s free training portal, Trailhead, you can find information of every kind. For example, a director from a call center can discover the range of possibilities that Salesforce offers you to optimize operating costs and improve the customer experience.

If someone wanted to start their Salesforce training, what advice would you give them?

Precisely because of my recent adventure in ISDI as a Salesforce trainer, I often find myself giving advice in this regard.

Salesforce is not a traditional software but what is called “software as a service” (SaaS), customizable through its platform.

This implies that rules to build a solution can be different. Regarding this matter, my recommendation is to “walk, run and fly”: first you should learn which are the access and security mechanisms and basic configurations, then master the automatization under code capacities, and lastly create applications using code. By doing so you can learn to differentiate which solution is applicable to each circumstance in order to get the most out of the platform and make robust and scalable applications.

Secondly, regarding my learning process, I am a self-taught learner. I like consuming content at my own pace and my curiosity provides me with the needed fuel to keep on learning new skills. For people with a similar style of learning I recommend Trailhead, the free training Salesforce platform, where both those who are taking their first steps, and experts who have been in this ecosystem for a decade, will find guided itineraries through which new skills are acquired in a dynamic and sometimes even practical way.

For all those other people who need guidance, backing, or even a classroom where they need to use all five senses, my recommendation will always be to attend the official Salesforce training. From my experience I can guarantee that an official Salesforce training like the ones imparted at ISDI, in exclusive for Spain, it is a wise investment. That is because the content of the training course is continually updated by Salesforce on an official basis, and also the level required to become an official instructor makes the later quality of the course excellent.