Salesforce CIO Juan Perez on transforming logistics with genAI

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[This transcript was auto-generated.]
Hello, good afternoon and welcome to CIO Leadership Live. I'm your host, Maryfran Johnson, CEO of Maryfran Johnson Media. This video show and podcast is produced with the support of CIO.COM and the Digital Media Division of Foundry, an IDG company. We're streaming live to you right now on LinkedIn and to our CIO channel on YouTube. Our viewers are most cordially invited today to join in the conversation we're about to have by submitting questions of your own right in the chat fields on YouTube or LinkedIn.
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Our editors are watching those chat streams and we'll pass along the best questions for me to pass along to my guest, who today I'm very pleased and honored to have. Visiting us is Juan Perez. He is the executive vice president and CIO of Salesforce. He joined Salesforce in April of 2022 to lead the global I.T. organization and the company's internal digital transformation work.
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Juan is also in charge of integrating new acquisitions across the Salesforce ecosystem and of driving global operational efficiencies across a big array of technologies, everything from analytics and automation and AI to cybersecurity. Salesforce is, of course, well known in our industry. They are a tech industry giant founded in 1999 in San Francisco. The company is now a $33 billion cloud based provider of what is being called the number one AI CRM platform in the world.
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More than 150,000 businesses use Salesforce as customer relationship management products, which are currently holding a nearly 24% share of the entire global CRM market. Now, before he joined Salesforce, Juan was extremely well known in our industry. He was the chief information and engineering officer for UPS, where he managed a $6 billion budget supporting all of the technology and engineering functions at one of the world's largest logistics and package delivery companies.
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Juan spent 32 years of his very impressive career with UPS. He became the CIO in 2015 and he was always a driving force behind the adoption of advanced analytics, AI and many other leading edge technologies, such as virtual reality solutions for driver training. His impressive range of commercial, operational and technological expertise led the Hershey Company to appoint him in 2019 to its public board of directors, where he now chairs the Governance Committee.
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Juan, Welcome. It's wonderful to have you here with us today. Good afternoon, Maryfran. What an honor it is for me to be with you today. And I want to start by thanking you for doing this, for the CIO community, for bringing CIOs technology leaders of many industries, many companies out there to actually share their experiences and their perspectives.
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We all learn from one another, and this is great. And it is really an honor for me to be providing it, because I've never found talking to anyone beyond CIOs to be any more interesting. You all have such great stories to tell. And of all the stories that you've been telling in recent interviews, one I especially enjoyed, the one about your one day retirement.
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You were at UPS for 32 years and you retired. It got announced. You spent 24 whole hours relaxing and kicking back before you started your next huge new role there in Salesforce. I was just wondering, in that 24 hours, did you pick up any new hobbies? I will tell you, it was the greatest day ever. Don't you wish you'd had like a whole week, maybe between huge jobs?
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Well, if I would have had a full week, probably I wouldn't be speaking with you today. Yes. You'd be off somewhere on your yacht, maybe, you know, enjoying your grandchildren? Yes, absolutely. it's great to be here. Yes. Well, let's start out about what was it that enticed you to join Salesforce?
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Even at 33 billion, the company is about a third the size of UPS. So although it doesn't sound like it, you actually went to work for a much smaller company in an entirely different industry. So tell us about what the allure was. Absolutely. Well, first of all, I'm very proud and I had just a phenomenal career with UPS.
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And I feel really fortunate that I spent 32 years of my life working for such a great company, an iconic company that does so much good for for the world. You know, people sometimes don't realize that, you know, moving something from point A to point B may seem like the simplest of things to do, but it's vital and to making sure that everything gets to the right place at the right time, to the right person in the right condition.
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But at scale. So yes, credible problem that requires technology, right? It requires process. It requires engineering. It requires a lot of know how to do it the way that UPS does. So for me to work in that company for all those years and to be able to learn about all those principles and practices was truly an incredible opportunity that I will be forever grateful for.
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Well, and I think during the pandemic, the whole world, suddenly all of us regular people out in the world got very familiar with how important the supply chain was. And that, my goodness, just extend supply chain - they were like the catch words all of a sudden, you know, and you never think about where the the store shelves that's stocking all your toilet paper and your paper towels where that stuff is coming from.
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And you were there during the pandemic and stayed for two years after that by the time you left in 22. Talk about some of the lessons learned in the supply chain and in managing that trend, that transition and through the pandemic, maybe things that you've brought with you to Salesforce today. And that's a really, really good point.
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So to your previous question at the end of the day, you know, Salesforce was looking for for a CIO who had really worked in a company that had a large scale, large scale problems, large scale technology needs, large scale technology modernization, large scale technology transform nation and overall company transformation. And I give Salesforce an enormous amount of credit for wanting to really set up its I.T organization in a way that can actually support incredible growth for the company in the years to come.
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The company has done very well. I was fortunate to come into an organization that had a really solid I.T. group, but now it was time to really be thinking about scalability and the ability to implement technologies to efficiently run the company and truly mature the company into an organization that can provide great technology for our customers, which is what we do as part of being the number one A.I. CRM.
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But simultaneously running the company as a well-oiled machine, which is what UPS does so well. And to your point, you know, I learned so many things during the pandemic, but I learned things that I kind of already knew about UPS. The first thing that I knew was that, my goodness, U.P.S. has just incredible people. But when challenges come about, people truly rally behind those challenges.
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Think about it. When everybody went home, what were they upstairs doing? They were coming to buildings, they were driving their trucks that were making deliveries, they were making sure that all of us continued to live our lives in the best possible way under very difficult circumstances. So I learned about resiliency in the people in the company.
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I also learned about, you know, something that UPS executes so well every year. You know, we're actually UPS is actually in the middle of its peak season now. It's almost Christmas time. Yeah, well, UPS had actually to run Christmas in May. Think about it. Right. Suddenly all these packages start showing up and the organization needed to scale quickly.
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And so I wasn't actually able to see how effectively we scaled to be able to support the needs and the demands of our customers during some very difficult times. And now here at Salesforce, I bring some of those experiences, right, that, you know, when you go through those really difficult circumstances, you come to a company like Salesforce. Now you're in a position to share those experiences to actually help our teams here believe that they can do anything when it comes to supporting technology for the enterprise and also being in a position to scale rapidly to support great growth.
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It's exciting. Well, and I know in previous interviews that I've read that you've done or in times that we've talked in the past, the word integrity of the employee, the integrity of the company and the company culture often came up. I mean, the same is true of our mutual friend Rob Carter at FedEx. You know, there are people, especially if you've spent 32 years with the company, That's because, you know, you're a lifer for a reason.
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It's just there's something about the company that really resonates with you. You went, though, from UPS to a tech industry company. And in general, I wouldn't say the tech industry companies are known for that, for keeping people engaged and for having cultures that are so supportive. What did you what were your concerns about that coming into Salesforce and what did you find when you got there about what the culture was like and whether you could expect and find that same level of devotion to the mission that you had at UPS?
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Well, what a great question, Maryfran. I will tell you that I had a preview into Salesforce's culture when I was a customer of Salesforce at UPS. Okay. And, you know, I had an opportunity to interact with people who truly demonstrated to me how much they appreciated and believed in the customers success. They truly prioritized me as a customer.
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At least I felt that way in all of my interactions with the company. You know, for the longest time as a CIO, and I'm sure that many CIOs listening here would agree with me. You know, you get exposed to a number of vendors. And, you know, at some point in time, you need to really distinguish between who is a vendor but who's also a partner.
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Partner. Yes, I heard that lot. Absolutely the case. And for me, you know, I said the story many times, I probably can count the partners with one hand. Yes. But the vendors are many, right? They show up when they want to sell me something. But, you know, the partners are - they're really looking for, you know, how they can help me be successful in addressing the big problems and issues that we may be facing at any given point.
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I really felt that connection with Salesforce. I felt that they were a partner. And now that I've been in the company for some time, you know, I've come to see how the company truly lives to the full potential of its values. And I give all the credit in the world to the founder of the company, Marc Benioff, who is incredibly passionate about the company, what the company stands for, giving back to the community, supporting the communities that we that we live and work and support every single day.
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And very importantly, making sure that customer success is constantly a top priority. So when I think about the values of Salesforce, they they really align well with the values that I carry throughout 32 years at UPS. Customer success is one, innovation is another one. Trust, which is the number one value for the company right away. Trust is at the top of absolutely everything.
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I think of trust as the whole notion of integrity, and I think which was a huge value is a huge value at UPS. And the second one that I carried in my heart for my entire career was the whole notion of excellence. So the founder of UPS used to talk about integrity and excellence in all we do.
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I believed in that since the first day that I joined UPS over 34 years ago. Now, today I see Salesforce with trust as the top value, customer success as the second one. Those two are just like integrity and excellence, and it's really carried me here well through throughout the almost two years that I've been with the company. Well, good.
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And I want to talk about your set of priorities coming in. But before we move on, you mentioned Marc, and of course, he's one of the very well known figures in our industry, in the tech industry. This is the first time you've been working directly with a company founder, and that is something that has resonated with you.
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Talk a little bit about that, about why what you're learning, working with a company founder in the here and now. You know, you're not just reading a book of his recollections from 1999. He's still there. It is an incredible experience, especially for someone who has taken a company from zero and what the company is today. You know, and Maryfran, I used to say it before, you know, if I would have had a chance to meet someone that that was instrumental in building the company that UPS's today, you know, there were two names that always came to mind.
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One was Jim Casey, the founder of the company back in 97, and the second one was George Smith, who was the founder or the builder of the engineering discipline at UPS. Yeah. And I always wonder how would they describe, you know, what they did, how they lived their lives, how they lived their values in the company to build the company that UPS is today, the massive company, you know, 500,000 employees all around the world doing amazing things to support customers.
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Well, now I get a chance to see that firsthand here with with Marc Benioff and Salesforce. And I have seen some really interesting characteristics in him that I believe were the same ones that Jim Casey carried when he built UPS to the company that it is today. The first one is just incredible passion for the company. I mean, Marc is incredibly passionate about what Salesforce does, what Salesforce stands for, and what Salesforce brings to its customers.
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The second one is this constant drive for innovation, for bringing the next better solution. So that the customers can get what they need and get the right solution to support solving their problems. The next one is just this incredible desire to help the people in the company to help every employee be successful. Okay. I feel that Jim Casey at UPS, felt that way, that the UPS core to his success and he wanted them to be successful in all they did.
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And the last one that I would say, it's common also in my two experiences with these two great companies, is this drive towards helping customers succeed and putting always the customer first as you're making business decisions every day. Yeah. Okay, fair enough. Well, let's now let's pivot over to some of those priorities that they didn't bring you in just to be a figurehead.
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They actually had work for you to do there. And some of the things you had mentioned was helping the company modernize its priorities is making it more relevant at Salesforce. And when we were talking earlier and you were listing some of those bullet points for me that one brought me up a little short, making IT relevant.
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How could IT not be incredibly relevant at a company that is essentially an IT product? So talk to me about what you found when you got there. For an I.T. department that because again, the focus on customers does not necessarily mean you're looking into the best way to run the technology organization. And of course, they've been doing a good enough job.
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But what did you find that needed to be changed or upgraded in terms of giving it more of a strategic role in Salesforce as it grows? Absolutely. It's really interesting because I came from a company where, you know, I played a vital role in running the company every single day. You know, today I would very easily say that, you know, a package cannot be delivered without technology.
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It's not that simple, right? So obviously, technology plays an important role in the company. You know, now, almost two years after I left, UPS continues to do amazing things in creating and building technology solutions to support the customers as well. Here at Salesforce was really fascinating to me to be in a technology company, although I always believe that UPS was truly a technology company.
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The I.T. Department was the technology provider, right? The technology field. Yeah. Well, here at Salesforce, we have an entire group that does just a phenomenal job building technology to support our customers. Yeah. You know, the the sales cloud product, the service cloud product, the support for Tableau and Slack and Commerce Cloud. I mean, that's what we sell to our customers and it has to be a really good product since our customers are hugely dependent on the technologies that Salesforce puts in front of them.
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So I came to to an organization where that, in my view and rightfully so, has been the priority for the 25 years of the company has been around. That needed to be the case. But coming in, I think I saw it kind of like it's one of those things that has to be there, right? Sure. And not necessarily viewed as a strategic asset, to your point.
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Right. Yeah. So I really have been very diligent at trying to really show that IT we call it business technology, Your Salesforce, which I love the term, by the way. Good. Okay. That that business technology is relevant. It's important. It should be viewed as a strategic asset. And by the way, that business technology has an incredibly important mission to be customer zero for Salesforce.
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Okay. Where all the products and technologies that Salesforce builds and delivers, Maryfran, are used by Salesforce I.T. to support the organization. It's a beautiful model and I think it's one that will continue to evolve and grow so that we can use our technologies to make better products for our customers. Okay. And that that serving as customer zero is, it's seems like almost a natural state for an I.T organization at a world renowned tech vendor.
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When you look back over the last year and a half, what have you accomplished toward that goal so far? And what are your next steps in that? You know, I'll tell you a couple of things that I think have been really important, and I sure hope that this continues for the years to come. One is that the CIO role is now considered one of the critical roles in the company.
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Another one is the fact that the CIO role is a member of the executive leadership team of the organization. That means that the CIO truly has a seat at the table. Yes. What we've also been able to do is expand the role of the CIO, which I believe that CIOs, you know, sometimes we think about CIO of the technology folks, right?
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But I truly believe I've always felt this way by the way, Maryfran, that first and foremost, CIOs are business leaders. Yes. And then right after that is the technology leadership that CIOs bring to the table will now see the CIO at Salesforce has that seat at the table, but also the role has expanded the data and analytics functioning.
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So under the CIO umbrella in the company. The data for a company like Salesforce is as important as data for any company. That is actually, you know, folks who are listening to the call today. Data is critical in every single company or organization out there. We've expanded the role so that the CIO also has some business responsibilities, like running global business services and and also the CIO organization has been charged with driving operational excellence across the enterprise.
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So if we do those few things well, the business technology, data and analytics, global business services and operational excellence in the organization. My goodness, we're going to generate so much value for Salesforce that I think we're going to be in a really good path for many years to come. Okay. And I remember when we were talking earlier and you said we want to ultimately run all of Salesforce's business on Salesforce.
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And I was surprised that it wasn't already doing that. Is that do you think is that a commonplace finding you think, in any big technology company in the industry where they're their product organizations and they're out there selling products to the entire IT universe? But then I guess I'm thinking of the shoemaker's children, you know, the ones or they don't get the best shoes because, well, that's their job.
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Well, you know, it's interesting, obviously that our products continue to evolve. So as they continue to evolve, it gives us an opportunity to bring those products into our own organization. And, you know, and there are a number of technologies that we're not into. You know, we're not an ERP provider and we have to have an ERP solution.
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We are not a human resource management system provider. So we have to have an H.R. management system for the company. So we have to have both solutions in place and simultaneously, you know, I have the obligation and the responsibility as the CIO of the company to continue to drive the implementation of Salesforce technologies in our company. And I'll give you one example.
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I think you'll appreciate this one could you know, I am really committed to using Slack, which is one of those Salesforce products to run the IT organization. And my team has been very active in building an IT management platform all on Slack and I have this commitment that I have made to myself and to my company that the organization will be managing all of its business on the Slack platform.
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And what does that mean? All communications, incident management, security alerts, Project management, project updates, people related items, approvals of all kinds. All that will flow through our Slack platform and we're getting there. I'm really excited as to where this is going. Interesting. Well, and I know you had mentioned also that essentially the CIO is really a chief product officer.
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I mean, not just in tech industry companies, but pretty much I've had that kind of interview with people in a variety of other industries as well. How do you see your role as that as a chief product officer? Because you have the I.T. backing or the I.T. underpinning for all the product organization under your responsible? Yes.
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So the the actual product that Salesforce builds for our customers is managed under a separate product. Okay. But on the other hand, I mean, you bring up a really good point. And I think, you know, speaking with my fellow CIOs, I think we all carry that that other alternate. I mean, we we actually have many hats that we use at different times.
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You know, we carry the hat of the chief security officer. We carry the hat of the chief information officer. We sometimes have to be the the chief common sense officer. You know, sometimes people will say, hey, you have to be the chief "No" officer because I have to say no to the way certain things get managed. I do think that from time to time we also carry the hat of Chief product officer in the sense that you think about it.
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Maryfran in my IT organization, you know, we manage a large variety of products, products that we used to run the enterprise and that's why, as we transform the entire organization, we paid a lot of attention to refining our product management approach within BP. And today the structure that we use to manage all technology across the BP group is product based.
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And I'm so fortunate to have just such a great and I should I should have said this from the start. You know, as a CIO, I cannot do anything myself. I am supported by just an amazing group of I.T. professionals in my group, and they truly embrace the whole notion of product management, product ownership. And it's really having making a difference in the way we manage acknowledging the group.
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Let's dive into that a little bit more about the structure of the IT organization now versus 2 to 3 years ago. What looks different? What sort of things have you instituted that are unique to the Juan Perez approach to managing a great techno, a business technology function? Tell us about kind of just some of the details of how you have it structured, you know, before of being an I.T. guy.
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I would tell you I'm a process guy. An engineer. And you know, I spent a large a large portion of my career, very private. And, you know, I was an engineer in the company looking for process improvement because at a company like UPS, every second counts, every minute counts, every mile counts.
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You know, I tell the story all the time that, when UPS through technology, by the way, saves a mile driven by UPS drivers in the U.S. across all drivers, one mile a day in the course of a year. I don't know what the number may look like now, but, you know, in the time that I was there, it actually was over $60 million in savings in any given year, one mile, one mile.
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So it's a business of details. And I believe that in technology, as technologists, as CIOs, we manage a business of details. Details matter. Now, details come into play when you're actually looking at an end to end process, you know, and processes. It's so easy to to bypass processes because you think you can do it faster. It's so easy to bypass the details because you don't think very important to get to the outcomes that you're looking for.
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But in the end, processes have a number of inefficiencies, duplication, access. Well, what I have learned from my process management perspectives and of many years now in I.T is that the process matters. And when you manage technology in a way where the management acknowledge those technologies fragmented, when you don't have clear ownership as to who is responsible, accountable, directly, directly accountable for when you don't have clarity, when there's a time of incident, when there's an issue, when there's a problem as to who is going to ultimately respond to the incident, the issue and get it solved, it really causes confusion, it causes delays and it causes negative business outcomes.
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And I am not for any of that. So I would say that, you know, the primary thing that I was focused on this is back in the early days when I started with the with the company, is to do the same thing that I did with UPS, which was let's go through an I.T. transformation effort here. Let's understand where we have duplication of roles, where we don't have clarity of roles, and we have multiple handoffs that create questions, issues, problems, and let's clean that up, because here's one thing I can tell you, and I am convinced about this after all these years I've been in business, what is good today may not be good tomorrow,
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and I certainly hope that the next CIO that takes over my roles and responsibilities here at Salesforce, you know, takes whatever we did and makes it ten times better. Yeah, because in the world that we live in, you know, there's constant change. And if you don't keep improving your processes the way you manage technology, you'll end up in a really ugly place.
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Okay, Well, I know that one of the things you mentioned when I asked you this question as we were getting ready for this interview was that you took a look at the way the Enterprise Architecture group was put together and there was a certain amount of consolidation there. I mean, that sounds right in line with what you just said about how you've got to have what is it the CIOs often call it, the one through two choke, you know, like knowing how to go, who to go through.
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So you have a product, a product model approach inside of the business technology organization. Of course, product support is part of that. I'm sure there's engineering teams. Product managers is the one biggest change that you made when you look back over the last year and a half that is working out really well, or maybe you're still tinkering with it.
00;31;27;16 - 00;31;51;09
You know, you mentioned architecture. I think every CIO on on the call would tell you that, you know, if you want to deploy good technology, you have to have good architecture. Yes. I was really fortunate to work with the most amazing architects at UPS. And here at Salesforce, we just have an incredibly talented group of architects as well.
00;31;51;11 - 00;32;12;21
But you know what I have also learned in that space is that, you know, for you to have really solid architecture is to support the technologies that the company needs. You've got to have appropriate standards. Those standards need to be documented. You have to have appropriate discipline and rigor in your review process so as to how you architect solutions and manage solutions.
00;32;12;23 - 00;32;44;05
The architecture practice has an incredibly important responsibility in my world. I mean, I expect the architects to to talk about security, talked about compliance in our solutions with a I taken such an important role in our company and in many I'm expecting the architects to really learn a lot about A.I. and ask questions and understand how the architecture that we are proposing for our solution is in a position to support AI.
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I expect the architects to talk about data and the approach that we have towards managing data and of course the basic things, right. Resiliency. I definitely want to make sure that architects are challenging capacity, challenging questions related to disaster recovery, business continuity, those kinds of things. So you think about the role that architects play today. It's vital. It's incredibly important.
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The chief architect for Salesforce who does a great job supporting our group, he made a proposal to actually consolidate the entire architecture group into one primary group. There are many ways of doing this, Maryfran, but fortunately for us, we we felt that it was the right time to bring them all into one group so that we could provide appropriate training, appropriate support, appropriate artifacts that they could use in driving architectural decisions and create a community and a practice for architecture.
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I don't know if that would be the way that we do this forever, but it's working well for us today, and I think it's provided some good branding for the well. And see, I remember just a few years ago CIOs had to talk this way about digital transformation, about being able to digitally connect with customers and the sort of things that we all take for granted.
00;34;06;23 - 00;34;36;25
Now, five years ago, the indeed they were creating digital transformation practices and that sort of thing, whereas now it's the ongoing work. So you're right. I mean, it all keeps essentially evolving forward that way. Let's pivot over and talk about you have the other the strategic business and tech priorities going into the new year. How are you prioritizing and focusing on the innovation work?
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For instance, what are are the top three things on your list going into 24 that you want to bring about in the business technology organization? Absolutely. You know, Maryfran, I worked for just a great CIO who opened in many doors for me to really be able to do what I do today. Do you know him?
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Because you met him before and I'm sure you interviewed him as well. Barnes was the CIO for a number of years and I succeeded him. They used to always and this stayed in my mind forever. They've used to always remind us since direct reports that, you know, we were not in the business of technology for technology sake, that every technology decision that we made needed would be towards supporting the company, supporting the company's strategy.
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And I firmly believe in that model. It's worked well for me now for many years, and I think it's critical that we keep that in perspective here at Salesforce. I'm applying the same principle. I want to make sure that we we manage technology in support of our company's strategy and our company's objectives and what our company's strategy is and objectives as well.
00;35;54;27 - 00;36;24;28
We want to continue to provide great products and services to our customers. It plays a key role in being customer zero, but plays a key role in making sure that we, you know, we provide feedback on our products so that we can continue to make them better. And we're also BP plays a key role in implementing the new technologies so that we can try them, test them and create good use cases that our customers can use.
00;36;24;28 - 00;36;47;20
It's the perfect example. We've been implementing a lot across the Enterprise now using Salesforce Solutions for some time, and we got more to do. So that's one that the whole notion of. Customer zero, the next one, Salesforce, of course, wants to continue to scale and grow and provide create more shareholder value. We've got to do that in a number of ways.
00;36;47;20 - 00;37;16;26
We've got to support our business when it comes to selling our solutions. So I want to make sure that we are advocates for technology in front of our customers. That's a priority for me and for the business. And and I also believe that it's critical that we continue to bring in technologies to the company that help us drive more efficiency, more productivity, continue to help us expand the capacity of our people.
00;37;16;28 - 00;37;37;07
Right. You know, the way that I view productivity and efficiency, it's never been really a matter of cutting jobs and any of that. To me, you've got to start with the notion of expanding the capacity of the people that you that you're working with. And I think technology plays a key role in building and creating that capacity expansion.
00;37;37;10 - 00;38;08;04
And think about what I will do. My goodness, you know what I have seen already inside of our company with the whole notion of core pilots embedded in our in our CRM solutions is now people being in a position to use AI to get answers quicker, to have a better understanding of the business and to expand their capacity in the way that they either support customers or sell to our customers or develop technology all three areas.
00;38;08;06 - 00;38;35;22
So I want to do more of that. And of course, you know, I always start with this when I go through the budgeting process, security at the top of the list. We've got to make sure that we continue to build security technology and security solutions. And then the last one that I would say, Maryfran, that goes into the prioritization process is, you know, I truly believe in the notion of research in budget for IT.
00;38;35;24 - 00;39;04;13
It will be really difficult for me to support the company's needs if our own BP house is not in order if we don't have the right platforms, the right technology solutions to support the business. Well, I know I've the idea of running running the business of i.t. I mean, there's that whole technology business organization. I think you may even belong to that group where it's basically about the financing and the way tech budgets are managed and run.
00;39;04;18 - 00;39;30;02
That's where I think CIOs maybe haven't patted themselves on the back enough over the years about their role with when they have their chief financial officer hats on, you know, when they're looking at their own i.t. Budgets like the merciless way that cfos look at the budgets. Right? I love that. Yeah. You know, I would say I think that's a really, really good point that you make.
00;39;30;03 - 00;39;57;02
I think that the CIOs have really built a great discipline in managing budgets. It's a tough it's a tough job. I tell people often that, you know, the CIO job is it's a complicated job in many ways. And in some companies more complex than in others. But overall, it's a really complex role. But I tell people that for me personally, this is just one person's view of the world.
00;39;57;05 - 00;40;16;00
The most difficult part of the CIO job is making sure that you end up with a budget that supports what's most important than the most critical needs of the organization. It's not as easy as it seems, no, and I'd be the first to tell you that it does not seem easy at all even talking to people about it.
00;40;16;00 - 00;40;50;22
It seems enormously complicated, but if you have, you know, if the people that are working for you believe in you, if they're all together on the mission, they have so many good ideas among them, you know, the CIOs that I think that have become legendary in, you know, like in the world of, say, CIO magazine and CIO.com, they are the ones that are truly those business leaders that you mentioned where they get they inspire people to be on board very much the way you have found working directly with the founder of the company to be its own form of education and inspiration.
00;40;50;22 - 00;41;11;17
Right. You would mention to when we talk that you've done more customer engagement in the last year and a half than you would have imagined you were doing. And indeed, compared to the role you had at UPS, of course. Tell us about that when you are out in the field and and you're there and this is a this is a different side of the table for you.
00;41;11;23 - 00;41;38;02
You're not like the CIO of $100 billion package, a company package delivery company. You're the CIO now of one of their vendors, hopefully a vendor partner. And so you're out there meeting with CEOs and with customers. What are you hearing and what are some of the issues that you bring back to work on within Salesforce? Because I'm sure that nobody as much is as friendly as you are.
00;41;38;02 - 00;41;59;20
I'm sure that they do not pull punches when they want to tell you what else you should be doing for them. So tell us about some of those encounters and what you bring back home to Salesforce from it. Absolutely. I'd be happy to. You know, I have to admit that in the early days when, you know, the expectation of this job here at Salesforce is that I will engage with our customers.
00;41;59;25 - 00;42;19;05
And it's a good expectation, by the way. It's a reasonable expectation. But in the early days, my goodness, you know, I never did it to the degree that I do it now. I just this week, by the way, just this week alone, I have met already with three of our customers. And, you know, different discussions, different reasons for those discussions.
00;42;19;05 - 00;42;41;28
But, you know, my gosh, why do I need to do this? It's a distraction. I got plenty of work to do. I got to spend more time on all these other projects that are important for the group. But you know what? Now, almost two years later, I have been so fortunate to connect with so many CEOs in so many industries and many companies.
00;42;42;00 - 00;43;07;14
And it's interesting, most times the conversations start with, you know, they want to hear my perspective on how we're implementing Salesforce. They want to hear how we're going about implementing all their technologies. By the way, they want to hear my my experiences on the things that have worked and how they work. They want to hear what we're doing with AI, but it has never failed.
00;43;07;17 - 00;43;35;20
After every single one of those conversations, I think I have gained more than, you know, personally as a professional, than they have gained from me, quite frankly. You know, I have learned about them as human beings. I have learned from them as professionals, I have learned from them as people, leaders, and they have also given me a lot of perspectives on the problems and the challenges they have.
00;43;35;22 - 00;43;59;18
And it's also given me this view that, you know, some days the CEO job seems a bit lonely right now, especially when you're when there's a problem, something's broken. Everybody's a technologist until something breaks. Yep, yep, yeah. When something's brain is broken, you're looking around and number one, it's right next to you. Yeah, well, who I get to blame for this is what they just.
00;43;59;21 - 00;44;19;00
There's somebody, you know, that I can blame for this. Yes, that's why it can be a lonely job. But what I've come to realize in all this interaction is with many, many, many CEOs, is that, you know, we all have similar problems. No matter what industry you're in, We are all, you know, trying to figure out what are we going to do.
00;44;19;01 - 00;44;40;10
We are all trying to figure out how do we better get value from our partners and our vendors. We are all trying to figure out how do we ensure that the organization is future-proof so that we can be ready for the challenges that will come into our business in the years to come? We are. We are all dealing with data problems.
00;44;40;16 - 00;45;06;06
You know, I have not met one CIO yet, Maryfran, that's told me, Hey, we got the data problem figured out. We are 100% good and managing data. Yeah. So it really has created a forum for us to talk about these issues and you know, to all the fellow CIOs that I have interacted with, I'm incredibly grateful for everything that they have shared with me and everything that I've learned from them.
00;45;06;09 - 00;45;26;11
Yeah, and you got to tell them and don't pull your punches. I really want to hear what you think. I don't think you could get them to pull their punches anyway, actually. Now the other thing we have, we've glanced over the topic a few times, but I know from our previous conversation I was surprised about how very enthusiastic you are about the future.
00;45;26;11 - 00;45;49;27
When we think about future proofing of AI, now that you know and when you first were talking about it, I thought, well, that, you know, there's so many products at Salesforce that have AI embedded. Of course, he's got to talk it up. But you have played with not played with, you have utilized and experimented with almost every leading edge technology, virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain.
00;45;49;27 - 00;46;10;18
You've done all that stuff in your engineering and CIO roles at UPS, but I was sensing a genuinely different level of kind of faith in the future of what A.I. is going to bring to the industry. So I wanted you to talk. Most of your fellow CIOs right now are students of it. They're looking at generative AI.
00;46;10;19 - 00;46;32;03
How is that going to be used in business? Tell us where you are with all that and you have become something of an enthusiast of that over the last two years. So tell us why. I mean, because at the at the base of it, you're still your skeptical self. You're still a CIO who knows that technology use for technology's sake, is a way to spend a lot of money.
00;46;32;06 - 00;46;55;17
So what is it about AI that has you so really enthusiastic about it? You know, it's another great question, Maryfran. I think about it from this perspective. You know, I've been enthusiastic about a lot of technologies, but in the back of my mind I've always said, Wow, I don't know when this is really going to be ready for or big impact, right, for prime time.
00;46;55;19 - 00;47;26;00
You know, I worked with an amazing team of engineers on drone technologies and and drone delivery ups. Just an amazing work in becoming nascent. The first commercial drone delivery company certified to do that. They never really could get expanded beyond some of the basic tests. I'm Sure, that there's still work being done there, but I was excited about that technology and I still think that it's got potential and many users, but it's taken longer than expected.
00;47;26;07 - 00;47;51;20
Same thing happened with autonomous guided vehicles. I think that we're going to see autonomous guided vehicles at some point in time, but all the timelines that I predicted were wrong, you know, every single one of them. And and a lot of it has to do not even with the technology. A lot of that has to do with the the acceptance by the public, the acceptance by government regulations, those kinds of things.
00;47;51;22 - 00;48;17;17
We got to certainly keep that in perspective, even when it comes to A.I. But with I feel I feel a little different because I was here. So it is here, it's around us. There were a you kept saying to me, Gen AI is here to stay and it is here to stay. You sounded a little surprised that you were saying that because remember, my experiences with many of these technologies that you know, I believe in them.
00;48;17;17 - 00;48;51;24
I think they have incredible potential. I think companies need to continue to make investments in some of these new cutting edge technologies to learn from them. But they're not going to be here tomorrow. Generally, I'm generative. A.I. is here today and we can take advantage of generative A.I. in a number of areas of business. You know, I think about business processes, Salesforce, business processes, sales, business processes, back office business processes, logistics, business processes.
00;48;51;26 - 00;49;24;05
And my goodness, I think the numbers of times in which we have created process delays, process bottlenecks because we haven't had the right answer at the right time, because we haven't had the ability to communicate effectively with someone somewhere around the process that now when we have these types of technologies at our disposal, we now can improve on many of those process bottlenecks and process issues that have been built over time because we didn't have those types of capabilities.
00;49;24;07 - 00;49;54;17
I think that they exist now. There will be challenges in implementing this technology. And you know those. Maryfran, I'm sure you've heard about all these different challenges with toxicity. That's why Salesforce has put such a significant emphasis in creating trust layers to to make sure that the outputs that come from these technologies are credible, are real, are protected, you know, But so so that's still something that needs to continue to mature and grow.
00;49;54;19 - 00;50;28;19
I think it's going to be much more complex to embed AI into into processes that don't have technology solutions that are conducive to implementing some of these technologies and new capabilities related to generative AI. I think this is not a sales job, but I will tell you just from where I sit here that technologies like Salesforce is technologies that have A.I. embedded in them and that customers are already using to support a variety of processes now will be much easier for companies to make.
00;50;28;21 - 00;51;02;11
Well, and I've found, too, as I've talked with the last couple of issues of episodes of CIO leadership live, I've had extensive conversations about AI and what it's going to bring or what isn't, and a lot of it comes down to the importance of technology vendors and suppliers who really are able to partner with companies on this because, you know, a small pharmaceutical company based in Boston is not going to be able to develop a whole team of AI specialists I'm thinking of as AI nerds.
00;51;02;11 - 00;51;20;22
But, you know, we don't want to call anybody nerds anymore, although I've always thought it was something of a term of honor for really smart people that know a lot in depth about a particular topic, they're not going to be able to build that up. It's just the same way. Most companies cannot have their own AI experts on staff.
00;51;20;24 - 00;51;47;03
Their own science, their PhDs. You have a whole teams of these folks, right? Absolutely. And we continue to make investments and bring in great people with those capabilities, those skills to keep enhancing our research and development group that's bringing these large language models to reality, these trust layers to reality and these capabilities into our products. So, you know, the investment is there.
00;51;47;03 - 00;52;11;18
The technology is not imaginary, it's there. The uses are there today. We still have to see lots of successes around the use of these technologies. But I think they will come. They will come. It takes time to see some of these things really materialize. You know, I had the fortune to work on on a big project at UPS related to driver routing and optimizing driver routes.
00;52;11;20 - 00;52;39;02
And, you know, we have an incredibly capable and smart team working on these things. It took a long time to really perfect those technologies. The notion of optimizing a route had been in place for decades, but to really do that scale and make it real was really complicated. It took time to get there. I think with a I think it's going to take some time to get to the of the real value realization behind it.
00;52;39;02 - 00;52;58;08
In some cases, in some cases, value realization would be available real quickly. But the important thing here to me and Maryfran, is that I do believe that AI is here to stay well. And so putting yourself back on that other side of the table with the CEOs that are your customers, what are some great questions you would recommend that they all ask?
00;52;58;08 - 00;53;20;27
There are other suppliers, I'm sure that you've been talking about this stuff with them, but there are other suppliers that are talking about all the great A.I. capabilities of their products. What do you recommend? What should they be asking about? Yes, absolutely. Well, let's start with trust, right? Remember, trust is their core value in the company. Yeah. Got to really push that trust discussion.
00;53;20;29 - 00;53;43;12
How do you make sure that the models that you're using that the the the outputs that you're creating generating from generative, I can be trusted. That discussion is critical. And I'm sure that every CIO and listening to the session today, I see that as a top of mind item in their implementation plan. The second one is, you know what?
00;53;43;12 - 00;54;12;10
What business problems are you trying to solve? You know, one of the biggest risks when it comes to these types of technology solutions is that you run 100 pilots all at once. And at the end of the day, you're so deluded that you really don't know what worked and what didn't work. Yeah, I would tell you that in my experience in UPS, you know, there were a few areas in which we put our bets on because we knew that the price was significant.
00;54;12;12 - 00;54;33;19
And, you know, I think that it's important to know where the best benefits will come from and not dilute your resources, your attention into so many pilots that at the end you will not know what works and what doesn't work. The other one that I think it's really important is, you know, understanding how you're going to manage in the enterprise.
00;54;33;22 - 00;55;05;07
You know, we formed an AI council here at Salesforce. It's starting to really in a way, went through the typical typical steps, right? We went through storming, norming, forming. And, you know, we are now really getting into performing a little better. And it's important to have some level of organization around a I believe, you know, I've used this term before and I really am really afraid of the creation of shadow AI in the enterprise.
00;55;05;08 - 00;55;35;07
This is not shadow. It is shadowy AI that's interesting. What is shadowy AI shadow? AI is, you know, people around the enterprise using AI solutions without any level of I hate to use the word, but it's the best word I can think of any level of governance that can ultimately either expose company data or create outputs that can be damaging to the company because there was no governance around any of these.
00;55;35;09 - 00;55;55;20
All of that still needs to be defined and all of that still needs to be figured out. So I think those are important questions to ask. And I do believe to your point, I think you started with this, Maryfran, aligning yourself the right partners. I truly believe that's critical. Yes. Well, and you brought up the wonderful G word governance.
00;55;55;22 - 00;56;22;16
You are the and I want to pivot over in our last remaining few minutes here. I want to talk about what you have learned, how your leadership skills have deepened or expanded in your work on a public board of directors with the Hershey Company. You are the chair of the governance Committee, and that is the committee that is in charge of making sure everything is running well within the board itself.
00;56;22;21 - 00;56;47;13
And so what have you learned being part of that and why should other very busy, full time working CIOs make sure that they look into getting a seat on a public board before they retire? Yes, absolutely. You know, the the person who encouraged me to join a board was the previous CEO. Good for him. So smart and good.
00;56;47;15 - 00;57;25;15
And I will tell you, I will be forever grateful to him. David Anthony, who actually encouraged me to join a board. He felt that it would actually round me as an executive and he would give me a perspective outside the organization, especially after you spent 32 years in the same company, right? Yeah, I will tell you, Maryfran, but first of all, I think that CEOs bring incredible value to the boardroom, not because I'm one of them and I'm on a board, but because I think that the that companies are facing today, they definitely will benefit from the experience and the knowledge that CEOs bring to the table.
00;57;25;17 - 00;57;53;09
And secondly, I think, you know, when you sit on a board, you get a chance to see how a corporation truly works outside of the normal day to day, the things that you run within your company, you see at a higher level how the organization works. And if you happen to be in a for profit business, you actually get a chance to see capitalism in action and actually get to see It's quite a finance education, isn't it?
00;57;53;09 - 00;58;19;24
Yeah, it's phenomenal. It really gives you a chance to see how companies are held accountable, how companies are really driven towards creating value for their shareholders. But you also get a chance to understand how what other stakeholders you have to support beyond just simply the shareholders. And you learn a great deal, but you also provide great value in CEOs and whatever possible.
00;58;19;24 - 00;58;43;11
I encourage CEOs to join a public board, not ten public boards you can know, but at least one could not. Yes, at least one. I did a series of columns for CIO AECOM about this very topic that's I had mentioned our CIO Hall of Fame dinners when we talked previously. Over the years, I would always I would be sitting there and these be a group of CEOs about to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
00;58;43;18 - 00;59;10;16
And I would say, well, what's next? What about after life as a CIO? And to a person, they always said, I'd like to do work on public boards. And what I came to realize over time was that you have to start working on that, on finding that seat, on having the conversation with your CEO, on all of that approach to it way before you get to the point where you retire because you're an operational business executive and that's what boards are looking for.
00;59;10;18 - 00;59;38;22
I agree. And you can think, think about me. Maryfran, I spent most my career in a logistics company. Now I'm in a technology company to now work to work with a company that is in the business of making people happy. And Hershey is a phenomenal company and it's been around for longer than UPS and a company that does so much good and whose objective is to support the children at the Hershey School.
00;59;38;24 - 01;00;00;00
It's just phenomenal to me and I feel just a true honor to be a member of that board. Yes, it does. It has for some for profit companies are just all about for profit. But Hershey's has a wonderful philosophical approach to what they do in terms of giving back to the community and that sort of thing. So I can see how that would be very important to bond.
01;00;00;03 - 01;00;21;06
Thank you so much for joining me today. This was a wonderful chance to talk with you about all the work that you're doing at Salesforce. I guess we never did touch on whether you picked up any hobbies along the way, but you didn't have any parent company time. All right, great. Well, thanks so much. It was great of you to make the time.
01;00;21;06 - 01;00;43;10
And it's been a pleasure having you here today. It was my pleasure and my honor, Maryfran, I wish a great success and I wish great success to all the CIOs that listen to your series, You and me both. Exactly. If you joined us late today, don't worry. You can watch the full episode of my conversation here later on LinkedIn, but also on CIO.com and the CIO YouTube channel.
01;00;43;10 - 01;01;13;04
CIO Leadership Live is available as an audio podcast wherever you find your podcasts, and I really hope you enjoyed today's conversation as much as I did with Juan Perez, the EVP and CIO of Salesforce. Please do take a moment to subscribe to our YouTube channel, CIO's YouTube channel, where you can find more than 100 episodes of CIO Leadership Live and interviews of similar quality to the one that we had here today.
01;01;13;07 - 01;01;36;06
I'll be back with you in January with a whole new slate of great conversations coming in 2024 with world class CIOs and technology leaders. Thanks so much for joining us today and have a wonderful holiday.