Life at the top - becoming a Salesforce Celebrity

In the Salesforce world, Rudi Khoury is kind of a Rockstar. 

Born into a family of entrepreneurs, Rudi was given insight into the inner workings of running a business from a young age. This early exposure gave him the desire to learn how to run a great company, from both a financial leadership perspective. 

After beginning as a financial controller and working his way up in the company, Rudi is now the Executive Vice President of Marketing & Digital Transformation at Fisher & Paykel. 

He describes that his big break was when he was given the opportunity to lead a customer experience change. “Change isn’t just digital. It’s the entire business.”

Rudi was tasked with transforming the people, processes, and obviously the technology at Fisher and Paykel to create a customer and people centric business. His success is marked by his role as keynote speaker at the 2020 Salesforce Australian and New Zealand world tour.

Although it is a long to the top if you want to rock and roll, Rudi certainly got there. From humble beginnings which began with small platform investments, Rudi lead Fisher and Paykel to transform its site globally onto Salesforce’s suite of digital products to become a multi-cloud platform.

He reveals that one of the keys to his success was forging a strong relationship with his vendor and what being at level 4 does for a client.

“We have done some great stuff together. We have been apart of Beta testing new capabilities, influencing roadmaps, gaining early insights, and getting a seat at the table so you can do the preparation that you need to. But there is a risk and not everything works out. Some things don’t come to market.”

In this example I see the difference between businesses who say they do agile, and businesses who are agile. There are inherent risks when road mapping an idea but ultimately deciding not to go down that path. This type of agility allows for creativity, innovation and giving your team the courage to take risks. 

Rudi also mentioned that during the year that was, having a level 4 partnership meant that when unique and unprecedented problems were exposed throughout the pandemic, they felt confident approaching their vendor asking for help solving the business problem. 

“Often they would tell me that the solution was already within our toolkit, and we would just have to turn it on.”

While I was cynical and considered how a sales team may use this type of approach to sell their customers something they don’t need, Rudi shares that a trusting partnership often overcomes his doubts.

“There’s been many times when I have asked for a solution, and they have told me that I don’t need to spend money. It’s important to consider that the relationship is a subscription and often both the partner and client are invested in getting the maximum return on investment. It can’t just be a selling relationship.”

Clearly, Rudi made a few right decisions along the way. If you’re just starting your transformation – you may be wondering ‘where on earth do I begin?’.

“We worked on upskilling our own people. We had the foresight to put in a really good Salesforce administration team which is one of main pieces of advice I would offer to organisations.”

“The other piece of advice I would offer is don't set out with a mandate of just replacing the old system. If you have decided that it doesn't work, don’t go and buy the new shiny thing and make it as redundant as the old one.” 

As I have said before on Platform Diaries, there is often no silver bullet to transforming your tech.

Rudi thinks that this is one of the reasons many technology transformation projects are destined to fail. “As I said earlier in the conversation, technology is just one part of it. Keep focused on a customer or business outcome and don’t underestimate great leadership.”

Are you beginning a transformation and perhaps are placing too much emphasis on the technological aspect? Or perhaps you’re a level three looking to take the next step with your partner? 

No matter what stage of your journey you on, I would take the advice of Rudi Khoury – Salesforce celebrity.