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TCS+ | Zuko Mdwaba on Salesforce and its SA and Africa growth plans
Customer relationship management software giant Salesforce recently showcased the power of its latest artificial intelligence and cloud-based solutions to customers, partners and associates at Salesforce World Tour Essentials Johannesburg, held at the Kyalami Convention Centre in Midrand. In this episode of TechCentral’s business technology show, TCS+, Zuko Mdwaba, Salesforce area vice president/Africa executive and South Africa country leader, shares highlights from the event. He also provides insight into the company’s plans for South Africa and Africa. More than 2 200 global and local leaders attended the Salesforce event in Johannesburg, demonstrating the huge interest in AI and digital transformation in South Africa, with organisations from across a range of sectors eager to learn more about new technologies that will allow them to leverage their data more fully and grow their businesses. The Salesforce ecosystem of partners in the South African region has grown 34% year on year, but the most significant improvement is in the area of certifications, with an increase of 43% in the same period. These partners, Mdwaba explains in the TCS+ interview, are helping organisations across all sectors to raise employee productivity and transform with real-time insights and new levels of customer experience. Mdwaba shares data from International Data Corp, which shows Salesforce and its partner ecosystem is being fuelled by AI- powered cloud solutions and will generate US$5.8-billion in net new business between 2022 and 2028. In the interview, Mdwaba delves into: • The economic impact that the Salesforce ecosystem is going to have on South Africa in the next few years. • How the combination of CRM, cloud, data and trust is transforming organisations. • How Salesforce is ramping up its skills development and talent programme in Africa to build the workforce that will help drive its aspirations for the continent. Finally, he speaks about some of the infrastructural challenges on the continent and where the opportunities for technological innovation and business growth lie. Don’t miss the interview!
- Duration:
- 21m
- Broadcast on:
- 11 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- aac
- Hi, I'm Gosnar Tintrov and this is TCS Plus Pro-TU by Salesforce. Salesforce is the leading customer relationship management platform in the world. Earlier this month, the company hosted the Johannesburg leg of its World Tour Essentials event in Kailami. Here to tell us about what this event means for the local ecosystem, as well as give us insight into the Salesforce strategy for the African continent is Zukom-Drava, South Africa MD and Africa Vice President at Salesforce. Zuko, good day and welcome to the show. - Good day, Nadi. Thank you for having me. - Our pleasure, our pleasure. Zuko, this World Tour Essentials event is something that happens globally, right? There are legs in Sweden, Australia, Singapore. What is the significance of this event in South Africa? - It's quite significant. Salesforce is relatively new in South Africa, comparatively speaking, in terms of having an entity. You know, we've been doing business in Africa for a number of years, but we've had a physical entity basically having an office just over two and a half years now. So having a World Tour is an amazing opportunity for us to get closer to our customers and get closer to our customers as well. So it just creates an opportunity for us to be able to share some other vision, some of the things that we're doing as a company, you know, we are a company that one of the things that we always talk about at Salesforce is that everything that we do is anchored by our values. So it is always a great opportunity to just share those values and leave those values in a physical event. The size of what we had recently is really an amazing opportunity for us. - Okay. Excellent. One of the major things to come out of this event, given the space that we are in is artificial intelligence. But if I remember correctly, Salesforce released Einstein way back. I think it was 2016 before this wave of AI. But now that you're infusing, well, you have infused AI, but now that the rest of the customer basis catching up, how are your customers responding to using AI within the ecosystem? - I would be pleasant to surprise if you didn't ask a question about artificial intelligence. - Yeah. It's the talk of the town, everybody's talking about artificial intelligence. Look, you are spot on, Salesforce has been on the artificial intelligence journey for more than a decade. It's really, really, if you look at where artificial intelligence comes from, there's been an evolution of the technology itself. You know, we started from a predictive point of view where our technologies, what our customers are using today, there's a predictive element that from an AI point of view. So what has happened in the recent past and is basically moving into generative artificial intelligence, and you know, you saw and you were just as amazed as most of us were. How quickly it grew, you know, when you look at a number of companies in the tech space, how long it took them to get to 100 million customers, you know, with generative AI, we were talking a matter of two months, I think it was two months when they got to a significant number that was comparatively speaking, it took other companies that, other technologies that were there before, more than a year, in some cases, two years. So it just shows the evolution of technology, it's moving at a more rapid pace. So for us, I think the beauty about it is that we believe it's a company because we've been a number one CRM company for many years, and it's not us saying that, this is the market saying that I'm talking about the customers that we have at a global level. You know, when you look at the number of customers that are going with Salesforce or Visa via our competitors, we've got the highest market share by a country model. It's quite, it's quite, and that's where we, you know, a lot of our innovation and everything has come from, inspired by the fact that, you know, our customers are relying on us from a customer relationship point of view. And what we have done is basically to ensure that they're not left behind from a technology point of view. So AI, like you correctly put it, has been there for some time. So what we're doing now is just evolving that to ensure that the latest and greatest. And benefit on the fact that it's a CRM, it's the data, and then AI. But another thing that's quite important, maybe we'll talk about is the trust element around that. Exactly that. I mean, there's, there's a lot of fear going with how AI is going to be used. Firstly, there are security concerns, and there's, then there's the ethical component of this. How are you managing that in your ecosystem? Very good question. It's, it's actually quite interesting, Nutty. I've been in the tech space for many, many, many years, you know, Salesforce is the first company that I have been part of that, in fact, the way leading in this space. They have got an executive that's specifically responsible for ethics, right, from a technology point of view. This is someone that reports directly to Mark Benioff who is responsible for ethics, ensuring that everything that we do is at a, is at an ethical level. That's something that's something that's important. Maybe something that's important to also highlight. I mentioned values, arguably our most important core value is trust. We need to ensure that we are trusted by our customers, we are trusted by our partners, we're trusted by our stakeholders that we're working with, but we need to ensure that trust from a data point of view and from everything that we do is at an ethical level because technology is amazing, but you know, sometimes it's easy for people to look at technology, especially at an enterprise level, look at it with the same lens with at a consumer level, and I'm sure you'd agree with me. It's not the same. Yes, yes. I would be surprised and I don't want to put you on the spot, but I would be surprised if you're not using Gen AI on your phone, you don't have an app, you know, most people do have an app, right? And this is an app that's basically from a Gen AI point of view. The data is out there, right? It's data that is available to everyone, so it's fine for a consumer point of view. I can always go in and check a few things and, you know, it's not business critical, nothing is really going to happen if I get something that's not representative, representing what I'm supposed to be getting. And at an enterprise level, we all cannot afford that, so this is the big difference. So this is where we differentiate ourselves, we truly believe that the fact that from a CRM point of view, we've been leading for many, many years and there's a lot of investment that is input in their place, and data is another layer, and you know, artificial intelligence need the data. That's a few, right? And then when you combine those things, you need to ensure that customers are comfortable with us, what are we giving them in terms of the value proposition that we have. Something that's really, really important is that we don't own the data, we really don't own the data. So what this gives us, it gives us a platform where we can be able to ground the data, because the data that's coming from your customer database as a customer, the data that's coming from other sources, it could be your own sources or fair party sources, but we have a way of grounding that, ensuring that it is not toxic, it is representing what's supposed to be out there from a customer point of view. Okay, so this speaks on the one hand to data accuracy, and on the other hand, keeping that data siloed so that it's not leaking outside of the customer's kind of systems. Absolutely. Beautiful, beautiful. So you've got your partner, it's ecosystem that uses your software as a service, and then you've got your infusing artificial intelligence into that. What are the economic benefits of that going to be? So our partners are helping our customers to use our technology, obviously there's partners that are using our technology for their own, running their own businesses as well. I think the biggest benefit out of that is that the way, personally, the way I see artificial intelligence, or at least generative AI nowadays, is that it's almost like having a personal assistant in your pocket. There are things that you and I shouldn't generally be spending too much time on. Those things, this could be repetitive tasks, it could be things that generative AI could be super helpful in terms of bringing to the fore. Now the value that partners add on this is that they layer that with the other things that really need some human intervention. So we operate in a very, very competitive environment. Any company or whether it doesn't matter the industry that they're in, they are reaction to time, whether it is from a marketing, a new product, or from selling something that's new, or from saving as a client, it is important. Firstly, one of the things that's important is to understand the customer, which is why we talk about the customer 360. So you look at the customer from you engaging with the customer in terms of business development, trying to sell to the customer, come up with a lead, create an opportunity, have a customer sign, the customer, the AI customer. But you also need to be able to service that customer, because I'm sure we can all agree that the customer that we have today is better than the customer that we do not have, right, in terms of acquisition and everything that you have. But it becomes really, really important for companies out there across the industries, for them to be able to react very quickly to changes that are out there. It could be their competitors going to market. Sometimes the winner is who responds quicker. So that's one of the things that our partners help our customers to be able to have that power of being agile and being able to respond quickly to market needs. Excellent. Just going back to the AI question, often it is thought of as if AI is actually going to take jobs away. But US sales force actually think that more jobs are going to be created within your ecosystem because of this. We do believe more jobs are going to be created. I think it's AI is here to stay, I think a lot of us are realizing that and I think it's important that more and more people realize that. That's a reality. That's how technology is evolving nowadays. It's normal, it's almost natural for people to feel threatened. I hear this job's question quite a bit, there's a lot of people that are concerned about that. But my view, like I've said, is that it's how we take advantage and how we leverage artificial intelligence. And the power around this is how we create productivity. Because all of a sudden, if you've got a task that can be handled at half the time or a tenth of the time or even less, it suddenly creates more productivity. It frees us to be able to do other activities and that is powerful because that's where we can, as human beings, can differentiate ourselves, can be able to do other things. Just to give you context, there's a study that was done recently from a Salesforce point of view. There's something that we call the Salesforce economy. You're looking at the impact of Salesforce around the world, but I'll bring it closer to home, bring it to South Africa. IDC did this study and they're saying that the AI CRM space in South Africa, 2022 and 2028, is going to be at the level they estimated at the level of $5.8 billion. And this is not Salesforce, this is the ecosystem. Everybody using Salesforce, whether it's a company creating jobs and having people that are, or a partner, being involved in implementations and us, their ecosystem is a value of about estimated value of about $5.8 billion. IDC is saying that they're also saying that there's an estimated number of jobs, net new jobs that will be created, 83,000 net new jobs. And that is an independent study that's been done to just to try and answer your question around AI is going to replace people, or it's actually going to create more opportunity. 33,000 jobs. But now the one challenge that you face as Salesforce is that these jobs require people to be skilled in a particular way, and not necessarily in the way that they are taught from the women when they come out at school. Technology is changing so quickly that people need to adapt on the fly. So what kind of training initiatives are you involved in to kind of get people work ready? All right, so technology has evolved quite a bit. You know, if you look back, if I use myself as an example, you know, I'm a technologist at heart. I studied technologies. That's what I know. I studied computer science. And by the way, just on the side, I did artificial intelligence adversity, but this was 30 years ago. I studied young. I told you. I did artificial intelligence, but already artificial intelligence was possibly 30 years old back then, you know, it's the pace of change that we're having. Now when you look at a decade, two decades, three decades ago, and you look where we are today, Salesforce has got an amazing platform where it is specifically to help people be able to sharpen their skills, to train, to develop new skills. Now the big difference is that when you look at Salesforce as well, the other thing that's there is that we talk about low code and no code, you know, it's not as complicated as it used to be. The barriers to entry are not as high as they used to be. So we have got examples of people around the world, maybe specifically in South Africa that have been able to change their careers or that have been able to get into the Salesforce ecosystem because of the ease of entry, right? Now to answer your question, we, one of the things that we are doing in South Africa, right from day one, it was we had a clear strategy that technology is evolving at a rapid pace. We need to have creation of skills at the core of our strategy. And one of the things we did, that was that there's someone that's dedicated, okay, Ashla Fier, who is dedicated to working on helping to create skills. How does she do that? How does that currently is that we've got companies, organizations that specialize in skills development. So we have partnered with a number of these partners. We've got what we call workforce partners is about 18 that we have across the African continent. But if we talk about South Africa, we're working with companies like Capaciti, we're working with companies like Collective X, which is a privately initiated initiative, basically these organizations specialize in creating skills. And we work with them through our Trailhead platform to ensure that we help in creating skills at scale. So that's one of the things that we do. So working with these partners, I think one of the advantages I remember you saying is that you partner with them between people, but then they also help in placing people to kind of bridge that gap between, I've got the skill, but I need workplace experience to actually know how to apply it, right? But Trailhead itself is actually free, it's open to anyone who wants to go on it. But you did say that training is important because Salesforce not only had ambitions for South Africa, you guys want to conquer the rest of Africa as well. Tell us about those ambitions. We do have ambitions to cover more territory across the African continent. We've started the journey, we are responsible for the African continent. So outside South Africa, there are other geographies where we've got customers today, we've got partners and we are making some significant strides in those areas. There's an office in South Africa, there's an office in Morocco. Okay. There's two offices on the African continent. South Africa and Morocco, so those are two offices. We've got territories today, we've got in East Africa as well as West Africa, we've got customers there and partners. So there's quite a lot of initiatives that we're having, of course there's global systems integrators, global partners that we have that help us get into those markets, so it's a combination of the global implementation partners with a combination of boutique partners in the local geographies. So there's some inroads that we definitely making there. Yes. And you guys, I mean, because you're software as a service, you sit high on the stack, right? So a lot of infrastructure has to be in place before you can actually supply your service. How is that looking on the continent? How's the growth of the internet infrastructure and the ability to actually get your product out there? Well, I'm sure you've been following some of the stuff that's happening in East Africa, Kenya to be specific, a really, really innovative nation. They've done things that haven't been done by other countries in Africa or maybe in the world as well. So in terms of penetration, yes, they've got the infrastructure in terms of connectivity. Yes. You know, they've got the infrastructure because they've been doing that in banking and telco, unfortunately, telco is, you know, that Africa and South Africa and most of Africa, in terms of mobile phone penetration, it's quite high across the globe, you know? So through that, there's a lot of advancements that are there, you know, there's undersea cables that are going across the African continent. So in terms of connectivity, and there's companies that are in South Africa, large banks and large telcos that have got presence in a number of countries across the African continent. So through that, there's, yes, it's going to take time to get to a point where it's across the board, but the platform is there for connectivity from a software service point of view. Okay. Zuko, whenever we talk about Salesforce, the word ecosystem is always there, you know? And you talk about growth in the ecosystem. How do you measure this growth? So how we measure growth is, firstly, when we talk about ecosystem, we're talking about our customers that we are so grateful to have. We talk about our partners because we wouldn't be able to have the scale that we have without our partners. So this is something that's quite important. One of the things of measuring our growth is obviously the increase in the customer base that we have, which we've had quite a bit across the African continent and we're grateful for that. But the other thing is year one year between last year and this year, we've had 34% growth on the number of partners that we have, okay? Just year one year. And I mean, I could compound this if you look at the past three years as the number that's bigger than that, but year one year, it's 34% partners. But what's important is the certifications, right? There's the partners, but there's the certifications, so people working for their partners. One of the things that even though we've got a trailhead, which we've spoken about, that is a free platform, and I would encourage anyone on the African continent to jump on the trailhead because I think it's something that could change people's destinies. But one of the things, I mentioned core values, our other core values, customer success. As a software, as a service company, it goes without saying, we need to ensure that our customers are successful, our customers success is our success. So we need to ensure that people that are using Salesforce, you know, to help customers or even customers using Salesforce, they need to be certified. So certifications year one year in the partner's base, we've had 43% year one year growth, okay? From a South African perspective. And from an African perspective, it's almost similar. The 40% year one year growth, African perspective, sorry, in terms of the number of certifications. Yes. So these are people who are coming into the Salesforce ecosystems to work as architects, business management, analysts, et cetera. Could be technical skills, could be soft skills. Yes. It's always easy to people. The soft skills are the hard skills. Yes. So it could be anything across the board in terms of people enhancing their skills and ensuring that they'll guarantee success in everything we do. All right. So cool. Thank you very much for joining us and giving us your time. Thank you, Nati. Much appreciated. I enjoyed chatting to you. Me too. Me too. That is a Zukov driver of Salesforce for Tech Central Show. [BLANK_AUDIO]