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I was chatting with my mentor and friend, Jackie Travieso over a call a week ago and she randomly asked me, ‘What is it that you love the most about Salesforce? ‘. A million thoughts flashed across my mind and I instantly spurted out ‘The Community ‘. We did go on for another couple of minutes about how incredibly amazing the Salesforce ecosystem is which thus inspired me to write a post about it.  The list of ‘things that I love about Salesforce’ would be endless so I must  suppress my emotions and attempt to sum it all up in five reasons that explain why I am so stuck on this platform. And hey, exactly three years ago, the responsibility of being a System Administrator was bestowed on me for the first time ever. So what could possibly be a better time to share this?

1. The CRM

   I still remember how I started as an end user doing simple data entry in Salesforce. The ease of use of this platform led me to being an administrator and the initial tasks were as simple as creating objects, custom fields, performing data imports, building declarative automation rules and so on. Observing how customizable the platform is, I transitioned into a developer role where I extensively began working with Apex and Visualforce. I have come a long way since then and no part of the platform bores me, be it declarative or programmatic. I am still enthusiastic about workflow rules, processes and flows the way I am about Apex and Visualforce. I have so many solutions to choose from and so many different approaches to take to solve a problem. It all makes me feel like a kid in a candy store! The CRM is on the cloud and on demand which has enabled me to complete tasks while I was traveling. I have worked on some of the most complex implementations while I was in flight or waiting at the airport or traveling in a public bus in India. Could it be any more convenient?

2. The Community

   This is undeniably my favorite one. It’s been over three years since I have been involved in the Salesforce community and I have met some of the most amazing people, made close friends, helped other folks and received enormous amounts of help from random strangers. I strongly believe that the community is one of the major reasons why Salesforce is so successful. The responsiveness, cooperation and enthusiasm of the community members keeps the community alive and makes it impossible to not be a part of it.  I haven’t come across success stories as motivating and moving as the ones that happen in the Salesforce world. And the power of the community has a major role to play in it. I myself had immense help from community members when looking for a job and I owe it big time to all of them for helping me find my dream job.
   The whole Salesforce community thrives on the motto of ‘Helping each other’ and that is why it is 2+ million members strong and still growing. I have been inspired by countless people and tried my best to give back to the community in any form that I possibly can. With over 7000+ answers in the answers community, probono study groups that I run out of New Jersey, and a Salesforce blog, I still feel that I am not doing enough!

3. The Company

   Salesforce sincerely cares about its customers and that is what makes it so freaking awesome. You can find the Salesforce staff actively responding to their customers on Twitter, Facebook , Community boards and via multiple other channels. When the management level folks (like Shawna Wolverton and Mary Scotton) reply to your Salesforce related queries on Twitter, you know that they care. Their help and training documentation is unbeatable compared to other CRM’s/Softwares and I have never come across a knowledge base this comprehensive and exhaustive. With the 1-1-1 model and Non Profit Starter packs, Salesforce goes above and beyond in aiding organizations that strive towards making this world a better place. I am definitely proud to be a part of such a philanthropic ecosystem which is so inclined towards promoting a culture of well-being and caring. All of this wouldn’t have been possible without a visionary like Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce whose leadership, guts and philanthropic activities have transformed Salesforce into an innovative, successful and customer focused company that it is today.

4. The Challenge

   I have been working with the Salesforce CRM for over 3 years now and I can confidently claim that there hasn’t been a single dull moment. There is always something interesting that Salesforce launches as a part of one of its releases every year and that certainly keeps me occupied for a couple of weeks post each release. With the advent of Trailhead, my admiration for Salesforce has reached new levels and it’s one of my favorite ways to learn more about this vast platform. I have had the opportunity of working with other CRM systems and language platforms in the past but I was never as engaged with them as I am with Salesforce. Reason? Salesforce is a company that is well aware of the importance of innovation and that is why it does three releases per year. This keeps me on my toes and never lets my work become stagnant or monotonous. New features inspire new approaches and possibility of a better methodology which is immensely conducive to solving a business problem. When dealing with a user requirement, I have a plethora of tools in the Force.com platform that I can use to accomplish it and deciding which one best fits the needs is exactly what makes it so challenging and fun at the same time.

5. The Gratification

   At the end of the day, I feel content about what I do and isn’t it all that matters? For the past three years since I got myself into Salesforce, I can’t think of a day when I wasn’t eager to get to work, even on a Monday morning. Answering questions in the answers community everyday is an addiction, blogging about Salesforce is a hobby and hosting Salesforce study groups is a passion for me now and there’s absolutely no stopping me. Having the support of the community gives me the confidence that I have people to assist me if I ever get stuck and I am absolutely willing to do the same for them. Going to bed every night knowing that I did my part and then waking up the next day to get back to it again is what keeps me going and I hope it stays this way.

 
If you aren’t a part of this fantastic ecosystem, I urge you to take the first step towards joining it. Learn, collaborate, teach, ask and give back as much as you can. You surely wouldn’t regret it.