Cognition24
2 October 2023
In our ongoing Meet the Team series, Adam Lee shares his journey to becoming a Salesforce consultant and how collaboration with Cognition24 brings mutual benefits to both our clients and our team.
It’s a bit of a mixture because I wear a few hats. I’m a Business Analyst and a Salesforce Consultant. My role is to support businesses maximising potential with their Salesforce org. That ranges from sorting out bugs to adding enhancements that need development. I also manage requests and translate requirements from the business to the development team.
I provide and develop solutions to the requirements our customers raise or translate and document requirements for our developers so they understand what’s needed. Currently, the main clients I’m working with at Cognition24 are Ocean Outdoor, Cambridge Consultants, Mindset Practice and Herts Young Homeless. Different companies have different platforms and processes, so their requirements vary, which keeps it interesting.
I started off as a reporting analyst in 2008. This involved reporting on spreadsheets, calculating KPIs and building Access databases, as we did in the good old days! I was doing some work for British Gas and they’d discovered that Salesforce was a platform that was suitable for their business. They saw that I had potential technical abilities, so sent me on a Salesforce course. I ended up attending three courses with Salesforce directly.
I’ve achieved 7 Salesforce certificates over the past 15 years. This knowledge has enabled me to progress from analyst to consultant and run my own company, that’s quite a highlight!
The biggest challenge is getting the requirements of a client, who doesn’t know Salesforce and what the system’s capabilities are. In these cases, I have to spend a lot of time getting to know and understand the client’s current practice, so that I can then work out how Salesforce could be adapted to their processes.
I work from home in Newport, Gwent. At the start of a project, Tim [Chisnall, Managing director] will give me a brief on how the clients use the system or their own systems. Josie [Wright, Project Manager] coordinates the meetings. I liaise with the developers as well especially if any work needs to go through offshore developers.
The great thing about working with Cognition24 is that we’ve been able to help each other by offering ways of looking at solutions to problems that might not otherwise have been considered.
Everyone on the team is very helpful. They get back to me quickly if I have any queries and are very supportive.
I think Salesforce is going to expand to work with more businesses across the world including small businesses. Because the Salesforce system is getting bigger, more people have an awareness of it.
My driver is getting a solution that will support the business I’m working with. This could be something as simple as creating a report, or a much larger project creating a solution enhancement. As long as what I’ve delivered benefits the business, I’ve done my job.
