Manager Salesforce Center of Excellence
Manager Salesforce Center of Excellence (CoE)
IT department
Works in Utrecht and from home
Lives in Amsterdam
Part of VodafoneZiggo since 2018
VodafoneZiggo enables B2B customers to do more and more business online. Automated and personalised. Joël Groenland plays a valuable role in facilitating this development. "I'm responsible for the beating heart of our sales organisation: the Salesforce ecosystem. We use it to service our organisation internally, and all our B2B customers."
Insiders know that Salesforce is a world on its own, filled with trailblazers who give it their all. "If you're Salesforce-minded, then you can really indulge yourself at our Salesforce Center of Excellence," says Joël with pride. "We work here with a community of more than 80 people from all over the world, with a view to getting everything out of Salesforce that there is to be had. And we do it scaled agile, so with many teams together. The energy is really unique."
"Today's business customer demands end-to-end solutions," says Joël. "With quick service and assistance with every challenge. That includes a perfect and digital customer journey, in which they soon find their own, personalised way. In order to do this, we are building an ecosystem where many of the Salesforce tools have a role.. We use Marketing Cloud for marketing campaigns. Commerce Cloud is the foundation of our web shop. The CRM for sales runs on Sales Cloud and the CRM for service on Service Cloud. With Field Services, we manage our service engineers.
"We want to be frontrunners in everything we do. That's why we keep pioneering and take time to innovate. During hackathons, we look very carefully at the current issues we face, as well as at the latest Salesforce releases. Like Einstein GPT, Salesforce's version of ChatGPT. What can this powerful tool do for our company and customers? Those are the kinds of practical and theoretical questions that I challenge myself and the team with constantly."
"What we do, really matters,' our CEO Jeroen Hoencamp often repeats to the company, and that definitely also applies to our department. The digital platform we're working on is the future of our B2B organisation. An essential part of VodafoneZiggo's ambition is to become a digital platform telco. That idea gives me a buzz each day again. Such a crucial role is very exciting. You do really cool stuff and learn so much! And there's pressure, too, of course, which is why I keep a close eye on my team's wellbeing. By regularly talking to them, obviously, but also by being aware of my observations. If we have happy talks, then I know everything's fine."
Joël sees positive energy all around. "We are a real community. A diverse group of talented and passionate people from all four corners of the globe: from India and South America to Africa and Eastern Europe. We have great fun together and learn a lot from one another – on a personal level, too. Colleagues regularly bring in food from their homelands, for instance. I've tasted some amazing dishes. Sharing food invites you to open up and learn more about each other’s culture. I really like that kind of thing."
In order to let the community grow, Joël is regularly on the lookout for new people. "Developers and testers, mostly. I seek passionate people, who understand for whom they ultimately do everything. Customers, of course, but also internal users such as Sales Account Managers and Service Agents. You have to see the bigger picture – understand our architecture. Does your idea bring us closer to the dot on our horizon? It's important that you're comfortable taking responsibility. And want to contribute to the community, help each other; that you're optimistic and start the day with a smile. All things I try to do and be myself, too, of course."
It's nice to note that Joël had already worked for the company in the past, in a Vodafone shop. He moved on to something else for a few years, but came to realise that he really missed his former employer. In 2018, he returned to what had now become VodafoneZiggo. He cites plenty of reasons. "The flat and informal organisation. Our values Open up, Team up and Step up, which are often expressed and encouraged. The freedom to be autonomous, entrepreneurial and creative. To me, VodafoneZiggo is a big playground in which I can do fun things."
The future is bright, according to Joël. For himself, for VodafoneZiggo, and with the help of Salesforce. "The engineering culture we're building is only going to get more interesting and successful, I'm sure of it. We can let technology work for us more and more Ultimately, I see a prominent place for Salesforce at the heart of all our products and processes."
