Greetings! I am Suraj Tripathi and I work in Cloud Analogy as a Salesforce Certified Application Architect and at the same time I have acted in the capacity of Australia Business Head for Cloud Analogy. My job roles at Cloud Analogy are Delivery Head, Customer Satisfaction Manager and Technical lead in development.
My Certifications
I started my career as a Java developer, almost 6 years back, as an Oracle Java programming developer. However, after working for about 6 months in Java programming, I shifted to Salesforce CRM technology. Since then, I have acquired skill sets by Salesforce certifications. I have acquired following skillsets:
- Salesforce Certified Platform Developer 1
- Salesforce Certified Platform Developer 2
- Salesforce Certified Data Architecture and Management Designer
- Salesforce Certified Sharing and Visibility Designer
- Salesforce Certified App Builder.
I am also Salesforce Certified Commerce Cloud Digital Developer as well, which tells that I have good hands on experience in Salesforce B2C Commerce Cloud as well. I have 5+ years of experience in the Salesforce ecosystem. Cloud Analogy works in Agile methodologies, and I am a certified Scrum Product Owner also which helps me in understanding the business model and break it down into sprints so that the project can get successfully delivered on-time. We have earned quite a lot of appreciation from our clients. I would now narrate the wonderful experiences that I gathered, while starting our Australia office and other events. I planned to arrive at Sydney on 8th of February, so that I can meet as many people and prospects as possible. I gathered some knowledge on:
- Acquiring Lessons on to the Australian culture, weather and time zones.
- Finding Transport and Indian Food Outlets.
- Preparations for obtaining the Visa.
- Planning for a flight after obtaining the Visa.
Now, about the business trip to Australia.
FIRST WEEK : FLYING OFF TO A NEW JOURNEY
February 8th I took a flight to Sydney with a stopover at Kua la lumpur. At the end of my long flight, I reached Sydney Airport, Australia at 10:45 AM Sydney time. Thanks to my Australian friend/client I already knew that where I will be living for the next 2 months. He helped me in getting my AirBNB, hotels and gave me his metrocard to travel using trains. On my first week there, he took me to places like Sydney fish market, Bondi beach.
SECOND WEEK IN AUSTRALIA (11TH FEB – 17TH FEB, 2019)
The second week had a busy schedule and a lot of meetings, booked with my end clients and some of my existing ones too.
On 12th, Feb : I had a meeting booked with one of my prospects. The project was in the pipeline for a 1 month and a face to face meeting helped the prospect to understand me and thankfully the project kick started. On 12th, Feb, 2019, it was my turn now to meet one of my oldest clients, in his office and met with his Australian team there – imparted a great experience for me to work on different office cultures.
13th, Feb: I went to North Sydney to meet one of my clients there for whom we are working in website development.
14th, Feb : I had a meeting with a prospect who wanted to have a meeting for me to see the scope in Zoho CRM, so I met him and understood his business and at that time he didn’t need my help.
17th Feb : Then in the weekend I went for some site seeing with my clients in places like : Harbour beach, Opera House, Darling Harbour, Royal Botanic Garden. We gulped some drinks and talked about how we can enhance the opportunities together and what are the apps which we wanted to spend money on. However, the apps must earn considerable profits.
THIRD WEEK IN AUSTRALIA (18TH FEB – 24TH FEB)
In my Third week in Australia, I started to feel at home there. I started to feel like Australia is my country and I was pretty used to with the food culture, people over there.The climate and beaches reminded me of my stay on Koh Samui island couple of years prior, when I rented a villa from yourkohsamuvillas.com and had great time getting to know other culture and mentality. That feeling of enthusiasm was now reignited while abroad again. As far as business, I had a great start in this week as I had a meeting booked with one prospects, who had a requirement for ZOHO CRM, but there was a problem. His office was around 100 Kms far from my place. So we discussed this with the client and we suggested to take the call over gotomeeting itself and it was successful.I understood the requirements, along with my colleague Nitish and we were extremely joyous to get this deal converted.
Fourth Week in Australia (25th Feb – 3rd March, 2019)
I had a meeting with another prospect on 25th of Feb, we booked our time when suddenly he called me on my number. So I went and understood the requirements he had and explained those to the team and we still had some doubts so we booked an online meeting with him so that we could clear all of our doubts before starting the project. Meeting with Andrew Levi, an existing client was booked on.
26th of Feb : A day when my existing client and I talked over a cup of coffee and I took the team’s feedback from him. The areas of improvement were discussed to help him. We also gave our feedback to him, so as to motivate the team – with a precise and perfect output. This was a good day for me as my mentor and big brother Ajay took the flight to see me in Australia.
27th of Feb : Ajay arrived in Sydney after a long wait, as he missed his connecting flight in China and he had to book another flight to Sydney from China which was 4 hours later than the expected arrival time.
I went to pick him up, along with a client from Sydney International Airport at 7 AM.
1st of March : We went to see the clients Pet Shop which is managed by his sister and then went to his sister’s house and met his family there and had homemade dinner. His mother cooked dinner for us and I think these kind of gestures show that you and your clients are friends and not just business partners. It gives a personal touch and increases the trust between us and them. It’s always good to respect each other’s families and culture and try to be one of them for a day. Then we went to Coogee Beach in the evening and discussed the AppExchange app which we wanted to launch together – to increase the revenue.
2nd of March : Time for the Mardi Grass Festival day, supporting the local Gay community, so that they can get equal rights as the straight people. In that festival, all of Sydney and people from around the globe gathered on a single road and partied together. They created a rally and wore colorful dresses and danced in that rally. That was pretty nice experience for us, to see a different festival, different from what we celebrate here in India.
3rd of March : I took Ajay for the places which I already visited earlier like Harbour Beach, Opera House, Darling Harbour, Royal Botanic Garden. Next, we booked our flight to Brisbane as we had meetings booked in Brisbane with our existing clients and we were eager to meet them.
FIFTH WEEK IN AUSTRALIA (4TH MARCH, 2019 – 10TH MARCH, 2019)
4th March : We took the flight and flew off to Brisbane and met our existing and new clients – Guy Cohen, Justin, Josh, Natheniel Flack then we returned back to Sydney, as we had to be in Sydney for the Salesforce biggest event in Australia (Salesforce World Tour).
Salesforce World Tour : Pre-Event
5th of March, 2019 : It was a pre-event hosted by Salesforce for all the partners(small or large) in Australia – to explain them on how Salesforce is conducting Sales and Marketing, at the current state and they explained that Salesforce had released a budget of $ 50, 000 AUD – meant for the start ups who wanted to start a business in the Salesforce world, Australia.
We came to know how anyone could apply for that. Moreover, in that event we learned how we could better to sell our Pin Tags application in the market and how and what should we do for better marketing – all future applications.
Salesforce World Tour : Lots of Learning Opportunities
6th of March, 2019 : We were ready for Salesforce Sydney World Tour. We had a couple of meetings there and got a call from one of our end clients friend Steven, that he was participating in Salesforce world tour.
So, I went to meet him and it was his turn to explain us on how application was beneficial for both us – our end clients as well. We learned how we would partner out with this opportunity.
We met there with Vineeth, Scott, Adrian in the Salesforce World Tour as well. As I am not very good at talking with strangers, but still I managed to do all this. On the same day, 6th of March, 2019, Ajay had to leave for London, for the London Calling event. I dropped him off at Sydney Airport.
9th of March : I had to move from Joe’s place because I had booked that room for only 4 weeks. I moved to my client’s friends place as he was not in the city for sometime, so I got permission to stay there until he came back.
10th of March : I went to Wollongong for skydiving. It was the best experience I ever had. The jump was from 15000 feet from an airplane and there was always a time when you lost time and forgot about responsibilities (for a short time) and just enjoy the weather and the event. I had another surprise – as I met one of my oldest friends, from my school.
SIXTH WEEK IN AUSTRALIA (11TH MARCH, 2019 – 17TH MARCH, 2019)
CCD 101 Commerce Cloud Developer Course : Time to Learn More
12th March : I went to Melbourne, for the CCD 101 Commerce Cloud developer course. This was to help me to get Commerce Cloud Developer certification. I spent around $ 4000 AUD, just for the course. This covered 50% of what comes in the certification exam.
The course was for 4 days so I stayed in Melbourne for 4 days. The Course was taken by my one of the mentors (Gaurav Khetrapal) who is B2C Commerce Technical Designer and had a lot more experience than me.
15th March : Flew back to Sydney
FINAL WEEK IN AUSTRALIA (25TH MARCH, 2019 – 27TH MARCH, 2019)
25th March : Went to meet a client Vineeth in Sydney for a Salesforce AppExchange application which they are trying to build where we did a great brainstorming and discussed about what is the best way to implement and create the application in the best possible way so that it could pass the security and checkmarx review.
27th March : I had a flight at 12 PM, Sydney time for New Delhi. It was my time to say goodbye to Sydney and prepare my mind for getting back to India. There I found the perfect vacation rental cleaning franchise for sale on the website www.maidthisfranchise.com. So my client picked me up at 8 in the morning and dropped me at the airport. Glad not to book a cab. He explained how to claim my GST, which I had spent in Sydney.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Overall, it was a good experience, with a lot of friendly people around, always ready to help others. But unlike India, limited conversations in the public transport. Anyway, I enjoyed every part of my journey, meaningful client interactions and knowing more, not to mention about the delicious, mouth-watering food, of course .