I joined McKinsey about seven months ago as part of McKinsey’s May acquisition of Salesforce Platinum Partner S4G Consulting. This new McKinsey-Salesforce alliance brings together McKinsey’s strategic insight and deep transformation capabilities and Salesforce’s leading CRM platform.
At S4G, I was a senior consultant and team lead, and had been with that firm for about a year before the acquisition, but I’ve been working with Salesforce implementations since 2018. I am now a senior Salesforce consultant with McKinsey.
What I do at the firm
My principal role is to analyze and design Salesforce solutions for a variety of clients. My goal is to help clients improve their processes, efficiency, and productivity, by implementing Salesforce platforms, such as Salesforce Sales Service and Experience Cloud.
Ultimately, I am there to help our clients optimize their investments in Salesforce solutions.
I think for many technologists, one of the biggest perks at McKinsey is that you can explore many different technologies. For me, I specialize in Salesforce solutions, and so I am focused on building my expertise in Salesforce, and then learning how to apply it across all the different industries and organizations. So, there is a place for those of us who want to be solution focused and grow deeper in your expertise.
Making the transition to business consulting
2022 was a great year for me, I was recognised as a Salesforce MVP (Most Value Player) and received the Golden Hoodie award for the social impact I generate in the community through the WomenForceIT foundation. I joined McKinsey as a subject matter expert and understanding of how to deploy Salesforce and all the best practices necessary for customers to get the most out of the solution. I could talk to customers about the particular technology.
However, McKinsey adds an extra layer to the process. It’s not just about implementing the solution. We develop a strategy behind it. So, we are figuring out why the client should implement Salesforce and what is the impact it will have for the client. My background is in engineering, so to switch from being focused totally on the technology to also taking the time to understand the client’s needs, goals, and budget has been eye opening and it’s helping me grow professionally.
Growing through training and on-the-job learning
For many highly technical people, making the shift to consulting can be a challenge, if you have never been client facing in the past.
McKinsey sets us up to succeed, though, and I think at the root of that is McKinsey’s problem-solving approach. It is weaved throughout onboarding, where we work on real-world problems, and reinforced in our day-to-day work. It is foundational to all our client engagements. I think it’s easy to just throw another piece of technology at a client, but at McKinsey, we want to ensure that the technology we are recommending truly solves the clients’ problems. McKinsey has experts across many products, platforms and technologies, so it also allows us to be truly product and provider agnostic. Our process encourages you to keep an open mind and consider all solutions.
Another big learning experience for me has been improving my English. Before the acquisition, I worked only with clients in Spain. Since joining McKinsey, I am working globally, with a variety of clients in different countries for different partners. It’s pushed me to focus on my English, and I can feel it getting better every day. The firm offers a great deal of support, even providing interpreters in some cases, for those of us who need to build our fluency in a language, so it’s a great confidence booster.
More about me
When I say I love Salesforce, I'm not exaggerating. In fact, I founded a non-profit organization, WomenForceIT, to help women find careers in Salesforce and change their lives. Women come to us, many of them lawyers, nurses, mothers and many more. We help them develop these Salesforce skills that will enable them to enter the job market and get certified We have currently trained over 200 women worldwide.
We also founded a Podcats "Crónicas de Salesforce", which drives Salesforce content in Spanish, where you can get consulting, technical and much more content.