James Perram

Struggling with quality in your Salesforce implementation? You're not alone. At KiwiQA Services, we’ve built a specialized Salesforce Testing Center of Excellence (CoE) that’s helping companies across Australia and globally to de-risk their Salesforce rollouts and ensure ongoing platform stability. What makes our Salesforce QA services stand out? Our certified test engineers work across: 1) Sales Cloud 2) Marketing Cloud 3) Public Sector Cloud 4) Custom Salesforce Integrations We’ve supported multiple end-to-end Salesforce implementations - from UAT planning and regression testing to multi-system integration validation - for clients across retail, government, healthcare, and tech. How KiwiQA delivers value: 1) Test strategy aligned with your agile Salesforce deployment 2) Regression and UAT suites tailored to your custom workflows 3) Integration testing across APIs, CRMs, ERPs, and legacy systems 4) Offshore, onshore, and hybrid delivery models 5) Automation-first mindset for long-term ROI Whether you're rolling out a new Salesforce org or scaling your existing setup - our QA experts ensure nothing breaks when it matters most. Let’s talk. KiwiQA can be your QA partner across every Salesforce Cloud. #SalesforceTesting #SalesforceQA #SalesforceUAT #RegressionTesting #MarketingCloud #SalesCloud #PublicSectorCloud #IntegrationTesting #SalesforceConsulting #SalesforceAustralia #QualityEngineering #KiwiQA

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⚡ Speaker Spotlight ⚡ Carl Vescovi | Xero Carl Vescovi is a Salesforce Architect and Developer with over twenty-two years of experience across Salesforce administration, development and architecture. Currently a Senior Engineer at Xero, he holds twenty-two Salesforce certifications and has worked throughout the ecosystem, from Salesforce itself to global system integrators and founding his own consulting company. Carl has helped organisations from small businesses to large enterprises optimize their Salesforce setups and develop scalable solutions. He’s published to the AppExchange, created free native components and Developer plugins, and brings experience from previous roles in healthcare, sales, and product management. He’s also presented at numerous Salesforce events and User groups. Passionate about bridging the gap between traditional administration and architectural thinking, Carl enjoys seeing Salesforce professionals advance their careers and believes there are significant personal and career growth opportunities for proactive Admins in the Salesforce ecosystem. Carl lives on the outskirts of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, with his wife and three children. ⚡Session Info ⚡ From Support to Strategy: Thriving as an Admin in the Age of AI As AI rapidly automates routine Salesforce admin tasks, the skills that drive career success are fundamentally shifting. This session explores how to position yourself not just to survive, but to thrive in this transformation. You’ll discover why professional reputation has become your most valuable asset, the specific skills that separate advancing Admins from those who stay stuck, and practical frameworks you can apply immediately to your next decision. Whether you’re an aspiring architect or a business user looking to elevate your strategic impact, you’ll leave with actionable approaches to make your thinking—and your value—visible to stakeholders. Drawing from over 20 years in the Salesforce ecosystem and practical frameworks from his book “Think like an Architect,” this session provides a compass for navigating complex decisions with confidence in an AI-augmented world. You’ll Learn: - Why strategic thinking becomes exponentially more valuable as AI handles tactical work - The four core skills that build professional reputation and credibility - A practical 5-step framework for handling complex decisions - Simple tools that make systematic thinking visible to stakeholders - How to start building these capabilities today Ideal For: Salesforce Admins, aspiring architects, business analysts, and anyone making strategic technology decisions. 👉 Event & Session Info: https://lnkd.in/gQfjZaKc True Blue Blazing #TBBMelb2025 #SpeakerSpotlight #CarlVescovi #Xero #Salesforce #AI #Architect #Admin #Community #Trailblazers

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👫 In the D365 & Power Platform market, connections are everything. Not job ads. Not inbox spam. Not guesswork. Connections. I’ve built deep, trusted relationships with high calibre professionals and high performing Microsoft Partners across ANZ. So when a role opens or a project kicks off, I already know who fits. 📍 Candidates get access to exclusive roles they’d never find on Job Ads. 📍 Clients get accurate hires without sorting through irrelevant CVs. This isn’t transactional. It’s targeted, relationship driven recruitment, and it works. If you're hiring or making a move in the Microsoft Biz Apps space, tap into my network.

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Just came across a fantastic breakdown of what 'Salesforce Advisory Services' actually means beyond the buzzword. 💡 Here's what struck me: Many financial services firms jump straight to implementation without proper advisory work - and then wonder why their Salesforce ROI falls short. A proper advisory engagement should cover 12 critical areas including: ✅ Outcomes & Metrics Definition (not just features!) ✅ Journey Mapping of client experiences ✅ Architecture Strategy for your existing systems ✅ Roadmapping focused on business outcomes This resonates deeply with what we see at Vantage Point. When financial institutions skip these steps, they end up with disconnected systems, compliance gaps, and advisor productivity issues. The difference between a struggling Salesforce implementation and a transformative one often comes down to these advisory fundamentals. What's been your experience? Did your Salesforce implementation include robust advisory work before configuration began? #FinancialServices #SalesforceStrategy #DigitalTransformation #WealthManagement

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We are future proofing our corporate enterprise systems and improving how our teams interact with our data and tech to deliver on our health commissioning objectives. 🫶 If system and data transformation sparks joy 🤩 in your world … I encourage you to download this procurement opportunity to learn more.

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Morning Australia, Nuage has partnered with a large enterprise that is needing 3 Senior Boomi Developers supporting a large federal government integration program. - 12 month initial contracts - Baseline Clearance Needed - 50% Hybrid working from any major Australian City (Preference being Melbourne) - $1000-1200 a day depending on experience These roles sit between platform building and deploying integration services across enterprise systems, APIs and Cloud platforms. You’ll be working across: - Boomi integration development - REST / SOAP APIs (JSON / XML) - Data mapping & transformations - API design (Swagger) - CI/CD and cloud integrations (AWS / Azure environments) This is a senior hands on role with design input, working alongside architecture and platform teams to deliver scalable integration services.

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What have been the most challenging Salesforce roles to fill in 2025? Speaking from my own searches this year, the most challenging roles to fill have been: 📍 Salesforce Developers with Omnistudio experience and Australian Citizenship for permanent roles This year there has been lots of demand for Salesforce Developers who have strong Omnistudio experience and hold Australian Citizenship. This is because there has been been demand in the Federal Government space, and these roles often require a level of security clearance. This demand has meant that a lot of people have been able to secure contract roles, offering lucrative rates, which means it has been incredibly hard to get people to consider permanent roles requiring the same criteria (Australian citizenship, Salesforce development and Omnistudio experience). 📍 Salesforce Sales roles, for partner organisations For the first half of this year there were lots of Salesforce partners looking to add to their sales teams, and looking to attract people away from other partners or out of Salesforce directly. One of the biggest challenges when hiring sales talent is that when someone is performing in their current role, it is incredibly difficult to get them to leave as they are often in a patch that they enjoy, earning good money and as they are performing well - they are often well looked after by their current leaders. Unless you could offer something they weren't getting where they already were, there weren't solid reasons for people to be considering a move. 📍 Fixed term contracts There have been a spike in fixed term contracts this year, which are generally hard to fill because they often only really appeal to people who are in between roles. In all of my years in recruitment (too many, believe me), I can't remember seeing many people leave a role to take on a fixed term contract unless it is a multi year contract. Most fixed term contracts are for a 12 month period, and they pay less than a daily rate contract which is typically the preferred option when someone chooses to move into a contract market. I know a lot of hiring managers have had the belief that finding Salesforce talent should be easy due to the market downturn. Finding Salesforce talent isn't hard, but engaging and securing top Salesforce talent is as difficult as ever 😮‍💨 Talent Hub Global #Salesforce #TalentHub

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Automating NDIS Claim Management with Salesforce Field Service Managing NDIS claims can be time-consuming and error-prone, especially when staff need to manually reconcile service appointments, products, and billing. By using Salesforce Field Service and Flow automation, disability service providers can streamline this process—saving time, reducing errors, and ensuring compliance. This article walks through how automation connects service delivery, inventory, and claim creation in a real-world scenario. Link: https://lnkd.in/ggy2SqKJ The Scenario in Simple Terms When a support worker completes a service appointment, Salesforce automatically updates the related product usage and generates an NDIS claim. This ensures billing is both accurate and compliant without manual double-handling. For staff, it feels seamless. They complete their work, and Salesforce does the rest—keeping records consistent and claims ready for submission. How the Automation Works 1. Triggering the Flow The process begins when a Service Appointment is marked as “Completed” and a signed report is present. The flow retrieves the related Work Order and checks for an associated Opportunity. It loops through all Work Order Line Items (WOLIs) and matches them with Opportunity Line Items (OLIs). 2. Updating Products and Inventory For each matching OLI, the flow recalculates the consumed quantity, updates the OLI, and links the WOLI back to it. This ensures the product usage reflects what was actually delivered during the appointment. 3. Creating the NDIS Claim The flow assembles data from the Service Appointment, Account, Contact, and Opportunity Product. A new NDIS Claim record is created, linking all of these elements together. The claim includes service times, participant details, and product information—providing full traceability. Data and Field Mapping Supports Delivered From/To is populated using Service Appointment times. However, assigning both actual and scheduled times to the same fields results in overwriting—meaning only the last values (scheduled) are retained. The NDIS Claim record connects back to the Service Appointment, Account, Contact, and Opportunity Product. Opportunity Products update their consumed quantity, ensuring inventory and billing align with actual service delivery. The User Experience NDIS Claim Record: Staff can see all relevant details—participant, hours, times, and services—without needing to manually create anything. Opportunity Product Record: Quantities automatically update, reflecting consumption and remaining balances. Flow Diagram: Provides a clear visual of the steps involved, from service completion to claim creation.

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I've been working through our quarterly expense audit and something blew my mind. Australian tech companies are continuing to win more and more of our business. Why? The consumer experience and price point. Loom (acquired by Atlassian) -> converted to a business account this morning after finally getting to the point where we need >5 min videos and download capabilities. Whole team can access for $15 / month. Canva -> have been a paying subscriber for years. Our entire team is on a plan for $150 a year. Cake-> switched over from Carta last year. It's a super intuitive product, great support, and was significantly less. Compared to the US, the Australian venture capital market is tiny. Sure, the companies that I'm talking about did raise VC dollars eventually, but it was after figuring out initial product market fit and building in PLG triggers. The reality is that SaaS models are changing more now than they have in the last 20 years. The days of charging companies exorbitant per seat license fees and expecting customers to pay premium support fees to get over the adoption curve are over.

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There’s a pattern we keep seeing across Australian mid-market businesses. They’ve invested in great tools – NetSuite, Salesforce, Shopify, ServiceNow. But when you ask how they’re integrated? You get the same answer: “It works for now.” That’s the corporate version of “she’ll be right.” Until one day it isn’t. The old model was simple: scope, build, deliver, move on. But business doesn’t move in clean phases anymore. You’re onboarding new apps. Customers expect real-time updates. Teams are hybrid. Change is constant. And that means integration has to evolve too. You need someone thinking about: - Platform health - Monitoring thresholds - Change control for small tweaks - How the finance team’s new workflow actually flows downstream This isn’t “maintenance.” It’s operational discipline. If your business runs on multiple systems, your integration layer is your nervous system. It needs care. It needs visibility. And it probably needs more attention than it’s getting. When you're ready to treat it that way, we’re here.

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Salesforce Projects Don’t Fail Because of Tech (It’s a Capacity Issue) Salesforce projects rarely fail because of the platform. They fail because of people — or more precisely, the lack of them. Across Australia and APAC, demand for Salesforce expertise keeps rising — but delivery teams are struggling to keep up. Every conversation lately sounds similar: “We’ve got projects ready to go, but we can’t find enough skilled engineers.” The reality? - Local markets are running out of certified talent. - Offshore options that used to work are now too expensive or out of sync. - And the “perfect candidate” takes months to onboard. At this point, it’s not a technical issue — it’s a capacity issue. The companies that solve this problem first will deliver faster, win more deals, and keep their clients happier. Scaling Salesforce teams today isn’t about hiring endlessly — it’s about partnering smarter. 👉 How is your team balancing delivery capacity vs. client demand right now? I’d love to hear how others in the industry are handling this significant challenge. #Salesforce #TeamAugmentation #DeliveryChallenge #TechLeadership #B2BSales

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You can't fix what you can't see. Do you ask — or do you assume? A client I worked with in the past had just purchased Salesforce licences. The ask was plain. Migrate everything from their existing system into Salesforce. Same process. New platform. Get it done. I could have just said yes and built it. But something didn't add up. So before making a single click, I asked: "Walk me through what happens when a lead comes in." "We just call them." That was the answer. No stages. No follow up sequence. No way of knowing who had been contacted, who hadn't, or where anything was up to. Not because they were disorganised. But because their existing system had never given them the visibility to build anything better. How many leads were sitting untouched? Unknown. Who was in the 1st stage of followup and who was in the 2nd stage? Unknown. Were prospects opening their emails? Unknown. Who had clicked a link and was ready to be called? Unknown. Their old system couldn't tell them any of this. And because they couldn't see it — they had built assumptions around it. What they described as their "process" wasn't really a process. It was a set of habits that had formed in the dark. And they were about to cement those habits permanently into Salesforce. I stopped them. Migrating a broken process into a powerful platform doesn't fix the process. It just makes the problems harder to undo. Moving to a new system is a rare opportunity. Not just to change the technology — but to leave outdated practices behind. So we used that moment to ask the hard questions. The ones nobody had stopped to ask before. And the cracks revealed themselves. High severity leads — the ones who needed urgent attention — were sitting in the same queue as everyone else. No prioritisation. No urgency flags. No way to tell a critical enquiry from a routine one. By the time an advisor got to them, the window had already closed. KPIs were taking a hit. Advisors were carrying the blame. And nobody could explain why — because nobody could see it was happening. This was just one crack. There were others. Between the avoided cost of a false rebuild, the risk of losing good advisors burnt out by a broken system, and leads quietly walking out the door from sheer frustration — We were looking at atleast $60K a year bleeding out. Silently. All of it invisible. Until someone finally asked. The most important thing I've learned working in Salesforce? It's powerful to know what you don't know. And the only way to find out — is to ask.

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Unpopular opinion: Most Australian businesses don't have a Salesforce problem. They have an implementation problem. We've seen it across 450+ projects — a founder invests in Salesforce, waits for results, and ends up with a glorified spreadsheet the team ignores. Here's what actually makes Salesforce deliver ROI: → It must reflect how YOUR team sells → Clean data comes first. Always. → Fewer features + better adoption beats complexity → Ongoing support is where the real ROI lives We're a Salesforce Summit Partner — one of a select few in Australia. If Salesforce isn't delivering what you were promised, we'd love to have that honest conversation. Comment your #1 CRM frustration below 👇 #Salesforce #SalesforcePartner #CRM #AustraliaBusiness #SMBAustralia

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There’s no straight line in a Salesforce career. I've worked with: Admins who became CPQ Consultants Developers who pivoted into architecture via project work BAs who realised they’d rather run delivery than write user stories It’s never as linear as: Cert → Role → Promotion → Repeat The best moves I see in this ecosystem are made by people who: Explore new parts of the platform Ask to shadow roles internally Get close to the business side of the tools There’s no single path. But if you’re staying still, you’re falling behind. Salesforce is moving fast. You don’t need to chase every trend, but you do need to evolve. If you’re not sure what your next step looks like, start a conversation. Ask someone in a different role what their day is like. Shadow a project. Try something small that stretches you. SaaSpeople

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📣 PIA Feature Update – June Release We're excited to roll out a fresh set of new features, improvements and what's coming next to make your NDIS invoice processing even more accurate and reliable. ✨ New Features 🆕 Auto-Create Provider If PIA finds a provider on an invoice that doesn’t exist in your system, it can now automatically create the provider using the invoice details and flag it for review. ✅ ABN Validation PIA now checks provider ABNs against the official government registry to ensure the provider has an active business registration. 👍 Improvements 📌 High-Risk Line Item Thresholds High-risk checks are now applied to the total value of line items using the same support code, not just individual line items. 💸 Outstanding Balance and Zero Price Line Items Improved handling of Invoices with a $0 outstanding balance and line items with $0 🔧 In Development 🚗 Support for New NDIS Provider Travel Pricing Arrangements We may not love the new NDIS travel rules but rest assured, PIA is being updated to handle the latest changes so you stay compliant. If you have any questions or feedback on these updates, we’d love to hear from you. We're committed to helping you get the most out of PIA 🚀 MYP Technologies (MYP/iinduct/iinsight) Profenso AI Maciej Trzaskowski, PhD Vinnie D'Alessandro Kamran Healy-Sheeraz Joshua Arnold Michal Studzinski

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How top teams make Salesforce work. The best operators I work with do three things consistently. They don't obsess over features. They don't chase automation hype. They build discipline into their operating rhythm. → Appoint a process owner Someone owns sales stages, qualification criteria, and data standards. Not the admin when they have bandwidth. Not the VP when they remember. A single person accountable for making sure the system reflects what's actually happening in deals. → Define stage exit rules Each sales stage needs clear criteria to advance. No "we'll call it 60% because it feels close." Document exactly what needs to happen before a deal moves forward. Most teams skip this, then wonder why forecasts are fiction. → Run weekly hygiene reviews 15 minutes. Every week. Review stale opps, incomplete records, gaps in the pipeline. Make it routine instead of a quarterly panic. This operating rhythm does something most companies struggle with. It lifts data quality without adding headcount. It gives you forecast confidence you can actually rely on. The teams doing this aren't running fancy automation or custom apps. They committed to the unsexy work of process discipline, and it shows in their numbers. Better cadence, better data, better decisions. Like and share if you've seen what happens when discipline becomes the default in your CRM → #Salesforce #SalesOperations #CRMBestPractices #SalesProcess #DataQuality

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Most SaaS leaders say they want Enterprise AEs... But in the ANZ market right now, I’m seeing strong SMB reps being promoted or hired into enterprise roles, then hitting a wall with multithreading, procurement and 9+ month cycles. The shift isn’t about deal size. It’s about how deals get done. 🛍️ SMB/B2C success = activity, pace, single-threaded deals 🏢 Enterprise success = navigation, consensus, political mapping The enterprise reps getting hired fastest in ANZ right now all have: - MEDDPICC deal structure - Documented success plans - Strong stakeholder mapping (5–8+ contacts early) - Commercial alignment before POC It’s actually less about “big logos” than people think, and more about repeatable deal strategy. These are the profiles most in demand and the hardest to secure for SaaS companies building true enterprise capability in ANZ.

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