Certinia recently made two significant announcements. The first was the release of its Summer 2024 update, which included updates across the Certinia Professional Services Cloud, the ERP Cloud and the Customer Success Cloud. The second was the general availability of its Customer Success Cloud solution.
Raju Malhotra is now the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Certinia. He spoke with Enterprise Times about some of the changes he is bringing in. He framed the new Summer release using the TSIA model, LAER, Land Adopt, Expand and Renew. This is a shift from the services to the renewal framework that Certinia used for the Spring release. I asked him whether this was a change of emphasis.
He replied, “Number one, they do fit together. We consider them both useful for different contexts. The reason I picked this for our current release was to highlight the point we were making about CS cloud. The opportunity to renew is very valid. We still use it in customer conversations, especially with new prospects.
“The LAER feedback model works very well for the conversation we were having about summer, which has a lot of focus on our CS cloud features. The point I was trying to make there, was you have the project delivery and then an opportunity to build an ongoing customer relationship by focusing on that customer success part of it.
“That’s why I chose the LAER model. It’s about the context. I thought it was more relevant. It’s not something that we look as supplanting our opportunity to renew.”
Malhotra also believes that customers use the LAER model within their organisations, so they have a greater affinity for it. Malhotra has demonstrated that the new Certinia can be more flexible. He may be listening to the wider industry rather than imposing its own frameworks.
This is a wise approach and is likely to deepen relationships. It will still need its frameworks to explain its solutions, but openness is welcome.
On integrations
CS Cloud is targeted at larger enterprise firms. Certainly, most of the beta customers were of a significant size, including Salesforce and Dell. CS Cloud already integrates seamlessly into the Certinia PS Cloud. I asked Malhotra whether we would see formal partnerships with some larger ERP vendors around CS Cloud, such as SAP, Oracle and Workday. The financial applications the larger enterprises use.
Malhotra replied, “We absolutely expect enterprise customers to have their own financial planning systems. We will continue to integrate with their financial systems, be it via MuleSoft, be it some other integration tool.”
However, Malhotra was cautious about clarifying whether any specific partnerships would be announced. It is certainly not a priority at the moment.
Over the years, Certinia (and before that, FinancialForce) has vacillated on its strategy over HCM, should it buy, partner or build. At different times it has considered or done all three. I asked Malhotra about his view and current strategy over HCM.
He answered, “That is something we want to integrate with other best-in-class HCM and HRIS systems, as opposed to building it organically or acquiring it inorganically. It is very much a partnership and integration play for us.
“We are best in class in professional services automation. We want to be best in class in CS Cloud also ERP Cloud. It’s hard to be best in class in everything, and that’s something we’ve chosen to use as a partnership opportunity.”
Artificial Intelligence
Certinia has worked with Salesforce with Artificial Intelligence from even before Einstein. How do you see the importance and development of AI within Certinia?
“We see it as a huge potential. By definition, professional services lends itself to automation, improvement, and productivity changes based on AI. Generally speaking, we’re in the space that is not only the largest but also highest growing vertical for the global economy, services businesses.
“From a macro perspective, it would benefit hugely from AI. There is an evolution in how we, as Certinia, are looking at implementing AI for our purposes, and there is a three-step evolution.
“The first is assistant-based AI. That is the idea of using co-pilots, or some type of assistant in the app within Certinia, to help customers find what they’re looking for. That is about using LLMs and a lot of our proprietary information to make the information available for our customers.
“The second model is advisor. We’re evolving in that direction, where the AI is actually able to give you some recommendations and advise you. In some cases, we do that. In some cases, we see a bigger opportunity.
“The third area, where probably the biggest opportunity, but also the newest area that we don’t have any footprint on today, but we’re thinking about how to implement, is the agent-based idea. It is where you can see an AI-based agent, which is clear to the end user they are communicating with the AI agent versus a human being. The agent will solve a number of your reactive or proactive issues using the guardrails that Certinian already has set up. “
With Dreamforce imminent, it will be interesting to see what plans Certinia has with Agentforce, which Salesforce recently announced. These are the autonomous AI Agents that Malhotra refers to.
Looking forward
Certinia announced the appointment of Malhotra in June. With several weeks under his belt in the company, I asked what he intended to focus on.
“One, is applying the power of data on projects, on customers, on interactions we have within Certinia in service of new-gen AI use cases. The Gen AI use cases that make our existing workflow, data reporting and dashboarding better, as opposed to something that is a siloed, separate add-on.
“That is one of the biggest opportunities, applying AI to everything we do, PS, CS, ERP. Really making the end-user experience better, from user experience, usability, productivity, and information retrieval. Also, all the three use cases that I mentioned, from assistance to advice to potentially having the AI do things on their behalf.
“The second opportunity is driving the level of investment in our best-in-class professional service. Driving that enterprise scale, and improving the financial offering we have. Thinking about how much we’re going to invest in which areas, and specifically what type of new capabilities keep us moving forward. That clarity is something that I’m focused on as an opportunity.
“The third thing is to leverage the Salesforce platform as well as we can from a technical perspective. Not only what we do today, but also deepening that partnership at Salesforce on the engineering side so that we can deliver some of those capabilities very early for our customers. “
The Book Question
What was the latest book you read?
“The book that I have on my Kindle is Victor Frankel’s – “Man’s Search For Meaning” (Amazon (Aus, UK, US). I also love Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams(Amazon Aus, UK, US). A few weeks ago, I had a few days off, and I read that again. That’s my guilty pleasure, but that’s something that I’ve read a few times before, too.”
What have you learnt from Frankel’s book that relates to business?
“For me, it’s about persistence. It’s about not being swayed by a given moment, of having a deeper purpose, a deeper recognition of the why, and sticking to it. It’s very tactical and almost seems such an arbitrary takeaway for business. Mainly because I think the book is more about, frankly, humanity, and it’s about living a life of purpose in meaning.
“That meaning eventually is about doing what you love and going back to the first principles in that sense. Even the horrific experiences like Viktor Frankl had to go through. You can actually live through those experiences and come out stronger on the other side.
“To me, that’s a very important life lesson. I don’t want to almost trivialize it by mapping it to the vision or mission statements. Still, I think that when done right, that vision statement or mission statement becomes a true, authentic reflection of the humans that are part of that organization and what their purpose is, and does that align with the broader purpose of what the organization is trying to do?”
