{"id":712,"date":"2023-05-09T03:48:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T03:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fde.cat\/index.php\/2023\/05\/09\/automation-engineering-secrets-revealed-slashing-customer-processing-time-from-hours-to-seconds\/"},"modified":"2023-05-09T03:48:00","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T03:48:00","slug":"automation-engineering-secrets-revealed-slashing-customer-processing-time-from-hours-to-seconds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fde.cat\/index.php\/2023\/05\/09\/automation-engineering-secrets-revealed-slashing-customer-processing-time-from-hours-to-seconds\/","title":{"rendered":"Automation Engineering Secrets Revealed: Slashing Customer Processing Time from Hours to Seconds"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our \u201cEngineering Energizers\u201d Q&A series, we examine the professional life experiences that have shaped Salesforce Engineering leaders. In this special edition, we meet Pratima Shukla, a software engineering manager based in Bangalore, India. In her role, Pratima leads Salesforce India\u2019s Industries Cloud Public Sector Solution<\/a> (PSS) team, where she is responsible for delivering cutting-edge automation capabilities for state and local governments.<\/p>\n

Read on to learn how Pratima and her team overcome complex engineering problems by combining innovation with organization-wide collaboration.<\/p>\n

Pratima Shukla.<\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s a critical problem that Salesforce customers face, and how does automation help?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Governments and companies around the world are drowning in data \u2014 lacking resources to process their volumes of paperwork and review countless applications. My team helps them win that battle by developing Public Sector Solution<\/a> (PSS) \u2014 automation software that slashes the time it takes to process documents from minutes or even hours to mere seconds.<\/p>\n

What does this look like? Let\u2019s take a government motor vehicle agency \u2014 they may receive 500 driver license applications each day. A single employee may be tasked with verifying each application\u2019s data, and they may only have time to review 20 applications per day. That is where PSS comes in. The software largely removes the human from the loop, as PSS\u2019 automation system ingests the applicant\u2019s information and instantly performs the verification process.<\/p>\n

Pratima (far right) manages two PSS scrum teams based in Bangalore and Hyderabad.<\/em><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the secret to rapidly engineering new PSS automation features?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Collaboration is the name of the game. The PSS team, along with engineering teams throughout Salesforce, create features that are designed to be interoperable across industry verticals. For example, a feature designed for a state government customer might also satisfy the requirements of a healthcare customer.<\/p>\n

Once we identify a customer feature requirement, the PSS team will look internally to determine if other product teams have already created a similar feature \u2014 residing within another Salesforce product \u2014 and if the feature will fulfill the customer\u2019s requirement. That is the path of least resistance and is a common practice within Salesforce Engineering, where teams share features amongst themselves \u2014 saving considerable development time and expense.<\/p>\n

In instances where the feature has not been built, our team will build it from scratch, which sometimes is the most practical approach.<\/p>\n

How does your automation team pivot if another\u2019s team feature doesn\u2019t fully fit your customer\u2019s requirements?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Interestingly, 90% of the time, another team\u2019s feature is not 100% reusable because that team built their feature uniquely for a specific sector. That means our team must make enhancements to that feature \u2014 without impacting current customers.<\/p>\n

Pivoting can be challenging because we cannot control what we cannot control. For example, our production roadmap then becomes dependent on their production roadmap \u2014 meaning if their timeline slips, then our product\u2019s timeline slips as well.\u201c<\/p>\n

Pratima explores the engineering challenges that keep her up at night.<\/em><\/p>\n

What is a great challenge that your automation team tackled recently?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a recent PSS release, we tackled a customer use case that required a business rules engine for ingesting a tremendous amount of data and performing complex calculations \u2014 enabling the customer to decipher which persons would qualify for certain benefits.<\/p>\n

Our team kicked off the process by looking internally \u2014 did Industries Cloud have a rules-type tool that was already available? It did not, so we looked more broadly across the various Salesforce clouds. When the team could not find an optimal solution there, it sparked a challenging search across the external open source market. Once we found a tool, it introduced tough questions:<\/p>\n

Do we want to bring the tool within the Salesforce platform? If so, how?<\/p>\n

Can we afford the associated costs?<\/p>\n

Will the tool solve our problem or potentially create more problems?<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the team felt the market offered no perfect solution, and it would be easier and cheaper to build the solution from scratch.<\/p>\n

What is the hardest part about building an automation feature from scratch and how do you overcome it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Time is the enemy. In the case above, we needed to deliver the basic rule builder in just three months. Luckily, the Salesforce Flow<\/a> team \u2014 designers of the Flow workflow automation solution \u2014 had a framework that conceptually supported our design, however, we needed to reconfigure it. This helped speed development.<\/p>\n

An example PSS framework that supports both medical and financial use cases.<\/em><\/p>\n

Using our combined expertise, the PSS team enhanced the Flow framework and built new features on top of it, which exceeded the customer\u2019s expectations. Additionally, our <\/a>feature won the Sing<\/a>apore Good Design Mark (SG Mark) 2022 Award<\/a>, which was a real honor for our team as SG Mark is considered the standard for exceptional design quality that impacts businesses in Singapore and beyond.<\/p>\n

Your automation team innovates within a deadline-driven, fast-paced environment. How does Salesforce help junior engineers succeed in this framework?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Salesforce Engineering is dedicated to helping our engineers thrive by helping them build their technical knowledge. For example, Engineering offers a speed mentoring meet-and-greet program for women engineers, where a senior mentor meets one-on-one with a junior mentee for 15 minutes, discussing a specific question posed by the mentee.<\/p>\n

This advice is invaluable as it helps the junior engineer gain clarity on any project-related or professional development issues. Additionally, the introduction may also serve as a bridge to the future, creating opportunities for them to collaborate on future projects.<\/p>\n

Pratima dives deeper into Salesforce\u2019s multiple mentorship programs.<\/em><\/p>\n

Learn more<\/h4>\n

Stay connected \u2013 join our <\/a>Talent Community<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Check out our <\/a>Technology and Product teams<\/a> to learn how you can get involved.<\/p>\n

The post Automation Engineering Secrets Revealed: Slashing Customer Processing Time from Hours to Seconds<\/a> appeared first on Salesforce Engineering Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In our \u201cEngineering Energizers\u201d Q&A series, we examine the professional life experiences that have shaped Salesforce Engineering leaders. In this special edition, we meet Pratima Shukla, a software engineering manager based in Bangalore, India. In her role, Pratima leads Salesforce India\u2019s Industries Cloud Public Sector Solution (PSS) team, where she is responsible for delivering cutting-edge… Continue reading Automation Engineering Secrets Revealed: Slashing Customer Processing Time from Hours to Seconds<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":856,"url":"https:\/\/fde.cat\/index.php\/2024\/04\/18\/in-their-own-words-15-salesforce-engineering-innovators-discuss-the-art-of-problem-solving\/","url_meta":{"origin":712,"position":0},"title":"In Their Own Words: 15 Salesforce Engineering Innovators Discuss the Art of Problem Solving","date":"April 18, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"In our \u201cEngineering Energizers\u201d series, we explore the problem-solving skills of engineering leaders. 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