A Time to Celebrate

The journey is part of the goal, make sure to enjoy it

I remember the day clearly. It was a huge demo, the biggest I had ever participated in. This one was bigger though since I was the one leading the charge. The deal rested solely on this one demo, this one moment, going exceedingly well. My only thought the minute before it was our turn to present was, “Don’t screw this up!”

Three weeks back, I got word that the lead for this demo had gotten terribly sick and was going to be out indefinitely. We had precise specifications to follow as outlined by the consultants helping this enterprise with a massive customer experience transformation and replatforming program. Basically the customer was going to put their entire global organization operating across 67 countries on a single customer system and database.

The task was handed off to me to take over the customer account, lead the demo, and complete the necessary demo configuration. I was well-versed in the customers’ industry, so when I reviewed the scenarios, I knew this would require more, much more, than simple configuration.

The task before me was monumental. I had to assemble a team, storyboard the scenarios, determine what was configuration versus customization, create an entire new data set to make the scenarios work, write a script, and bring together multiple different teams to ensure we could support the functionality being sought. Then there was the matter of integrating an analytics tool that we just…