THREE QUESTIONS WITH
Per Haakon Lomsdalen
Regional Director, Salesforce
In the beginning of March 2020, you were announced as Salesforce’s Regional Vice President for Norway and Iceland, becoming the first Norwegian in a management position at the company. At the very same time, the pandemic was becoming a reality in Norway. When entering the role, you stated that recruiting was your main focus as the company was growing. How did you navigate the hiring challenges that arose from the extraordinary situation? Did you reach the target or redefine it?
We are on a growth path that will last for a while. Building up a local organization takes time of course, but we are making great progress. We´re hiring new employees every month so the target is still the same. So far, we have built a strong local organization and leadership team, and we’re still hiring!
Crisis management, B2B, B2C, customer experience and service – what are the biggest trends on the horizon?
We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to reimagine how we work. We are moving to an all-digital, work-from-anywhere world. From now on, remote work will just be work. E-commerce will just be commerce. Video meetings will just be meetings. The traditional ‘9-to-5 workday’ is no more. In an all-digital, work-from-anywhere world, every company has to be able to work, sell, service, market, collaborate, and analyze data from anywhere. And Salesforce was built for this world. With products like Slack and Work.com, Salesforce is creating the operating system for the new way to work and closing the innovation gap as customers, and their employees, make the necessary transition to that exciting future. The companies that will emerge stronger are the ones that embrace change and don’t simply snap back to the way things were done before.
From now on, remote work will just be work. E-commerce will just be commerce. Video meetings will just be meetings.
As someone with extensive experience from the technology industry, do you organize your life completely “in the cloud” or does the occasional post-it or grocery list find its way into your daily life?
With all the great digital tools available, I´m not using post-it notes, I must admit. What I really enjoy is that all the cloud solutions that are available make it easy to collaborate seamlessly both in my professional and personal life. A very simple example is calendar sharing with my family, which makes it easy for us to align and get an overview of our current and upcoming activities.
On more advanced levels, the cloud platform that Salesforce represents gives me a 360 degree view of the business I’m running, when and where I need it. But most important for me, is that my daily life should not only be in a cloud – I worship close relationships and face to face contact with family, friends and professional networks. A digital cloud can never substitute the joy of physical interaction.