MY JOURNEY TO BECOMING A SALESFORCE ADMIN

My name is Smitha Praveen and I am honored to be a Salesforce Cross Cloud admin at Horizontal Integration, with a consultant-level certification in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.But this hasn’t always been the case – In fact, my career move into the Salesforce world is recent and I am very proud of my story. Let me tell you how I got here…I started my career in early 2007 as a Lecturer, training MS students on various software technology streams eventually leaping into Information Technology as a software tester. As part of my role I performed various software application testing that includes GUI, Functionality, Integration, End to End and Database testing.I joined Horizontal Integration in 2015 as a Quality Analyst, testing various Sitecore CMS Systems.In 2018 I received a request to help out a new team doing testing for a system that I had never worked in before: Salesforce Marketing Cloud. The task was to test the outcomes of multi-channel marketing journeys in a feature called, “Journey Builder.”As I began my testing on Marketing cloud, I was fascinated to learn the ins and outs of the Marketing cloud tool on how everything was mapped together so neatly.  I was ultra curious about this cloud software asked questions of the Salesforce team constantly. The more I learned about the tool, the more interested I became in the power of Salesforce.At my core, I am a data person, and I think that’s why I was so attracted to Salesforce Marketing cloud. There’s so much you can do it one tool: You can completely personalize your content, audiences and messaging, if you have enough data. With a little of knowledge of automation, SQL, and coding, I realized that I would do amazing things in Salesforce Marketing Cloud.Justin Piehowski our Salesforce Practice Lead encouraged and motivated me to take salesforce certifications. He told me “You can do it I have confidence in you.” He pushed me into using Trailhead to learn more about the platform and then to apply that experience to client work.My first real test in the Salesforce world was taking the certified email specialist exam. I was nervous, but I had tremendous support from HI team members to help me build on this.I passed the test and became certified! From there, I knew my career would change.I dove right into the studying for the Salesforce Certified Consultant exam. This is known to be one the most difficult exams in all of Salesforce.Would you believe it – I passed! I couldn’t have done it without  Shane Smyth, possibly one of the sharpest Marketing Cloud consultants in all of Salesforce.I also want to introduce another person my QA manager Donna Adams who always supported me and encouraged throughout all my certifications and always believed in me.I love keeping up on the Salesforce releases and watching the platform evolve. I am so excited to bring this to my clients. There’s no turning back for me now, Salesforce here I come!I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work for Horizontal Integration and the people I’ve worked with over these years are amazing. I am grateful for the many amazing work opportunities that have come my way – each has taught me invaluable lessons, working in project teams as well as in self-managed positions. I’ve grown in my career and as a person.I want to end this blog saying that most of my QA knowledge and skill set like analysis, Problem solving troubleshooting these were the foundation which helped me to move towards this career. Anyone who has a positive attitude and perseverance should not be afraid to take a first step towards change to fulfill their dreams.