Venn at Work: Jonathan Davis, Salesforce Consultant

If you are Jonathan, your day is full of building, automating, and customizing Salesforce environments. Keep reading to find out how Jonathan spends his time as Salesforce Integration Consultant at Venn.

7:00 AM: I’ve been working toward additional Salesforce certifications ever since joining Venn, so I actually enjoy dedicating time to it in the mornings before I leave for work. The certifications provide me tremendous growth opportunities, plus we’re awarded bonuses for every certification we earn, so it’s a win-win all around.

8:00 AM: I think like most other people at Venn, my day starts with checking my email and Slack notifications. I usually try to block my calendar with the projects I’m working on. In general, I like to break my workload into one—no more than two—hour blocks so that I can be laser-focused on a specific task.

9:00 AM: I have an active list of projects that I’m working on continuously, so I find that the most challenging part of the role is prioritization. What I try to do is take thorough notes so that it’s easy for me to pick up a project that I’ve put down rather than have to remember all the details. It’s also helpful in the event someone else ever has to pick it up where I left off.

I think of my job like playing Tetris. You know what’s coming up next, and you also have two or three things coming down the road that you still have to think about. The key is taking good notes, continuous prioritization, and clear communication.

Jonathan shared best practices, including his own tips and tricks, for successful task management during an internal Lunch ‘n Learn.

10:00 AM: I typically average three calls a day across 10 projects at any given time, so at least half of my day is spent in communication with clients. Most of the work revolves around Salesforce optimization, including ongoing support or enhancements for clients on one of our Service Plans. If it’s a Salesforce implementation, then my responsibilities are more task-oriented. If it’s an issue that needs to be resolved, then it requires me to be in problem solving mode.

My favorite part of the job is building Salesforce flows. The client knows what they want to have happen, and it's usually possible, but I have to figure out how to do it the most efficient way. It’s just fun to build.

12:00 PM: Honestly, I don’t usually eat lunch. I snack throughout the day. My go-to snack in the office is trail mix.

1:00 PM: My afternoons aren’t necessarily any different from my mornings. I usually have a call or two, and in between those I’m working on some sort of customization in Salesforce. The types of clients I’m dealing with typically already have their Salesforce set up, but if they need help with implementation, we have the resources for that too. Most of of the time clients come to us for Salesforce customization to support automation within the app or integrations with other apps (i.e. Sage Intacct).

In the Salesforce world, there’s a lot of people that don’t have the opportunity to work on the integration side, so I think what we do is unique from that perspective.

3:00 PM: A lot of the time our clients either don’t have a dedicated Salesforce person, or if they do, they wear a lot of hats and do a lot of different things - which is where we come in. Sometimes it's like, we’ll create the body of the functionality they’re looking for, and as they get used to it, they’ll identify automation they want to add (i.e. Select a ‘Country,’ auto populate). They wouldn’t have realized they needed it in the initial project because the functionality is considered “nice to have” as opposed to “critical.”

What I enjoy the most about Venn is the culture of solving problems. I like that what we do is solve problems. Everyone is very excited by that. I like how positive and productive that is.

6:00 PM: In the evenings, me and my wife, Jess, like to cook dinner together and banter about what our dog, Rusty, is thinking. We’re pretty obsessed with him.

A family that wears matching Hawaiian shirts together, stays together.

We also enjoy going bowling about once a month. Our first date was at PINSTACK. She’s really good at the claw machines.

Outside of work, Jonathan and his wife enjoy bowling together.

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