Joel Mansford, ProvenWorks Founder and Managing Director: “We work with clients, large and small, across a huge range of industries. Every business and organisation is only as good as the data behind it.”

In the digital world we live in, the Salesforce ecosystem has gained massive traction and has grown exponentially. Business leaders must understand that Salesforce CRM implementations involve constant optimization. Experts are recommending businesses to investigate Salesforce-specific applications to make the most out of their Salesforce investment. These applications allow you to optimize your database to deliver the best services to customers and prospects.

A Salesforce ISV (independent software vendor) is a Salesforce partner who helps Salesforce users by developing applications for Salesforce. The partner takes on complete responsibility for managing, developing and supporting the application and they are usually listed on the Salesforce AppExchange. Salesforce ISVs have a deep understanding of an industry’s or organization’s objective and the consumers you are trying to cater to.

Globally, there are a vast range of Salesforce ISVs delivering excellent services, but ProvenWorks stands out from the rest. ProvenWorks is one of the longest-established British Salesforce ISV Partners. You’ll find the company on the Salesforce AppExchange, where they deliver some of the most popular, highest-rated applications for data quality management and automation. All available exclusively for Salesforce CRM, ProvenWorks’ solutions empower users to be their own data heroes through time-saving automation and guided user experience. AddressTools is a suite of functionality to manage and harness the power of your address data. Simpleimport is an import solution designed so that business users and admins alike will find importing intuitive and straightforward. With over 13 years as a Salesforce.com ISV partner and zero external funding, ProvenWorks has expanded into a global market across ten time zones and 3000 customers.

In conversation with Joel Mansford, Founder and Managing Director of ProvenWorks

Q. What was the motivation behind starting ProvenWorks?

ProvenWorks started with the question: “Surely we can’t be the only ones who need this?” In 2008, when I was working as a contractor, I realised that there was a gap in the market for solutions dealing with address data. We wrote the app ourselves, and ProvenWorks was created. Since then, all of our products have come from my experience on the other side as a customer who has a requirement around data management and can’t find a solution. As we have grown, our primary goal has remained the same: how can we save you time?

Q. Access management and the privacy of sensitive information is a major consideration around cloud and hosted services. How can we overcome this issue?

Trust is Salesforce’s #1 core value, and as a partner of Salesforce, we earn the trust of our customers through transparency, security, compliance, privacy, and performance. Unless you’re a security and compliance company, data privacy and access management are not the areas in which to innovate. We use the best, most trusted platforms and ensure that our staff become experts accredited to implement best practice on these platforms.

Q. Digital transformation must provide a competitive edge to the customers. How do you gain insights to keep your clients ahead of the curve?

Three things drive our own digital transformation. Firstly analytics; we’re a data-driven company, both in what we create and how we make decisions internally. Nothing is done without first analysing the data. Secondly, we maintain a feedback loop with our clients. There is no better way to meet our clients’ ever-evolving requirements than by understanding their usage and nurturing good communication. Finally, and equally important, we stay informed. We run internal sessions to stay up to date on what’s happening in the space, and our work culture encourages the team to get certifications and always keep learning.

Q. What are the different sectors that your company is focusing on with your applications?

Saving time in managing your CRM data is vital regardless of industry. We deliberately design our solutions for use across sectors - just read our success stories. We’ve had recent success at the enterprise level with Service Cloud implementations that require fast, accurate data input. We’re also gaining a lot of interest in the US Higher Education space, where our solutions fit into student and admissions portals. Giving back is a huge part of our culture, and we offer a scalable Not-For-Profit discount on all of our products; we have dedicated staff that support our Not-For-Profit customers. We won the 2021 Partner Innovation Award in the Nonprofit Award category for our work with Malala Fund.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

As Salesforce Lightning experience develops, we’re seeing more and more interest in our on-page components. Our ManagedImport component empowers admins to pre-define import mappings so that users can simply drag and drop files to upload data. We’re also announcing our new Address Verification Flow Component, for internal and external Salesforce users to verify their address data quickly at the point of entry. Salesforce is developing its Flow functionality, and we’re finding new ways to incorporate our solutions into these complex automated processes. It’s definitely an exciting time to be a Salesforce partner!

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

We’re always looking to investigate avenues for new products and new partnerships - watch this space! We have some of the most experienced staff in the ISV space so we’re keen to work alongside younger ISVs, sharing expertise and ideas. As with any growing company, recruitment is a big focus this year as we look to expand our team and ProvenWorks’ potential.

Meet the leader behind the success of ProvenWorks

Joel Mansford is the Founder and Managing Director of ProvenWorks. With many years’ experience working within Sales and Marketing building databases, reports and customising CRM systems, he considers himself a techie at heart. After co-founding the business with a University of Reading former intern, Joel has maintained a heart for providing opportunities for students. ProvenWorks gives students valuable experience in software, and often their first job in the IT industry. Half of the ProvenWorks team studied or are studying at Reading University. By building up students, ProvenWorks helps kick start careers and give students important skills to carry with them into the world of full-time employment.

“We’re a well-established Salesforce Partner who design solutions exclusively for the Salesforce platform. We save you time around your data management and integration so that you can focus on building client relationships and delivering world-class services.”