Transcript of a Salesforce-hosted video segment (Success Anywhere World Tour) featuring Mark interviewing Jeff Kimball, Honeywell’s Senior VP & Chief Commercial Officer. The discussion describes Honeywell’s rapid COVID-19 response (enabling remote work, keeping manufacturing running, building a PPE/mask factory in Rhode Island), the company’s emphasis on scenario planning and agility, and how Salesforce provided a customer-centric, end-to-end view to support sellers working from anywhere.
Chapters
Well, now we're going on. We've told this amazing story about New York City. We've told this amazing story about the vaccine cloud, about contact tracing. Now we want to talk about another amazing customer. Honeywell. And this is a company that many of us know. It's an institution here in the United States. An incredible company. Let's take a look inside this incredible organization.
The future of business has fundamentally changed. Being able to adapt, being able to be flexible, and being able to work from anywhere.
Honeywell is a business where we go to the office every day. And when Covid hit, we had to immediately transition to a work from home environment.
Honeywell is an industrial company that's been innovating for over 100 years. We operate across the world in industries like aerospace, oil and gas, building technologies, and even safety and productivity.
And regardless of where we are, we need access to the same information. Part of my role was helping with that pivot and provide the tools and technologies that are going to enable that. The beauty of Salesforce is that everything anchors around the customer.
Salesforce gives you that end to end360 view from lead generation to servicing the customer, supporting the customer with every step in between for those sellers.
Are we creating new opportunities? Are we creating more pipeline? All of that information is in Salesforce and it's all right there, there at your fingertips.
Salesforce allows us to keep the customer front and center by allowing us to look beyond our business unit silos and empower our employees to work regardless of where they are.
If we can help our sellers be successful, then they can help our customers be successful and create a great experience. That's our purpose. And Salesforce has never failed to step in and help us where we need it.
Well, Honeywell is an amazing company. And for those of you who know and have worked with Honeywell products this year, perhaps one of the most amazing things that we saw was when Honeywell really pivoted and aggressively started to develop this amazing ppe, the mass that we need to stay safe right through the pandemic. And they built a factory in real time in Rhode Island. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. It reinforced to me how companies like Honeywell have the agility and the ability to focus, but also pivot and really create success from anywhere. And that's why I'm so excited that today we get to hear from Jeff Kimball, the senior vice president and chief commercial officer of Honeywell. He has done so many amazing things this year. Jeff, it's awesome what you've done, but I know, you haven't done a keynote in the rain yet, have you?
I have not, Mark. No, I have not. This is a first.
You're going to have to try it. It's fantastic. Anyway, Jeff, tell us. Tell us how it is that you've been so successful this year and how you've driven transformation at Honeywell at scale. I've heard amazing stories from Darius. I want to hear it directly from you.
Thank you, Mark. It's great to be with you. Look, like everybody, we were faced with a crisis that we had of proportions that we had not seen before nor experienced before. And it really required us to pivot hard on two fronts. You know, we had to make sure that our own company was able to operate. And, you know, like many of the stories we've heard so far today, we had to enable our workforce to work remotely around the world in a matter of days. And we weren't, you know, we weren't expecting to have to do that. So we had to pivot very hard to make sure that we were able to operate our own company. And, of course, we have many manufacturing plants around the world that we had to make sure we could continue to operate safely. And so that was all one big effort that we undertook. And then at the same time, we had to make sure that we were able to still serve our customers. And we really pivoted hard and put a lot of time and effort into understanding what our customers needed from us in this unprecedented time. And we spent more time interacting with customers than ever before to really listen to what their challenges were and to come up with new ways to serve them. And it's been really remarkable to be a part of that.
Well, Jeff, I've been extremely impressed by the amount of gratitude that you've had this year, you know, for what you've been doing, I know, not only with your family, but with your friends as well and all of your colleagues at Honeywell and the leadership team there. You've inspired others, you've motivated others. You have succeeded where others have had troubles. You know, give us that advice. Tell us, Jeff, how do you be successful from anywhere? You're leading these amazing teams, and you have really just persevere. Tell us, how do you do that?
Well, I think it's. I don't think there's anything magical. I think it really is, you know, starts with good preparation and planning. You know, one of the things we do at Honeywell is we always build different scenarios, operating scenarios of what might happen in the markets that we operate in. Certainly, we didn't see this specific thing coming, but we do a lot of scenario planning, and so we had that to fall back on or to start with, I should say, as we encountered this new situation. So I think being prepared, having different scenarios in your mind and on paper, in terms of how you would respond to different changes in your market, it starts with that. Then I really think once you get into the situation, it's being agile, and we've heard about that through different stories today. But being able to pivot quickly, personally and as a team and as a company is one of the most important things you could do and, you know, really open your mind to, to what you need to do and really engage with your customers and your employees on, on what their needs are. And, and those are just a few of the, you know, things that have enabled us to get through this challenging time. And, and I think that resilience and that perseverance and that agility, those are kind of the key, the key words and key phrases that come to my mind as I sort of reflect back on the past year.
Jeff, thank you for everything that you have done for us every single day. We're so grateful to you. Please send thanks to the entire Honeywell team as well, would you?
