In the tech world we tend to focus on learning the tech.  Those of us working on any given system or tool want to drill into how it operates, what features it has and when they should be used.  This is true for NetSuite, or AWS, or InfoSec.  And there’s nothing wrong with making technical skills a focus of our job; after all we ARE the systems folks!  

Learning technical skills, however, shouldn’t (can’t!) be all we focus on.  We also need to stretch ourselves to understand the domain our systems exists in.  For SalesForce this would involve learning how sales teams operate.  What does any given Sales rep need to do or know on a monthly/week/daily/hourly basis?  Why do they (dis)like any particular aspect of SalesForce?  What policies does the Sales team have to follow?

While certainly not directly related to the system, questions like this help inform WHY and HOW the system can be used.  We don’t need to know as much as our customers about their process, but the more we know, the better we’ll be able to support them (personally I became a license health care broker to help accomplish this).  

There’s many ways to help expand our domain expertise.  The simplest is simply through osmosis.  As we work on any given system, we’ll naturally learn a bit about the domain it exists in.  Working in NetSuite, for example, will expose us to charts of accounts.  SalesForce will expose us to a closing process.  Workday will expose us to hiring.  This is a natural first step for many folks since it’s basically impossible to miss; you can’t learn the system without picking up SOMETHING.  That said, this is only the beginning.

Getting to know your customers is another way to improve your domain knowledge.  Get them involved in testing, or have them show you how they use any particular screen.  Sit in on their team meetings and get a feel for how the team behaves.  This first-hand experience has several advantages, including giving you more domain expertise, but also helps build connections and puts a face to everyone.  Knowing Jimmy in sales is much more impactful than knowing some random user has problems.

Training like your customer-base takes this a step further.  Go and get whatever certification or accreditation they need (like my example of becoming a certified benefits broker).  This will not only extend your baseline knowledge of that particular area, it will help you see things the way they do.  In the care of a credential or training you’re also rounding out your own experience and possible exposing you to new concepts.  This has the added benefit of (generally) getting you some street-cred with your customers.

Going even deeper you could even BECOME your customer.  I very rarely see folks taking this path since it is very intense and time consuming… but it does offer the most in-depth way to gain experience.  For example a software engineer might choose to implement a live customer, or a Salesforce rep may take some inbound calls.  While this does crank up the intensity a bit, it will really help show you what’s important, or annoying, or impactful for your customer base.

While there’s nothing wrong with not taking these steps, I find they help individuals make better informed decisions and allows them to develop better solutions to challenges.  Flexing ourselves this way also has the side-effect of helping us build better relationships, and learn something new about our tool.