Established pan-European experience design organisation

In 2014 I joined Salesforce as part of the global experience design leadership to establish an experience design organisation in Europe as part of Salesforce's expansion in the region at the time.

I approached the challenge from several strategic angles to set the organisation up for success:

1. Convince leadership that a central design team in London would not be sufficient as EMEA was split into four self-governing regions: UKi, South, Central and Nordics. Furthermore, understanding local beahviours and customs is an important aspect of designers truely understanding their users.
2. Grow 4 teams with a minimum viable team mentality. A single designer gets lonely and quickly burns out.
3. Educate rest of Salesforce Service organisation in EMEA so they knew when to position design as part of customer proposals.
4. Shape an define package called "Envision" to fit the EMEA market and convince leadership to give sales teams (globally) incentive to sell the package.

Results

• The organisation grew to 4 established studios in London, Berlin, Paris and Amsterdam with a headcount of 40+.
• A consistent 9.7 out of 10 in customer satisfaction.
• Had largely no benchtime
• A staff retention rate of almost 100%.
• Bonus result: 2015: The first time a project, where design had been involved, appeared at a Salesforce keynote presentation with a lead-generation app for Commerzbank.