Ben Apa is our latest employee feature, and we couldn’t be more excited to share more about this incredible Simplus team member. A Delivery Director at Simplus, Ben is widely applauded by his colleagues for his compassionate management, dedication to client needs, and resiliency. We asked Ben to share a little bit more about his professional and personal background, so keep reading to learn more about him!

 

What do you do at Simplus?

I’m a Delivery Director for the West region and own the high-tech practice. I’m responsible for managing and growing this practice, with an indirect tie to some of our most strategic and notable Q2C clients. I pride myself on not letting any client relationship go unattended or undervalued. It is also one of my highest priorities to ensure our resources, the team members that work at Simplus, are appreciated for the work they do and given an opportunity to grow in the way that they desire while at Simplus.

 

What are some achievements of which you are most proud? Both professionally and personally.

I am proudest of my family: my wife and my three kids. They are the reason I strive for success, constantly giving me motivation to be better, whether they realize it or not.

Professionally, I am particularly proud of how I’ve developed a well-rounded solution architecture skillset across multiple Salesforce platforms and industries and can leverage that as an enterprise-level engagement leader to realize deeper and richer success for our clients. My unique understanding of Sales and Revenue Cloud has enabled me to proactively identify operational, functional, and technical risks for our most complex delivery engagements and mitigate these perils more efficiently.

 

What are your hobbies?

I love to spend time with my family: watching movies, reading books, traveling, and cooking. Cooking is a passion of mine. Always looking for new recipes to make for the people I love.

I am a huge football fan—and a jaded one too. The Miami Dolphins are my favorite sports team. But when I’m not drowning in their misery, I’m excited to root for the champion Georgia Bulldogs.

 

Why do you like working at Simplus?

The people. I can go on about benefits, values, and methodology, but ultimately I have to enjoy working with my team members day in and day out and feel empowered by my leaders to do what’s right. It’s the right kind of people alongside me and above me that make this the right place to work at.

 

Tell us a little bit about your professional background.

I started out as a sales leader. When I was leading an inside and outside sales team of about a hundred people, I also inadvertently became the business owner of Salesforce.com. We adopted this for account and opportunity management, and eventually, I was responsible for delivering this to much broader parts of our organization. From then on I was hooked. I joined Cloud Sherpas and still work with some of the amazing people that made that company great. I’ve led multi-national, enterprise implementations for Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Revenue Cloud. I’ve done Marketing Cloud work and have even dabbled a bit in coded development, integrations, and data migrations (but don’t ask that of me these days, please). Today, I most enjoy getting to do quite a bit of everything. I lead people. I help develop and grow folks on their career paths. I get to capture new IPs, assets, and a practice point of view based on my years of experience. And I still roll up my sleeves every now and then to make sure our most strategic clients are happy and growing with us.

 

What do you feel are your greatest contributions that help make Simplus the best consulting firm?

The best things I can contribute and often focus my time on are in helping to grow our more junior resources. I remember what it was like starting out as a consultant and then growing as an app lead and solution architect—the pressure of discovery calls, building complex flows and detailed design, and helping delegate the ownership of build and execution to a large team. I let that show at every opportunity I can with our team members. It’s important they understand that we have been there. But with hard work and love for your craft, you can reach your goals in this space just the same.

I LOVE seeing our most challenging projects succeed, helping lead a team of our brightest to production release, and feeling the positive energy from their success after we finish these engagements. It’s a feeling like no other.

It’s also truly satisfying to help close new deals and net new logos with some of our largest and most challenging clients.

 

If you are playing Two Truths and a Lie, what answers stump people every time?

I married my high school sweetheart.

I’ve never traveled outside of the United States.

I was born with only two wisdom teeth.

 

Congratulations, Ben!