New Partnership Creates Innovative Salesforce Training Program
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 24, 2021) — A partnership among the City of Lexington, the University of Kentucky, Commerce Lexington and Coastal Cloud announced the creation of a new UK Salesforce Consultancy Incubator Program yesterday.
As part of the new program, Coastal Cloud will train students, recent college graduates and new or aspiring Salesforce administrators to become effective Salesforce consultants. The Salesforce company creates digital platforms for customer relationship management, assisting businesses with marketing, sales, commerce, service and IT support.
“Businesses around the world utilize the Salesforce platform, and this partnership will provide the valuable training to become a Salesforce consultant,” Mayor Linda Gorton said.
UK has a strong partnership with Salesforce. Recently, the university turned to Salesforce to aid in response to COVID-19, leveraging the Health Cloud to serve the campus community with daily screening, testing and contact tracing operations. This effort resulted in a nomination of an Excellence in Institutional Efficiency award.
UK also has a Salesforce Student Organization, sponsored by the Von Allmen Center for Entrepreneurship at the Gatton College of Business and Economics, which brings together over 60 students dedicated to professional development and skills training in preparation for entering the workforce.
"Through partnerships like this, UK students will have the opportunity to discover what's possible when technology and innovation converge," said Kirsten Turner, vice president for student success at UK. "They will gain invaluable experiences that will propel them to be successful and productive members of our community and economy."
Participants in the program will gain experience in client discovery sessions, documenting requirements and business processes and proposing out-of-the-box custom Salesforce solutions. Experience will progress to levels of design and development within the Salesforce software platform.
Commerce Lexington Inc. President and CEO Bob Quick said, “The key to success in business often starts with building relationships. There is an art to connecting with people, and this partnership will provide valuable training to students, recent college graduates and others to do just that. The Salesforce company is well-known in the business world for its CRM digital platforms, and through this initiative and new space, Coastal Cloud will help build our future workforce in cloud-based careers.”
In addition to gaining technical experience with Salesforce, program participants will have the support of working alongside experienced Coastal Cloud consultants, who will share knowledge and expertise on being a successful Salesforce Consultant.
“We are so excited to expand Coastal Cloud’s presence in Kentucky, bringing high paying jobs to the Lexington area,” said Sara Hale, Coastal Cloud co-founder and managing partner. “This new space allows us to continue to grow our partnership with the University of Kentucky, connecting students to jobs in technology and helping to build a cloud-based career pipeline for graduates.”
Coastal Cloud is a Salesforce Multi-Cloud Expert Partner based in Palm Coast, Florida. Through its unique consulting business model, the company provides implementations and managed services to assist clients in migrating to next-generation systems. Coastal Cloud, one of the fastest companies to achieve Platinum status with Salesforce, was named to Inc.’s Best Workplaces and Florida Trend’s Best Companies to Work. For more information about Coastal Cloud, visit www.CoastalCloud.us.
As the state’s flagship, land-grant institution, the University of Kentucky exists to advance the Commonwealth. We do that by preparing the next generation of leaders — placing students at the heart of everything we do — and transforming the lives of Kentuckians through education, research and creative work, service and health care. We pride ourselves on being a catalyst for breakthroughs and a force for healing, a place where ingenuity unfolds. It's all made possible by our people — visionaries, disruptors and pioneers — who make up 200 academic programs, a $476.5 million research and development enterprise and a world-class medical center, all on one campus.
In 2022, UK was ranked by Forbes as one of the “Best Employers for New Grads” and named a “Diversity Champion” by INSIGHT into Diversity, a testament to our commitment to advance Kentucky and create a community of belonging for everyone. While our mission looks different in many ways than it did in 1865, the vision of service to our Commonwealth and the world remains the same. We are the University for Kentucky.