About Purposeful Architect
Richard Cunningham started Purposeful Architect in 2020 to create conversations about the discovery and design stages of Salesforce solution development. At Salesforce meetups, he kept hearing about Salesforce orgs in disarray. Some of these meetups were hosted by Ian Gotts, CEO of Elements.cloud, who literally wrote the book on problem orgs, OrgConfessions. The book quickly grew to 100’s of confessions, highlighting the need for improved analysis and design in the Salesforce user community.
Richard has managed app development in Salesforce since 2006. He has been responsible for product management, project management, production administration, often at the same time. Richard intends to use his experience to start the conversations in Purposeful Architect.
Richard Cunningham, Author
Richard Cunningham first showed his keen insight into customers at the age of fourteen. His newspaper route had a stern doctor, who hated searching for his paper in the dark every morning. Richard not only put the doctor's paper on the porch, but immediately next to the door opening, thereby allowing the doctor to quickly reach the newspaper from inside the house.
Knowing that simple action made the doctor’s morning start better, Richard took that extra step for every customer on his route. The stern doctor was so impressed with Richard that he also hired Richard to clean his pool. He knew that Richard would do any job to his high standards.
In college, Richard developed a new talent – software development. While working in Austin College’s data center, he taught himself how to code. After graduating, he took this new found skill and coupled it with his customer orientation. He developed a profound ability to understand customer needs, and to create intelligent technology based solutions.
Early in his career, Richard leveraged his skills as a Sales Engineer. Working onsite with clients, he understood their challenges and guided them through how to adapt new technologies to meet their needs and make the technology accessible to everyone in the organization. He flourished in the client-centric, dynamic, fast paced environment.
In 1994, Richard was one of the early innovators to see the internet as a solution to client challenges of a niche market and its commercial potential. He launched Aircraft Shopper Online in 1995, which capitalized on the aircraft industry’s portable, high-ticket assets and a global market. ASO grew into a multi-million-dollar business and was sold in 2006.
After the sale of ASO, Richard founded Blendery, with a mission to create intelligent technology solutions on the Salesforce platform. The company started by developing ActevaRSVP, providing event registration for Salesforce customers. Clients like NBC and Manpower worked directly with Richard to streamline their event registration experience. While working with these clients, he saw a greater need in the event community that technology could improve beyond just registration.
Blendery next developed Red Carpet, a Salesforce based hospitality system for Coca-Cola’s global sporting event sponsorships. He worked closely with the Global Hospitality Team to develop a system that extended beyond event registration to streamline management of rooms and tickets into custom packages for Coca-Cola’s event guests. Coca-Cola launched the system for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and used it through the 2019 Rugby World Cup, more than any other system that they have used before. Richard has since joined his colleagues from Coca-Cola as a Partner in the Edge Network.
