This morning, I discovered a new AppExchange app that quickly became the second-most exciting thing I’ve seen on a Monday morning in quite some time. (The top most exciting thing this morning was trying out my new french press coffee maker at work (shown at right))

The app is called Find Nearby Accounts, Contacts, and Leads and it provides you the means of geolocating all your Accounts, Contacts, and Leads using Google Maps in a completely easy way. The installation took five minutes. Configuration took another ten minutes (really only on account of watching some helpful videos provided right on a setup tab for the app). Soon thereafter, I was geolocating all my records like a mad-man. Well, truthfully, the Geo-code tab took care of that whole thing for me, but it was completely easy, user-friendly, free, and best of all, the end result was a pretty fantastic app.

So what does it do?

You add a few fields to your Page Layouts in Salesforce like “Find Nearby” and “Mapping Status.” If the address has not been mapped before, simply click Locate Account (or Contact or Lead) next to Find Nearby and it will geocode it for you. Then filter your results by whether you want to see Accounts, Contacts or Leads and within what mile range of that initial account. The result set can then be dragged over to the Driving Directions section. There you can quickly order the people and places you need to see and quickly generate Google Maps of how to get from one to another.

For the sake of challenging the system, I selected 16 accounts that I wanted to go see. I didn’t put them in any particular order and literally, 20 seconds later, I had directions for the 1755 mile trek I’d need to take to visit all 16 of those customers.

Another feature within that map is a green plus sign on each Account, Contact, or Lead which quickly helps me create a calendar event to meet with them, right in Salesforce. It couldn’t get much easier.

You can also add a “Map” button to your List View Layout and create a map of any grouping of Accounts, Contacts or Leads that you can find using a List View.

While there were some apps available on the AppExchange before to help you geolocate records and even very nicely get you directions, this is the first time I’ve seen something so deeply integrated, easy to setup and completely free. I kid you not that I was up and running in under 20 minutes. That’s the power of a great set of APIs from both Salesforce and Google. The AppExchange makes it easy to install it, and I have to hand it to Iman, the guy who hosts the six videos showing how to configure and use the features of the app. Iman’s work was not only really useful, but he’s now set a great standard for setup help that I hope other AppExchange partners will use as well.

This app got my mind thinking of all the other things I might want to use this for in the future. Maybe it will spark something with you too. One of the things I appreciate most abou the AppExchange is seeing what others have done and imagining how to take it further with my company. It could be something little or something huge, but it makes me think.

To see the magic, check out these short demos.

Today’s guest post is by Ed Schlesinger, better known as @studentforcenow on Twitter. Ed is a father and a businessman who has an incredible vision for the possibilities of cloud computing to help higher education. His brainchild, Studentforce is a unique portal for universities which connects students to faculty and administration to everyone. With the announcement of Chatter, Ed immediately saw the amazing potential that Chatter would have on Studentforce and I want you to hear what he’s poured his heart into. Let it spur you on to think of new and deeper uses for Chatter in your daily work and life.

The Higher Ed Cloud

Salesforce.com and its forward thinking management, employees and partners whose efforts have sparked the revolution that is happening NOW; even as I type this response, should be lauded for its accomplishments. However, while having a ‘great’ idea; one that resonates with all of us and becomes just plain common sense should be celebrated, its the execution on that idea that is the true measure of a game changing technological, financial and sociological success that is the shift that benefits us all. That is the true accomplishment salesforce.com can beat its chest about – execution.

In order to reinforce that momentum and truly democratize the availability and use of powerful enterprise class SaaS, studentforce endeavors to place the platform in the hands of those who truly know how it can be used – students. Delivering on Don Tapscott’s 1998 prognostication “… that the most revolutionary force for change is the students themselves. Give children [students] the tools they need and they will be the single most important source of guidance on how to make the schools relevant and effective” is a tall order made possible by the force.com platform; and, more recently, the introduction of Chatter – a secure medium by which students collaborate with one another; faculty do the same; and, each group shares with one another. Student Chatter + Faculty Chatter creates a dimension of conversation and collaboration never before available.

Recently published studies report that faculty (80%) use social medium; and, a growing number (30%) use collaboration tools, available as a service to communicate with their students incorporated into lesson plans. We already know that students (and others) have already enthusiastically embraced social medium and its growth is accelerating throughout the world. But there still exists a disconnect between faculty, students and staff on campus. As the further ‘commercialization’ (by no means a bad thing) of collaboration platforms evolve it seems to be at the expense of PRIVACY. That will inhibit the execution of a great idea. Ironically, security and privacy must be intact so that collaboration and sharing can occur. Think about it – strange; right?

With Chatter layered within the force.com architecture, we now have a platform that is secure; private where necessary; and, holds the promise of exponentially increasing the transfer of ideas …. so the execution of those ideas can occur. Chatter also ” … brings the data alive” by automating the notification of important events as they occur and delivering them specifically relevant to the tasks they are associated with. And its MOBILE; available on my Blackberry, iPhone, iPad and yeah – future mobile devices.

What better audience is there to take a wonderful idea (SaaS + Collaboration + Mobile); effectively executed for businesses, non profits and individuals than those who have grown up using these tools? And, by giving students ” … the tools they need” a generation of productive, knowledge seeking students will be able to execute on the ideas that have not yet been thought of as they become citizens participating in business, teaching and life long learning.

Studentforce Chatter Use Cases

Here are a few possible use cases for Chatter in the Higher Ed space off the top of my head. There are probably many, many more that I have not thought of or have not yet been even considered until Chatter has been deployed among students, faculty and university admins.

• Admissions/student recruiting would be able to identify the ‘right’ fit applicant for the school and engage them through the process. Instead of marketing “TO” the student the school is “ENGAGING” the student applicant through Chatter – all branded with the Universities’ materials
• The boarding process for new admitted students can be accomplished through single sign on and documents, workflow, etc. can be accomplished through an appealing interface with drag and drop (think eSignatures, etc.). There would be a significant return on investment once this is implemented including, but not limited to: postage savings, printed materials, labor to print and send documents from varied departments at the university, reduction in duplication of effort, significant reduction of errors
• Even if Chatter was limited ONLY to engaging students from time to time in an efficient manner retention will be dramatically increased
• Documents, links, events, other information can be shared among user; or, IT designated GROUPS facilitating the transfer of documents, video (‘Lectures On Demand) information securely
• Faculty can distribute assignments to students in their classes and students can submit completed assignments securely; same with grades or any other information between secure groups. This is a DRAMATIC increase from Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Blackboard. There is a significant ROI for this application as universities will NO LONGER be captive to expensive maintenance contracts from Client Server based systems. With that said universities that have signed long term contracts with these providers can still improve their users’ experience and increase the return on investment of those systems by front ending them with Studentforce equipped with Chatter
• Career services will be able to notify students of specific internship opportunities based upon their interests, major, skills, specific qualifications etc. and students will be able to apply to university partners with drag and drop capabilities. Similarly, companies that hire from Universities through specific programs can have access to the PROFILE available in Chatter through Portal or S2S deployment – again; in a secure manner
• Study Abroad processes will be vastly improved whether it be the student application process where numerous documents are required to be exchanged between students, the home school Study Abroad Office, Scholarship Vendors, Student Loan Vendors, and the Study Abroad school’s admissions, registrar and bursar departments
• Documents, events, can be shared among students who are Freshman, Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors; students who share a major; share an association with a specific school (IT, Arts & Sciences, etc.) and the combinations of those. Therefore ALL Juniors in IT; or ALL Seniors in Arts & Sciences.
• References and recommendations required by hiring companies or graduate schools can be transferred through Chatter
• Financial Aid and other government required documents that require secure transmission (completed tax forms of students that are required by Financial Aid offices; signed Master Agreements for Loans required by banks and government entities, etc.)
• Emergency Notification and unified communication across campus

Ed Schlesinger
Studentforce

Momentum keeps growing in the Service and Support realm at Salesforce.com.  What started as humble beginnings back in 2005 as relatively simple case management is now expanding to be the most comprehensive Service and Support offering yet; the Salesforce Service Cloud 2.  With 8,000 companies already using the “current” Service Cloud platform, Salesforce has cemented their commitment to continued innovation, putting time, money, and developers behind building the best service offering available on any platform and for any business.

Service Cloud 2 consists of three parts, Knowledge, Answers, and Salesforce for Twitter

A core piece of the Service Cloud 2 is Salesforce Knowledge.  Just a year ago, Salesforce saw ahead of the curve and made a strategic acquisition of Instranet, a comprehensive knowledge management company that had some great technology, but still relied on single tenancy and complex software and hardware management.  Service Cloud 2 is the fully “in the cloud” version of that acquisition.  Re-tooling a technology and entirely integrating it to existing products usually takes years, but just one year later, Service Cloud 2 is able to fully utilize Visualforce, Apex code, and all the other benefit already available on the Force.com platform.  When asked if former Instranet customers were interested in switching over to the cloud, Alex Dayon, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Salesforce said, “They’ve been pushing us the hardest ”

Companies work hard to try and share knowledge across their organization and to their customers, but most of the technology to do so is complicated to design, deploy, and maintain.  Whether your business process is simple or deeply complex,  Salesforce Knowledge allows for rapid deployment, easy sharing of information to as few or as many people as you need, extremely simple customization, consistent innovation and upgrades, as well as being on a trusted, secure infrastructure that has been proven reliable.

Salesforce Knowledge is priced at $50 per user, per month and is slated for general availability in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2010. (a few months away)

Salesforce Answers takes the knowledge of the masses and allows you to build on it and reuse it.  Most of us look to a search engine to solve a problem much sooner than pick up the phone.  The answers they find though might be dated and it’s often hard to know which answers are right.  Salesforce Answers helps you build knowledge through the people who talk about your products.  In turn, when your customers find the answer to their questions, they can be published to your knowledge base immediately and you gain millions of content writers.

One of the most interesting features of Salesforce Answers is it’s built-in integration to Facebook.  Now your company’s Facebook fan page can utilize Salesforce Answers right out of the box and millions of people have another way to join in the conversation and contribute.

Salesforce Answers is currently in pilot and should be generally available in the first half of fiscal year 2011.

The third piece of the new Service Cloud 2 is Salesforce for Twitter, a free integration between Salesforce and Twitter to monitor your brand, and join in the conversation that’s already happening.  Whether you realize it or not, people are probably talking about your products, your industry, and even your competitors.  How will you be prepared to respond to what’s being said?  Salesforce has a way.

Salesforce for Twitter features

• Search Twitter in real time – Don’t waste your time looking for service issues, let Salesforce find them for you.
• Monitor service issues on Twitter - Once you find something that needs attention, capture the conversation, see what others say, respond to it yourself, and join the conversation.
• Establish an Enterprise presence on Twitter – Show your interest in the people who are interested in you.  Resolve service issues before they escalate and engage your customers before your competitors do.
• Give your customers a direct channel to support through Twitter – Setup your own channel for customers to directly “Tweet to Case.”  Customer issues are immediately turned into cases to resolve and build a reputation of listening and response.
• Integrated push of “Tweets to Knowledge” – Don’t miss capturing a solution. Once resolved, publish the solution to Salesforce Knowledge.

Salesforce for Twitter Is available now from the Salesforce AppExchange.  If you’re interested in more information on Salesforce for Twitter or the Service Cloud 2, follow Salesforce on Twitter @salesforcenews.

Salesforce is proving that they “get” Service and Support.  With the Service Cloud 2, they are building an arsenal of tools to engage customers, track those relationships, resolve their issues, share information, increase brand loyalty, and improve customer satisfaction.

If you’re put back by the thought of how much it costs to use these tools, you probably ought to look at what the things you’re doing today are costing you in software licenses, hardware maintenance, unhappy customers, and frustrated employees.  I guarantee you thousands of companies are going to adopt this technology, pay the price, get the ROI, see repeat customers and grow their business.  Will it be you or your competitors?

Marcelo Lewin, of the Pixel Heads Network recently posted an interview with Peter Coffee, platform evangelist for Salesforce.com.  Pixel Heads specializes in videos, blogs, and podcasts aimed at entertaining, informing, and teaching digital content authors.  

An interesting point Coffee brings up in the interview is the broad use of the term “platform” today.  He helps differentiate the requirements of scaling an application built on the Force.com platform versus on other platforms such as Facebook.  Some application developers are now finding out a kind of “cost of success.”  He says that while some Facebook application developers are happy to learn that their app is modestly popular, the Facebook platform is merely the gateway to their application and if they want to scale up to the masses, they’re facing increased hardware, bandwidth, and software costs to scale up their application.  The issue of scaling on Force.com is not an issue any Force.com developers need to worry about. 

To find out more about how Pixel Heads uses Salesforce.com and Amazon S3 for their network, you can catch it here.  There they talk about how the scaling of Amazon S3 allows them to serve their content worldwide to 10 or 10,000 people simultaneously without degraded performance or even any change made by Pixel Heads.  

It kind of goes back to the analogy of the power company.  I don’t have to worry about whether all my lights will go on in my house if I decide to illuminate them all at the same time.  The power company handles the load and I don’t need to call and request extra power, it’s just made available to me at a predetermined price.  

You can follow Pixel Heads at @PixelHeadsNet on Twitter  You can follow me at @CRMFYI on Twitter.

I found it interesting to read Bill Snyder of Computerworld put Salesforce.com CEO, Marc Benioff in what Snyder calls, “our Bozo Hall of Fame.”  He walks the reader through the drama that unfurled about a year ago when Salesforce.com began some type of talks with Zoho’s CEO, Sridhar Vembu about bringing the Zoho productivity suite to the Salesforce AppExchange.  Snyder attributes the “award” to Benioff for how the whole process went down and eventually fizzled to nothing.  What adds to the intrigue of this story is the timing of Salesforce’s strategic alliance with Google over the past year.  Though we don’t have many details from the article, here’s kind of what I’m kind of thinking went on.

Going back even a little further than this story recounts, I remember having a discussion with Salesforce back in 2006 about Zoho.  At the time, we had a Salesforce product manager and a few services guys in our office to discuss a project.  Off the cuff, I asked if the product manager had ever seen Zoho CRM.  Since he hadn’t seen it, I decided to take a few minutes and show him what I’d seen in it by getting a free Zoho CRM license.  We walked through the app a bit and honestly, we had a good laugh about just how similar Zoho and Salesforce really were, once you strip away the on-screen formatting.  While you can’t say that Zoho had nearly the features that Salesforce had at the time, it was still striking how much it appeared that Zoho emulated Salesforce CRM.  The Salesforce guys kind of laughed it off as imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.

We also found the Zoho CRM logo humorous.  Notice how the Zoho blocks are similar to the Salesforce “S Cube” logo which appears to now be retired.  And notice that the font of “CRM” appears to be strikingly like the signature logo of the company formerly known as Siebel.  What a coincidence?

Now fast forward to 2007.  The Google / Salesforce alliance gets it’s kickoff on June 5.  That alliance really started with Google Adwords and the launch of Salesforce Group Edition.  I’m going to guess that more than just AdWords talks had taken place during that year, though nothing more was released.  No doubt, talks about Google Apps were happening too 

Then, according to Snyder, sometime before Dreamforce 07, Salesforce asked Zoho to put development effort into integrating with Salesforce and offering it on the AppExchange.  Salesforce still had no office suite that was fully integrated to Salesforce CRM, so Zoho seemed to make sense.  Salesforce knew full-well that Zoho had a CRM product that would compete, but they wanted to see the office suite integration.  A later meeting between Salesforce and Zoho brought them to putting a stop to the offer to bring it to the AppExchange due to the competing CRM.  Salesforce then offered to buy Zoho out, though Zoho’s CEO refused.  Vembu wrote on the Zoho Blog on November 4 with the headline, “Mr. Benioff, Tear Down That Wall.”  Now if Zoho CRM had defined their company, I can see them being a little miffed at their flagship being absorbed (or annihilated) by a merger, but their many products defined Zoho, not just their CRM.  

Move forward to April 2008 and the launch of the full Google Apps suite, fully integrated with Salesforce.  That was a huge announcement which led to tons of possibilities and speculation.  While I know Google and Salesforce have become best pals, I wonder where that Google alliance would be today if Vembu had accepted Benioff’s offer to buyout Zoho.  Frankly, I’m glad Zoho walked away, but I wonder what Dreamforce 08 would have been like if Salesforce had it’s own office suite.

Though I can’t point to just when, I really thought I remember Marc Benioff being complimentary to Zoho in the past, on a quarterly earnings call when talk of office productivity suites came up.  Either way, now he gets to be complimentary to Google instead.

Regarding Snyder’s “Bozo” award, I can’t really say that I think it’s deserved.  Think of every corporate merger and buyout that happens.  If there are competing products in both the former companies, it’s not so unreasonable to expect the stronger one to win dominance and drive the other to obsolescence.  That’s business.  Not everyone will like it, but that’s the way it works.  Now he may be wishing that Salesforce had just let Zoho go out on the AppExchange as is.  But think about which one will drive more revenue to Salesforce.  Zoho on the AppExchange or Google Apps native in Salesforce? We know the answer, and that’s the way Marc Benioff has chosen to take his company.  Good for us.

Salesforce has provided the Dreamforce 08 breakout sessions in record time this year.  Kudos to Erica Kuhl and her web services team at Salesforce tor getting them up so quickly.

Head on over to the Salesforce.com Community site and check out all the sessions you wanted to attend but couldn’t get to.  This year they have much better packaging of the content as the audio is synced to all the slides shown in the session.  Now you’ll see everything you would have gotten in the breakout (except for the speaker).

Didn’t attend Dreamforce 08?  No problem.  You don’t even have to log in to watch any of these great sessions.  Pick out your favorites and watch or even just listen while you’re doing your other work.  It’s a great way to get inspired and get more from Salesforce.

One of the key messages from Dreamforce 08 was the coming ability to build what are called Force.com Sites.  These sites are websites you can build to extend the reach of CRM and your own built apps on the Force.com platform to people who don’t use Salesforce.  This extends the your ability to gather data and build some great apps both on public websites and corporate portals that leverage your data and applications in Salesforce.

Monday night at Dreamforce, the Developer Community held a Hackathon where you got a hands-on look at Sites and a chance to compete for great prizes building your first site.  My good friend Johan built his first site and even won an iPod for the effort.  He built a site for employees to request access to Salesforce.  It could be integrated into a corporate portal and makes use of both the standard and custom fields on User records to not only allow users to request access, but you could even use workflow to auto-provision users and then assign a task to the Admin to give the profile a human-eye once over before activating it.  This fills a gap we’ve seen in how to get non-users of Salesforce on their way to accessing Salesforce.

I also had the chance to talk to a fellow passenger on my flight back to MSP about how he’s thinking of using Sites.  He manages franchise retail outlets around the country.  They use Salesforce to track much of the information the collect from those locations, but they don’t give each location access to Salesforce.  Today, they have to gather the data through email and manually input a lot of data.  His vision for Sites is to open a portal for those retail locations and allow them to enter the data directly to Salesforce, eliminating any double entry and really strengthening the process of data collection.  Tie that with workflow and you’ve saved a ton of time.

What have you thought about doing with Sites?  To this point, Salesforce and the Force.com platform have been pretty much a walled garden of your data, and of course much of it can and will stay that way.  But start thinking of what you could start managing through both internal and external uses of Sites.  Force.com Sites is currently in Developer Preview, but based on history, it’s probably not more than a few months from public availability.  To learn more about Force.com Sites, visit the Developer website and start imagining.  There’s also a webinar you can attend on December 2 to learn more about it.

Stop by the Immersion Lab upstairs to get your own copy of the Force.com Workbook. It’s a great book of 13 tutorials to build Force.com apps in just 30 minutes. Need it today or not, stop by and take one home. You’ll be amazed what you cab do.

The online version can be downloaded here.