CRM FYI

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.

Marc Benioff is no stranger to Web 2.0, but it’s interesting that he’s not only going to watch TechCrunch 50 next month, he’s joining the panel of experts who will sort through the best of the best Web 2.0 companies and ideas.

TechCrunch 50 is a mini-conference of 50 hand-picked startup companies that get to pitch their products and ideas to a team of experts, advisors, and investors. It started last year as TechCrunch 20 40 where personal finance service Mint.com was crowned the winner.

I have no doubt Marc will provide some great advice and feedback to these companies he talks to. He really started his own Web 2.0 revolution. What I find more interesting though is that Marc will also be looking for his next acquisition target. What better place to seek a product or idea to augment Salesforce.com than a best of the best startup conference.

Just about two years ago, Koral did it’s pitch at Demo 06 and within nine months, Salesforce bought them and made the product known as Salesforce Content.

What will it be next? I’m anxious to see.

Find out more about the panel of experts and TechCrunch 50 at TechCrunch.

When you travel, why is it that in spite of the fact that you want your money back quickly, submitting your expense report is not the top activity on your mind? So far, for most of us, it’s because we’ve been stuck in a tedious processes of gathering receipts, taping them to paper, inputting data on either a spreadsheet or online app, then either dropping them in an envelope to Accounting. We put off submitting that expense report because it’s not fun and we have more valuable things to do with our time.  Model Metrics just changed the expense reporting game for us though. Weary travelers, get ready for the first and only expense report app you’ll likely ever enjoy. Get ready for Expense2GO.

Starting today in the Apple App Store on iTunes (v 7.7), you can download Expense2GO, the first native iPhone expense reporting app that lets you enter expenses on the go, online or offline and sync them securely to an expense management system in Salesforce.com with full workflow capabilities.

Model Metrics has built Expense2GO from the ground up on the iPhone platform.  They utilized the iPhone camera as a part of the app and integrated the whole process back to Salesforce.com and the workflow and approvals available from the Force.com platform.  From your iPhone, you can incur an expense and literally moments later, it could be approved by your boss and you’re on to more productive work.  At initial launch, the online interface for expenses will be a non-Visualforce application, but later this summer, the full Visualforce user interface will be released.

Part of the game-changing nature of Expense2GO is how you enter your expenses. As you get a receipt, take a quick picture of it with the built-in iPhone camera. Attach it to a visit or trip, put in a note or two and hit the sync button. It’s really that simple. But to say it’s that simple really doesn’t live up to the headline I gave it above, saying that expense reporting is sexy. To understand why I say that, you really have to see the video demo and the screenshots below.  It’s really quite elegant.

The benefits of Expense2GO seem huge.

• Instantly digitize receipts
• Online and offline data entry allows you to report an expense literally anywhere
• Interface utilizes iPhone multi-touch to make data entry extremely easy
• Security is built-in and enterprise class
• Workflow is built-in, customizable, and approvals can be done through the iPhone
• Integration through web services allows deep ties to be built to your back office
• Entering an expense report is fun for the first time

The cost of Expense2GO is $10 per month, per user, regardless of whether you use Salesforce.com already or not.  Salesforce.com CRM licensing is not required.

I heard someone once say that Apple makes the sexiest looking rectangles in the world and it’s true.  Apple makes some of the simplest, yet most elegant designs in their products.  The iPhone demonstrates that and now there’s a way to leverage that elegance in a business process that nobody liked, until now.  Model Metrics is pushing the envelope with the interfaces they’ve built to Salesforce.  Along with the iPhone 3G enhancements that are breaking down barriers to corporate acceptance of the iPhone, Model Metrics is showing us that the iPhone is not just a good looking device, it can really be leveraged to solve a big problem for travelers.

To download Expense2GO, you’ll need iTunes 7.7.  Then head to the iTunes Store and search Expense2GO.  While you can download the app today, you won’t be able to run it on the iPhone or iPod Touch until the iPhone 2.0 sofware update is released on July 11.

It’s almost like peanut butter and jelly; two things that taste great alone, but taste even better together. The announcement today of Salesforce for Google Apps is an exciting one for multiple reasons. Google and Salesforce are two of my favorite companies with some of my absolute favorite applications. The combination of them is a powerful offering. What we’ll now need to watch and see is how the rest of the world, the “not as geeky as me” crowd embraces this alliance.

Two great videos will explain this alliance. (Both are well produced and impressive in their own ways)

Now the main question I have is, “Will companies adopt this offering?” With the wide range of size of companies using Salesforce, it’s a natural fit for those who are smaller and already using Google Apps. The tie is natural and probably one that they’ve wanted for some time. How about the mid-size to large company though? Will Gmail replace the use of Exchange or Lotus Notes? That’s a harder one to picture happening, but maybe there has to be a shift in process to blend them somehow.

On the document front, I can guess that you may see quicker adoption when you start looking at the value of collaborative docs, spreadsheets, and presentations rather than email attachment nightmares like we all deal with today. Since Google offers significant amounts of storage space, it kind of alleviates the Salesforce document storage caps as well.

Probably the most exciting thing in this offering for me is the integration of Google Talk. I already use Google Talk to communicate with our Salesforce program team. Now that I can communicate with them from within Salesforce, which is that much better. One of the desires I’ve had for a long time is to have Salesforce deal with presence management or “who’s online now?” With the integration of Google Talk, you can better collaborate on the work you’re already doing in Salesforce and get quick answers to move deals along.

To find out more info about Salesforce for Google Apps, visit the product home page. You can also participate in the Live Webinar today at 12 PM PDT. If you’re a developer, check out the Developer Documentation.

Talk seems to be forming around the “big announcements” coming next Monday from Salesforce.  TechCrunch says it has to do with more Google integration.  That’s cool….maybe it could have some of what I’ve beein hoping for.

If you look at the new ways you can integrate Google Gadgets into iGoogle with your Google Spreadsheets data, you’ll see some pretty good looking charts.  I’d like to see the ability to use Google Gadgets within a Salesforce Dashboard or Report. 

Appirio has done some cool stuff with Salesforce data secured in Google Gadgets on your iGoogle homepage.  Now I’d like to see the reverse and see some Google Chart Gadgets inside Salesforce. 

If you like the idea, please promote it here on the Idea Exchange.

Successforce is the mack daddy source for info you need as a Salesforce user, developer, administrator, executive, or competitor.  (OK, you need some other bloggers too)  Not a walled garden, they’ve made Successforce open to all who want to read and even contribute to the content therein.  But how does Salesforce make it easy to find what you need?

The answer lies in Google Custom Search Business Edition.  Ryan Pollock, a Product Marketing guy from Google wrote a blog post and did a short video interview about Custom Search with Salesforce VP of Developer Relations, Adam Gross.  Adam talks about how easy it was to integrate the Google Custom Search across all their pages and ensure we find what we need, regardless of what technology their assets lie on in the Salesforce back end.

Looking a little deeper into the pricing model, it wouldn’t be hard to see a quick ROI with an inexpensive service like Google Custom Search. 

Custom Search Business Edition is available in a number of plans:

• Search less than 5,000 web pages: $100 per year
• Search less than 50,000 web pages: $500 per year
• Search less than 100,000 web pages: $850 per year
• Search less than 300,000 web pages: $2250 per year

It’s good to know Salesforce sees it important to draw together all their resources for us, across so many sites.  Site searches are often neglected due to our experience of them providing us little or no value.  I wonder how many corporate websites could use a quick, inexpensive search makeover like this and see their customers find some real value from all the content they’ve spent millions producing.

Idea: Salesforce, you’ve got a “Who We’re Reading” section on Successforce pointing to many blogs, including my own.  How about adding our sites to your Google Custom Search Results?  There’s some good content out there people would get value in finding. Salesforce heard my request, and they’ve updated the custom search to include my blog and others; proof that they’re listening.  Thanks!

Technorati Tags: successforce, salesforce.com, crm, google custom search

See the sessions you missed at Dreamforce 07.  They’re starting to show up on Google Video.  About 50 of the breakout sessions are available already and more will be added soon. 

To see what’s available now, search Google Video for Dreamforce and sort the results by Date.  If you’d like to know when new videos are posted, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for new videos with the Dreamforce tag.

You’ll also find some user submitted videos of the excitement of Dreamforce as well as some footage from the volunteer project run by the Salesforce Foundation held Saturday, September 15. 

As the keynote sessions are added, I’ll be sure to let you know as they are worth a second watch.

Technorati Tags: dreamforce07, force.com, salesforce.com, crm

Today, I got to look at what I first thought was an unlikely match of my two favorite platforms; Salesforce.com and Facebook.  It’s called Faceforce and it augments your Lead, Contact, and Account data in Salesforce.com, helping you build deeper relationships with your customers and prospects.

When I first heard about this mashup, I wondered what value one would offer the other.  I like both platforms and though I use both daily, I didn’t see how one would benefit the other.  After seeing the apps work together, I understand more of the value and significance of this mashup.

How it works is you first need a login to Facebook.  Then you install the Faceforce application into your Salesforce.com org from the AppExchange.  You just need to add the S-controls created by Faceforce to your page layouts for Leads, Contacts, and Accounts.  That’s literally no more than a two minute process for all three.  Select the Faceforce application from AppExchange drop-down and click on the Faceforce tab.

The first time in, Faceforce will ask you to log into Facebook and add the Salesbook application to Facebook.  This is the hook that allows the two apps to talk to each other.  Once you’re back on Salesforce, you can Search for New Links to find people in your network that are found in Salesforce.  Once you match up your contacts to their Facebook profiles, you’re ready to ready to update Salesforce.  Before you do that though, if you have Salesforce contacts that you’d like to invite to Facebook, there’s a link to invite them into your Facebook network.  Once you’re finished, you’re ready to see more about your contacts.

Now in Salesforce, if you look at a Contact that you’re friends with on Facebook, you can see their Facebook profile right inline with their Salesforce contact record.  It even allows you to perform regular Facebook actions such as Send a Message, Send a Gift, Write on Wall, Message, view their Full Profile, and even the curious Poke. 

At the Lead level, the S-control will search Facebook for the lead and show possible matches.  If that is the person, you can link them to into the lead so you have access to all their Facebook data inline with your lead data.

At the Account level, the S-control will display all the Facebook connections you have with that company and allow you to take numerous Facebook actions, right from the Account record.

The mashup was built by Clara Shih, an AppExchange Product Manager at Salesforce.com in collaboration with Todd Perry, a software engineer at Facebook.  She did it because she too is a huge fan of both platforms, but more importantly, she demonstrated a way of mashing up two products, that were never made for each other.  Yet, as a user of both platforms, you can now connect the dots, having more information at your fingertips, inline with the applications you use everyday to build deeper relationships with your customers and prospects.

I don’t expect every company to adopt such a mashup, though the tremendous influx of new Facebook users 35 and older in the last months  have certainly taken to the concept and are hungry to build their networks.  If you’re looking for information on your customers and prospects, you can’t ignore what’s available through Facebook.

What Clara is doing with Faceforce is only going to spark more ideas of how to make use of data available to us.  I’m interested to watch what she and others do to enhance this type of integration.  We’re bound to see more like it.

I haven’t gone through nearly as many features as are in Faceforce.  If you’d like to see a demo of Faceforce, Clara provides a short Flash demo of how Faceforce works.  If you’d like to try Faceforce for yourself, you can install it from the AppExchange.  Her next experiment will see what you can bring from Salesforce into Facebook.  Kudos to Clara for helping us get a taste of the possibilities.

Technorati Tags: faceforce, salesforce.com, crm, facebook, mashup, salesbook, appexchange

Salesforce is co-sponsoring a cross country bus tour Adobe is subtitling “Cross Country Coding.”  The On AIR tour consists of three months, eighteen US cities, a big red bus, and evangelism about Adobe AIR ((Adobe Integrated Runtime) formerly Apollo).  It’s a little hard to see, but to the left of the O’Reilly decal is the Salesforce logo.  You can see more pictures of the bus on Flickr.  I’m registered already for the Minneapolis event in September which should prove pretty interesting.

Put simply, AIR is a way to develop applications that give a rich, user experiences both in a browser and on a desktop, across platforms.  Developers don’t need to write different versions of their apps for Mac, PC, or Linux.  They can develop once and deploy widely, even across browsers without worry of compatibility issues. 

How’s that fit in with Salesforce?  Salesforce has been working with Adobe to provide developer resources that let you make unique, richer Salesforce applications both through your browser with your Salesforce data, but also through desktop apps that don’t look anything like your browser.  The Flex Toolkit for Apex is a storehouse of coding wizardry that extends your data in ways you could never work with your data before.  Rich graphics, smooth transitions, drag and drop data, fields, and columns are just a few of the things Flex offers to Salesforce users.  The Flex Toolkit works hand in hand with Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR to help create apps that may just blow your mind.  Give it time, there aren’t many apps out there yet, but watch and see.

The only publicly available, free AppExchange application built with some Flex code that you can download and try right now is Conference Manager.   Interestingly enough though, it’s also the app that Salesforce uses internally to manage Dreamforce.  I’ve installed it and it’s slick stuff.  It uses inline S-controls let you work with your data in a really unique way.  Take it for a Test Drive or install it in your own development org. 

If you want to get a taste of what AIR can do with your Salesforce data, check out Dave Carroll’s Salesforce Widget. 

Adobe is putting a lot into the launch of AIR and from what I’ve seen so far, AIR has a good shot at making some compelling apps, and ways to see and work with your data unlike you do today.  It looks like Salesforce is working very tightly with Adobe to make it that much easier for developers to work through Flex and AIR.  Salesforce folks will be at numerous bus tour events showing off what they’ve done.  Watch for the “coolness” of AIR both in standard Salesforce apps, widget like applications like Dave Carroll’s, and even in dashboards.

Between seeing what literally “develops” on the bus around America On AIR and what’s shown at Dreamforce 07, it looks like you’re going to be seeing Flex and AIR quite a lot before year-end.  (And that’s a good thing.)

Technorati Tags: salesforce, adobe, air apollo, appexchange

John Ragsdale, of the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), writes about a new service called TruCast by Visible Technologies that brings visibility to what your customers or anyone is saying about your company across the Internet and blogosphere. What I find potentially even more interesting is that this tool not only identifies what is being said about your company, but it brings into view the overall sentiment of their posts and even maps out their sphere of influence across social networks.

TruCast enables you to

• Keep a pulse on what people are saying about your brand, products, or services.
• Respond to individual posts to address angry posters before they gain enough momentum to reach a large audience.
• Use information gleaned from consumers to improve your product, or create a new product to satisfy an unforeseen need in the marketplace.
• Stay ahead of emerging trends in the marketplace.
• Identify current and emerging influencers.
• Start buzz about a product, service, announcement, or initiative.
• Learn more about your most vocal critics and fans.
• Tailor your message with the help of data on opinion leaders.

When it comes to Marketing awareness and knowing what people are saying about your company, this seems like pretty valuable information. On top of that, what if you were tracking those who are big proponents of your company or brand and became aware of their sphere of influence across the Internet? 

Now, what if you tied TruCast to Salesforce and set that kind of sales intelligence before your account executives?  Use the positive proponents of your company to boost customer reference programs and find champions within each industry you serve.  Find out about discussions that are negative and do what you can to approach those issues. 

Bottom line, it does matter what people say about your company.  Now how are you going to find out what they’re saying?

You can read John’s thoughts on it here.

Technorati Tags: sspa, support, visible technologies, trucast, marketing, sales, bi, business intelligence, customer support, salesforce.com