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.

Can you think of a significant day in the history of software? I’m looking for a day that a single company changed the way millions of people do business and made them more productive. I’m guessing there have been a few; but honestly none of them quickly come to mind. From this point forward though, June 22, 2010 ought to stick in your mind as “The Day the Earth was Chatterized. ”

Salesforce Chatter is a collaboration platform for business that’s as intuitive to use as Facebook, more contextual than email, more alive than SharePoint, and runs on a secure, private, and trusted infrastructure already delivering billions of transactions each week.

From the first public mention of the word “Chatter” by Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, to the day it went live for 77,300+ customers, only 216 days passed. And in just 125 days, the Chatter private beta went from 100 to more than 5,000 customers. During the beta, more than 100,000 people used Chatter, and polled recently, 90% of them would recommend Chatter to others. Words like “amazing”, “crazy cool”, “fantastic”, and “monstrous win” are how users describe the Chatter experience. That’s impressive for a feature that can be enabled and deployed in under one minute, with just five clicks of the mouse, with nothing to install; no hardware, no software.

The Veil on Salesforce Data Lifted
While Chatter and Salesforce CRM data are both available to everyone with a Salesforce license today, Salesforce revealed a new version of Chatter licensing which helps extend Chatter and even basic Salesforce data to all enterprise employees at a significantly reduced price. This Chatter-only license offers

• Profiles
• Status Updates
• Real Time Feeds
• Content and File Sharing
• Groups
• Ideas
• Read Only Access to Accounts and Contacts
• Limited Access to the Force.com Enterprise Cloud Computing Platform

Priced at $15 per user, per month, Chatter-only users will be able to utilize corporate data like Accounts and Contacts which have previously been completely off-limits without a full-Salesforce license. Additionally, each Chatter-only user is allocated up to 600 MB of storage space for Chatter content sharing while Enterprise and Unlimited Edition users get a storage bump from 500 MB per user to 1 GB. Professional Edition users get 600 MB of content storage.

Not that long ago, a single add-on license for Salesforce Content was $35 per user per month. Now all Salesforce users get Content included in their licensing and Chatter-only users get tremendously more than just Content was, and at less than half that original price.

While Chatter, file, and content collaboration is a great reason to get these new Chatter-only licenses, I can imagine a fair number of them will also be sold for the sheer fact that it allows read-only access to to Accounts and Contacts, some of the key data in any company.

Additionally, organizations will be able to share one custom application from the Force.com platform with their Chatter-only users.

As if adding Chatter to every Salesforce org wasn’t exciting enough, Salesforce also revealed that there are 30 new ChatterExchange apps available today to bring the Chatter add-on ecosystem to 60 apps. While every one of 160,000 customer designed apps are also Chatterized, these new ChatterExchange apps extend the usefulness of Chatter beyond what even Salesforce imagined. The thing I really like about the ChatterExchange is that this ecosystem is only beginning. Developer preview only began 99 days ago and already we see apps to Chatter when conference room lights are turned on, save and rate Chatter, auto-refresh group and individual status updates, bring in outside collaborators through Google Wave, map out where service reps are and reassign them on-the-fly, Chatter analytics and tons more. Considering Dreamforce 10 is still 23 weeks away, we’re going to see some fantastic new Chatter add-ons before the big show.

For information on getting started with Chatter, visit the new Getting Started page at Salesforce. There you’ll find easy to use resources like:

• Admin activation guide
• Sample email template for rolling out Chatter
• Interactive user training
• Use cases for Chatter
• Customer case studies
• FAQs
• Customer testimonials
• Customer survey results

Chatter customers really say it best.

If you follow me on Twitter, it’s hard to miss my regular status updates like,  “21 videos were posted to The Salesforce Channel today,” but what’s that all about? The Salesforce Channel is a website where I curate Salesforce videos from all over the Internet into one place so you don’t have to do the searching. My motto is, “Your single source for Salesforce video.”

I found that while many videos about Salesforce.com exist in large repositories like YouTube, searching for Salesforce-specific videos can be rather daunting and downright difficult. You may find a user or playlist with some videos you like, but how do you look for more? Salesforce embeds many of their videos into sites like their main site and the Community site, yet, there wasn’t a great place for user generated content from administrators, developers, or AppExchange partners anywhere I looked.

The Salesforce Channel is now that one place to find it all. There I collect Salesforce related videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, eHow, Metacafe, Dailymotion, Howcast and many more sites. I tag them with full names, companies, topics, features and more. I organize them into playlists and groups as well as publish more than a dozen different RSS feeds to help you stay on top of what’s current. (For example, the RSS feed and playlist of 100 videos in Japanese)

The Salesforce Channel, by the numbers

• Videos available in September 2009 – 1,200
• Videos available in May 2010 – 2,731
• Videos “in queue,” yet to be published – 439
• Playlists available – 71
• Unique tags on videos – 5,907
• Videos viewed in April 2010 – 4,485

As you can see, The Salesforce Channel has grown tremendously in the last 8 months and that’s why I need you. Come join The Salesforce Channel Community and take on the role of either a Reviewer or Editor.

A Reviewer watches videos, puts a rating on the best ones and puts comments or reviews on individual videos to add value to the rest of the community. They can also create playlists to further organize videos and even group their favorites.

An Editor helps search for videos, tags them, reviews them, and finally publishes them. As you can tell from the huge addition of videos in the past 8 months as well as the number of videos I have “on deck” waiting to be published, this is where I could really use the help. I’ll provide you with a wiki and help on how to do it all. Joining me this way and helping publish more videos, make them easier to search, better organized, and contributing to the overall Salesforce.com global community would be a fantastic way I’d like to get you involved.

It’s easy to get started

1. Register at The Salesforce Channel
2. Sign up to become an Editor

There’s a lot of video to watch; a lot to curate; and a lot of information, knowledge and education contained in this one site. Please help spread the word about “Your single source for Salesforce video.”

If you come across more videos about Salesforce that you’d like to add, you can submit them one of two ways. Use the Submit page to link to your video or drop the bookmarklet on your browser and simply click it when you’re viewing a video you’d like to add to The Salesforce Channel.

If you’re a developer and have some great ideas on ways to use video from The Salesforce Channel in creative ways, there’s also an API available that we can discuss the possibilities of utilizing. I’d like to brainstorm with you about possible ways to extend the reach and value of these videos. Just email me at jeff<at>crmfyi<dot>com to check it out.

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

The future of business applications is upon us. It’s a world where your data comes alive, those who log into your applications are people, not just users, your team’s past work is leveraged into future solutions and even proactively fed to those who need it, and you truly collaborate with not just your direct coworkers, but people from across the company in a way never before possible. This world is Cloud 2 and it’s not imaginary; it’s the reality that 100+ companies, 3,800+ developers, and Salesforce themselves have been experiencing for the past two months. What makes this future possible is Chatter. It’s the game changer that is quickly becoming the best thing Salesforce has ever developed and will be available to all paid editions of Salesforce sometime this year.

What makes Chatter revolutionary though? Aren’t business apps working just fine the way they are today in small and large organizations alike? Isn’t email collaboration enough? Aren’t portals and knowledge management systems and content repositories and legacy, home-grown apps cutting it? The fundamental ingredient those systems lack is context. On their own, they accomplish something important, but they tend to live in their own disconnected worlds. Though integration appliances and services exist, most companies never get to the point of tying it all together. What those applications lack is connecting people together with their ever-changing data, in the midst of their spreadsheets, documents, and collateral, with one tool as a hub for business. That hub is Cloud 2 and whether you use Customer Relationship Management out-of-the-box from Salesforce or you want to create an application that’s the farthest thing from CRM, Cloud 2 is the platform for it all, and the star of the show is Chatter.

So for the quick purpose of definition, what is Chatter? Chatter is a social layer to business applications that fosters effortless collaboration to get your daily work done. It’s built on a secure, trusted, reliable framework that 72,500+ companies are already using today to run their business. Chatter does not require a server, or software, or even some additional licensing from Salesforce. When it’s ready for release, it will be provisioned immediately to all Salesforce customers for rollout when they’re ready.

A new breed of AppExchange

With the introduction of Cloud 2 comes AppExchange 2 and a new section, the ChatterExchange. Introduced today are 20 Chatter applications built  by Salesforce partners like Appirio, Echosign, FinancialForce.com, Genius.com, ServiceMax, and more. These new apps leverage the power of Chatter’s social layer, using profiles, status updates, and real time feeds to extend their apps directly in front of business users, right in the context of their work. Add to that 15+ more Force.com Labs apps created by the developer community and this amounts to a fantastic start to a new realm of business collaboration. Not only will Chatter be utilized with core CRM functionality, but the ChatterExchange will extend it beyond what many of us even imagine today. Check out the screenshots and video below for some idea of these new ChatterExchange apps and watch the live Cloudforce 2 presentation on April 8 for live demos.

The emphasis on service

You may recall that in 2009, Salesforce put a big emphasis on the fastest growing segment of their business, Service and Support. With the release of Service Cloud 2, we saw how companies could now monitor their brand via Twitter within Salesforce, look to the wisdom of crowds with a solution like Answers, and build public and private knowledgebases that bring solutions to consumers where they tend to look first, the Internet.

Today, Salesforce is expanding the private beta of Chatter from 100 to 500 customers, of which 250 use Service Cloud 2. Early indications from the first beta customers have been overwhelmingly positive in regards to not only the ease of Chatter’s use, but also in improving overall communications and collaboration.

So what will Chatter do to push the Service Cloud envelope? Picture this. A service rep is having trouble reproducing a problem reported by their customer. In the past, escalating that case only notified the rep’s manager so they would help assign more resources to the issue. With Chatter, that escalation can automatically add the product manager, a technical lead,  two subject matter experts, and the rep’s manager as followers of the case and notify them with what’s going on. They’re given a link directly back into the case and they begin resolving it with full visibility to what’s going on within that case via the Chatter feed. Soon the issue is resolved and instead of a slew of emails being typed and sent manually, outside of the context of that case, now everyone is kept in the loop with Chatter. It’s automated, it’s in context, it involved the right people.

I worked in support for an enterprise software company for nine years and I can only imagine how a tool like Chatter could have cut down on our call times, increased quality answers in our knowledgebase, gotten the right people involved with cases early on, eliminated email runaround, and bottom line, led to happier customers and a more profitable bottom line.

To learn more about Cloud 2, be sure to watch the Cloudforce 2 event live from New York City on April 8, at 10 AM EST. The event is free and will be offered as a recorded session later as well. If you write your thoughts about Cloud 2 on Twitter, be sure to use the hashtag #cloud2.

Appirio PSA with Chatter

Chatterbox by FinancialForce.com

ServiceMax for Chatter

Today I discovered a quick little tweak that can make your dashboards make more sense. It’s really simple, yet makes a big impact on reading the data.

When you see dashboard tables with “Record Count” on them, it’s not completely intuitive what kind of records you’re talking about. I found a simple way to relabel that dashboard component with the real label of what it is like Accounts, Contacts, Quotes Generated or whatever your data.

This simple tweak uses the Custom Summary Formulas available in the Report Builder tool to give you the same data as a Record Count would, but it’s with your label.

In the video, I show how you can relabel a dashboard table from Record Count to Contacts. This can be particularly useful when creating new tables with more than two columns and when you create Combination Charts with a line of other data. The Record Count label can be changed to be much more specific which makes your chart more readable.

Try it out and enjoy.

This week I had a chance to write a guest blog post for the Salesforce AppExchange. I chose to write about utilizing networks to become a hero to your Salesforce users.

It’s not hard, it really doesn’t take that much time, and in the beginning, you can even start out by just listening in. No matter your experience level with Salesforce, you’ll gain a lot, just by listening on on some of the channels I mention.

Have a look and I welcome your feedback either here or on the AppExchange blog.

With a network, you don’t need to have all the answers to be a hero to your users.

Amid all the hoopla around Google Buzz, Salesforce is making some buzz themselves in the Enterprise space with the announcement of a Chatter private beta to 100 customers today.

When Salesforce began looking for customers to start kicking the tires on Chatter, the response was overwhelming. More than 2,500 companies enthusiastically volunteered for the beta. From that, 100 were chosen across many industries including financial services, manufacturing, high tech, and professional services.

So what really is Chatter? Well, if you’re one of the 400 million people who have joined Facebook already, you already have a little familiarity with what it’s about. Chatter is streams of information, files, comments, photos, snippets, videos, data, and intelligence, fed to you directly in context of where you already work. Chatter takes the work out of finding this information and instead puts it in front of you, knowing what you need to know about and letting you customize and filter your feeds to be most relevant.

Chatter is the culmination of numerous business functions that we can all benefit from. It’s part content management system, part team report card, part data field history viewer, part chat client, part message board, part workflow notifier, and part get-to-know-the-people-you-work-with social network. It makes data come alive, whether that’s letting you know an important deal just closed, a new product catalog was published, a competitor just had a bad earnings call, your co-worker needs help with their presentation, or one of your customers is late in paying an invoice to you. Chatter brings all that together in one place so you can make better decisions, help others on your team, and easily publish news with just a few clicks

Much of the information you’ll get in Chatter is timely and important, so Salesforce needed to find a way to provide you that information even when you don’t have your browser open with Salesforce. That’s why along with Chatter, they’re introducing a new Chatter client for the desktop that is built on Adobe Air. Much the same way TweetDeck provides you background popups with relevant tweets you decide you want to know about, Chatter will provide you that immediate feedback on your computer, regardless of what application you’re running and what’s in the foreground. Since this Chatter client runs on Adobe Air, it works on both Mac and PC using the same code.

When you’re away from the desktop, you don’t have to miss out on Chatter there either. Chatter will include dedicated iPhone and BlackBerry apps right out of the chute. No more hauling out the laptop to see what your team has been doing to move deals forward. Information is served to you in real time. No waiting for an email that a deal closed, just follow it on Chatter and you’ll know.

Among the biggest benefits of Chatter is the fact that it’s built on a solid, secure infrastructure that you don’t need to worry about. Just know it’s there, it’s secure, it’s scalable, and it’s out of sight. You won’t pay for a server upgrade, you won’t patch a database, you won’t buy a firewall, you won’t add a hard drive, you won’t have to do load balancing, you won’t have to tweak a kernel, you just go about your work and leave the rest to Salesforce. And because Chatter is just an extension of the applications you’ve already setup, all the data security that’s already in place just works, out of the box for Chatter.

It’s almost like Chatter is putting a human side on CRM. Today, we converse in the halls, in meetings, on the phone, and through email, but we don’t exchange more than limited amounts of data about ourselves, the projects we’re working on, the deals we’re closing, or the scoop we learned. We occasionally share information using Salesforce itself, but we rarely see the data come to life. Chatter brings the insights to you. Even the fact that all users of Salesforce will have a profile page which can contain a photo, bio, stream of what they’re doing, the groups they are members of, the documents they update, and the people who they follow tells immensely more than just passing in the hall or during a meeting.

As Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce pointed out back in November, with Facebook, I can know what movie my friends have been gone to, but I don’t have just as easy access to what deals that same person is moving forward in my pipeline. It doesn’t have to be that way. Chatter will offer prescribed and subscribed content to keep you in-the-know about anything in Salesforce.

I can see it now. Chatter streams will eventually become the topic of conversation throughout the halls of companies around the globe. Have you noticed how often Facebook and Twitter are mentioned in the news, television shows, and even in the lunch room? When people begin seeing the value of sharing, collaborating, informing, assisting, building, and  broadcasting, in context, it will change the way we work.

The private beta is a great sign of progress and getting Chatter ready for prime-time. Remember, Salesforce unveiled the concept of Chatter only three months ago at Dreamforce 09. It’s anticipated that Chatter will be available for all Salesforce customers during 2010. While it’s an aggressive timeline to go from 100 customers on Chatter to nearly 70,000 by the end of 2010, that go-live will be a pivotal moment in enterprise computing. It will set the standard by which other collaboration tools will be judged. And while it will be a new concept for it’s users, it’s also going to feel like something they already know. There won’t have to be a day-long class to teach users how to use Chatter. It will come quite naturally, and when it does, watch what will happen in companies; as their data comes alive, reps are enabled, managers are informed, and the company hub becomes Salesforce and Chatter.

To learn more about Chatter, attend the live Chatter event today (February 17) at 12 PM PST.

Staples may have the corner on that “Easy button” thing, but Salesforce now has an “Easy box.” It’s called Setup Enhancer for Salesforce and it’s about to make navigating the Setup tree a whole lot easier.

Setup Enhancer for Salesforce is a Greasemonkey script that helps you find just what you’re looking for in Setup with a minimal number of keystrokes. Looking for Account Validation Rules? Don’t hit all those plus signs out there and scroll down endlessly. Type “val” and you’ll have one list of just validation rules. To learn more, check out the video.

All you need to run Setup Enhancer for Salesforce is

• Firefox 3.5 or greater
• Greasemonkey
• Setup Enhancer for Salesforce

This is the Salesforce administrator’s new best friend. If you try it and like it, please leave a five-star review of it at UserScripts and leave some feedback.

It’s kind of scary, but I think he really did. I was just drafting an email to my favorite User Experience team at Salesforce. I wanted  to discuss any future ideas they had on revamping the interface to allow “gradual data entry” and not just overwhelm people with a huge page layout with temporally superfluous fields on it.

When I heard that Salesforce had released a new feature set called Visual Process Manager (VPM), I first thought it was a rehash of the previously released visual approval process designer. While a good product, it wasn’t the most exciting thing around. (No offense to those who wrote it. Showing the process visually is WAAAY better than just looking at a series of steps.)

As it turns out though, Visual Process Manager was actually the first step in Salesforce breaking open the piggy bank to acquire some new companies to compliment their current functionality and expand way beyond what many of us are even dreaming about.

Salesforce acquired Informavores, a six year old company in the UK who specializes in simplifying process management. Co-founded by Steve Wood and Robert Suttie, they’ve been AppExchange partners with Salesforce since 2009.

The core of VPM is (the formerly known product) Firefly; a sophisticated yet simple to use, drag and drop interface that you can design process flows in minutes, not days. Test them out, on the fly. Then after they’ve been in place for awhile, measure which paths are taken most often; which ones are never used at all. Learn how you can tweak the process to make it smoother for everyone.

Fortunately, some of Informavore’s customers like British Telecom (BT) are already on Salesforce.com for CRM. While Firefly was originally designed to work with nearly any CRM solution, I’m willing to bet in the very near future, they’re moving to just one; Salesforce.

What gets me most excited about VPM is the idea that some data is gathered in sequence and the user doesn’t need to see 80 fields on a page, just to fill out the 20 which turn out to be relevant to their particular issue or inquiry. That’s where VPM’s call scripting comes in.

Using VPM to design a call script allows you to gather relevant data when you need it and help guide sales and support people down the right avenue to not only ensure better data quality, but gather the right data every time and ensure that mandatory paths were taken and so on.

I’ve already got in mind a project that I want to start building on VPM tomorrow. I have a team of sales people who sell Medicare insurance to the public. There are strict regulations around the exact scripts which much be read to members when they’re enrolling in Medicare. VPM will allow me to design all those paths (98 pages on paper) and ensure we not only gather exactly the data necessary to enroll those members, but will ensure that we read them each part of that script and record their response to the whole enrollment process. in “the old” Salesforce, I couldn’t do anything that complex without a customized solution like using Flex Builder for Force.com. Now rather than needing developers, business users can design and deploy complex business processes on their own and adjust as quickly as their business changes.

Do you have business processes which require this kind of scripting? Maybe it isn’t 98 pages like my Medicare model above, but maybe you need to gather relevant data step by step and the “old way” in Salesforce just hasn’t given you the results you need from a data quality or employee guidance standpoint. You should check out VPM.

I’m sure we’ll see a lot more about this in the coming months, but for now, Marc read my mind and has spent his first however many millions of dollars from the piggy bank wisely on acquiring Informavores.  This is a great step forward and I’ll let you know how it goes building my first scripts.

See an overview of Visual Process Manager

salesforce.com: Visual Process Manager Demo

Posted to The Salesforce Channel by CRMFYI on February 02, 2010

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See what Firefly for Salesforce can do (Informavores demo)

See an overview of Firefly for Salesforce and Force.com (Informavores demo)