CRM FYI

It’s days like this that you can hopefully see a great reason to at least pay attention to Twitter, even if you don’t yet have an account there and participate.  This afternoon, I was adding notes to an internal support case on my ever-so-faithful Salesforce.com Case tab.  I hit Save, and it started chugging…..and chugging….and eventually, just got hung.  My first reaction was to fire up Tweetdeck (IMHO, the best Twitter interface out there) and I looked at my continual search of all Tweets, worldwide for the word “salesforce.”  And sure enough, right there, users started asking the same question to the world, “Is Salesforce.com down for you?”  We saw immediate validation that we all experienced the same problem.

Enough of Salesforce.com’s 1.1 million users are on Twitter and many of their first reactions were to do the exact same thing.  Unfortunately, today’s outage took out the http://trust.salesforce.com site as well so many were wondering how extensive the whole thing was.  Humor even came into play as people suggested it’s time for a worldwide coffee break.  Someone even mentioned that it would have been really cool if Starbucks had caught onto the outage quickly and offered a coffee special for people who mention that Salesforce was down.  I thought it was funny.

For the most part, Salesforce has been really solid and we’ve not experienced many outages for quite some time.  This is really a compliment to Salesforce making availability such an important issue.  The fact is though; it will go down again sometime again.  It’s just going to happen.

Here are my suggestions to you to be prepared for the next time.

• Check the Trust site.  http://trust.salesforce.com/
• Check Trust SaaS  http://trustsaas.com/ – They monitor the uptime of Salesforce servers as well as other services like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, and Typepad.
• Try a Twitter Search – This URL finds all Tweets containing salesforce.com, salesforce, or sfdc.  You don’t have to have a Twitter account to look at all these Tweets and know whether people are experiencing issues too.
• Join Twitter and ask the question.  If you put “salesforce” in it, oodles of people like me are going to see it and respond to you.  If you post that you’re having trouble with Salesforce, include which server “your Salesforce” is on.  It’s in the URL of any of your Salesforce pages.  It’s either NA1, NA2, NA3, NA4, NA5, NA6, AP0 or EU0.  Participate in this one more facet of the Salesforce community.  

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.

Since its introduction in 2006, the Salesforce IdeaExchange has been a powerful source of customer involvement in improving Salesforce.com. Part of the success of the IdeaExchange has been opening the mic and letting every person have their say. Another part of that success though is the involvement Salesforce has mandated on their Product Management teams to be on the IdeaExchange and knowing what people want from each of their products.

One thing I’ve struggled with though is getting my favorite Ideas to the top. I want to spread the word and get enough votes around features I’d really like to see. That’s why I’m introducing a new feature on CRMFYI to highlight great Ideas from the IdeaExchange, some old, some new. I want to help you find some great Ideas that could benefit us all and bump them up in popularity.

Watch for Ideas and participate in the community. Seriously, not that many companies you work with really want to know what you think. But here, you not only have a voice, you’re part of building the next generation of Salesforce.com apps and platform.

If you’ve got an Idea you’d like to see promoted, please send me a link at jeff<at>crmfyi<dot>com.

How do you communicate with your Salesforce Users?  Email, newsletters, a “News” section within the Salesforce sidebar or Home Page?  Each can have it’s appropriate time and place, but how do you manage it all?  You want to target your message to the right teams, at the right time.  Especially when it comes to a change in process or functionality within Salesforce, you want to provide a way they can see that message easily, without having to dig too deep.  About four months ago, I bought an app off the AppExchange that has revolutionized how I communicate with my hundreds of Salesforce users.  It was extremely inexpensive and has more than paid for itself already. Here’s the lowdown on Home Tab Messaging, by Interactive Ties.

Home Tab Messaging is a set of s-controls that deliver a home page component that will house all your messages to users.  Where the power comes in is in how you can make those messages appear and to whom.  You can define an effective date and end date for your messages.  No more making a note for yourself to remember to publish a message when it’s time.  Your message will be shown exactly when you need it.  You can design your message from simple text or make it rich with HTML. You can give your users the power to delete the message from their screen, but they can always get back to the ones they’ve deleted by viewing them from the Deleted dropdown.  Finally, you can target your message to exactly who you want by adjusting the visibility of messages based on Salesforce Profiles.   Here’s how it works.

You can setup any user to be a message author with a quick checkbox on their User account.   As an author can manager all your messages in a single list.  You can then create a new message and either type away or write HTML and paste it in.  Choose the date you want the message to appear and when you want it to disappear.  Choose which profiles from the list need to see the message, and it will only be shown to those you wanted.  You can even see an Opt-Out list of users who chose to delete your message.   From a user’s side of things, deleting a message only keeps it from showing on their homepage message box.  They can easily view a deleted message again by just switching their message view from Active to Deleted.

While some people might look at this tool and just write it themselves using s-controls or Apex, the one time price-point of $500, makes it a really compelling buy.  A quick walk through the Google Checkout will get this app running for you in Salesforce in almost no time at all.  To be honest, it was almost instant ROI for me because I no longer had to write emails and figure out who needed to be included when I sent it.  The messages are shown on time and when they’re needed.  I put the Message box right at the top of the right column on the Homepage and people notice it.  They can browse the headlines and click into any message for all the details they need.  Check out the video walkthrough or try a quick demo as a user or as an admin right now.

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.

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

Though I am one who lusts after an iPhone, I’m not one who will run out and get one anytime soon.  Author and blogger, Paul Greenberg has opened up a little competition or bakeoff when it comes to CRM apps running on an iPhone.

He’s inviting EBSuite, Etelos, HEAP, NetSuite, and Salesforce.com to show off their apps on the iPhone and see who’s best.  This should be an interesting one to watch, provided everybody is up for the comparison.  While Greenberg says Zoho has come up with a great suite of desktop productivity apps for the iPhone, he says they haven’t put anything together yet for ZohoCRM.  (If you haven’t seen ZohoCRM, it’s amazingly similar to Salesforce.  So much so that Salesforce thinks it’s flattering.  Zoho lacks quite a lot compared to Salesforce, but it’s funny to look at how much they look alike.)

Having just watched some more video on the Adobe on AIR Bus tour today, I’m thinking that Salesforce would probably be able to make some pretty killer apps for iPhone using the Flex Toolkit.  But then again, this is Salesforce, so why would the vendor need to build the app.  Incubators?  Anybody up for the challenge?  With Dreamforce only eight weeks away, who will be showing off Salesforce on the iPhone? 

I’m sure the geekdom (I say that lovingly guys) of Salesforce HQ and the Incubator have plenty of iPhones floating around.  If you are using Salesforce on the iPhone, send me a screenshot of it.  Tell me what you think of it.  If you’re working on an app for the iPhone, let me know about it.  I’d like to hear what you’ve done, and most of all, I’d like to see it at Dreamforce.  Actually, it doesn’t matter who you are….tell me what Salesforce is like on your iPhone.

In the meantime, let’s watch how the competition heats up over at Paul’s blog and see who shows up for the party.

Technorati Tags: crm, salesforce.com, iphone, ebsuite, etelos, heap, netsuite