» AppExchange

Geo Got Me Excited on a Monday Morning

Posted on August 10, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in AppExchange, Force.com, News, Sales | 5 Comments

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.

Chatter Takes a Starring Role with Cloud 2 and the New ChatterExchange

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Jeff Grosse in Chatter, News | 8 Comments

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

New Salesforce Contact Manager Edition Makes it Affordable for SMBs to Get In the Cloud

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Jeff Grosse in News, Sales | 19 Comments

biz If you’re a small business and haven’t heard of Salesforce.com, it’s time you get to know them. It’s Salesforce that really pioneered “the cloud,” or running your business without a server, and today they’ve made it affordable for you to effectively manage your business contacts on an enterprise-class platform that’s accessible anywhere there’s a browser. And when your business grows, Salesforce can grow with you.

For years, large companies have managed their business relationships and processes using rather complex software known as Customer Relationship Management, or CRM for short. While businesses of all size need to manage this contact and relationship data, it was often the more expensive solutions which had the best ways of managing that data and adapt to unique business requirements. Then about ten years ago, a company called Salesforce.com got started with a goal of eliminating the need for companies to buy software and manage the complex project of upgrading it, just to get marginally useful new features. Salesforce had a goal of making incremental changes available to all their customers regularly (about three times a year), without disrupting business and without burdening the customer with all that hassle. What they found was, companies of all size started flocking to their business model. It make information easily, securely available to the right people, at the right time, to help make the right decisions in business.

As you can imagine though, there’s a cost to managing that infrastructure, developing new features, and making sure that upgrades go smoothly, while still coming up with new and innovative features that help businesses grow. And while many large companies like Dell, Japan Post, Avon, and Citibank have been able to leverage Salesforce to improve their business processes and effectively manage some of their most important data, other small to medium businesses were able to use lower-cost editions of Salesforce that allowed them many of the core features of Salesforce and grow into Salesforce as their businesses grow. Though each company may license a different edition of Salesforce, they all run on the same world-class platform that is reliable and secure.

Today, Salesforce has made available it’s most affordable edition of Salesforce yet, still with the key core of CRM that all the bigger companies use, but at a price that small business can manage. Here are the details.

Salesforce Contact Manager Edition is designed for 1 or 2 users to effectively track business relationships using the core of Salesforce known as Accounts and Contacts. It’s priced at just $9 per user, per month and here’s what else you get. There’s built-in integration to Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, or any other email system. You get a reporting engine to easily see what data you have in Salesforce and slice and dice it as you want. You also get built-in integration to Google Apps like Gmail, Google Talk, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Docs.

Contact

And if you’re thinking that all that sounds good, but it must be too complex to customize and make it work the way your business works, it’s not hard at all. Salesforce Contact Manager Edition is designed with easy to understand videos, tips, tricks, and how-to’s to make you successful immediately, without having to read a book, learn about programming, or anything difficult.

GettingStarted

And what happens when your business grows and you need more users to access it or you need more complex applications to manage your sales leads or forecast your sales pipeline? You just call Salesforce and upgrade to another edition with the features you need. There’s no need to hire a consulting company or form a six month project to move up; Salesforce grows with your business.

One of the amazing things is, as Salesforce comes out with new features, you’ll see new functionality added to Salesforce and you’ll always be on the newest release. You’ll always have access to your data. You’ll always be able to customize Salesforce to meet your unique business needs, and you’ll always know your data is safe, with a company that’s trusted by some of the biggest organizations in the world. Small or large, Salesforce is meeting the needs of business.

And now, you can give it a try without even spending a dime. There’s a 14 day free trial of Salesforce Contact Manager Edition that you can sign up for and after that, it’s just $9 per user, per month. There are many new videos on YouTube to help launch your success on this new edition of Salesforce. There’s a community website for you to learn more about Salesforce, get to know other users of Salesforce around the world, ask your questions, get best practices on managing your data, and even give your input on the features you’d like to see added to or changed in Salesforce. There will also be new applications and enhancements to Salesforce available to you from the AppExchange, Salesforce’s own “iTunes of Business Applciations.” And if you want to find out how much more you can do with Salesforce, consider attending Dreamforce coming up this November. It’s where you’ll learn what 12,000 other people are transforming their business with the power of Salesforce.

Trazzler, a startup focused on helping travelers answer the question, “Where should I go?” was an early adopter of Salesforce Contact Manager Edition had this to say about it. ”At Trazzler we are using Contact Manager Edition to manage thousands of business contacts, each segmented by category, company size, and geographic region. Contact Manager Edition has enabled me to experience the benefits of cloud computing first hand,” said Adam Rugel, CEO and founder of Trazzler.

A click away from $2.5M more revenue per team?

Posted on March 3, 2009 by Jeff Grosse in Analytics, AppExchange, Productivity, Sales | 3 Comments

Randall Isaac, CEO of Bluetide Management is my guest blogger today. I’ve known Randall for a year and a half and his company specializes in unearthing data hidden in CRM that affects decision making and bottom lines.

Sales process makes a dramatic improvement on revenue performance, yet the majority of sales managers don’t use it effectively.

I am an unabashed fan of CSO Insights’ annual poll of sales executives. As opposed to research from many top analyst firms that is so academic I wonder if any of them have ever carried a sales bag, the survey data from CSO makes want to scream ‘right on – finally real sales challenges are being talked about’!

Here is some selected data from their latest survey of 1,800 senior sales managers;

89% of sales managers feel sales process provides real positive impact to sales results
But 60% of sales managers don’t use sales process
Formally managing sales process makes a huge difference; managers who formally manage vs. those who ‘informally’ manage report 5% higher win rates.
CSO pegs the incremental revenue associated with this better win rate at an astonishing $2.25M per year, per 20 rep team.
Now the clunker: only 15% of sales managers say that their CRM provides impact to revenue results.

I’d like to offer my opinion on how this data all ties together.

What is Sales Process?

The Wikipedia definition of sales process

“A sales process is a systematic approach for performing product or service sales. The reasons for having a sales process include seller and buyer risk management, standardized customer interaction in sales, and scalable revenue generation.

Specific steps or stages in a sales process vary from company to company but generally include the following steps:

Sales Universe
Sales lead
Qualified prospect
Need identification
Proposal
Closing
Deal Transaction

From a seller’s point of view, a sales process mediates risk by stage-gating deals based on collection of information or execution of procedures that gate movement to the next step.”

Why are so few managers formally using Sales Process?

The last line of the definition is about information that sales reps collect at each sales stage and the procedures that they engage in to move opportunities forward is what sales people do every day. The Role of a manager is to bring that activity in line with sales process. CSO Insights found that there is a dramatic difference in sales performance based on how a manager achieves this; formally and regular reinforcement drives far better performance than simply informally talking about it.

The naysayers will say “CRM captures sales activity in the form of Tasks and Events (for those not familiar, think MSFT Outlook’s Task and Calendar features for sales people), so what’s the problem?”

Well, here’s where the whole system breaks down. The role of a sales manager is defined by huge pressure, lots of hours away from family travelling, and too much to do in too little time. They do not have time to click around the CRM to try to find their reps’ activity information. A fly on the wall of any sales forecast review meeting taking place right now anywhere in the world will very likely observe a sales manager inspecting and guiding sales activity with their sales reps verbally. In other words, CRM is not participating in the fundamental sales manager function of managing the team’s sales activity! Voila – millions of sales dollars are being dropped…because of too many clicks!

The solution is for CRM to think like a manager

The dilemma is that once a company has realized success and is going down a certain path, it’s really hard to change. Salesfore.com has gone through exponential growth and has a wide diversity of customers. Whenever they add a feature it’s really important to satisfy the widest possible audience. That must make it hard to bring it all down to solve a specific business problem for a specific user role.

Sit in a forecast review meeting, watch and listen to the dialogue and things become very clear. CRM needs to support consolidation of information onto the user interface so that it flows with the meeting;

The rep walks in the room; show that reps revenue forecast
The manager and rep start drilling into opportunity status; show the high level details of the opportunity, revenue, company, contacts, products, stage, etc
The manager wonders if the reps’ activity lines up with proper sales process: show the task activity associated with the opp. Ie., formally manage process
The manager wants to guide the rep back in alignment with sales; enable on the spot task creation and editing so the manager doesn’t have to wonder if the rep has captured the guidance.

The point is that these are all actions that CRM already supports, but doesn’t present. A little user interface design can save a ton of clicks..and turn them into millions of dollars!

You can find out more about Bluetde Management at their website. http://bluetidemanagement.com Their flagship product, Sales Clarity gives you a whole new realtime view of the data buried in your CRM.

Salesforce.com CEO, Marc Benioff Earns a “Bozo?”

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in AppExchange, Competitors, Force.com, Integration, Tools | 2 Comments

bozo 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.

An Easy and Effective Way to Get Your Targeted Message Across in Salesforce

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in AppExchange, Tools | Leave a comment

Messaging 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.

Expense Reporting Just Got Sexy with Expense2GO for iPhone

Posted on July 10, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in AppExchange, Integration, Mobile, News, Productivity, Tools | 7 Comments

Expense2GO Trip Detail 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.

Expense2GO Splash Expense2GO Trip Detail Expense2GO Detail Expense2GO Camera Expense2GO Synchronize Expense2GO Settings e2go_6