Make your Salesforce Project More Successful by Inviting a BA to the Party (Or Thinking Like One)


Today I welcome my good friend, Garry Polmateer as a guest blogger at CRMFYI. Garry is not only a Salesforce community rockstar, but he's planned and executed some great Salesforce implementations,

A Little Help from My Friends


In a demonstration of community and collaboration, Mike Gerholdt and I have created a blog post / demo video of utilizing inline Visualforce to display rich text info in standard page layouts without

Chatter-vantage #1 - No Need to Rush the Stage


Salesforce has created a conference attendee experience using Chatter that blows away all other conferences. Their Dreamforce Attendee Portal allows attendees to connect with speakers before, during

I Need You; to Join The Salesforce Channel Community


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

Calling All Heroes! You Belong at Dreamforce


Earlier this year, I wrote about being a hero to your users, and the gist of it was that through social media, you can surround yourself with fantastic people who will make you a hero to your users. I

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Marc Benioff to join TechCrunch 50 Expert Panel

Posted on August 5, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in Integration, News, Predictions, Tools | Leave a comment

TechCrunch 50Marc 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.

Google / Salesforce Alliance will Prove Itself in Adoption

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Jeff Grosse in Integration, Tools | Leave a comment

Ban4_googleapps_ovwIt’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.

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