Posted by Jay Rivard on Thu, Apr 22, 2010
Recently salesforce.com did a follow-up to the Chatter announcement at the last DreamForce. I have to admit that I did not really understand the value of the Chatter product at the time. This is in part due to the fact that I am not a heavy Facebook user. To be honest I never have the time or the interest to spend my free time in front of a computer.
The April event, however, has opened my eyes to the possibilities that this product offers. It truly is a game changer for most of our customers in the way that they use Salesforce. The following is a list of reasons why I believe this to be true.
- A large majority of our customers are Facebook users and are used to social networking. They understand the terminology, it's navigation, and its benefits. Adoption of Chatter will be easy for them.
- In almost every single engagement that I am involved with management is looking for the ability to see what's going on within the enterprise and to be notified of any changes that may be considered mission-critical. They wanted to be quickly streamed in and they also want to be able to opt in or out of discussions that they deem important. Chatter does this like no other product I've ever seen.
- This social networking environment would be available on the desktop and on Salesforce Mobile as well. You will be able to stay in touch regardless of your location.
- Companies are always looking to find one application to bring the whole enterprise in to work collaboratively. Whether you're in sales, customer service, finance, engineering, or any other business unit your ability to be part of this social net will positively affect customer satisfaction, profitability, product or service delivery etc.
If you are interested in learning more about Chatter please feel free to post a comment below. Now is the time to start planning for the next major shift in the way that you do business -- I do not believe that I'm understating its importance. You will see more about this in my future blogs.
Posted by Jay Rivard on Thu, Feb 25, 2010
As you may know salesforce.com upgrades their application at least three times a year. While they are not always major upgrades, it is an impressive feat compared to the traditional on-premise applications which may get upgraded once every 2 to 3 years.
Salesforce.com goes to great lengths to minimize the impact of these upgrades and does a tremendous job in notifying their install base of things that may need some client preparation. For example, in the Spring 2010 edition they are discontinuing support for Microsoft Internet Explorer V6. Salesforce.com has made many attempts to get everybody prepared for this eventuality.
Salesforce system administrators should take a little time to address these issues well in advance of the scheduled upgrade. We also recommend that you test out the upgrade in the salesforce.com sandbox. This is especially true if you are planning to enable new features that may impact some existing functionality.
If you do not have this level of technical expertise within your organization you may want to consider contacting us.
Posted by Sid Lejfer on Wed, Feb 17, 2010
A dropped fly ball in baseball, a fumble or interception in football, or a turnover in basketball, all can be momentum killers. It is difficult to regain your momentum when a negative change happens in a positive pattern.
The same is true with implementing and maintaining a CRM System. You can take all of text book steps for selecting, implementing, and maintaining a CRM system, but something unexpected happens. Let me give you a few examples and suggested remedies in regaining your CRM momentum:
1. Change in the executive management team. One of the important steps in getting approval of a CRM system within an organization is executive sponsorship. As an organization, you want to make sure you have broad based support for a CRM system so if any one executive leaves, your have organizational commitment to move forward with your CRM system.
2. The CRM advocate who initiated and drove the project leaves the company. As noted above, the key is to get broad based support for your CRM initiative throughout your organization. If one person leaves, other people within the organization will step up and drive the process.
3. Major shift in the way your business goes to market. With the pace of technology and changes in the economy, business needs change all of the time. You can protect yourself by selecting a CRM system that is flexible and can be modified very easily.
4. You are acquired or merge with another organization. Again, if you have selected a CRM system that is flexible and modified easily, you will be able to make rapid changes to adjust to requirements of your consolidated entity.
5. You company has financial issues. This is a difficult one to address. Depending on your contract arrangement with your SaaS solution, you will be able to decrease the licenses you have on a yearly basis. This will allow you to control the cost. In addition, the maintenance cost of a SaaS solution is less expensive than an on-premise solution and upgrades are included. SaaS solutions definitely give you more flexibility if your company goes through a financial issue.
6. Technical issues with your system. Solutions like Salesforce CRM provide a company with a solid technical solution with great up-time. The key is to take a phased approach to your implementation, have a pilot program and address any technical issues that come up, and properly train your staff. This approach will avoid any momentum killers.
7. Poor data quality. You can have the very best CRM system in the world, train all your people properly, and have an initiative that fails because of poor data quality. People get frustrated when they are working on a system that does not provide them with accurate information. To avoid this momentum killer, you need to address data quality issues before the data is imported into the new system. There are a variety of data cleansing solutions and approaches to addressing this issue.
8. Poor end user adoption. One of the biggest momentum killers is the final step - poor end user adoption. This can occur for many reasons. You need to make sure that end users are involved in this process from the beginning, the system addresses their day to day needs, and easy to use. If you address these three steps, you will have good end user adoption.
By being aware and limiting your momentum killers, you will have a useful and productive CRM System.
Posted by Bill Goulette on Mon, Feb 01, 2010
Scribe Insight is an affordable, on premise ETL (Extract - Transform - Load) middleware that works very well with the majority of possible data sources. Early on, Scribe had the only software that one could use to load data into Dynamics CRM versions 1.X and 3.0 because of a connector they built for it, but enough with the history lesson.
As Salesforce.com grew in popularity, Scribe developed a connector for it also. One can use the connector by selecting it from the available adapter connections when developing a DTS in the workbench or when creating a publisher that queries Salesforce. In both instances, there is the ability to specify the URL in the connection information. I will spend a paragraph or two pointing out a few of the often overlooked aspects of the URL used in these connections.
When defining the connection to Salesforce.com you may specify a Salesforce.com sandbox instance. This is done by taking out the 'www' the URL in the connection string and replacing it with 'test' (i.e.: "https://www.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/14.0" now reads "https://test.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/14.0"). The username and the password for the sandbox connection will then work. Often times, a person will use the sandbox's username and password and get a failed connection error and will realize after some troubleshooting that this little setting change was overlooked. Of course, when the work you have done is ready for production, be sure to change this segment in the connection string back to 'www'.
Salesforce.com upgrades its application on a regular basis repairing issues and making new functionality available to their user base. Salesforce.com releases are represented in the connection string at the end of the connection string. You will notice that the version that is defaulted to 14 (i.e.: "https://www.salesforce.com/services/Soap/u/14.0"). In order for existing publishers and DTS packages to take advantage of the new features provided in the new versions of Salesforce, the URL must be manually modified to reflect the new version. These are commonly referred to as endpoints. (At the time this blog article was written, the current version was 17.0).
Interestingly enough this change must be made to all of the connections that connect to the same Salesforce.com instance. Part of the reason that the costs can be kept affordable is that the licensing model they use is based on licenses purchased and not on a per-connection basis. As a result, if you do not change the end point for all the connections that connect to the same Salesforce.com instance, Scribe will multiply the amount of licenses that it thinks you need by the amount of distinctly different endpoints that your integrations are are using.
For example; an organization has purchased 100 licenses of Salesforce.com Enterprise Edition but is using endpoints 16.0 on older integrations and 17.0 for all the new ones. Scribe is now going to count 200 licenses and give you a licensing error in the alert log in the Scribe Console. This is easily remedied by manually making the suggested adjustment from the above paragraph, but it will give your integration administrator a bit of work to figure out the problem.
Posted by Jay Rivard on Fri, Jan 22, 2010
The Cisco Unified CallConnector for Salesforce.com delivers a new way to handle the everyday task of communicating with customers and vendors. This tool targets small or medium-sized businesses (SMB) allowing you to work harder, faster and smarter to win market share over larger companies. The integration of Salesforce CRM and Cisco Unified Communications offers real business value by streamlining communications and pulling together vital customer information exactly when you need it.
Until now, price and complexity have limited CRM and IP communications applications to larger organizations. But with the Cisco Unified CallConnector for Salesforce.com, those barriers are crumbling. Together, Cisco and Salesforce CRM offer a full-featured, but right-sized approach that enables you to more effectively identify and access customer needs and build profitable customer relationships.
The Cisco Unified CallConnector for Salesforce.com offers the following features:
- Screen pops of customer information for inbound and outbound calls, based on caller ID
- Information tracking related to inbound and outbound calls, with the information inserted automatically into Salesforce's application call history.
- Integrated call control buttons, giving users the ability to control their IP phone from the PC
- Ability to click to dial from any contact or phone number within Salesforce
- Easy installation and maintenance; no on-premise dedicated server required
Questions on the Cisco Unified CallConnector or have experience with it? Post your questions/comments below!
Posted by Sid Lejfer on Wed, Jan 06, 2010
Over the past 20 years, my consulting staff has implemented over a thousand CRM systems. One of the questions that I often get from prospects is what is the most important element in having a successful CRM implementation that results in a reasonable return on investment for our clients?
There have been an abundance of articles and books written on ow to successfully implement a CRM system that include key factors like executive management buy-in and end-user acceptance. Based on our experience, a successful CRM system starts right at the beginning of the process - planning.
Unless you have a thorough understanding of what you organization needs from a CRM system, how it will be deployed, and a way to measure the results, you will fall short of maximizing the benefits of having a CRM system in place.
We are deploying widely used systems like Salesforce CRM. The software works and it works well. Technical issues are resolved quickly and enhancements are added often. Configuring and customizing CRM systems can be done by properly trained and experienced resources.
The question is how should a CRM system be configured to address your business requirements. This is done through a thorough planning process. Our methodology includes a series of interviews run by our senior consultants and the completion of business process review documents by our clients to give us additional information.
The area that a consulting firm like ours adds real and tangible value is in the area of planning. We have the experience to know what questions to ask and based on the response from our clients, configure a system that will address the pain points and business requirements in a timely and cost effective manner.
Our consultants also know how to work with a client in prioritizing a wish list and coming up with a phased approach to address critical issues first and spread the financial and human resource investment over a reasonable period of time. Trying to do everything at once is not the right approach.
And the planning process is never really over. Once you deploy your CRM system, your business continues to change and your system needs to change with it. This ongoing cycle is healthy and important to the success of your business.
Posted by Jay Rivard on Wed, Dec 09, 2009
Love the AppExchange? Wish you could find out about new solutions that are posted to the AppExchange? Look no further. The Salesforce AppExchange now offers a newsletter which includes:
- Best practice information
- User reviews for new and noteworthy apps
- Lists of the most popular solutions
- Webinars, whitepapers, and other helpful content
Find the solution that can change your business! Click here to sign up for the AppExchange Newsletter: https://www.salesforce.com/form/appexchange/news.jsp.
Posted by Jay Rivard on Wed, Dec 09, 2009
Lookup filters are administrator settings
on lookup, master-detail, and hierarchical relationship fields that restrict
the valid values and lookup dialog results for the field. The restrictions for
the field are based on criteria such as a field on the lookup object or the user's
profile. If a user manually types an invalid value in the field when editing a
record and clicks Save,
Salesforce.com blocks the save and displays an error message. Administrators
can customize the error message.
Lookup filters improve user productivity
and ensure data quality. For example, restrict the Account
Name lookup field on opportunities to only
allow accounts with a record type of Customer, filtering out Partners and
Competitors. Or, if you have a custom relationship field that references accounts
and your organization has numerous inactive accounts, restrict users to choosing
active accounts only. Each object can have up to five active lookup filters.
Questions on
limitations, best practices and managing the lookup filters? In New England, contact Jay Rivard at (781)
530-3736 x102 or jrivard@harvestsolutions.net.
In Florida, contact Enrique Rairan at (954) 509-3761 or erairan@harvestsolutions.net.
Posted by Jay Rivard on Tue, Dec 08, 2009
With Winter '10, you can assign fixed colors to picklist values when shown in charts. Charts based on those picklists will always show the same color for particular picklist values in all charts in reports and dashboards across your organization. For example, if your team creates the same chart for every month, you can make sure that the groupings are always shown in the same color.
The following figure shows a dashboard with three charts grouped by opportunity stages. Fixed colors were assigned to the Stage picklist values so that the "Closed Won" stage is always shown in green and "Closed Lost" in red. Notice that even though another stage appears on the second chart, the assigned colors remain the same.
To assign colors to standard or custom picklist fields:
- Navigate to the fields page for your object. For example, for account fields, click Setup ➤ Customize ➤ Accounts ➤Fields. For custom objects, click Setup ➤ Create ➤ Objects, then click the name of an object.
- Click the name of the picklist you want to update.
- Click Chart Colors and select an option to assign colors to picklist values for use in charts:
- Assign fixed colors to all values assigns a fixed color to each value from the standard set of chart colors.
- Assign colors to values dynamically assigns colors when a chart is generated. The Chart Colors column shows "Assigned dynamically" for all colors. Assign fixed colors by editing picklist values.
Note: Chart colors aren't available for multi-select picklists, currency picklists, or Task Subject, Event Subject, and Opportunity Competitor picklists.
- To assign colors to individual picklist values:
- In the Picklist Values section, click Edit next to a value.
- In the Picklist Edit page, assign a color for use in charts by clicking the button. To assign a color dynamically when a chart is generated, click Assign color dynamically.
- Click Save.
Posted by Sid Lejfer on Wed, Dec 02, 2009
One evening over dinner my son Ben had talked about the impact Bill Gates has had on the entire world. He was the architect of the evolution of personal computers and the resulting revolution in the mainframe and mini computer industry. The wealth he generated for himself and his shareholders is staggering. His foundation is doing wonderful work in providing healthcare to third world countries and has made significant contributions in education.
Marc Benioff, the founder of Salesforce.com, is responsible for the evolution and revolution in the CRM industry, and the significant impact he has had on cloud computing.
As some of you know, Jay Rivard, our Salesforce.com Practice Director, Cathy Boudreau, our Marekting Administrator, and myself worked together at Success Automation. Success Automaion was a nationally recognized mid-market CRM consulting and training firm. The firm was sold in April of 2000 to an application service provider who was trying to provide hosted CRM to the marketplace.
We learned a lesson about being ahead of the marketplace. The concept was great but unfortunately, the technology lagged behind the idea. The leading mid-market CRM software products at that time were not designed around multi-tenancy architechture. Each instance required its' own server, making the hosted CRM solution cost prohibitive.
Along comes Marc Benioff and Salesforce.com, providing a CRM solution in a software as a service model. The pricing is reasonable, excellent reliability, easy to use, and providing functionality and control to the end-user that was not available before. This was the beginning of the evolution of SaaS CRM.
The revolution. If it can be done for CRM, it can be done for any application. And if you are already providing the infrastructure, you can also provide a development environment for the development of any application. You now see offerings of Force.com, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle, providing the end user with a complete development environment.
In the book, Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, he writes about people who are born at the right time with the right idea like Rockerfeller, Vanderbilt, and Gates. It will be interesting to see over time if Marc Benioff and Cloud computing will have as big an impact.