AspiraTech Blog: What's Online

Online visitor stats tracking goes offline

2010-03-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

Check out the new Foursquare network which allows brick-and-mortar businesses to track visitor behavior the same way online businesses have become accustomed to doing with website stats. Here is an article on the service that is worth the read: Foursquare Introduces New Tools for Businesses.

Combining the Foursquare service with website and email promotions, as well as Twitter promotions and CRM data integration, seems like a great new marketing tool for businesses that serve an on foot clientele. This benefits the customer too, as businesses can more specifically cater to their needs and offer them promotions they are likely to value.

I am going to be looking into ways to bring the Foursquare data into CRM databases (SalesForce.com, etc.) in the coming days and invite input from anyone who has already researched the subject.

SaaS Single Sign-on

2010-01-25T09:19:00.000-08:00

Do you maintain a spreadsheet of all your various usernames and passwords? Do you store passwords using your browser's function, but worry that if your laptop was lost others might gain access to sensitive data and wreak havoc in your name?

TriCipher's MyOneLogin may be the solution you've needed. Use a single secure username and password to login to a centralized location where you can access all your various SaaS accounts.

This browser based solution (which requires no downloads or configuration). At only $30 per user per year, it is an affordable solution to managing user identities for your entire staff from a centralized location that a system administrator can control. Add or remove all web-based accounts for new or departing employees within minutes.

Google Apps, SalesForce.com, Citrix, and ADP are just some of the vendors that support MyOneLogin access. It can also be used for your company's VPN network access. Find out more on the company's site at MyOneLogin.com.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T09:47:00.001-08:00

On behalf of the staff at AspiraTech, here is wishing everyone a prosperous and satisfying 2010. We know that many sectors saw a great deal of obstacles in 2009, and are glad we were able to offer innovative technological services to help our clients get more out of the technology they already have and make the most cost effective decisions about new technologies that would further elevate their bottom line.

Another year over, and a new one just begun. We are looking forward to reaching new clients this year, and bringing our Aspira XObject application to new customers who are only just discovering the productivity enhancements it provides within their SalesForce.com CRM system.

Happy New Year!

DreamForce '09 Session Recordings

2009-12-01T08:42:00.000-08:00

If you were unable to attend the SalesForce.com ecosystem conference earlier this month, or if you attended but had simultaneous sessions you had wanted to attend so that you had to miss some, you can find videos for most of the sessions at the following link: DreamForce '09 videos.

Some highlights:
Formula Magic - create groups of roll-up summary fields then graphically represent their contents right on the record's detail page, or in list views.
New SFDC for Outlook - get a peak at the new Outlook integration utility coming soon.
Non-profit Starter Pack intro - Tips on getting the most out of the NPSP for non-profit organizations.
Donor and Member Managment - More tips for non-profit organizations
AppExchange Recommended Sales Apps - introduction to some great apps for sales managers to implement, such as: a business card scanning app; X Squared mass contact updated utility that updates all contact addresses when the Account's address changes (the company moves); Account News Feed; Landslide custom sales process manager; Engage B2B by Silverpop email behavior tracking for lead scoring and sales rep notification automation; and Sales Genius for email-to-website click tracking visible within SFDC.
Sales Process Productivity - For companies newly implementing a universal CRM system, with emphasis on 1) effective end user adoption and change management within a context of ongoing process improvement within phased roll-out; and 2) sales performance dashboards
Platform State of the Union - use a Visio-like graphical user interface to create approvals now and standard workflow in future releases. Also create database schema graphically, and have them actually generate custom objects instead of your having to use the current form field based system to design custom objects.

I welcome your comments on any of these videos or suggestions about others that you think are not to be missed. Now I'm glad I didn't race into SF for that 7:30am session I really wanted to catch, but not badly enough to get up that early. Now it's just a click away anytime I want to reference it.

Chatter brings secure social media into SalesForce.com

2009-11-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

“Why do I know more about strangers on Facebook than my own employees?” asked SalesForce.com CEO Mark Benioff last week at Dreamforce '09.

Chatter is SFDC's answer to the business need for real time communication within dispersed groups that all happens within a private, secure, company environment. With Chatter, which will become a standard feature of all editions of SFDC early next year, every company employee will be able to create a profile highlighting their areas of expertise, publish status updates of what they're working on , and view updates of not only other staff's status but also events within the CRM portion of SFDC. Users won't all have to have CRM licenses to access Chatter, including the updates related to events within the CRM part of the system, which does require a SFDC license for record access.

I can definitely see how many companies will benefit from having this sort of collaborative tool. I can recall years ago when I was doing quality control at a large international company and would often wonder who to go to for information I needed to confirm whether data I was seeing was correct or not. It would have been great to be able to search profiles for expertise and work functions. There was also the one day each month where I was buried deep in number crunching and needed people in several roles to be super available to respond promptly to critical inquiries from me during that time, while others needed to basically not ask anything of me on those days. I would have loved to have been able to just put in my status update that it was "processing day" and to have trained everyone I worked with to know what that meant and how to respond. I could go on and on about the potential I see, just as I personally find plenty of good use for Facebook and Twitter in staying coordinated with important people in my personal life and informed of significant, but not quite email worthy events in their lives.

Chatter will also be available to non-CRM users of the Force.com platform within the version that is at the $50/user/month price point. It will of course provide no insight into CRM record events, since there are no CRM objects in that edition.

Introducing Aspira XObject

2009-11-05T17:11:00.000-08:00

In a previous article I presented several cross-object workflow solutions, with the caveat that though it was possible to create the rules in SalesForce.com, they wouldn't get triggered across the objects automatically. To solve this problem, we have created Aspira XObject, a free tool that allows System Administrators to create "Relations" between objects so that when criteria is met on one object, workflow rules get run on another as if both were just edited.

The idea of creating the tool arose when I was working on a non-profit SFDC system optimization project and the client had an elaborate set of conditions between different custom objects where internship applications moved through stages dependent on actions being tracked on several other objects, such as the service opportunity being approved, the intern being approved, forms having been received, and so on. There was a web of lookups and workflow connecting the objects, but it wasn't working effectively because you had to know the application should be in a certain stage to go edit it in order to trigger the workflow that would update the field to the correct stage. This obviously made no sense; why use workflow at all if a user needs to know it is time to change the stage?

We created a coded solution at the time that cost them thousands of dollars, and then a few weeks later they came back and said, "This is great. Now can you make it also include this fourth object?"

It was clear a coded solution that worked one object at a time was not going to really solve their problem. They needed to be able to continue developing their cross-object application progress tracking system independently without having to go back to the developer each time.

Around the same time I started participating in a conversation on Twitter where people were lamenting the lack of immediate firing of cross-object workflow. I was then confident that a solution was going to have value to enough companies for it to be worthwhile developing it as an installable app. Thus Aspira XObject on the AppExchange was born.

You can download the free version on the AppExchange if you are in Enterprise, Unlimited or the non-profit edition of SalesForce.com (must have workflow rules to use it). With the free tool you can automate any workflow that is on standard objects. If you need to automate the firing of rules on custom objects, that extended application is available for a fee that is just a fraction of what a custom coded solution would cost. Hope your company finds it useful.

SalesForce.com Partners with Dell

2009-10-20T17:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not a fan of Dell at all since my problem-ridden experience with my last computer purchase from them, but I am a fan of SFDC. I think one can consider it a consolation prize that when one gets a Dell (as a business purchase at least) it will come bundled with an introduction to what is truly a great CRM tool. I have many times turned small business owners I know on to SFDC, and they are always impressed by what it can do for them. Many of them are just not aware of the entire CRM technological space. I guess they are often not considered profitable enough to market to. Glad to see that is changing in a big way with partnerships like these. Here's an excerpt from a good article on the news:

Dell to Peddle Salesforce.com’s Widgetry
— Dell, itself a user, is gonna pitch saleforce.com’s on-demand CRM widgetry to American SMBs on its web site under a deal announced Monday. Dell, newly service-minded, will offer to integrate the stuff into customers’ existing set-ups along with Dell servers hawking data migration and physical and virtual appliances. Dell means to handle Salesforce’s Contact Manager Edition as well as three different levels of CRM services Group Edition for up to five users, Professional Edition and Enterprise Edition.

Up Goes the Economy...

2009-10-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

... and down goes the frequency of articles on this blog.

If you are a regular reader, you have probably come to expect a new review of web-based business technologies each week. Not only is that not going to happen this week, it is unlikely to happen more than a few times in the next 6 weeks. That is because the volume of new business coming our way has made it impossible to explore new technologies.

I move within a community of technology consultants, and it seems to be this experience is fairly widespread right now. August was fairly intense, September quite intense, and October coming on like a lion. Hopefully you and your business have been able to benefit from what appears to be an upswing in the economy. If not, I think it is likely you soon will.

I'm not going to dare to prognosticate the end of the global recession, but at the very least it seems that other than a few specific industries (construction, real estate, etc.) the decline has at least stopped. Companies are realizing they can't run on fumes any longer, and that if they want to meet the opportunities before them, they are going to have to start investing in their business's growth again, whether that be by hiring staff or by implementing labor saving technologies.

I'm very excited about some new members of the AspiraTech team who have been brought on-board to meet increasing client demand for a wider and wider array of technology consultation services. We also have a new AppExchange application coming out within the next few weeks, that I will write more about upon release. And then there is DreamForce coming quickly behind. Good times.

So please bear with us through this busy period. Looking forward to bringing you more time-saving reviews of the best new apps as they come to our attention - as soon as we have time!

Non-Profit Tech - Process, Process, Process

2009-09-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

It is incredibly rewarding working with non-profits (NPOs) to help them leverage the power of technology so that each donated dollar goes further in helping the people/causes their organization serves. A common misunderstanding is that NPOs have different technology needs from for-profit enterprises (i.e. companies) because of their emphasis on service rather than profit. I would argue that that is only true when both are failing to effectively utilize business technology. There are indeed unique ways in which NPOs and companies get it wrong, but there is a single foundational approach to getting it right, however distinct the final structure may end up appearing from the outside.

Think about a technology system designed by a coder versus one designed by a business analyst. The coder is always going to envision a coded solution whenever they encounter an area where an interface based solution isn't obvious to recreate an existing business process. The BA however is always focused on process, not mechanics. Therefore the BA is more likely to examine the reasons the interface and business process are not in synch and flesh out ways to bring them into alignment. Often what this reveals is a redundancy or conflict within the business process that had not been identified before the new technology was implemented. Sometimes a coded solution is necessary to make the interface fit the business process, but more frequently the technology reveals a shaky foundation.

I came across the following video when on Twitter looking at a non-profit tech related hashtags, and that is what got me thinking about how NPOs also need to focus on process first and foremost as the foundation of any new tech adoption. Otherwise you just find you can more efficiently execute bad policies and return inadequate results with fewer staff members, but no greater ultimate success. You just churn out more paperwork, more reports, more X, but do not do anything to increase the flow of effective communication, prevent or at least solve problems more quickly and effectively, spread an accurate message of your mission to those who would support it, collect financial support and track it accurately, and organize volunteer efforts most efficiently.

The video below focuses on this with regard to social media (spreading one's message through free social media), but the core idea could be applied to all areas of NPO utilization of technology:

Whenever I do a business technology system implementation for an NPO at some point I find myself making the case for more time up front on the Business Process Review. It is always hard for them to at first understand why we can't just recreate for them what they are already doing, only now within an online system that doesn't require an in-house IT department or any VPN connections for remote staff. In the end though, I simply won't take a project that doesn't have a sufficient block of hours devoted to examining the process and planning for a better one that takes advantage of the technology we are implementing as much as we can plan a way to do. That's the week you invest up front to make sure you don't find yourself needing another project a year later, once your initial pain points with in-house tech are long forgotten, to re-design the SaaS system so that it truly takes your operations to a new level of effectiveness.

How GoToMeeting Outshines the Competition

2009-09-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

As air travel gets more and more expensive and workforces get more and more decentralized, businesses find they have more and more reason to use online services to conduct meetings, demo products or services to potential customers, and share information with anyone possessing internet access.

Let me begin this review by saying that I really wanted Zoho Meeting to be the ultimate winner in my "battle of the online meeting services." Everyone likes to root for the little guy, and I was hoping to cut my $49/m service bill down to Zoho's very attractive $24, while simultaneously bumping myself up from 15 max meeting attendees to 25. If only.

I was even willing to overlook the fact that conference calling wasn't fully integrated. I signed up for a free conference calling service through InstantConference and was all set to start sending out that number as my static conference call number for all meetings. My clients would even prefer that, I argued, not having to call in on a different number each time we would meet. (Actually I may still wind up using that free service for any meetings that don't require screen sharing.)

But then I sent out a meeting invite to another one of my own accounts so I could test the service. That was the end of my consideration of Zoho as a meeting interface for my corporate clients. Here is what the email I received (which a client would receive) looked like:

Not only is the graphical presentation cheesy (what's with the psychedelic green?) but there is more screen real estate dedicated to promoting Zoho Meeting than there is to providing meeting information. The Toll-free number provided for calling Zoho Support is highlighted way too much, particularly given that there is no call-in number integrated into the service. It would be likely some people would call that number thinking it was the conference call number.

If you start a meeting using a different technique (instead of start now, schedule for later) you have the chance to put in text that includes whatever number you want attendees to call in on, including the option of using the Rondee service which Zoho recommends. The problem is that this information is still not nearly as highlighted as the tech support number. Is Zoho that convinced that someone is going to need to use that number during the meeting, or are they just that focused on promoting their company regardless of the impact on their users?

My company's reputation is simply worth more to me than $25 a month. Which brought me up to the next least expensive option, either GotoMeeting or ReadyTalk, both costing $49/month on a month-to-month service plan. Both are pretty similar, with the key difference I found being that Ready Talk limits you to 14 particpants, including the presenter among the 15 max participants, while GoToMeeting allows you to actually invite 15 people, plus the organizer. That may seem like a small difference, but having to tell clients that only 15 people can attend the meeting is limiting enough as it is. So why 14? Can Ready Talk really not afford to let that one last computer synch in so that they can be competitive with GTM?

I wish there was an individual user plan with GoTo that would allow me to invite 25 participants. To get that you have to have a corporate account with at least 5 organizers. For most companies that will be the option they will take, as it is definitely the best available option if you can make use of it.

Citrix, the makers of GoToMeeting, also offer a service called GoToWebinar that can have up to 1000 participants, and costs $99/month. When you consider the potential revenue generated from the unlimited number of such a webinars one could hold each month for that price, it is a real winner. Also, when you purchase GoToWebinar, you get the meeting service included for free, for your smaller meetings.

Unlike Zoho, both Ready Talk and GoToMeeting include integrated, free conference calling. A unique phone number and access code is provided for each meeting, and there is also the option of using VOIP calling features so that every participant can call in for free using their web phone. Both also integrated scheduled meetings into Outlook Calendars or iCalendar, so you get meeting reminders just like any other meeting in your Calendar. Lastly, you can record any meeting and publish to the web so that people who couldn't attend can view it later.

Moving up the price scale we come to the mother of web meetings, Cisco's Webex. What do you get by choosing Webex instead of GoTo or Ready Talk? Everything provided with either of those, plus 25 max participants per meeting, and a monthly price tag that is $20 higher.

For any business with at least 5 staff members organizing meetings, GoTo corporate is the way to go. You get the 25 participant limit, all the cool features of online meetings, and pay $20 less per month per user than with Webex. If you fall into the in-between, needing 16-25 participants in some meetings and having 4 or fewer people in your company who need to organize meetings (as opposed to simply attending those organized by other staff members), then Webex may make sense.

Here's the breakdown of key factors:

I've been using GoToMeeting quite happily for the last couple years, and though I had hoped to cut my bill in half by switching to Zoho, I'll be sticking with GoTo. It is the most respected and pervasive meeting service out there aside from Webex, and is a reliable, cost-effective option for showing whatever is on your screen to anyone anywhere who has internet access... even working with 3G smartphones.

You can get a free 30 day trial of any of these software services to check them out for yourself. (Webex's front page currently says it is a 14 day free trial, but if you navigate through the site you see you can find several 30 day trial links.) Let me know what you think of them yourself when you do. Happy meeting.

SugarCRM vs. SalesForce.com

2009-08-31T08:27:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I really like SalesForce.com as a CRM choice. I have therefore come to know it best, and to expect any other CRM to deliver the functionality and dependability that I have come to expect from SFDC. I don't care if something else costs less if it is unreliable or short on features.

That said, I also love supporting the little guy and prefer open source over closed systems in general. I'm a Firefox user, not an IE person, for example. So I wanted to love SugarCRM and have an option I would be proud to offer clients who can't afford SFDC prices. How unfortunate then for my review of SugarCRM to reveal it to be way too buggy and annoyingly planned to be able to recommend.

First let me say the things I like about Sugar. I like that you can change how your user interface is arranged whenever you want. You can simply change the theme shown in a dropdown field on the home page to change colors, arrangement of the object tabs (horizontal or vertical), and more. You can also create new home page views that mash together various components, such as lists of all your Opportunities, Accounts, Leads, etc. with graphical charts based on reports. In SFDC you get similar customization ability, but it is pretty much limited to just one view of the home page. You can't name a bunch of configurations, save them all as links, then switch from one to the other at the click of a button whenever you want.

I also love that Sugar includes an integrated project management component, though I couldn't get it to actually work. But to get to the downside later, let me just say that it is nice to not have to hunt for, install, and pay for an add-on, such as DreamTeam's $40/usr/mo pricey though excellent app. Sugar starts up day one with the feature there, and you can see Gantt charts at the click of a button, if you crave that sort of view of tasks on a project.

Of course, the thing most to love about Sugar is the price. You can get it for free if you want to download the community version and install it on your own web server running PHP. You then have to maintain it yourself, but there are a lot of IT people who know PHP, so if you have in-house IT with those skills, you will probably be fine. If you want an on-demand solution within the SaaS model, Sugar offers several options, each of which is less expensive than SFDC. For the Professional Edition of each, you pay $30/usr/m with Sugar and $65/usr/m with SFDC. For Enterprise Edition it's Sugar $50/usr/m and SFDC $125/usr/m. (In a later article I will review Zoho CRM, which is even cheaper.) Comparable Sugar editions also contain more features than the similarly named SFDC edition. For example, Sugar's PE includes workflow and campaigns at no extra charge.

A year ago there would be a long list of important functions available within SFDC that are simply missing in Sugar. Not so any more. Sugar has pretty clearly been copying SFDC like nobody's business. They even use the exact same list of picklist/dropdown values sometimes, such as for Opportunity/Sales Stages. Now it seems to be less a matter of having the function listed as included and more a matter of getting it to work.

Take the project management feature I mentioned earlier. I created an Account, created a related sales Opportunity record, and then created a project off that Opportunity. Great. But then when I added tasks to the project record, I simply could not get them to show on the Gantt for that project. It clearly says the task is related to the right project when I create or later edit the task, but when I go to the project the tasks don't actually get related. How is anyone using this?

This is in an area where I have no expectations coming from SFDC, because SFDC has no native project management. I just want it to work. But an area where I do have expectations set by SFDC is when it comes to working with Opportunities and Products. I expect the system to do things for me, like calculating the Opp Amount based on which Products I've added. Sugar doesn't do that. I also expect it to allow me to create an independent Price book from which I can pull products for any Opportunity. Sugar has me create each product as a unique entry related to a specific Opp, like Opportunity Products within SFDC. Nowhere did I find an actual price book that could be set up by admin or management staff then accessed by users.

On the admin side, I was annoyed by the handling of picklist/dropdown values. I think of each field in terms of what object the field is related to, regardless of what type of field it is. There is a difference to me between a Type field on an Account versus an Opportunity versus a Case. I don't expect to have to go to one location to find all of them, but in Sugar you do. You edit most fields on an object-by-object basis, but dropdowns are treated specially. They are all accessed in one central location. I could get over this, not expecting every CRM to have made the same decisions as SFDC, and willing to accept I better include the name of each object within the name of the field if it is a dropdown if I want to be able to find it later to edit the value options in the list. However, the thing is also buggy.

I tried at least 4 times to make changes to the Sales Stage field to either add a new value or edit an existing one, and each time it said it was saving my changes, but clearly did not. When I went to the separate page for editing the Sales Probability (an unnecessary step in SFDC, since the two fields are edited together there), my changes from Sales Stage are gone. When I then go back to Sales Stage, sure enough, not saved.

There are other little things that are just annoying if you've been spoiled by SFDC usage. For example, when you create a new field, instead of entering the label first the way you want users to see it (written out with spaces, etc.) and then having the system translate that into the form it needs to work with the field so you don't have to, it goes the other way around in Sugar. You supply the version formatted for the machine and then you also supply the one formatted for the user. Another example is, when you want to edit a page layout you have to do it twice, once for what the record looks like when it is being edited and again for what it looks like when it is being viewed. Now if you are going to frequently be making those two views different, I guess this is a great feature to have. I've never had it nor missed it in SFDC, but if I did, maybe I'd consider it a benefit instead of a cumbersome and unnecessary chore.

In general I found SugarCRM to be buggy. They have added a lot of features recently to make it more like SFDC (Self-Service Portal, etc.) but it just isn't reliable. Take a look at the frequency of patch releases in the announcements section of their support forum and you'll get an idea of just how buggy, but trying SugarCRM yourself is probably the best proof. Give SalesForce.com a try also, then let me know what you think between the two.

Skip the Apex - Form Assembly Solutions

2009-08-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

Confession, I avoid Apex like the plague. I don't want to know it myself, and don't expect any of my clients' in-house SFDC Admins to want to know it either. Yet whenever an Apex solution is created for them (by someone else at AspiraTech, never me) the client is forever dependent on a developer to maintain that functionality for them as their business process and related needs change over time. That is just not the way I like to work. I am all about teaching a person to fish instead of just giving them a fish. I love the ongoing relationships I have with my clients, but I want those relationships to be focused on my assisting them with additional solutions, not just tweaking the ones they already have because they are unable to adapt them themselves.

So I look for solutions that are provided within creative use of the standard user interface, VisualForce pages (which I then teach them to maintain), and AppExchange applications that have any needed Apex baked in.

One of my favorite Apps is Form Assembly. Though the product was originally created as a standalone website form service like Survey Monkey, it has grown to be something far more powerful than that with its SFDC integration.

With Form Assembly you can update any object in SFDC through your company's website. Want to collect feedback from your customers and have it added directly to their Contact record? Create a form using FA. Want to have forms on your website generate new records on a custom object you created, such as event registrations? FA feeds directly into custom objects. How about those pesky "Stay-in-Touch Requests" that send Contacts to a form to update their contact information, but then submit the form results to you as an email, requiring data entry to get the new info into their Contact record? Once again, FA to the rescue.

FA even offers PayPal integration, conditional fields (which SFDC does not offer), and calculated fields. I could go on and on about the many things I love about the app, and one of the best is its amazingly affordable $34/user/month price tag. Remember, the only user who needs the FA license is the one who will be creating the forms.

Honestly, the only thing I can say against FA is that they have made the puzzling decision not to make free trials available for even a week. I was therefore unable to demonstrate any of the SFDC integration for you in screenshots. The only trial I could access is one hosted on their site that is not integrated with SFDC, and even then you only get 2 hours of access, beginning as soon as you click the "Test Drive" button in AppExchange.

Come on folks. What do you think we are going to do, create a bunch of forms week one then not buy the service? It's only $34 per month! And it's such a great product, of course customers will want more than a week's access --though not us developers; hence our need to be able to access it to test use cases for our clients before putting them live in their systems. Give developers ongoing access without the ability to host forms on any site other than FA's and no ability to receive data from some critical field, like email, if you are really afraid of folks stealing access. And give the general public full access for just a week so that they can try it out without having to spend any money up front.

Apart from the irrational paranoia of the vendor, it really is a no-lose product, one every SFDC user should really consider implementing. With Form Assembly you get cross-object action without needing any Apex. One form can feed into multiple objects, creating needed records that are interdependent at the click of a "submit form" button. Skip the Apex and get Form Assembly.

LivePerson on the web: "Can I help you find something?"

2009-08-12T10:56:00.000-07:00

When you go into a store, you expect there to be staff there whose primary job is to help customers like you find the products you want as efficiently as possible. If you wind up wandering around on your own for too long, unable to find what you're looking for or anyone who can answer your questions, you are likely to leave in frustration, empty handed.

So when it comes to your business and the customers wandering through your website, do you provide "in-store" assistance? Enter LivePerson, a technology that connects your sales staff with website visitors in real-time.

With LivePerson you can set business rules that alert sales staff when website visitors are engaging in certain behaviors that suggest they may be a high value potential sale that is about to head for the door. Sales staff can then reach out to them and essentially ask, "Can I help you find something?" If the person responds that they would like assistance, a chat conversation begins.

Just as in a store the sales assistant could either tell the customer which aisle to find the needed item in or walk them over to it and put it right in their hands, the LivePerson assistant can do the same. They can either explain the answer to a general question if that is what the customer needs, or find the product the person is looking for and "push" that page to the customer, so that they don't have to do anything themselves to navigate to it.

This is just one feature of what the LivePerson (LP) system can do for your business presence online. This business use alone has routinely accounted for a 20% increase in sales for the businesses who have implemented LP, which you can find out more about by reading their success stories. Customer post-sales support is another major area in which LP's approach to customer relationship success offers tremendous value.

I came across LivePerson when I was evaluating chat software services for a SalesForce.com CRM client who wanted to integrate chat with their SFDC customer service app. The two technologies work seamlessly together, with lead, account, contact and case data passing easily between the two applications. Check out this integration plug-in on the SFDC AppExchange.

My client wound up going with just one LP seat license to start, just to get a sense of how it would work for them, since they were skating a very thin profit margin at the time. (I would generally advise a more comprehensive approach to integrating the technology into one's business process, if you can possibly afford to do so right now.) The cost for them was a little under $100/month, which isn't the cheapest chat you can find, but it is the best value. With LP you get far more than just a chat application. You get a business system, complete with reporting and optimization services provided by LP. You are coached and guided through not only implementation of the technology, but through the fine tuning of your business process so that you take full advantage of what the technology can do for your business.

The return on investment with LivePerson seems to be so definite that it is hard to make the business case for not using it. That is, if you do in fact want people who visit your website to come away satisfied with their experience, while your bottom line takes a marked ascent.

Intervals for Project Management & Client Invoicing

2009-08-03T08:46:00.000-07:00

[Click on image to see larger version - hit "Back" in browser to return to article]

Keep your reader recommendations coming. It is reader feedback that led me to Intervals, a truly superior solution for project management and client invoicing within one integrated web-based application. If you’ve read this blog in the past, you will be well familiar with how much I love Harvest, appreciate Basecamp, and loathe eProject/Daptiv. Enter Intervals, the killer app.

Time Tracking, Tasks & Invoicing

Intervals is both a project management and invoicing system. Its conception of the word "task" is more a part of project management than invoicing. Compared with Harvest, a pure invoicing system which views a "task" as something you charge for, Intervals requires a lot more work to get out an invoice.

Intervals forces you to plan ahead to create tasks in advance, or else feels like dual entry (task and time) when you go to enter time towards an invoice. Annoying when you are spontaneously deciding on tasks to do and just want to quickly enter the time, the way Harvest works quite well.

In Intervals you can track billable time within a “general time” bucket that includes no task, but that can be confusing if you are jumping between activities and want to detail them on the final invoice. I prefer Harvest’s quick and easy way to create new tasks and track time against them at once, rather than as two separate steps.

Within Intervals, you can just click an icon to start tracking time on the very next screen after creating the task, but at that point there will be no access to the "work type" drop-down list, unlike when you select the button “add time to this task” after creating the task or start the time recording on the "Time" tab. And then after you stop the timer and want to actually "apply" the time to the task, it is necessary to then enter the worktype info in another dialogue box, so basically it is the same as using the button in the beginning and having to complete two screens.

In Harvest less is entered when creating the task and the click of an icon button applies that first set of entries to populate all the data that will later be invoiced. That approach is much more streamlined, involving only half the data entry for each task, which really adds up.

I like that Intervals includes due dates on tasks by default, which Harvest doesn’t, since it isn’t thinking of a task as a “to do” so much as a billable unit of time. Instead of having it be so easy to create new tasks and log time against them as in Harvest, one is more prone to have fewer tasks and then keep returning to them in order to log time against them over several days. It isn’t that you can’t use Harvest in just as “organized” a way as Intervals. It's just that it is so easy to be sloppier in Harvest that there is a greater likelihood you will be.

In Intervals time tracking is a part of project management, and invoicing is an outgrowth of the fact that you already logged the time against a project. In Harvest time tracking is done solely for the sake of invoicing. If all you need is well organized, super quick and easy invoicing, Harvest is your solution.

Project Management Evaluation

Just as Intervals can be compared to Harvest when it comes to time tracking and invoicing, it can be compared to Basecamp when it comes to project management. Basecamp also includes time tracking features, but since they don't extend to include invoicing, it is an incomplete solution, requiring the addition of another app like Harvest to complete the job.

Project management is the one area in which I thought Intervals might not outshine the competition. User interface preferences vary a great deal from person to person, as do business processes from company to company. I recognize others may have a very different view of this, but when I compared the Basecamp and Intervals user experiences, again I wound up solidly preferring Intervals. The user interface is more intuitive, easier to read, and easier to navigate. There are also a number of pre-made reports that can be quite helpful.

Like Basecamp, the Intervals project management approach is more about organizing communication around tasks that have been done or need to be done by different people. It is less Gantt oriented than a software like eProject/Daptiv, which seeks to imitate MS Project within a SaaS app. I don't mind losing the Gantt view, but the one thing I couldn’t find in Intervals that I did want was a way to make one milestone/task’s start dependent on another’s completion. When one task gets pushed back, this affects all subsequent tasks, but how do you show this in Intervals without having to manually edit all subsequent tasks/milestones that should be dependent? The answer is found within their user forum:

“We used to use Microsoft Project heavily for all of our projects and we found that we spent too much time tending to and tuning the schedule. Intervals deliberately does not have task dependencies the way traditional project management solutions work. Via trial and error we found that Gantt charts are great at scheduling and articulating the steps to build something, but aren't that useful managing the day to day tasks of getting the work done. Intervals is very strong on the task tracking and getting things done side, but weak on the scheduling side. The milestones and light scheduling piece we [have implemented] strengthen the scheduling side quite a bit. You [can] create a milestone, attach tasks to it, and manage the tasks and milestones via a calendar view. You [can] drag and drop and move tasks and milestones around. It is definitely not traditional task dependencies, but it is a different way to approach the issue.”

The other major feature of traditional PM where Intervals takes a different road is resource allocation. To quote their user forum once more: “Intervals does not feature traditional resource allocation. We are working on a periscope report that will show how much work has been assigned vs. how much is done, but it is different than the resource allocation found in traditional project management (no resource leveling for example). It is meant to answer the question of "how much work do we have on the books" and can be filtered by client, person, project, etc. It may or may not do the trick depending on your needs.”

Like Basecamp, Intervals is taking a non-Gantt approach to project management. I find that the calendar editing function within Intervals is easy enough to use to make it pretty easy to manually move dependent tasks when you want, and at least with Intervals I can pick any timeframe I want to see in calendar view (unlike Basecamp).

To sum it up, as one of Interval’s customer testimonials proclaims: “At the end of the day, the core platform of Basecamp™ did not focus on time, work flow and reporting, which is where Intervals excels.” Amen.

The Costs

Pricing of Intervals is done by the number of projects, whereas in Harvest it is done by the number of users. With Intervals, for only $20 per month I get up to 15 projects with unlimited users (both staff and client users). In Harvest I get unlimited projects, but am on a plan that allows for only 1 user and pay $12 per month. Of course, since Harvest isn’t a project management app, you may not need more than one person to be able to log in, just whoever generates invoices. Still, the Harvest price point jumps from $12 for 1 user to $40 for 5, so if you do need more than one person entering their time in the app, you're going to pay for it. You can’t pay the same $20 as for Intervals and get 2.5 users, and this is just the time tracking and invoicing feature set we're talking about.

Basecamp's pricing for a plan that includes time tracking on each project, but no client invoicing, is $49/month for unlimited users and 35 projects. So combining Basecamp with Harvest would cost $61/month, and get you project management, time tracking related to projects that can be exported into the invoicing app, invoicing, a 35 project limited, unlimited PM users, 1 invoicing user, plus 10GB of document storage.

With Intervals, for a third that price I get the features of both Basecamp and Harvest within one integrated package, and the whole is indeed greater than the sum of the parts. At that price, I do get fewer projects and less document storage - 15 projects, 1 GB storage - but there are still unlimited users, so clients can be invited to contribute to mark tasks as done and view project progress. For my company, 15 projects is sufficient, since you can activate and deactivate projects at will, and we are never working on more than 15 projects at once. It would be nice to have more native storage which would obsolesce our use of ftp to share files during data migrations, but it's not a deal breaker.

Needless to say, I will be canceling my Basecamp and Harvest subscriptions at the end of the next billing period, and making the switch to Intervals. Try Intervals out for 30 days yourself to see if it is an approach that will work for your business.

(Special Nice-To-Have: Intervals creates a permalink page for each task, so that contributors can conveniently be directed to that specific task page.)

Cross-object Workflow in SalesForce

2009-07-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

It is a common misunderstanding that cross-object workflow is not possible in SalesForce.com CRM. It is extremely limited and in my experience tends to only work the way I don't usually need it to work, but there is some cross-object functionality.

Say for example you have created checkbox fields on both Contact and Account records to mark them as Active or not. One might logically want the Account to be marked as "active" whenever any related Contact record is. Unfortunately, the workflow formula you need will only allow you to mark the Contact record as "active" whenever a related Account is. Not too helpful.

I will teach you the method, then leave it up to you to find useful applications in your work. To perform the above workflow between Contacts and Accounts you would do the following:

Go to Setup/Create/Workflow&Approvals/Workflow Rules and create a new rule.
Start with the Contact object, because you will be updating a field on that object, and you cannot do field updates across standard objects.
Under field criteria, choose field "Account: Active" and operator "Equals" and value "Yes"
Hit Save and next (after naming the rule of course and making sure it is set to trigger upon creation, edit, etc. as you desire)
Create the workflow action "new field update"
Enter the naming you desire and set the field to update to be the field called "Active"
Specify the new field value of "yes"

You can also create the workflow rule that uses this field update by using "formula evaluates to true" instead of "criteria are met" under the rule criteria. The advantage of doing this is that sometimes more objects are available through lookup relationships when using the formula rather than just the drop-down lists of fields.

Here are a couple of examples that may actually be a bit more useful to you. These come from SalesForce's help files:

Update Case record based on values on related Account record:

Send email alert when Case is created related to certain Accounts, based on field values on the Account record:

A final note from SFDC help files on when and how you can use field updates with workflow rules:

"For standard objects, workflow rules can only perform field updates on the object related to the rule. The exceptions are that both Case Comments and Email Messages can perform cross-object field updates on Cases. For all custom objects, however, you can create workflow actions where a change to a detail record updates a field on the related master record. Cross-object field updates only work for master/detail relationships."

I welcome your sharing of other useful cross-object workflow rules you have been able to create among standard SalesForce objects. This is hopefully an area that SFDC intends to build out further in future releases. For example, I think a lot of people would love to be able to update status fields on Contact or Opportunity records whenever certain Tasks are marked as "Completed." I can think of dozens of helpful use cases for more cross-object workflow. Right now we are pretty much dependent on very limited native functionality and Apex coding to go beyond that.

Important Addendum: I was remiss in leaving out an important caveat about doing cross-object workflow. Note that even though the rules will work across the objects, you won't actually get the ones on the resultant object to fire until it is edited. It doesn't matter what change, if any, is made to the record, but the rules won't evaluate on object A simply because object B was edited, even if it is the new criteria on object B that cause it to meet object A rule's criteria.

AspiraTech has developed Aspira Xobject as a solution to this problem. Using Aspira Xobject, which is available for download on the AppExchange, you can connect any two objects so that workflow rules on one get evaluated whenever the other is edited. Check it out.

Keys to Effective Staff Training

2009-07-28T10:34:00.000-07:00

Whether you are training your staff to utilize a newly implemented technology and the related business process improvements, or training them to more productively use the software you've had for years, there is no better investment than in increasing the skills of the people you are already paying to do a job. If training is effective, it results in a remarkable ROI. You keep paying them the same salary, but they get more work done, and the information produced gives you more insight into your business performance, which then allows you to do a better job as a manager.

The big contingency here is, "if training is effective." What exactly is it that makes the difference between a training that lifts your business's performance and training that just wastes time and money?

Attributes of Successful Staff Training

Small group training allows each participant time to interact with the instructor and other students.
Training is delivered using a dynamic format that includes 1) instruction, 2) hands-on practice for each participant, and 3) the Socratic method of questioning to stimulate creative interaction with the material being taught.
The instructor focuses on making sure students understand both the "how and why" needed to truly master a subject.
The course syllabus and trainee manual are created specifically for your company, so that staff learn how to use their own system with their own business process, rather than being taught from a boilerplate template and then told to ignore parts of what they see.
The instructor has a personal style that is upbeat and friendly, with a dash of humor. This will ensure that your employees enjoy learning and have favorable associations with the subject matter. That emotional component is often overlooked, but is vitally important for retention and application ability after class ends.
Training may be remote or on-site, but the instructor's facilitation of the class makes sure everyone is keeping up and involved. Remote technology is reliable and makes it easy to understand exactly what is being demonstrated, and allows students to take control of the mouse and keyboard to demonstrate their skill acquisition as the class progresses.
The cost of the training is reasonable so that management does not feel they need to ration access to it.

Attributes of Poor Training

The easiest way to describe poor training is to simply note that it is the absence of the attributes describing successful training. Classes are so large that students are forced into a "spectator" role instead of being interactively involved in the training. Course material is generic instead of focusing on how your company actually uses the technology on the job. Presentation is formal and technically "snobbish," with the instructor trying harder to impress with his knowledge than impart knowledge to the students. On-site trainers teach at the students instead of collaborating with them to create a successful class; remote trainers have poor understanding of the cultural background, idioms and conversational style of their students, preventing an entertaining interaction that flows naturally. High training costs lead managers to choose these poor training options to get more staff trained for the same price.

The Bottom Line

Just as training can be the best investment your company ever makes if it is done right (e.g. invest $75 per worker and get enough increased productivity out of 6 of them to no longer need to hire a new worker), it can also be a complete waste of both time and money if done wrong. And the worse result of poor training is that it may lead you to undervalue training in the future, if you relate the lack of productivity increases to the value of training in general rather than correctly attributing it to the poor training you received.

How do I know all of this? Well for one thing I have a MA concentration in Adult Learning Theory. That gives me a strong theoretical understanding of what I'm aiming at when I start a training engagement. But what has really given me the ability to understand and deliver successful trainings is experience.

I've done it wrong and I've done it right, and I've learned to understand what I need to do to spin gold out of hay. I've worked as a full-time computer trainer at a back-to-work program, taking people who had never used a computer before and training them for jobs that relied on software expertise and enough business process competence for them to know when and how to use the right software solution. And I've worked with executives and sales professionals who are leaders in their fields, helping them to apply their expertise through the use of technology that will make them even more successful going forward. I know from experience that no matter what level you are starting at, there are certain attributes the training you receive must have if you are to achieve subject mastery.

These days I focus exclusively on SalesForce.com Training. It is my favorite software, bar none. In fact, I've stopped offering other types of training except when my company implements CMS website systems or QuickBase database applications and I'm teaching the new users and administrators how to master those systems. SalesForce training is the only type of training I offer to clients my company did not do any implementation or redesign work for. But whatever type of training your company needs, be sure to ask the right questions to ascertain whether the trainer you are about to hire is one that delivers effective training.

Minimal Questions to Ask

How many years of training experience will my trainer have?
What written materials will participants be given after class and will it be tailored to my business?
If the training is to be remotely delivered to my dispersed workforce, where will the trainer be located and how much experience will they have with American communication styles?
What percentage of class time will be devoted to student demonstration of knowledge achievement?
How will the trainer respond if students stumble upon areas of business process inefficiency during the training?

While there are probably other good questions to add to this list, these 5 should never be omitted. The correct answers to these 5 questions will tell you if you are about to waste valuable staff time and money or make a winning investment in worker productivity. Great training can not only teach your staff to be more productive in how they use technology to fulfill their responsibilities within your current business process, but also help you identify areas that can be improved. The more mastery each worker has, the more they can contribute the insights that come from their unique position.

It is also important not to underestimate the value of getting a group of workers together and allowing them to trade information and feedback as they use a system together that they normally use solo. At AspiraTech, we focus on this sort of comprehensiveness. We know when the training is heading in a productive direction that wasn't anticipated, and make space for that; and we know when it is veering into matters that are best left for another time, and make just enough time for managers to note that, before directing the training back on track. Whatever trainer you use, you will benefit from their having a wealth of business knowledge in addition to technical knowledge about the software you are learning.

We know what great staff training can do for any company. Hopefully this article has helped you clarify your next steps, and you are now ready to take them. Here's wishing you the greatest success with your business performance improvement initiatives.

Social CRM: Toucan brings Twitter into SalesForce.com

2009-07-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

If Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was a revolutionary trend in business paradigms, Social CRM is the natural evolution that is upon us now. If you sell a product or service, or care about a cause you want to promote, you have simply got to be on Twitter. I have Twitter accounts both for my consulting business and for my non-profit volunteer work. I see dozens of new site visitors each day that arrive through tweets I post on Twitter, and you could too.

SalesForce.com CRM (SFDC) is the next part of that equation. With SFDC I can see which visitors submitted a form on the site and track them all the way through won opportunities if someone contracts for consulting services. I can then continue to service clients through a custom object I created called Projects and through Cases after service is provided. And of course, all of this is tracked in numerous ways by SFDC's campaign, reporting and dashboard features, so that I can increasingly make better decisions about how to most effectively let people who need what I offer know that they can get it here.

Toucan integrates these two powerful SaaS business technologies, so that you can not only take advantage of Twitter's marketing and PR power, but do so from within SalesForce.com. Just as you should be integrating your paid Google Adwords campaigns directly into SFDC, you should of course be integrating your free Twitter campaigns into SFDC also.

Of the tweets you've posted over the last month, which ones generated the most traffic to your website? Which tweets generated the most sales? Which tweets led to the shortest sales cycles? If you don't know the answers to these questions, you need Toucan and SalesForce. (If you don't already have SFDC, you can get a one month SalesForce.com Free trial here.)

Twitter is free, and Toucan is pretty close to free itself. If you have up to 25 SFDC users you can get a 1 year license for only $150. That's $150 for everyone, not per user, and not per month.

Instead of reiterating the same how-to material Toucan makes available themselves, I'll just point you to a couple helpful links:

2 minute Toucan intro video - Toucan for SalesForce Intro Video
Request the password for a 7 day free trial - email to toucan@toucancrm.com
Get It Now link on AppExchange for after you receive the password - Get Toucan for SFDC

With the password you will receive a link to a two page configuration guide that includes helpful screenshots and step by step directions. I tried skipping that (rarely read directions on anything), but got stopped at my first step trying to just muddle through. So I suggest you take the 10 minutes to read the guide they send and just do it right the first time.

The only thing I found missing in the guide is that after you are done doing everything they list there you will want to add your Twitter ID under "Settings" within the Toucan app. That instruction is also not found within the user documentation they will send you a link to. You can't actually tweet anything through SFDC (like the initial message in a new campaign) until you enter your Twitter ID and password under Settings, as shown below:

The folks at Toucan are also very nice, and ready and willing to help at the drop of a hat. Give it a try and let me know what you think. I may also add to this post in another week, after playing with this longer and seeing the stats for the week.

Add Google Calendar to SalesForce.com homepage

2009-07-16T15:45:00.000-07:00

Even if today's posting of leaked Twitter confidential information that was accessed through Google Docs has filled you with apprehension about relying on that platform for any sensitive parts of your business, hopefully you are not hesitant to use some great low-threat features like Google Calendar. SalesForce just put out a very straight-forward and instructive how-to video on integrating your Google Calendar into SFDC, and having it display on your home page instead of the SFDC internal calendar.

With this feature, if you have 20 employees sharing a Google calendar, but only 10 using SFDC, you can still see a calendar within SFDC that represents the entire company's calendar.

Link to: Google Calendar Integration How-To video

Why SEO Must be a Part of Website Design

2009-07-08T11:33:00.000-07:00

Many businesses think of search engine optimization (SEO) as strictly a part of marketing, and in a way it is. The key understanding they miss, however, is that marketing doesn't wait to begin until you are at the stage of website promotion. It begins during the first stages of website design.

Think of your website as your business's public face. You get to pick the features you want on your face to create the most accurate impression you can for people who are first introduced to all you have to offer solely by looking at your face. What do you want your face to convey? And what if they could only find your face by searching for faces that have those specific features?

It is common to think of website architecture in terms of the content you want to share with visitors. You want them to see your products and services. You want them to know where you are. You may want to convey your pricing structure. Most websites out there are designed with these sorts of goals in mind. But no one searches for "products and services," so why name a page that way? What do people search for that would make it likely your products or services would fit the bill? Well that's what you need to name that page!

And likely we are talking about multiple pages, rather than a single "products and services" page, regardless of what you might name it. That will allow you to target your site's appearance for different possible searches even more, and attract more traffic.

Future articles will focus on how to discover the right search terms to structure your site's page around. For now I want to fully get across just how important it is that you structure your site around an SEO methodology from the ground up. In fact, we specialize in site redesign even when the graphics and user interface of a site are great, simply changing the architecture of the pages to be more search engine friendly.

Though there is debate in the SEO world as to whether Google and other major search engines still use page urls as part of their ranking criteria (we believe they don't), there is no doubt that they ALL use page content, particularly the page Title, as a major part of ranking criteria for any term. In other words, that page of your website is much more likely to come up in searches for a specific word or phrase if you put that word or phrase in the title of the page. This is why most search engine traffic comes in through pages other than the site's home page.

The home page is usually too general to attract the specific keyword orientation of search engines. Yet many companies continue to focus their marketing efforts on their home page, as if that was the most important page on the site. In terms of how pretty and attractive your "face" is, yes, the home page says the most about that, and you do want a visually appealing home page. But the home page needs to focus more on creating a favorable visual impression than in presenting substantial content. In terms of content, less is definitely more when it comes to the home page. But when it does come to conveying content, convincing a visitor that you have the products and/or expertise they seek, the secondary pages of the site are where the action is. And that is where SEO website architecture comes in.

Make SEO the framework of your site and you will find it is dependable, expandable, and able to accommodate your business's needs even as your business grows to include new offerings. The best marketing investment is the one you can make once and build on limitlessly for free, rather than having to pay for clicks for a lifetime. (However, pay-per-click marketing is an important adjunct to SEO, and we will also look at that in a future article.)

If you'd rather have someone who can apply their SEO website design expertise to your business's website immediately instead of waiting to develop that expertise yourself, visit our SEO Website Redesign page and learn more about what we do. Even if you choose to hire the help of a professional, you will still benefit from learning the basics of SEO yourself, if only so that you can understand the value and approach of the work you are contracting for.

Vertical Response for SalesForce.com

2009-07-01T12:56:00.000-07:00

I just watched a one hour demo of Vertical Response (VR) and have come away with mixed feelings about it. A number of my past clients have used VR before becoming SalesForce.com (SFDC) users, and that is how I first became acquainted with the VR email marketing application. They needed their VR account integrated into SFDC as part of their SFDC implementation.

Since they were clearly already sold on the app, they had very positive things to say about it, and this first gave me a positive impression of it also. The demo today revealed some great things about the app, but also raised a few issues, which a perusal of customer reviews on the AppExchange confirmed were issues for others too.

The Pluses:

Low prices - Send 1000 emails for $15; 10,000 for $120; the price per email goes down the higher the volume goes. Non-profits can send up to 10,000 emails per month for free and everyone can start with 500 free emails to test the system.

Free to install - Great idea to make the app free to install. That gives you the ability to play around with it and learn how it works, deciding if you want to work the way it works before you invest a penny. You only pay for the emails you send.

Easy to install - There really isn't much to it. Just go through the standard AppExchange installation wizard then add a couple picklists to two page layouts.

Nice template selection - It would take a lot of space to really give a comprehensive review of all the good things about the template selection. These are high quality templates, on a higher level than Constant Contact and other well known email marketing packages. That said, there are also some related Minuses I will get to next.

Tight integration with SFDC in terms of using the lists already provided by Leads and Contacts, instead of having to maintain external lists and SFDC lists.

Google Analytics integration creates a link between behavior within emails and behavior on the website when links in the email are followed.

Numerous on-demand video tutorials on using the system: How To Do Everything SFDC

The Minuses:

Only one SFDC user account can be attached to any given VR account. This means 1) all the images you upload are unavailable to anyone else; 2) you can't see anyone else's stats, even if you're the marketing director or a Sys Admin; and 3) there is no way to see a schedule/calendar of all emails to be sent by anyone at your company, only to see your own.

It is way too cumbersome to save and use your own templates once you've customized one of theirs to be exactly what you want. You either have to redo all those choices each time, or copy the HTML of the template once you've edited it to desire, then paste that into SFDC as a custom HTML template there. Thereafter you choose the SFDC Template option (a small link) on the templates page in VR instead of choosing one of the VR templates.

You cannot use VR to email market to members of purchased lists. Email recipients must have come to you through your website, someone who gave you their business card, someone who is a member or customer, or somehow has a direct relationship with you such that they would expect to receive communication from you. It is therefore more a relationship building email tool than an official email marketing tool. You can't do "cold-call" email marketing with them. This is enforced by their surveillance of your bounce and opt-out stats, and complaints. If they see anything unsavory, they will request your documentation of the opt-in of each member of your list and failing to provide this your account will be terminated.

As a minor inconvenience, in order to send more than 30,000 emails at once, you must get approval by writing to VIP@verticalresponse.com first.

No native website analytics tracking within VR so that Google Analytics is not required. (Compare to ExactTarget, which includes native website tracking integration.)

In general I have to say that I like VR enough to not steer companies away from it if they feel they can deal with the above limitations. I even recommended it to one non-profit I help out immediately after watching the demo.

I'm still liking Predictive Response (PR) better, because of the extra analytic and automated drip campaign handling features of PR (see previous post, Predictive Response Delivers), but PR is also a little more expensive. Let's say you had 12 users in SFDC and send 50,000 emails per month. With PR you'd pay about $740 a month and with VR you'd pay $500. (Oddly, for 50,001 you'd pay $425, due to how the price per 1000 is tiered.) You can see the exact price you would pay for any number of VR emails going out at the following link VR Pricing. You type the number you would be sending into the "Pay as You Go" box. Monthly unlimited plans are not available within SFDC VR acccounts at this time.

Additionally, setting up PR is a little more complicated, though not ridiculously so, due to it being more tightly integrated with many parts of SFDC and your website. You also can't try it out for free and the tutorials are always by request, rather than on-demand videos (though there is a helpful intro video available here: PR Overview Video). With PR you put a little more in for setup, learning and monthly expense, but also get a lot more in terms of integrated management of the entire marketing campaign.

While Vertical Response might be more appropriate for sending a monthly newsletter, Predictive Response is more appropriate for actual sales & marketing campaigns, where you are trying to promote specific products or services.

Free Marketing for Coop Businesses

2009-06-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

Domain registrar EnCirca is offering not only a free .coop domain for a year, but a number of free promotional services for the site you host at that url.

Some of the goodies include a free listing in the geo-tagged dotCoop directory (Directory.coop) and widgets that can be used to promote the .coop site on social networks and member sites.

A word of caution however, though I have not done business with EnCirca and am therefore unable to personally vouch for or warn against them, when I go to their website to find out more about this deal I get a warning from WOT (Web of Trust) software I have installed in Firefox that says the site is considered untrustworthy by other WOT users. It is for that reason that I am not posting a live link to their site. WOT is not completely dependable, as I've definitely seen some solid sites with questionable ratings. Public opinion being as fallible as it is, this should be no surprise. So I still want to pass along the info in case your business falls into the category that would really benefit from Coop branding, particularly when it is provided at no cost.

For more on the .coop domain extension in general visit Co-operate Online.

Social CRM - Passing along the Pearls

2009-06-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

I just came across the below article that I enjoyed so much I decided to repost it here for your enrichment as well. I am also seeing social CRM as the wedding of two powerful concepts to deliver a business success solution in the most economical and effective way currently available. Bill makes some excellent points:

"Social CRM - The Start of Social Selling - Learn It! By Bill Rice

Has CRM software gone Social too? Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester Research analyst and author of Web-Strategist.com, believes twitter future could be a Social CRM.

There is no question that Twitter's popularity is growing over night with thousands of people and companies joining daily. Many companies have taken notice of the growing number of people on twitter and recognizing it can be a way to connect to customers and grow their business's. These companies are joggling around Twitter and wondering how to implement this tool into the business plan. The concept of Twitter being used as a CRM is very fitting and presents itself well to many companies!

This concept is a long way from the discussion people are having about what a big waste of time Twitter, Facebook, and other like social networks are. This is the third time in less than a weak I have come across discussions of this concept. That being Social Selling!

Sales is inherently about relationships, building trust, and referrals. The familiarties that the Twitter world would know as they are following, friending, and retweeting? Yes! These concepts are what builds sales! It was only a matter of time before social media became a sales tool.

Social networking will become a natural part of CRM software, and faster than most think. This is not happening because of companies like Salesforce.com are sticking it into their software. No, simply because that is the why consumers are shifting how they communicate online and because consumers want to be contacted in this way.

The time for companies and their sales force to start adapting to the new way to approach sales has started. Get your sales team building more trust and improving the relationships they have with your consumer. This result will always lead to an increase in sales and more referrals that companies can build upon! If you are in sales, it is time to get your social CRM software and start Social Selling!

Here are some keys to get you started!

* Get on Twitter and Facebook--build an audience
* Be natural. This attracts people that will want to buy from you
* Monitor and be responsive to requests you can help with
* Get all your existing clients into your social network

Do you agree with the effect that Social Networking is shifting the way we should approach Sales? If so what else should the new class of social sales people be doing?

Raise your sales performance with Lead Management Software. Use Social CRM to start Social Selling!

Article Source: Social-CRM---The-Start-of-Social-Selling---Learn-It

SaaS Product Reviews - Guest Author Shares His Insights

2009-06-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

In a desire to present diverse points of view on what various online business technology products and services have to offer your business, What's Online presents articles from guests. The below article is comprehensive and though I can't say I agree with all his final assessment (for example, customization of the SalesForce.com CRM software can cost a mere $1-2000, which I hardly consider "a hefty price"), I do find a great deal of value in many of his recommendations. You be the judge for yourself.

And if you are an expert in a particular segment of online business apps, please contact us (use our About Us page form) to submit an article to be shared with our readers.

ERP on Saas Model By Girish Manekji

Software as a Service (Saas), a model of delivering software applications to customers over the Internet, has today reached and inflection point and is poised for a powerful take off. By 2010, Gartner predicts around 30 percent of new License purchases (In APAC excluding Japan) will be in form of Saas, or delivered through the Saas model. In a recent survey of 1,017 technology decision - makers, Forrester found that worldwide adoption of Saas in large enterprises is now at 16%, up to 33% from the previous year's 12% Coming into the Picture is the enterprise resource planning (ERP) on a Saas model. It is becoming the next big thing in enterprise software and offers enterprises of all sizes a viable, scalable and flexible model that will take them to the next level in terms of technology.

Why ERP on Saas Model?

Pay for what you use: Saas model offers just the "right" functionality because 80% of people don't need 80% of the functionality is software. Secondly, with Saas, there is less of a culture of big discounts based on big upfront payments as there is in perpetual licensing, so it also is less of an incentive to buy more than you need, which then turns into shelf ware. Thirdly, the Saas provider knows how much you are using on a real-time basis. Although the charging is immediate, there is no exposure to lengthy and often painful on premise audits, which are the main mechanisms on premise vendors rely on to check compliance. Faster Implementations: One of the primary reasons for quicker implementation is because organizations do not have to concern themselves with installing underlining in-frastructure and all SaaS implementations are purely platform - independent. Configuration of application data occurs often via a browser. Simplified application integration: Built on open standards and Web services standards, inter- SaaS application integration is considerably easier than the integration of propriety applications, While on-premise to on-demand integration is still a challenge, the overall integration burden is considerably reduced through Saas.

Reduced Infrastructure investments:

Acquiring software has traditionally produced the requirement to acquire new infrastructure (hardware, middleware, networks and so forth) to enable it. Through a Saas model, much of this investment is unnecessary and can be eliminated.

Reduced operational management requirements: Saas can be a boon to resource-constrained companies that do not have the resources, such as database administrators,to implement an on-premise application.

Lower upgrade costs:

The Saas model reduces the cost of upgrading from one version of the software to another considerably compared with on-premise costs. Since the model is a multi-tenant architecture, the cost of all software, in-frastructure and expertise is shared by a large number of customers.

Lower switching costs:

The Saas gives the customer the freedom to easily make the switch from one solution provider to another. This freedom to easily walk away from a provider, works as a motivator to introduce better features and ensures optimum performance. Many customers would have invested a considerable amount of money in implementation,integration, customization, testing, training, maintenance and upgrades (sometimes five to seven times othe amount of money spent on licenses). Despite of the problems in the set-up, the on-premise ERP will exist as a necessary evil and the difficulty arises when the customer wants to evaluate any new vendor.

Increased Accessibility and Productivity:

Web based applications gives the freedom to access the information from any part of the globe at the click of a bottom.

Why Ramco On Demand ERP

Ramco OnDemand ERP is the first ful-fledged ERP catering to the needs of growing business. A wolrd-class software, delivered as a service, it helps to streamline and integrate the business processes. As easy to use as e-mail, it requires minimal training and can be accessed from anywhere. For an affordable subscription, Ramco takes care of all the infrastructure, maintenance and support needs. Ramco OnDemand ERP is configured to meet the business requirements and typically takes less than a week to deploy. As the business grows, the solution can be scaled up to accommodate multiple locations, currencies and business units. It integrates multiple functions and systems into one solution which gives total visibility and control of operations. In the process, it helps to focus on growing business.

This piece looks at software on demand or software as a service (SAAS) option for startups and medium enterprises looking to reduce their upfront technology investments as well as technology management headaches.

Technology investments form a significant part of the expenditure of any organization, big or small, If you listen to the pundits, without technology investments, you are dead. And if you listen to those who have tread the path, then the headaches associated with even a simple setup can leave you with a similar feeling. This is why many startups and medium businesses either avoid technology investments or spend too much of their time, money and energy on the subject. Web technologies and bandwidth availability have now matured sufficiently for us to look as hosted, managed applications as a way out of being caught between the devil and the deep sea.

How does it work?

They go by different names- managed software services, software as a service (Saas), cloud computing or the older, application service provider (ASP), But the basic business model is the same. With SasS, you do not buy, install or run the application at your end, all that is taken care of by the vendor at his data center. As there is no installation, there is no need to buy expensive hardware either. You pay on a per-use basis (times number of users, messages, documents, etc.), usually every month, in advance. Depending on the service, there may be a setup and configuration fee. For some services, customization is also possible, that at times could end up being higher than the annual fee. In most cases, it is as simple as going to their website and signing up. You pay with a credit card, configure the service yourselves and you are ready to go. And in most cases, you get a free trial period, which I would strongly advice you to use to get a feel of what can be done and more importantly, what cannot be done.

What is the Advantage?

SaaS takes away your upfrong investments, which in most cases can be fairly heary; and converts that into smaller monthly payouts that would be easier to organize and manage. As your business scales up, (or God forbid, down), you can change your usage slab and payouts, mostly instantaneously. There is no lead time to buy and install new systems nor are their associated capital costs. Finally you are free to concentrate on your business and not on how to get particular software or hardware working; and to that extent, you need to maintain only a leaner team (less lots of IT people)

Budgeting:

Are you amongst those who are sick of budgeting with spreadsheets? Where increasing complexity leads only to increased frustration? Where you lose track of versions with everyone finally carrying a different set of numbers? Adaptive Planning probably hasan answer for you.

The software extends the paradigm of spreadsheets, but brings in SBU level flexibility to add specific budget heads as required. It also does modeling and sales planning and workflow (Enterprise Edition) amongst other things. There are three versions-express (free),corporate and enterprise. Pricing models are comparatively more complex depending on the number and types of users, support levels, training needs and son on. So, you are best advised to contact them or their partners.

Lower switching costs:

Increased Accessibility and Productivity:

Web based applications gives the freedom to access the information from any part of the globe at the click of a bottom.

Why Ramco On Demand ERP

Collaborations, Meetings and Conferences

In these days of soaring travel (and other) costs, web-based conferences go a long way in bringing your budget back to shape. What if you could take a potential client through a discussion on your engineering drawings without actually flying out and physically displaying the drawings in fron of him? What if you could do a quick sales conference without having to get the full sales team into the same room? What if you want to play around with an idea with your team that is in different cities? In today's world of managed services, all of these are possible, and at a cost that is only a fration of a Delhi Chennai return ticket !

Webex brings to the table web meetings, desktop sharing and audio conferences (and a few other services) on a pay-as-you-use model. So, if you have a sales presentation to make to a client in another city, you could share the presentation over the net with the cleint. alternatively, you could have an interactive employee conference without anyone having to travel. Pricing depends on a number of permautations and combinations and typically you enter your details on the website and then someone contacts you.

MindMeister is an online mind-mapping tool. Mind mapping? A mind map is a visual representation of ideas, tasks or thought processes. A mind map helps you express (and change) graphically, the logical sequencing and relationships between events and ideas and anything else. Mindmeister offers three plans- a basic plan with six mind maps is free and comes with advertising, a premium plan at US$49.9 per year and a team plan that includes a team administratoin interface, pre-populated friends lists and custom sub-domain. The team plan starts at US$ 235 per year for five users.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)/Sales Management :-- So you got a small sales team out there and you need to ensure that they are making the requisite number of calls. You need a handle on the status of each caller and finally, when one of them leaves, you need the replacement to be able to step in quickly and seamlessly and start from where the other person left. In short, you need a sales management application.

The most famous and perhaps the most successful of all managed applications, available at falls in this genre. You can extend Salesforce partner to customize the application to suit your specific needs. Be aware that customization comes at a hefty price. Appexchange offers additional applications that you can buy (some are free) and install onto your part of Salesforce to increase or improve functionality. Another SaaS application in the same genre is SageCRM.

Document Management

If your business revolves around documents and it is important for you to manage and track document creation and use, then you are in the market for document management services.

Knowledge Tree has a basic offering of 1GB storage and three users that is free and has a premium option of US$ 15 per month per user and ofers 10GB storage per user.

Email Management

All businesses have catch-all email addresses - ones like or And you need to allow many employees to access and reply to these mail addresses. Employees also need to know what mails have been answered and what the previous mails from a given sender have been.

Sproutit's Mailroom service attempts to do exactly that. The Sproutit mailroom, which calls itself a "simple email helpdesk", is very much 'work in progress' with many rough edges. It sometimes gets tracking information wrong, and does not have facilities to print or to backup locally. But at a base price of US$ 9 per month for three users and 500 messages (free for 100 messages and an ad inserted into every mail out) that is worth living with. We use sproutit.com's mailroom to handle mails atdare@cybermedia.co.in.

Market Research Surveys

One of the major elements of cost (and time) in a market research project is the survey. Reaching across to all the respondents takes both time and money. And that is where online surveys come in. You set up the survey online and invite respondents to come to the page and fill it up. You can set it up as an open survey that anyone can answer or a closed one that, only those who get an invite from you can fill in.

Survey Monkey is an online service that lets you configure and run online surveys.

SurveyMonkey offers three plans, a basic free one and a monthly plan at US$ 19.95 and an annual plan at US$ 200 per year. The key difference between the plans is the number of responses you can get per month and the number of questions for a survey .

Survey Monkey offers multiple (15) question types and questionnaire templates. The paid versions also offerthe ability to download your responses to a spreadsheet (or database).

Zoomerang Basic is free and is limited to 30 questions and 100 responses per survey and the responses are available only for 10 days. Otherwise you have professional education and non-profit plans. Professional comes at US$ 599 per year (US$ 799 with mobile, including 100 mobile credits), Zoomerang also does cross-tabs, filtering and customizable charts.

Network Monitoring

If your organization runs on a smallest to Medium network, then someone has the added headache of ensuring that everything is up and running; that everyone's mail is synchronizing and everything from printer toner to bandwidth is available. Good network monitoring tools are few and far in betwen and are costly; way to costly for a medium or even many large businesses to implement them on priority.

Time to welcome Spiceworks Spiceworks is many things- network monitoring tool, help ticketing system, IT asset managment, and more, rolled into one. You download and install a small piece of software onto a PC and then run it from your browser to get started. The Spiceworks website states that it works well with up to 250 devices, and slows down with more. And the good thing is that it does Windows, Linux, and Mac! spiceworks is free, supported by ads. If you do not want the ads, then there is a monthly free of US$ 20. As for me, I am happy with the ads!

Newletters and Email List Management

If you are in the habit of keeping in frequent touch with your audience- customers, potential customers, well wishers- then you must be doing a lot of emailing. Do you know how many of the indented recipients have opened the message? Or how many have clicked on which link? or even how many email ids are no longer working? Newsletter managers help you do all this. They let you manage your address lists, manage bounces and provide you with open, and click statistics.

Constant Contact charges montly, based on the size of your contact list. You can send as many mails as you want to these contacts. Plans start at US$ 15 a month for 500 contacts.

Aweber communications get you started as US$ 19 for a 500 database and includes signup forms on your website, auto responders and analytics of recipient responses.

Project Management

Project management is a particularly critical need for startups and other organizations that have to manage feature lists and schedules and fast approaching milestones. But they often have to resort to spreadsheets instead of good project management software, simply because of affordability.

Dream Team from DreamFactory comes in two versions- Pro and Enterprise. Pricing is not that straightforward. There is a monthly subscription fee and separate fees for storage, data transfer in, data transfer out, and different types of requests. It also requires the DreamFactory player to be installed.

Liquid Planner allows three project members and 2 GB storage for free. Users above three require payments of US$35 per month or US$ 300 per year. Paid accounts get 50 GB of storage. Basecamp comes in three versions. Basic (US$ 24 per month), Plus and Max. There is also a free option with one project and no file sharing. Base-camp offers to-do lists, file sharing, group message boards, milestone lists and tie tracking.

Shared To-do Lists

If you are working in teams,then keeping track of shared or delegated to-do lists is a pain. And if the team is spread out, then it becomes an even greater pain. To-do lists that are shareable are a good way to avoid this pain. Remember The Milk is a service where you can not only maintain to-do lists, but also share them and have them finished by others. The location of your task can be noted on Google maps from within the application itself.

You can have taks sent in as email by anyone who knows your Milk Account email id or have them added to your calendar. The basic plan is free, while the pro account costs US$ 25 per year.
Web Analytics

Google Analytics is free and many websites use it, Google Analytics is easy to set up and you can be up and active in minutes literally. the service gives you an overview of the visitors to your site and you can drill down to get more details, including where the visitors came from, what lead them there, what browser they were using, what screen resolution and so on. IT also gives you a map with drill down, which shows you where your visitors are coming from.

Google Analytics tracks pages at the page level. If you want to go even finer, like, where in a page users are concentrating, then you need something more. And that is where ClickDensity comes in. ClickDensity does clickmaps, heat maps and hover maps. All of these help you track where on a page users are clicking. With ClickDensity, you have plans ranging from a starter pack of US$ 5 all the way to a premium pack at US$ 400. The key difference between the different plans is the number of clicks stord to create the maps and the number of sites tracked.

Web Server Monitoring

If you have one or more servers or sites up on the net and you are managing them on your own, It isimportant that you be alerted when any of them go down or otherwise become inaccessible from any corner of the world. Server monitoring services do exactly this at specified intervals from locations across the world and alert you over SMS, email and other services when problems arise.

Pingdom offers a number of reports including uptime and response time along with monitoring. Pingdom offers nine different checks including HTTP, TCP, Ping, DNS, UDP, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP checks and you can set up different checks to alert different people. You can be alerted, both, when a service comes down and when it comes back up. You can also set up the check interval to vary from one minute to sixty minutes. They also have a check location in Mumbai. Pingdom offers two plans, Basic and Business at US$ 9.95 and US$ 39.95 per month respectively.

We use Pingdom to monitor all servers and services that we run and I must confes to an occasional false positive that has made us wake up and get connected in the deep night.

Host Tracker offers many more plans, has more monitoring points and is cheaper but offers only basic HTTP tests.

Inventory Management

If you have inventory to track (like infield service parts, multi-restaurant consumables or IT infrastructure. Particularly at multiple locations, then SeeControl is worth looking at.

The See Control website, unlike other SaaS vendors, does not have any price or plan lists or a place where you an sign up. You need to contact them through a form on the website and they will bet back to you.

Human Resources Management

HR is an area that gets divided into further niches, with each having its set of players. Thus, you have services that do online tests for profiling and those that do e-learning. Then there are payroll services and of course, the recruitment portals. Our primary focus here is on basic HR- employee information (HRIS), appraisals and payroll being available in one place.

Empxtrack from Saigun offers HRMS, applicant tracking, employee self service (leave tracking, HR help desk, employee handbook, personal data update), employee portal and appraisals as a managed package. Pricing is on slabs of number of employees and you have to contact them to get started. Adrenalin from Polaris also offers a hosted variant of their HR package.

ERP

ERP, the big daddy of enterprise applications, is also available as a managed solution from many vendors. Here the offerings, typically tend to be industry or process-specific.

Ramco for example, offers process- centric solutions (vendor management, customer management, storage and distribution, accounting, planning and stock management) and have particular focus on selected verticals like auto components, chemicals discrete manufacturing , distilleries, electronics, engineering, etc. .

Delantt Consulting offers hosted SAP BASIS , including sandbox hosting (evaluation stage), development hosting and production hosting. Pricing is dependent on type of hosting and number of user ids. SAP offers its own hosted solution, Business ByDesign at

Before You Choose

Before you choose a provider, there are some points to keep in mind that will ensure a better experience as you go along.

Do The Trial

Almost all SaaS vendors will give you a free trial, usually of thirty days or of a limited number of users. In fact, many, like sproutit and 01.com offer a mandatory free trial period of 30 days, during which you can delete your account without being charged. It is a good idea to use the trial to check out how the service works, and to find out what is missing. If a service provider does not have an upfront free trail offer, ask. you will most likely get one.

Choose The Right Plan

You signup for one of the many available slabs and the vendor will have an over usage charge, which is normally somewhere in the small print. Typically, charges for using extra will be many times the standard rate. So, when you go for a hosted server, you may signup for a server with 1000 GB per month of data transfer. Any usage above 1000 GB in a month will have an extra charge per GB, and this varies from service provider to service provider..

Let's take the example of Sproutit, which provides a shared mailromm service and charges US$ 0.05 for every message sent or received above plan limit. so, if you sign up for a personal plan with them (US$ 9 for 500 messages in and out ) and just happen to do 900 messages instead, you would end up paying US$ 29 as against the US$ 19 that you would have paid with the next higher plan that covers 1000 messages. So with all SaaS signups, it is important that you choose the right plan and monitor your usage as you go along and adjust plans if required.

Service Level Agreements (SLA)

An SLA sets out what level of service availability is being promised and what make good you will get in case the stated service level is not met. Yawn! Who wants to read boring legalese? However, you will be surprised. Let me give you one recent example. I was negotiating with a leading regional data center for managing emails. Somewhere buried in the middle of the proposal was the SLA and in it were a few gems. How about "Intermittent downtime for a period of less than ten minutes will not be counted towards any downtime periods" or "There will be no more than twelve hours of scheduled downtime in a calendar month." Give me a break. Schelduled downtime of up to 12 hours a month for an email service? And if the mail is down for nine minutes after every two minutes, that will be fine? Wait. That is not all. "All burnouts are exclueded and shall be charged on actual." Excuse me! You burn your equipment for whatever reason and then want to charge the customers for it? Obviously, this service provider has some serious rework pending on their SLA contains. Give it a look once over before you sign on. At least the known devil is better than the unkown angel !

LOOK OUT FOR "OTHER CHARGES"

Many SaaS services run on a sign-on-and -start model. But many like email services have set up fees. But you also come across some fees that are let's say, unexpected. Take the case of LuitDox, a document management offering. You need to pay them in advance, either for six months or for a year. That may be okay. But every time you make a payment, there is a processing fee of $35!

Salesforce.com will have their partners do some customization of the site to meet your exact requirements. But most customization quotes I have come across have been equal if not more than the annual charge for a small organization. (Such customization charges are of course open to negotiation)

INTERGRATION ISSUES : One of the problems with opting for multiple SaaS providers is the lack of integration across vendors. Your users will have to login to each of the services separately, using separate pass words and possibly user names. And you would have to create, delete and otherwise administer users at each service separately. It would have been nice if all services could acept logins using some thing like OpenID or and LDAP- based directory service like the Windows Active Directory Services (ADS), Until that happens, we are left with having to manage a different user name and password at each vendor.

WHEN YOU LEAVE : When you leave a service that you were using (and paying for), ensure that you have confirmation from them that your account has indeed been terminated and that you will no longer becharged. Else, you may have the unpleasant experience of your credit card being charged even when you are no longer using the service.

CAN YOU CONVERT YOUR VENDOR INTO A SaaS MODEL?

Finally, if you cannot find a hosted model, can you make your selected vendor offer a pay-as-you-use model? We were negotiating for the implementation of a new HR system. And the final question we had of the short listed vendor was whether he would implement it at a data center of his choice and manage it for us, against monthly payments instead of an up-front payment plus annual maintenance charges. The first reaction was one of incredulity. But a month of cajoling with an assurance of a three year contract and a year's payment as advance cheques helped them to agree to the deal. For us, a huge one-time payment got converted into more comfortable monthly payouts, and we did not have to bother about having to manage the backend. The funny part is that today, they sell a hosted model based around what we cajoled them into doing just for us, and I am not getting anything for the idea!

http://www.bestsaas.info contact : admin@bestsaas.info Girish Manekji http://www.bestsaas.info

Article Source: Girish_Manekji ERP-on-Saas-Model

Free SalesForce.com Account with up to 100 Users

2009-06-15T10:12:00.000-07:00

As of today, SalesForce.com is offering it's platform for free to companies that need just the platform (not SFA). You will be able to create up to 10 custom objects per user and one website with up to 250,000 page views each month. All this for free, indefinitely.

To get started go to SalesForce.com Free Edition, or to learn more first, read their official press release.

Predictive Response Delivers

2009-06-12T12:27:00.000-07:00

I've been comparing email marketing options and Predictive Response (PR) is looking like the best option for SalesForce.com users. The level of integration with the CRM simply can't be beat by such vendors as Vertical Response and BridgeMail. I am even more convinced PR must have a pretty tough package to beat given that earlier this week when I was exchanging messages with a BridgeMail representative the conversation abruptly came to an end when I politely asked him to clarify the business case for their service over PR. He has not responded back since.

On the other hand, PR's responsiveness in making the case for their service over BM was in keeping with my general experience of how they operate. These are people you can reach at 7pm on a Friday evening, and who will be happy to help however they can. Based in CA, with apparently all their tech support based there also, they offer a great product delivered with great support.

The two things I like most about PR are 1) the integration with SFDC, so that you don't have to maintain two sets of lists when SFDC is already a list management system; and 2) the ability to continually refine email marketing campaigns based on recipient behavior. You can see which links they follow in any email you send, which pages on your webite they then visit, which links on those pages they click, how long they watch any video, and so on. And it all funnels directly into SFDC, so that you can report on it right along with all your Opportunity data. And of course, it all feeds back to your campaigns' ROI as well.

Another element Kevin at PR pointed out to me is that PR is campaign based, not list based, in how it "thinks" about marketing. With a list based system like BridgeMail, if someone signs up for your newsletter mid-month, the only way you can send them that month's newsletter is to resend to the entire list. With PR, you simply add them to the campaign and SFDC keeps track of who within the campaign has or hasn't been sent which newsletters. So you then just send to the ones who haven't already received it.

The entire "drip campaign" approach of PR is a marketing winner. As you get feedback on what is working or not for given INDIVIDUALS, you refine your methods of marketing TO THEM. The system moves them from one campaign to another based on their behavior. Making it more and more likely they will like what they see enough to make a purchase or engage a sales rep about a possible purchase (i.e. convert to an Opportunity).

You may note that this review talks a lot about Predictive Response in comparison with BridgeMail, without mentioning Vertical Response. That is because VR merits an article all its own, which will follow next week. As a preview though, expect PR to stack up quite favorably in my view. It is simply the best email marketing package for SFDC users that I have come across. If you know a better one, please bring it to my attention.