Hundreds, or even thousands, of companies claim they have created Cloud Computing-based applications. I don’t doubt that in the least. However, almost all of these applications either a) use the company’s own platform or b) leverage one or two infrastructures, such as Force.com, Amazon Web Services or Google. Very few applications leverage more than two Cloud Computing applications.
Here at Model Metrics we have created an application that utilizes not one or two platforms, but an application that leverages four platforms. The application is called CardLasso (www.cardlasso.com), which is a solution that enables users to take a picture of a business card, have that image transcribed into usable data, and then made available for download to a csv file, a vcard, or for upload into the users Salesforce CRM org.
Here’s how it works. Taking a picture of the business card is not difficult. CardLasso lets the user use a mobile phone camera such as the iPhone or the webcam most folks have on their PC’s. The picture is then sent to a service provided by Amazon Web Services called Mechanical Turk. Think of Mechanical Turk as a cloud-based workforce. The "Turkers’ transcribe the image of the business card into usable data and then submit that information back to the users’ CardLasso account. At this point, the user can choose to receive the contact’s information as a vcard, in a csv file, or have the information sent directly to a specified Salesforce CRM org.
The uniqueness of the application is the number of web services it uses. Here’s a quick summary:
iPhone – use the iPhone camera to capture the business card images
Adobe Flex – alternatively, take a picture of the business card with your webcam using an Adobe Flex interface that controls the webcam on your PC
Adobe AIR – or, if you don’t have an internet connection, Adobe AIR takes the webcam photo capture module offline
Force.com Sites – from salesforce.com, Force.com Sites runs to entire process. A user’s account information is stored on Force.com and integrates with all other components of the application
Finally, Amazon Web Services drives all of the image processing. Amazon S3 assists with storing the images, EC2 helps to process and store the image, Dev Pay enables payment for the monthly transcription servces, and finally Mechanical Turk physically enables the transcription of the business cards.
You may be saying that this is a complicated way of getting something done, but its actually the new reality. All of these tools have extremely accessible API’s that make integration easy, enabling it to take the best technologies in Cloud Computing to create an application that bests the others in its market.
If your interested in checking it out, just take a look at www.cardlasso.com.
On the second day keynote at Google I/O they unveiled something big. This is new product is built by the guys who brought us Google Maps. Remember how surprised you were the first time you saw interactive maps IN THE BROWSER and could zoom down and see your own house? Well these guys asked themselves an interesting question: “What would email look like if it was invented today rather than 40 years ago before there was even an internet? “ The answer to that question is Google Wave.
Google Wave is a paradigm shift to be sure. It takes email and turns it on it’s head. It tries to remove the pain points of email and combine it with tools that didn’t exist 40 years ago such as instant messaging, blogs, wikis, etc… At first blush it isn’t evident how different this can be, but as they showed more of the feature set it became apparent that this has the potential to be something very special.
There is a concept of a “Wave”. A Wave is on the server and as with email you can send it (or more accurately share it) with others. However it is collaborative. Multiple people can update a wave simultaneously, and it has a very rich “track changes” type of feature built in. Those who have not yet read the Wave just see the final version, those who had read the original version see the changes highlighted, or with a strikethrough font as appropriate. Things get really interesting when you see the playback feature which has music like controls with a sliding timeline that allows you to “playback” the changes. You can do this with all changes, or just the changes made by a specific person.
Changes to a Wave are not merely seen upon save, but as each character is changed it is simultaneously changed on anyones screen who is viewing or editing it in real time which is pretty amazing to watch. It also incorporates the idea of chat within a Wave, and again you can see character-by-character typing. So there is no more waiting for 30 seconds for a friend to type a reply, you see it all real-time. These chats or comments can be placed in a Wave document around a specific section to have context.
There are other features such as drag-and-drop of pictures in a Wave from the desktop and again they appear immediately for others viewing that Wave. A Wave could be used as a quick way to share photos, multiple people can contribute their photos and you can view a combined slideshow of all photos, etc… There is even a great feature with one click of a button to share your wave on a blog. Since a Wave is live on the server all changes made to the Wave are immediately reflected on the blog, just like if someone else was viewing the Wave from the Wave client.
Waves are not just to replace email, but also documents. The development team showed how they use it to take notes in meetings, build specs and even build a “wiki” like repository of a Wave that combines links to other Waves. Initially this is only for rich text (think documents or email) but they plan to extend this concept to spreadsheets and presentations.
I was especially struck how the developers who know this product, designed it and built it are still learning how to use it. To illustrate this they showed a real example. They sent out a Wave to the team asking about going to a movie. Pretty soon people started replying to all (treating it like normal email) and soon the chain was cluttered. Then someone decided to update the original Wave and add three sections for people to add their names to: (Yes, No and Maybe). Then people just added their names under the appropriate section and it was easy to see who was coming and who wasn’t without having to cull through a bunch of replies. Suddenly the wave was an intelligent form instead of just an email. New technology is great, but if you don’t use the new paradigm it will not bring much benefit.
Now this is all well and good, but are enterprises really going to embrace this? I think Google was very smart in the fact that they designed this in such a way that most of it is open sourced and you can take this technology and build your own Wave server if you don’t/won’t trust Google with your Waves. They also opened up rich API’s so a Wave can be extended to do things like update a Twitter feed. I truly think that IF this ends up giving Enterprises the level of control and security they desire that this could truly be an email killer and bring radical productivity and collaboration gains to all of us at home and at work.
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I have an iPhone and for the most part I love it. I like the interface, the seamless access to music and all the apps on the AppStore. I don’t like the shortcomings, such as the lack of cut and paste, no video capture, lack of landscape keyboard, etc… Many of these will be addressed soon with the 3.0 OS, which is already in public beta. We have created six apps for the AppStore ourselves and we know and love Objective C. But what about Android? I’ve heard a lot about it, especially when the G1 launched, but I’ve never personally used it or seen it in action beyond some POC work by some of the developers on my team.
That is about to change. Google did a very smart thing, which at first I thought was very generous, then I realized was a brilliant move to buy mindshare. They gave all 4,000 of us a free Android phone just for coming to their conference. But we weren’t 4,000 random people. We are thought leaders and developers from all walks of life that know enough or care enough about Google to spend a couple of days learning more about it. Even with this “Google Centric” crowd I saw a lot of iPhones and Blackberries and very few G1’s. But now all of us have a free Android phone, and not only that but it is unlocked and we have a SIM card for 30 days of voice and data access.
I’d say the odds of all of us trying out some development on this platform just increased dramatically. I’m curious to see what comes out of this or what types of skunkwork apps my team can put together now that we have a spare phone we can actually try things out on.
I just got back from the recent Google I/O developer conference and was struck by it’s simplicity. It was short, only two days. It provided great content. It provided great food and snacks. It even had the requisite Wii and Rockband pods and upped the ante with Pool, Foosball and chair massage.
So enough with the format, what was the message? The message was all about the importance of HTML5 and how it was supported by all “modern” browsers. The browser made by the boys in Redmond was not on this “modern” list. I haven’t followed the HTML 5 standard that closely but was surprised along with others with what could be done within the browser without a plugin. Does this mean Adobe should worry about Flash marketshare dropping? Not immediately, but in a couple of years, maybe so. In a nutshell you have some new tags and features to consider:
<canvas> This tag allows you to have pixel level control in the browser and do things such as draw a diagonal line. They even created O3D which allows you to create compelling 3D graphics and use the graphics card, not the CPU.
<video> Now you can embed a video as easy as an image without worrying about plugins or codecs.
Geolocation – Your PC or Laptop can now be as smart as your iPhone and you can choose to share your location with the browser to get location awareness in Maps or other apps.
App Cache and Database - HTML 5 allows you to do some interesting caching and has it’s own SQL Lite DB (very similar to Adobe AIR). This can allow you to cache portions of your app for faster access or to do interesting offline applications in the browser. Google Mail already uses this approach on the iPhone and Android.
Web Workers – An API for running background Javascript so you can do things asynchronously and not slow down the user experience.
The big question of course is when is the HTML5 support going to be broad enough that developers can take advantage of all of this and really exploit it? Google asked that we as developers push that curve and not allow these features to lie dormant for years as was the case with the foundations of AJAX.
My next post will talk more about Google Wave and some other announcements that came out of I/O 2009.
The successful strategy for CRM implementation in your organization needs to be well thought out and aligned to your culture, business needs and problems. However, there is significant value to examining what has worked (and not worked) for others that have blazed this trail before you. This two-part post will address some of the guiding principles and success factors that you can use within your own organization if you are looking to implement some aspect of CRM or if you are finding a need to re-implement CRM after a failed effort.
First, I think it is helpful to establish that CRM is not software. Instead, it is a mindset and a culture that is reinforced by a set of defined business processes while being enforced, automated, and supported by software. This definition lends some comfort in knowing that the major hurdles are not technical, however, one must come to terms with the fact that leading people-change is much more difficult than building technology.
Affecting real change in people requires an understanding of what motivates them. Whether it is opportunity for advancement, meaningful work, money, power, or any other factor that motivates people, we must find a way to tap into those things for change to persist. For the purposes of this discussion, we will assume that money and the ability to close more deals are the key motivators of a sales force. Sales people are generally thought to be “coin operated” in terms of their motivations so the validity of this assumption should hold up.
Allowing sales people to make more money means that they need to close more deals, and your CRM program should be designed to allow them to do so. If the sales organization is convinced that this is the case, they will advocate the system, comply with the processes and show the results that align with your business goals. Simple, right? Well, although this is the logic, I think that a bit more exploration of the specific of “How” CRM will accomplish these goals is in order. After this discussion, you should feel comfortable answering the question “What’s in it for me?” The answers will help to refine your strategy to prevent your CRM implementation from simply being a scoreboard that allows management to see that is something happened, and instead become a tool that the sales organization uses as a tool to score (close deals).
Spend more time selling
The number one concern that I hear from sale people faced with using a new CRM system is that the overhead that comes from managing their work within a system is going to take away from the time they spend in front of customers. In fact, this should be one of the primary benefits of CRM to the end user. The “Automation” aspect of Sales Force Automation (SFA) is the foundation of any CRM tool. Sales people will have the ability to generate sales letters, access marketing collateral, RFP responses, product info, presentations, demos, and a host of other information at the click of a button. Without a tool in place and processes to support it, they are likely spending countless hours manually generating these outcomes or digging in multiple sources in an attempt to locate them.
Process guide/best practice deployment
A customized selling process needs to be defined from the bottom up and then the top down (not the reverse). The rainmakers in your organization are uniquely qualified to help define best practice and the CRM system will facilitate the deployment of those practices. Those in the sales organization who help to define the process by which the company will drive sales are often invigorated by the opportunity to have such an impact that the lesser performing folks have difficulty arguing with results. Furthermore, the CRM system will offer the ability to institutionalize best practice and centrally manage its effectiveness. When the time comes for a change, that change can be managed centrally as well.
Establish link between sales and marketing
Believe it or not, many organizations struggle to establish a synergy between the marketing and sales functions. If you are nodding your head, read on. Marketing should be seen as an ally to Sales because lead generation fuels opportunities for new deals. However, Sales is often frustrated by the unqualified leads that get passed on from marketing and reacts by dismissing the validity of those leads. In reverse, Marketing is frustrated by their inability to demonstrate their effectiveness because the Sales organization is not following up on the leads that they generate.
CRM can help bring science to this issue by introducing lead scoring and lead qualification criteria that leverage empirical data to support their effectiveness. The result is better leads that increase the potential for a sale. For the salesperson, the odds go up, and they find themselves working smarter rather than harder to bring in a new customer.
I’m on a quest to eliminate the term “resource” as a synonym for another human being. Why? Simple: everything I do is about people. Everything succeeds or fails based on the people involved. The term “resource” feels like an attempt to whitewash this fact, to neutralize it. And that’s exactly the opposite of what I want.
As a side note, I don’t think I’m alone in this. Although “human resources” is still used quite a bit, leading companies talk of “human capital” and “talent management”. Are these perfect? No. But they’re closer.
What do I want? I want people who are fired up. I want people who are high energy, who are engaged – people who are on a mission. And by this I mean both the people I recruit to join the Model Metrics team and the customers we work with. “Resource” to me feels like someone who “can” do something. I want a person who wants to do that thing. When a person wants to do something – whatever that thing is – they do it better. No comparison.
So you bring your passions and I’ll bring mine. Who knows what we can accomplish together. Whether we need to change the world or just make a necessary process more efficient, I’m up for it. Are you?
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