The value of the social enterprise is simple. For consumers, it provides a means of getting closer to their favorite brands, offers them a voice when they have something to say (good or bad), and allows them to make better buying decisions. For companies, it magnifies the voice of the customer, allows them to identify macro trends, improves their ability to service customer, maximizes sales through new channels, and can even improve employee satisfaction.

The social enterprise is a strategy; it is not simply a single system or idea. It impacts the culture, business processes, systems, and the bottom line. Leveraging social networks, social media, and the other concepts that will be discussed here is new to many companies, but time is ticking for those that are not developing a social enterprise strategy. Chances are your competitors have a head start and the cost of NOT taking action could be high.

The social enterprise strategy is different for every company, so the topics covered here should not be viewed as an exhaustive list, nor do the all need to be covered in every organization. They are simply characteristics of the social enterprise that require consideration. The social enterprise is:

Characteristics of the Social Enterprise:

Internal and External

Connectivity within an organization between employees, departments, regions and divisions within an organization is key. Improved communication benefits every company, no matter what the size, and mastering it ensures that the company strategy is carried from the CEO all the way down to entry-level employees. Connectivity also aids in tactical communications related to business process, on-boarding new employees, and building a culture of teamwork.

Private, internal social networks like salesforce.com’s Chatter revolutionize internal communication and collaboration to be revolutionized by facilitating conversations and idea sharing, and by providing a forum for asking and answering questions. Unlike traditional collaboration solutions, Chatter conversations are contextual and integrated into every day work. Unlike email, questions and ideas can be posed to a broader, non-specific audience so that responses are invited from and available to an entire group. What’s more, Chatter allows customers to be selectively included in the conversation to facilitate collaboration on projects, share documents securely, or even conduct negotiations.

Chatter customers are reporting some astounding benefits including:

• 27% fewer meetings
• 30% reduction in email
• 36% increase in customer responsiveness
• 39% increase in collaboration
• 52% faster finding of information

Participation in external, public social networks is a requirement of the social enterprise. By establishing a public persona on public social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube, a company can manage its brand where consumers are spending most of their time.

Person-to-person recommendations, which today often disseminate through the social grid created by social networks, are a major influencer in buying decisions among consumers. Just this holiday season 66% of social media users made a purchase on Black Friday as a direct result of a recommendation made on social media networks. With the Facebook user population over 750 million and growing, the social media channel is a difficult one to ignore.

Be careful not to dismiss these channels as only being for consumer brands either; YouTube marketing strategies for B2B customers often include customer testimonials, product demos, fun topics related to an industry, and “Viral video” contests.

Personal

The brand loyalty that customers of social enterprises demonstrate is partially attributed to the personal attention that they receive. Historically, market data established through sales metrics and customer surveys has been key to decision making and tracking of consumer trends. Sample groups were used to collect data and that data was extrapolated to extract customer sentiment. By the time this data was distilled down to actionable insight, the source was often months old making it nearly impossible for companies to react quickly.

In the age of the social enterprise, every consumer gets a voice and companies can address consumer issues proactively rather than reactively. Public social networks are filled with consumer comments, questions, issues, and opinions about the products they use. As companies tap into these networks, they can identify issues to resolve and turn potentially dissatisfied customers into advocates. Best of all, this can be done in real time.

Monitoring social networks may seem like a daunting task, but social monitoring tools like Radian6 are made to help. Radian6 continuously monitors public social profiles on thousands of social network sites and funnels invaluable information back to into companies that are savvy enough to proactively mine customer ideas that can enhance their products, services and messaging. The data captured builds a repository of individual issues, but also identifies macro trends in consumer sentiment, industry conditions and brand strength.

Awareness of your consumer’s opinions, expectations and issues is not enough. Successful incorporation of this knowledge into an organization’s operation requires a commitment to heeding the call to action, and that will require a strategy in itself. Here is an example of how Gatorade established a Mission Control to monitor social networks (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InrOvEE2v38). As a result of this initiative, Gatorade has been able to: Track Media Performance; Monitor Sports Landscape; Track Sports Trends and Buzz; Track Brand Attributes; Monitor Online Discussion; and Perform Proactive Social Media Outreach.

Contextual

The personalization of the social enterprise, internally and externally, requires that consumers, partners and employees are able to converse on topics that are meaningful within the context of what they are doing. Customers looking for information to make an educated purchase or solve a problem need timely and relevant data. If they can’t find it, they may move on to your competitor to serve them.

Live chat has been used in the customer service world for years. It empowers the customer to ask a personal question through the medium that makes them the most comfortable. Live chat and instant messaging have helped companies open new communication channels with their customers while driving down the cost of support.

Online communities are another mechanism a social enterprise can use to provide customers contextual information, answer questions, field suggestions and further reduce costs because solutions can be crowd-sourced rather than pushed out from a central location. Forrester has credited social communities with being able to satisfy human social needs including the abilities to communicate, connect, contribute and create. To be effective, communities need to be updated, policed, and managed, but the effort required to govern them is far outweighed by their impact. Starbucks has done an excellent job building communities with their mystarbucksidea.com initiative (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/03/20/where-customers-submit-discuss-and-vote-your-ideas-for-starbucks-my-starbucks-ideas/).

Internal collaboration and solution identification can also be aided by contextual social tools. Like communities, internal collaboration tools like salesforce.com’s Chatter allows users to be fulfilled by their sense of inclusion in corporate communication and collaboration. It also provides private messaging, file sharing, groups, and even customer interaction in the context of existing business processes.

Contextual social interaction creates a sense of relevance for both employees and customers. When their voices are heard, a hand of assistance is offered, or they have an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge by helping someone else through a community, people are touched in a way that ensures them that they are important and valued. This message is one that resonates deeply and facilitates loyalty.

Predictive

The primary goal of information systems is to gather data, turn that data into information, and derive knowledge from the information. The next frontier is using the knowledge that we derive to predict outcomes. Social enterprises look for ways to leverage the data that they are collecting to anticipate the needs of their customers, business partners and employees. They are also tapping into a whole other category of data provider.

There are over 1 billion people on the Internet, but that number is quickly being eclipsed by the number of “things” on the Internet. Things being devices, sensors, gauges, etc that are all transmitting data. The data that they dispatch can be collected, aggregated, analyzed and used to make our lives easier by predicting future events (Internet of Things, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfEbMV295Kk).

Suppose, for example, that you have a company that makes pumps. Each pump is connected to your social enterprise and transmitting data about its performance. What if you could proactively contact a customer when you learned that the pump was going to malfunction and save your customer a disaster? Would it be a meaningful contribution to your customer to avoid a flood?

These types of technologies already exist today and are getting easier to use and more functional all the time. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/supermechanical/twine-listen-to-your-world-talk-to-the-internet?ref=live

Predictive analysis can be complex and will likely take time to perfect. However, social enterprises realize that it will be impossible without significant historical data to draw from. Therefore, the sooner you get started, the better positioned they are going to be.

Mobile

It is difficult to talk about the social enterprise without including mobility as a primary characteristic. Social interactions cannot be realistically limited to captive audiences sitting at desks. The prevalence of smart phones and tablet PCs has reached an all-time high, and that trend will continue. Social enterprises are embracing mobility and are establishing a strategy for mobile devices, but they are also revolutionizing the way we work with them.

Mobile applications are not simply PC-based applications that run on a mobile device or within a browser. Users interact with mobile applications much differently than traditional apps. A mobile application is often used for a specific, targeted purpose. It is intuitive and easy to use, and it takes advantage of capabilities and functions that are unique to mobile devices (e.g. geo-location, camera, gyroscope, push notifications, video, touch screen input, etc). This provides an experience that is context-aware, familiar and personal to the user.

With the dominance of mobility in the market place, it is tempting for many organizations to get anything into their consumers’ hands to provide them a mobile capability. Beware of this strategy. Mobile applications are an extension of your company’s brand and it is critical that quality and relevance are priorities.

As they incorporate the social enterprise principles, companies are embracing mobility, establishing device strategies, challenging the status quo, and arming their employees and customers with the power of information from virtually anywhere.

“Gamified”

When thinking of the terms “social” outside the context of social computing, social media or social CRM, for many the first thing that comes to mind is that “social” implies “fun,” like a social event or a social gathering. Gamification creates the connection between fun and the concepts of social enterprise.

Gamification is the process of using game thinking and mechanics to engage audiences and solve problems (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O1gNVeaE4g, Gabe Zichermann). Game theory allows organizations to use game metaphors to connect with audiences (e.g. customers and employees) to gain their loyalty and encourage interactive behavior. This is a powerful science, that when used effectively, can transform a relationship between a company and a consumer.

Gamification incorporates points, badges, status, and virtual rewards to blur the lines between work and fun for participants. Incorporating these concepts can improve performance in customer support, sales and marketing efforts. For example, a customer service rep can earn points for every case he or she closes with a successful disposition. A collaborator on an internal social network can earn status based on the influence he or she has over others in the company through their contributions. How an organization allows employees to redeem their points or exercise their status is secondary to simply having the program because rewards systems like this resonate with a users’ personal sense of gratification.

The same concepts can be employed externally as well. Foursquare (www.foursquare.com) is a great example of a social enterprise that leverages gamification to encourage users to contribute comments/reviews of restaurants. By frequenting establishments and contributing feedback, patrons earn status that can be redeemed for discounts that have proven to be a strong incentive for participants. In turn, Foursquare is building a powerful social network of referrals and recommendations while the establishments serving Foursquare customers benefit from personal endorsements (assuming the customer has a good experience).

Consumers have high expectations for the products they use. It is no longer enough for systems and applications to be functional; they must also be intuitive, self-serving, and even fun to use…no matter what the task.

Benefits of the Social Enterprise:

In some respects, the characteristics of the social enterprise are absurdly simple in theory, but can be enormously complex in practice. The value of being a truly social enterprise is not found in a single dimension of the strategy, but in the synergies created by a balanced approach suited uniquely to your needs.

This diagram aligns common benefits realized by social organizations with a matrix of internal (within a company) and external (partners, customers, general public), micro (personal and small group benefits) and macro (large volume of data points) applications of the social enterprise.

What benefits exist for your company?

As 2011 comes to a close, we at Model Metrics are very proud of our accomplishments over the last 12 months, including, but not limited to the introduction of Model FX, the first cloud design lab, and our rapidly growing Social Enterprise and Mobile practices. But what we continue to be most proud of are the people and company culture at Model Metrics and we were thrilled to receive the Chicago Tribune Top Workplace award for the second year in a row.

With Model FX, we launched the first creative design lab focused specifically on cloud technologies. This arm of Model Metrics takes cloud computing one step further and truly incorporates our customers’ brands from ideation to development. The Model FX team works to deliver innovative social and mobile cloud solutions with customized user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) baked into the overall design. We know that the optimal representation of a company’s brand is just as critical as functionality to encourage adoption and ongoing usage. The Model FX design lab now enables us to bring enhanced consultation and custom cloud design services to our customer base.

2011 also brought about a significant IT paradigm shift toward the social enterprise with companies looking to transform community engagement into business value. Model Metrics embraced this shift by introducing an expanded set of services designed to mobilize the workforce and improve employee collaboration.

None of these accomplishments would have been possible without the talent of each of our team members and since inception, we have made it a priority to create a different kind of work environment that truly embodies our core values, which include collaboration, innovation, honesty, responsiveness, philanthropy and passion.

Our continued efforts to foster a collaborative company culture and standout team were validated once again when Model Metrics took home, for the second year in a row, the Chicago Tribune Top Workplace award. This prestigious accolade recognizes Chicago’s best employers with a special emphasis on dynamic, supportive and inclusive company cultures. We’re excited to close out the year on such a high note and can’t wait to see what 2012 brings!

Model Metrics’ 2011 Accolades include:

• Chicago Tribune’s Top Workplaces 2011 Award Model Metrics took home second place in the Top 5 small companies category for best places to work in Chicago. This recognition is followed by a first place win in 2010.
• Built in Chicago Top 50 Digital Tech Companies Model Metrics was recognized as one of the largest digital technology employers spurring job growth in Chicago.
• 2011 Red Herring Global 100 Model Metrics was recognized as a finalist for the top private companies around the world.
• 2011 AlwaysOn Global 250 Top Private Companies Model Metrics was honored as a company demonstrating significant market traction and developing game-changing cloud technologies.
• CRN 2011 Fast Growth 100 Model Metrics was ranked as #27 in a list of 100 companies recognized for impressive, exponential growth over the last few years.
• CRN’s Next-Gen 250 Model Metrics was recognized for innovation in cloud computing services.
• Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For 2011 Model Metrics was honored for our commitment to excellence in our human resources practices and employee enrichment.
• 2011 Red Herring Top 100 North America Model Metrics was chosen as a winner from a pool of hundreds of companies across North America based on financial performance, technology innovation, quality of management, execution of strategy and market integration.
• Cloud Computing World Series Awards Model Metrics was chosen as a finalist for Best Cloud Application.
• CIO 100 Awards Model Metrics’ customer, Ingram Micro, honored based on the innovation and success of the Ingram Micro Cloud website that Model Metrics helped to design, develop and deploy.
• 5^th Annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service Model Metrics was selected as a finalist for the Customer Service and Call Center Consulting Practice of the Year category.
• Kellogg Alumni Rising Entrepreneur of the Year Award Model Metrics’ CEO Adam Caplan was recognized as a Kellogg alumni who is building a successful, high growth entrepreneurial venture.
• 2011 ITA CityLIGHTS Awards Model Metrics’ CEO Adam Caplan was honored as CEO of the Year.
• The Forrester Wave: Salesforce.com Implementation, Q2 2011 (May 13, 2011) Forrester Cites Model Metrics as “Strong Performer” in salesforce.com implementation and received highest scores for client satisfaction, implementation life cycle, vertical expertise, key partnerships and go-to-market strategy.
• Gartner Cool Vendor in Application Services, 2011 Model Metrics was recognized by this leading analyst firm for providing innovative technologies in the application service market.

 To learn more on how to become part of the Model Metrics family please visit: http://www.modelmetrics.com/careers/

AH Holdings, a growing conglomerate of healthcare support solutions companies, worked with Model Metrics to deploy Chatter for better knowledge sharing among its highly dispersed workforce serving hospitals across the country and internationally.

Just two months after going live, its transformation into a social and agile enterprise is gaining momentum. Sixty-six percent of employees are collaborating on Chatter and more than 112 groups have been created by associates’ initiative. As a result, they can provide better service to hospitals and clinics and drive business efficiencies.

We also recently completed a Chatter deployment for Standard Register, a leading provider of critical communications management, who wanted to deploy social enterprise technology as part of a transformation in the solutions and services it delivers. Together we underwent a methodical deployment designed to ensure business value. Today Chatter is used to better manage its sales efforts, enable closer collaboration between employees, and drive overall efficiencies.

Is your company ready to get started?

There is a saying in audio recording which has become a bit of a cliched pun:

“We’ll fix it in the mix.”

If anyone has ever spent time in a recording studio you have probably heard this. The advent of digital music production has made it much easier to fix mistakes during the mixing/editing process, making it arguable to skip another take and “fix it in the mix”. As a musical hobbyist, I have been part of several late night sessions where that term was thrown around jokingly for mistakes that clearly should be corrected through another take versus trying to edit them later. And after the chuckling subsides, we drag ourselves out of the control room, pick up our respective instruments and have at it one more time…

As I am sure every industry has its own similar term to reference work that is pushed off later that should probably be addressed now, there is a common saying I hear on software projects:

“It’s a training issue.”

This saying often refers to usability issues that are reported as Change Requests. For various reasons these Change Requests are not addressed as software changes but instead “Training Points” for the users to modify their behavior. The negative slant is this implies it’s OK to ask a user to change their behavior, rather than change the software to meet their “needs”.

While this thinking holds merit when custom developing an application, I disagree in terms of a customizable multi-tenant software like salesforce.com that is leveraged by the masses. Let’s look at the Microsoft Office suite of products. MS Office changed the way business works. And it didn’t do it by providing a unique experience for every type of industry and client. It dictated a set of best practices (right or wrong) that can be leveraged across the globe regardless of industry or department. While new features may not have always been intuitive, businesses realized there is a significant cost savings to not creating their own version of a word processor or spreadsheet application, or presentation maker. Rather, they should make the investment to learn how to leverage one that was created for the masses. One could argue that organizations often bettered their processes due to pre-designed functionality that was available to them that they may have not considered applicable to their work or industry.

The difference between Salesforce.com and Microsoft Office is that Office is a product, while Salesforce is a platform with product offerings. In addition to marketing, salesforce automation and customer service and support, the platform can be leveraged to apply a rich set of features and functionality to other areas of the business (recruiting, employee development, operations, etc…). You can custom configure and even custom develop on the platform to create unique applications.

One of the areas we work with clients is helping them navigate the myriad of choices they have when designing applications on this platform. When is it ok to “customize” and when should one leverage what is already available but only requires simple configuration? Here is where the rubber meets the road. Working on this platform, I have seen many clients realize the benefits of modifying their process or behaviors for enhanced visibility, streamlined work streams, or improved collaboration. Salesforce’s native page layout editor often accelerates design decision making, creates a repeatable, familiar interface, and introduces visual tools that may not have been utilized before and would not have been requested by the client. While change can be painful, the benefits can often outweigh the investments.

For this reason, businesses should always make sure they are making the proper investment in Training and organizational Change Management. Regardless of the size of your organization, Training and Change Management can consume a significant portion of any software budget, and that percentage only increases on a platform that reduces the amount of development time needed.

So next time you hear “it’s a training issue” on your salesforce.com project, try not to immediately cringe, chuckle or push back. It may very well be an opportunity to improve…and an appropriate time to “fix it in the mix.”

Many of our customers ask us about mobilizing their workforce. In fact, 80 percent of Model Metrics customers include smartphone and tablet adoption plans in their cloud deployment initiatives. Most need guidance on where to start – from devices to development technology to application design. Model Metrics helps enterprises develop mobile roadmaps to ensure a successful mobile cloud deployment.

We ask key questions early in the project to help decide how to best launch your mobile strategy. Picking the development technology is often the last step, not the first. Topics we discuss with your team include:

• Who are the users & what do they need to do?
• What are their job tasks prior to, during and after a customer interaction?
• What is your branding message and how does the field staff reinforce this message?
• What systems and hardware do they have today?
• Do you control the mobile device or do you support Bring Your Own Device – BYOD?
• Are users connected via WiFi or 3G? How often?
• If users are offline, what are “must have” capabilities? What could they live without until reconnected?
• If you expanded mobile access and capabilities, what could else your users be doing? What do office based field support teams do that could be moved to the field?
• What internal legacy systems do field staff use? Or need information from?
• What external applications do field staff use? Or need information from?
• Do they need transactional data or summary? Both?
• Are there new device capabilities that introduce new job tasks, such as GPS, camera, mobile mapping?

An example of using new device capability to streamline work is to pull the GPS location of the device (presumably in the user’s hands) and display the account the user is standing next to. Bypass typing the customer name and instead query the app based on GPS coordinates. Turn on the device, press “sales call” and up comes the contacts, account, opportunity and past sales information.

With this information, we can help you build a business case to secure executive sponsorship and a budget. Can you boost productivity by 5%, 15% or 25%? Can a rep or service professional cover more accounts or dedicate more time to prospecting?

Often, the first phase of the mobile deployment is a proof of concept. The proof of concept kicks off the design process, proves the technology works and gives stakeholders the opportunity to better understand the app. This is especially helpful if you have an exec on staff with what I call ‘iPad fever’. “iPad Fever’ is when an eager executive is ready to dish out the dough for devices but needs a real business case. More than once we’ve heard “We bought a bunch of iPads, but need a real business app, not just Dropbox, Gmail and Angry Birds.”

Comparing your needs to the available and rapidly advancing technology leads to the right short and long term decisions. Below are mobile app choices from Salesforce.com are listed below with their common uses.

Are you afflicted with iPad fever? We can help. To start developing your mobile cloud roadmap, contact us at info@modelmetrics.com.

Here are some technology choices to consider as of the end of 2011:

Chatter

Deployment: Standard UI. Apple, Blackberry or Android App store distribution. Used online only. No cost. Common Customer Use: Private collaboration with co-workers, partners, selected customers. Read and post links, comments, pictures, etc. We have built custom Chatter screens to embed Chatter features into other apps.

Custom Apps via SDK or APIs

Deployment: Custom UI for any device. Can be online and offline. Leverage ModelFX to design user experience consistent with your marketing and brand messaging. Deploy via weblink, mobile device management tool, or iTunes App Store. Cost varies based on scope, amount of configuration and integration to legacy systems. Common Customer Use: The sky’s the limit for mobile apps. Often used with hybrid custom and custom objects populated from legacy systems to enable mobile access to legacy system data. The Digital Sales Aid app for the iPad helps (1) get started fast (3-4 weeks from kickoff to live users), (2) prove value to executives and (3) introduce mobile computing to IT. Great app to improve quality and volume of professional sales interactions. Other custom apps include ROI tools, mobile lead capture, product visualizations and product demos. A customer presented the story of the largest corporate iPad project at DreamForce 2011 in October.

Mobile Dashboards

Deployment: iTunes download for iPad to view all your dashboards while online. No cost. Common Customer Use: Handy tool to view dashboards from iPad. No re-configuration of your dashboards needed. Not as flashy as RoamBI but for no expense it’s great basic access to reports.

Viewer

Deployment: iTunes download for iPad to view your Salesforce.com objects while online. No cost. Common Customer Use: Unsupported simple online viewer to your full Salesforce.com database. No development or configuration needed to deploy. Recommend revising screens to fit new screen real estate.

Mobile and Mobile Lite

Deployment: Apple, Blackberry or Android app marketplace distribution. UI is based on your current SFDC pages. Typically need to build custom pages to appear well on mobile screens vs. PC browser. Designed for offline users. The iPhone app runs 2x on iPad, so you loose some screen real estate. No cost. Common Customer Use: Access to SFDC objects. Plan to configure special mobile pages in Salesforce.com to create basic mobile screens for your users (but don’t use VisualForce, as this does not work on these devices.)

Touch

Deployment: Coming soon. New HTML5 UI optimized for mobile devices.  Can be online and offline. Common Customer Use: Limited SFDC objects. Rumor is read only during first release in 2012. We expect to configure special pages in Salesforce.com to create appropriate mobile screens to fit the user’s screen size.

Are you afflicted with iPad fever? We can help. To start developing your mobile cloud roadmap, contact us at info@modelmetrics.com.

As the term gamification becomes more mainstream, it’s bringing in an influx of questions from organizations we work with, so we were thrilled to have TJ Keitt, a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research Inc., join us for a Webinar on Gaming in the Enterprise to answer those questions. TJ walked us through the evolution of gamification, what a gamified business application looks like and how companies can begin to gamify their businesses. If you missed the webinar, you can catch the replay here. Watch Video

This has many possible applications for file transfer, but for instance, if you're writing an HTML5 / PhoneGap app for iOS 5, and you want to download an attached file from the current version (v23.0) of the Chatter REST API, you need to send a GET request to:

https://test.salesforce.com/services/data/v23.0/chatter/files/[PUT THE FILE ID HERE]/content?versionNumber=1

But, you have to include a few headers for authentication…

setRequestHeader("Authorization", "OAuth " + oauthToken);

setRequestHeader('X-User-Agent', 'salesforce-toolkit-rest-javascript/v23.0');

…so it's not like you can just dump the GET request into the src of an <img> tag. So, what you can do now in iOS 5 is send off an XMLHttpRequest with a responseType of "arraybuffer", and use this data to write to a HTML5 Canvas object.

Here's the XMLHttpRequest:

And here's the body of the callback that handles Base64 encoding the arraybuffer and writing that data to a Canvas using the Data URI Scheme:

Cepheid, C.H. Briggs, Elkay Manufacturing and hundreds of Model Metrics customers harness the power of cloud computing on the latest tablets and smartphones

CHICAGO – November 1, 2011 – Model Metrics, the leader in cloud computing services for the enterprise, today announced significant momentum in its mobile practice with hundreds of customer projects focused on deploying cloud applications to tablets and smartphones. Large enterprise customers including Cepheid (Nasdaq: CPHD), C.H. Briggs and Elkay Manufacturing are benefiting from the innovation made possible through the combination of cloud and mobile computing technologies.

Extending Cloud Innovation to the Mobile Workforce
Model Metrics sits at the intersection of enterprise cloud innovation and mobility. With the growth of cloud computing and proliferation of mobile devices, businesses are discovering not only productivity gains from conducting transactions on the road, but also competitive advantage by mobilizing the cloud on the latest smartphones and tablets including the iPad and Android-based devices.

Today 80 percent of Model Metrics customers include smartphone and tablet adoption plans in their cloud deployment initiatives, and the company’s mobile projects have increased by nearly six times [or 600 percent] in 2011. Expanding its mobile practice, Model Metrics recently introduced new service offerings and support for additional development technologies and mobile device platforms. The company also announced the Digital Sales Aid, a custom cloud-based mobile application designed for field sales.

Comments on the News

• “The innovation of the cloud extends beyond company walls,” said Adam Caplan, CEO of Model Metrics. “The possibilities go beyond exposing business applications on mobile devices; the real innovation comes from rethinking how business success can be achieved by combining the power of the cloud and mobility.”
• “Model Metrics Digital Sales Aid gives our commercial architectural product group sales team a better way to showcase our interior specialty building materials using iPads,” said Alicia Guthrie, Marketing Integration Manage Luis Arias, Chief Marketing Officer, C.H. Briggs, one of the largest independently-owned distributors of specialty building materials. “With quick access to photo galleries and product-related documents we stand out from competitors and are driving efficiencies in our sales process.”
• “Model Metrics delivered our cloud applications and digital sales tools in an easy-to-use iPad application that syncs with our CRM,” said Nico Arnold, executive vice president of worldwide operations at Cepheid, a leading molecular diagnostics company. “Our customers can be extremely busy, and arming our sales professionals with a mobile tool that can quickly present our value proposition and track opportunities has had a positive impact on how we do business.”

Additional Resources

• Customer iPad deployment video: http://www.modelmetrics.com/marketing-viewpoint/how-zimmer-is-taking-their-cloud-data-mobile-on-the-ipad/
• More on Model Metrics mobile practice: http://www.modelmetrics.com/service-offerings/mobile/

About Model Metrics, Inc.
Model Metrics delivers solutions and services at the cutting edge of the cloud computing industry. Since its founding in 2003, Model Metrics has become one of the most diversified and respected partners of salesforce.com, Amazon Web Services, Adobe, and Google. Headquartered in Chicago with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New

York, Detroit, Minneapolis and Dallas, Model Metrics’ customer base spans all industries and includes enterprises such as Abbott, Allstate, Aon, Cars.com, CME Group, Honeywell, InfoUSA, MasterCard, Medtronic, and Orbitz.

With a focus on mobile and call center technology, business process and change management innovation, and custom development, Model Metrics has completed 1,500+ salesforce.com implementations for mid-sized and Fortune 1000 companies. Its world-class application development skills using Force.com, Adobe Flex and AIR, Amazon Web Services, Google and the Apple iPhone enable the creation of custom applications featuring multimedia-rich user experiences. To learn more, visit http://www.modelmetrics.com/ or follow us on Twitter at @modelmetricsinc.

###

Media Contact:
Kelly Indrieri, Public Relations, Model Metrics, 1.650.340.1983, kelly@kulesafaul.com

And Why Not? 

What more noble cause is there to be leading your company in? Salesforce.com (SFDC) has changed the way people and companies interact with software. The Salesforce.com platform is not just software hosted in the cloud, but has become a platform for companies and individuals to design their own software that integrates with their core CRM quickly and cost effectively. 

Need a place to track expenses against your prospects and clients?
Salesforce. 

Want to monitor your office technology assets?
Salesforce. 

Need to track order fulfillment?
Salesforce! 

Why Has This Platform Been So Successful? 

The lack of need to manage hardware and scalability coupled with the highly intuitive Admin GUI has empowered business people to meet their own needs without constant dependency on technical resources. Which me brings me to my next point.  

Salesforce is Not Difficult to Administer

Oh my gosh! He said it! Shhh! Don't tell anyone!

That's right, it's not difficult to setup and make changes to your SFDC environment thanks to SFDC's "declarative" configuration wizard. And while certified Admins are scarce right now, that won't be the case forever as it does not require programming experience to become one. Then if becoming an SFDC Admin is so easy and popular right now, how does one differentiate themselves in an ecosystem that is growing leaps and bounds and may be as saturated as .Net developers in a couple years?

Simple. Let's look back at why SFDC took off in the first place. It targeted business people with small departmental budgets and showed them they could deploy their own system without taking a programming class, or requiring a cap ex request. Why is this important? Because thebusiness knows what they want when they want it. When the business has to go through an exhaustive process to get it, it gets frustrated, loses interest or worse, ends up with a very expensive system that does not meet its needs nor grow with change. 

Make Yourself Valuable

I have an uncle who once told me "the people who know how will always work for the people who know why".

Throughout my career these words have echoed in my mind. If you were one of the first adopters of SFDC, it answered a need you already knew you had. Understanding how to configure the tool was the next step to meet that need. If you are new to SFDC but not technology, or you are just starting your career out of school, then you may be tempted to immerse yourself in the features of the platform, learning as much as you can and building your list of certifications. And while this is empowering, it is not valuable to employers…on its own. 

What is valuable is knowing their business. Know their competitors. Understand the market landscape. Talk with the business and spend time with them understanding their jobs, not just the mechanics, but also the objectives. What are they measured by? What market forces are they planning for? What is their short term/long term vision for the platform?

Then, apply the knowledge you have gained of the platform, and how other SFDC clients use the system, to guide the business in its use of SFDC as a tool to meet those needs. Understand their requirements and challenge things they ask for. Ask why they want that field, or that workflow, or that validation rule. Offer alternative solutions or thinking. Leverage the platform to facilitate improvements to their process. Leverage your business acumen to consult them on ways to improve their use of technology, not migrate flawed methods to a new technology.

A prominent client in the insurance industry recently posed a question. They asked "how can we share an Account record with someone, but not give them access to all the Contact records for that Account?" As a capable Admin, I might be tempted to start working on a solution to their request, but I stopped myself. Instead, I inquired why they would want to do this in the first place. It's counter intuitive to the goals and objectives of this platform they shared with me when we first started working together, which was to foster collaboration and cross-selling. Removing visibility to key contacts at an Account record would certainly not foster collaboration and cross-selling. Spending time and money on determining a way to meet their request, while potentially showing off my admin skills, would only jeopardize their strategy for the system's usage.

How and Why

While so many industries are waiting out the current economic environment, Cloud Computing is growing exponentially. Admins and Developers are in high demand. Salesforce consultants are needed even more. Because despite what is offered by the latest technology trends, we should be stewards of best practices and innovative thinking. We should not be afraid to ask questions. We should not be afraid to disrupt current thought or culture. While not all of our suggestions will be embraced, it is our responsibility to make sure they are heard. For these behaviors will make you distinguished in your career.

Because while it is good to know how, we should always be striving to know why.