Since its establishment in 2001, AIDS Run and Walk Chicago has raised more than $3 million net to fight HIV/AIDS. Model Metrics is proud to continue the fight against HIV/AIDS and support more than 150 Chicagoland HIV/AIDS service organizations whose work is so invaluable to this cause.

If you would like to pledge or participate in this year’s event, please visit their website.

Google’s grand vision of running multiple devices across multiple carriers is coming to fruition, as the Android devices have eclipsed Apple’s IOS in sales.

Mobile devices have been one of the industries that in spite of significant economic headwinds have continued explosive growth, especially smart phones. This is a big part of why Model Metrics develops so much for the mobile market – field workers in every industry are demanding remote access, and we’re more than happy to help.

Model Metrics, the leader in cloud computing services for the enterprise, today introduced Model Metrics Cloud Analytics providing an entirely new way for businesses to leverage their data in the clouds. The new service offering extends the reporting and analytics capabilities in Salesforce and integrates the data in real time to other relevant data sources to enable businesses to access and act on information in powerful new ways.

<link to full press release>

Most CRM professionals agree that a single instance of a CRM system lowers total cost of ownership and creates efficiency in maintenance, support, and re-use. However, proponents of a multiple-instance strategy would argue that localization provides for more flexibility and more closely addresses the needs of end users. For them, the tradeoff to consolidating to a single instance is that the system becomes less useful and introduces more bureaucracy. Hmmm. Where do we go from here?

Reporting
Let’s begin with data visibility and reporting needs. If, at any point, it is going to be a requirement for senior management or someone else in the organization to do global reporting, a single instance should be considered. This type of reporting makes it easy to compare performance in various regions and evaluate variability in system adoption. By its nature, it also makes it easier to do analysis because data structures are common and the analyst can compare apples to apples. It’s true that there are alternatives to global reporting needs like an enterprise data warehouse where data is aggregated for holistic viewing, but the presents an additional challenge of marrying disparate data structures. The best approach is to establish a single source of truth that can be referenced without transformation or lag time.

Collaboration
Related to data reporting is data sharing. CRM, at its core, is about tracking and sharing information about customers. Silos between functional groups like sales, marketing, customer service and account management fundamentally kill the effectiveness of a sound CRM strategy. For this reason, if an organization has the need to share data between geographies, functional groups or process areas, then a single instance is appropriate. Collaboration is key, and if the organization is dealing with a common set of customers, they should consider leveraging a common system for sharing information. In cases where geographically segmented customer bases or business lines don’t share customers, they can autonomously operate in separate instances.
It should be noted that a Salesforce-to-Salesforce integration is an alternative to sharing information across orgs, but not a replacement for a full view of customer data.

Integration
If an organization is leveraging integration from back office or third party data sources, it will be a major factor in determining whether to go with a single or multiple instances. Integrations cost money. These costs can be attributed to the time spent developing, testing, deploying, and managing them, or in the case of third party data sources, there is a cost of obtaining connections to a metered service. In either case, it seems desirable to consolidate integrations wherever possible. Rationalization of these processes also tends to establish consistency in the output of the integrations (for example, if data as being transformed one way from the back office system to Salesforce.com instance A and transformed a different way to Salesfore.com instance B, a mismatch is created).
However, if an organization is obtaining common data elements from multiple data sources, it may be a good case to have multiple instances of Salesforce.com. To illustrate, consider a company with two divisions that operate in two different geographies. In one geography, SAP is used to manage customer financial data and in the other, a homegrown ERP system is used to manage the same information. With the back office systems separated, it is likely that there are going to be conflicts related to key customer information if we try and integrate both into the CRM tool. In this scenario, it would seem that the two geographies operate fairly independent from one another, so multiple instances of Salesforce.com might be the optimal way to go.

Process Rationalization
As mentioned earlier, proponents of the single system site operational efficiency and total cost of ownership as benefits. To dig a bit deeper into this, we need to do some detailed analysis of the process overlap between various business segments. Is there commonality? Is there synergy? Or are there direct conflicts?
With traditional CRM tools, process diversion would be a good reason to propose multiple instances, but with Salesforce.com a significant amount of localization can be accounted for within a single instance. Process reconciliation is potentially a complex and involved process because it has as much to do with managing change and changing old habits as it does evaluating real business drivers.
It is important to note the strong executive sponsorship is key to effectively prioritizing localized process support against other business drivers like globalization or cost management. Most regional business leaders are incented on the performance of their own business so conforming to a standard process (or system) for the common good is not a big motivator.

Governance
In any case where multiple business groups are operating within a single instance of CRM tool, a thorough governance strategy needs to be in place. Governance is the set of policies, roles, responsibilities, and processes that you establish in an enterprise to guide, direct, and control how the organization uses technologies to accomplish business goals. A governance steering committee should have representation from senior management, IT, Salesforce.com Administrators, and participating business units. The plan should include detailed processes for prioritizing and vetting issues that arise so that conflicts are resolved.
With a multiple-instance strategy, governance is still important, but not as critical as when competing interests are prevalent.

Administration
Administration is one of the areas often cited as being an opportunity to create efficiencies for companies considering going from multiple instances to a single instance. In most cases, each instance has one or more people responsible for administration and maintenance. When consolidation occurs, the job becomes larger because the resulting system can be more complex, but the redundancy is often eliminated. The breakeven point for what is optimal varies on a case-by-case basis.

Globalization Settings
Salesforce.com provides standard support of globalization features like multi-language and multi-currency. Consolidating multiple instances into a single instance will have an impact on users if doing so requires either of these features to be enabled. Who will be responsible for maintaining the Translation Workbench? How will currency conversions be managed?

Governor Limits
Some Salesforce.com governor limits are set based on the number licensed users in an instance (e.g. API calls per day). This can be a consideration in cases where multiple instances that are heavily customized or are running integrations that require API calls.

Edition Constraints
For organizations looking to consolidate orgs, the Salesforce.com Edition of each candidate org should be evaluated. In every case I have seen, it is advisable to consolidate into the highest-level edition of the candidate orgs. For example, if looking to consolidate a Professional Edition and an Enterprise Edition org, it should be done using the Enterprise level instance at a minimum. It may be required to move to Unlimited Edition if the joining of the two orgs would exceed certain limits imposed by Enterprise Edition.

In evaluating your organizations optimal endpoint, these are some of the factors that should be evaluated and prioritized. The analysis needs to be thorough and balanced to ensure that the opportunity cost for each decision is well understood and documented.

On June 22 out in San Jose, salesforce.com is hosting a huge event called Cloudforce (which we’re sponsoring), where they will be unveiling the next nail in old-technology’s coffin: Salesforce Chatter. So why mention the investment worry over the old world of technology players?

Simple: the old guys just don’t get it.

There is an enormous revolution going on, and pretty much every person is taking part in it. Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. The social connections between individuals have exploded, and mobile access to these systems lets us plug in to those connections anywhere.

With Chatter, salesforce.com is now making the enterprise social. Everything you know and love about social media is now coming to your company, but only if you’re a salesforce.com user. Nobody else is doing this, and investors are paying attention and putting their money where their mouth is.

Salesforce has been on an absolute rocket ride, and that is showing no signs of changing any time soon. Maybe it’s about time you join the social revolution too.

<Link to pdf version>

There is valid debate occurring around the pro’s and con’s of using Flash to serve a banner ad, or a video, or if the <canvas> tag or <audio> tag are a viable alternative.  However this is a minor point when you are considering which platform to use to create a business application or a consumer facing RIA (Rich Internet Application).

First, let’s look at where the HTML 5 spec currently sits.  It is a much-needed refresh of the current HTML 4 spec and has some great features such as support for video, audio and offline data storage using SQL Lite.  The W3C HTML 5 specification is currently in “Working Draft” status and is not expected to be finalized until 2012 or later.  The other current issue with HTML 5 is that is only supported in varying degrees by the major Internet browsers and some of its features may never be supported by some browsers (such as an offline data store).

We do a lot of work for Fortune 500 clients and have used both Adobe Flex and HTML 5 on projects.  Currently HTML 5 is an option if you have full control over which browsers will be used to run an application (which is frequently not the case, even in the Enterprise).  In contrast, Adobe Flex is a great platform to build business applications and can run in virtually all desktop browsers. 

Flex is a rich platform that has complex UI elements (data grids, tabbed navigators, menus, etc.) built directly into the Flex SDK (now called Flashbuilder).  It allows you to take your application and easily run them in Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) on the desktop (outside of the browser) or on a mobile device*. 

As a company we are generally technology agnostic and try to bring the best options to the table to meet client needs.  Although our focus is around deploying Cloud based solutions we have found that user interface or taking the Cloud offline is important to our clients.  The question of Flex vs. HTML 5 for a business application is an easy one to answer today and will likely be so for the next couple of years.  The promise of HTML 5 is great, but until the specification is finalized and it is widely supported by all major browsers it can only be used in limited ways and it doesn’t have the developer productivity tools that are inherent in Flex. 

Here is a real world example.  One of our early iPhone products on the iTunes AppStore was Search2GO, a simple search tool for Salesforce.com.  This was built in Objective C and it took approximately 8 weeks to develop.  Yesterday I watched two developers create over half of this same functionality using Flex/AIR and had it running on an Android phone in a day.  Granted there are still things that could be added, but this was a great illustration of why Flex/AIR is a great toolset.

So while the debate rages on about HTML 5 vs Flash in the consumer market I’d recommend taking a hard look at Flex for business applications.

* Except the iPhone or iPad of course…

Twitter Management

Hootsuite: the definitive package for managing your corporate and personall Twitter accounts. Users can add, update, and monitor multiple Twitter accounts (and now, even Facebook) from a single browser window. Hootsuite makes managing a corporate Twitter account easy by granting access to as many (or as few) people as you’d like.

Since Twitter is limited to 140 character updates, you have to make the most of each character. Hootsuite features a built-in URL shortener which also tracks clickthroughs for you, no matter where you post them.

Don’t have time to update Twitter all day? No problem. Hootsuite lets you schedule tweets in advance, so you can continually update your feed with things your followers find useful.

In addition to their website, Hootsuite also has a desktop application and a new iPhone app.

Social Media News

Mashable: without a doubt the best source for Social Media news on the Internet. It’s updated constantly by a number of bloggers and is a treasure chest of information.

Mashable covers Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, mobile, and anything else social/techy that you can imagine. It’s easy to navigate and the articles are all written with the modern attention span in mind. Get in, get your info, get out. Awesome.

Digg: the original (and still the best) social networking and news site. The concept is simple – users submit stories, and other users either digg a story up or bury it. The cream rises to the top. Hate mainstream media? Here’s your reprieve.

When I’m looking for content that tends to be cutting edge or obscure, I usually check with Digg. Of course there’s trolls and fanboys, but those are easy enough to avoid.

 Podcasts

Marketing Over Coffee. Yeah, their logo sucks – who cares?? This weekly podcast by Christopher Penn and John Wall is witty, humorous, and full of can’t-miss content for marketers.

Each week they bring you best practices for both B2B and B2C marketers, covering covering everything from SEO/SEM to social media monitoring and marketing. If you’re looking for a place to learn how to make nice mailers this is not it.

These guys are all about metrics and measurements. If you can’t measure the lift, they’re not interested and neither should you be.

 
This Week in Tech. Leo Laporte is an old-school broadcaster with plenty of new-school ideas. He was one of the very first to eschew traditional terrestrial radio and move into podcasting. I believe this show began in 2006, so you know he’s way ahead of the curve.

Each weekly installment is about an hour long and brings me up to speed on the week’s updates in technology, both consumer and enterprise. If you are a marketer you absolutely, positively cannot let technology pass you by. This is a good arrow to have in the quiver.

 These are just a few of my favorites. Got some of your own that you’d like to add? I’d love to see them in the comments.

Ironically, this showcase took place a few days after the first Apple iPad’s came out.  More ironically, the solution we intended to demo was an integration between LiveCycle and our Pharma2GO solution, which takes salesforce.com offline for Life Sciences companies using Adobe Flex and AIR.  Naturally, we decided we’d take advantage of the timing and show Pharma2GO and the LiveCycle integration on the new iPad.  

In just a few days we able to export our offline app in a build specifically for the iPad using the new CS5 suite.  Simple to do and looks fantastic:

If you’re reading this, I’m sure you’re aware this approach is now a questionable practice according to Apple.  Of course you can build in Objective C.  That is doable and we’ve done it countless times for the iPhone, but that is not a build once deploy anywhere methodology.   We were looking forward to that.

Obviously, look out for an Android version of Pharma2GO shortly.

Full release below that we posted this morning:

• A pharmaceutical sales representative runs Pharma2GO on his laptop or mobile computing device to access and modify records in Salesforce CRM online or offline. 2GO uses Adobe Flex and AIR technology to extend offline access to Salesforce CRM on various mobile devices.
• The sales rep meets with a physician, drops off drug samples, electronically captures the doctor’s signature and enters the results of the sales call in Pharma2GO, which updates his Salesforce CRM record.
• With the signature capture, an Adobe LiveCycle workflow process is invoked. It automatically sends an acknowledgement email to the doctor, who clicks to confirm that he met with the sales rep and received the pharmaceutical samples.
• The acknowledgement is captured in the sales representative’s Salesforce CRM.