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.”

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.

Large hospice and palliative care provider uses Model Metrics’ cloud deployment and integration expertise to gain business visibility, cost savings and ultimately provide high quality care to its community 

CHICAGO – May 2, 2011 – Model Metrics, a leader in cloud computing services for the enterprise, today announced the success of Tidewell Hospice in using cloud computing to provide high quality care to its patients and greater community. Florida’s premier hospice and palliative care provider, serving 1,300 patients a day, worked with Model Metrics to deploy Salesforce CRM and integrate it with its electronic medical records (EMR) system. Tidewell has greatly gained business visibility from the resulting system, improving the effectiveness of its business liaisons in building relationships with physicians, hospitals and the community, and giving the company a competitive advantage in the face of healthcare reform.

Bringing technological innovation to hospice and palliative care  
Tidewell’s innovative use of technology is paving the way for hospice and palliative care centers across the country. It wanted to extend the knowledge contained in its EMR system to track its referral relationships with physicians and hospitals, as well as fundraising, events and the grief and bereavement services it offers to families and its community. Tidewell saw the potential for CRM technology to support its business process, and leveraged donated and discounted licenses of Salesforce CRM from the Salesforce.com Foundation. It turned to Model Metrics for their expertise with Salesforce and the healthcare industry to customize the system to its unique needs.

• Model Metrics’ cloud expertise and proven methodology led to a quick deployment. Translating Tidewell’s requirements into visual prototypes happened nearly instantaneously, with the system being configured and customized in just 60 days. 
• The dashboards Model Metrics created give business liaisons and their directors new insight into their relationships with physicians and long term care facilities, including referral performance by physician and admission trending. Management is now able to leverage standardized and consolidated information to direct liaisons to work more efficiently on the best referral sources that create access to hospice benefit.
•  Model Metrics integrated the cloud-based CRM system to Tidewell’s EMR system using the Informatica Cloud. Patient information from the EMR system such as census data and their transitions is automatically updated in the Salesforce system on a real time basis. 
• As a result, Tidewell has been able to save costs. The new system did not require a significant increase in headcount or operation. In addition, the business visibility and control afforded by the new system gives Tidewell a competitive advantage by being able to quickly adapt and expand into new markets as a result of the changes taking place in healthcare reform and Medicare reimbursement.

Comments on the News

• “Model Metrics represents a new breed of services provider in the age of cloud computing. Their ability to provide nearly instantaneous proof of concepts of our vision, along with their healthcare and Salesforce domain expertise, was crucial in guiding us towards a solution that brings new innovation to how we run our business,” said Dave Lafferty, EVP and CIO, Tidewell Hospice. “Cloud computing not only affords us the opportunity to manage our organization without having to maintain a large IT department or infrastructure, but also gives us nimbleness to secure our future in the face of a changing healthcare system.”
• “Tidewell Hospice is exemplary for its use of cloud computing in a unique healthcare environment,” said Adam Caplan, CEO of Model Metrics. “Through its foresight into how a cloud-based CRM system could apply to how it manages relationships with its community, Tidewell is able to focus its resources on its core mission to provide the best possible care to its patients and their families.” 

About Tidewell Hospice
Serving more than 1,200 patients daily in Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte and DeSoto counties, Tidewell is one of the largest not-for-profit hospices in the U.S. Home-based palliative care is the basic premise of the program, involving the support of physicians, registered nurses, social service counselors, certified nursing assistants and volunteers, all following a prescribed plan of care. Tidewell's services are available to everyone, regardless of ability to pay. For more information, please visit: http://tidewell.org/

About Model Metrics
Model Metrics, enabler of the Model Enterprise, 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.

###

Contact:
Kelly Indrieri
Kulesa Faul for Model Metrics
(650) 340-1983
kelly@kulesafaul.com

Data Management and Data Quality is an issue in every CRM deployment. The reason for this is that CRM data is not transactional and doesn’t get balanced at month end like accounting data. CRM systems are full of soft data points that can be aggregated to provide information and knowledge, but only if the foundation is accurate and trusted.

A data management strategy has many dimensions including proactive cleansing of data to prevent issues, reactive management of data to fix issues that already exist, manual processes of data stewards, and automated processes that ease the manual burden. The approach to choose will depend on the specific needs of the organization, but will probably include all of these components.

The most difficult part of implementing a strategy is having some metrics on which to base your response. With all of the potential data issues that exist, it makes sense to focus on the highest value, lowest effort fixes as a means of maximizing your CRM investment. Each problem has its own cost-of-bad-data associated with it, whether it be time spent pursuing out-dated information, hard dollars spent on marketing to the wrong contacts, or wasted time managing information that is obsolete to the business. It is imperative to understand these costs and how they impact the business, but that requires some basis for action.

Recently, Model Metrics has come up with a tool for taking the guesswork out of data quality in a salesforce.com implementation. Data Profiler interrogates an org’s data and metadata to provide concrete, actionable data quality indicators down to the field level! This tool is proven to provide our customers a baseline health check of their data quality, and on-going metrics on how it is improving or degrading over time.

The value of the Data Profiler comes in two main categories. First, the tool provides all of the raw data at a summary and detailed level to make an actionable data management plan. Second, the service Model Metrics provides to interpret the Data Profiler output and help to devise a plan that is unique to your business.

Data Profiler provides summary information related to data “Completeness” and “Conformity.” Completeness is the relative completeness of the records that are being entered in the system. If Contact records, for example, are just being entered with Names and Email Addresses, but no Phone Numbers, Addresses, or other information, the level of Completeness is going to be low. Conformity, on the other hand, is a measure of how the metadata of picklist values matches up with the actual values in a field. If there is low conformity, it likely means that there is a process by which records are being loaded into the system (without using the standard UI) and compromising data integrity.

Completeness and Conformity are only two of the metrics that are visible at a more detailed object and field level views. Object by object, there are metrics related to the record count, fields, ownership percentages, record aging, and much more.

The above is just a glimpse into the comprehensive data health report that the Data Profiler provides. If run on a monthly, quarterly, or even annual basis, it can prove as a compass on your data management roadmap. It can also help to measure progress against the initial baseline of data health and allow for easy identifications of new issues that are sure to arise over time. No CRM implementation should be without a solid data management plan and Data Profiler is a great way to start.

Bill Kalma

Model Metrics – VP, Technical Services

In the world of CRM implementation and management, we tend to focus a lot of effort (and rightfully so) on process compliance, collaboration, and user adoption metrics. We do this because we know intuitively that impacting these behaviors of CRM users will ultimately lead to desired outcomes like increased customer loyalty, better customer service, lower costs, and increased revenues. These are the real metrics that success or failure will be measured against; the others are simply a means to an end.

What is often lost in the focus on change management is the end users’ ability to optimize their behavior with the real end goals in mind. Remember, a sense of ownership among end users is a key tenant to behavioral change.

Here are a couple of examples taken from the real world that help illustrate the point. First, I was teaching my 7 year-old daughter how to hit a softball last summer. I spent a great deal of time coaching her on her stance, her grip, the position of the bat, contact point, bat speed, rotation of hips, and on and on and on. She was a natural at hitting the ball, but she kept hitting the ball between first and second bases making her an easy out for the other team. So, I worked with her some more to speed up her swing, swing earlier, focus on the release point of the pitcher and follow-through. No change. Finally, in frustration, I said, “I want you to hit the ball to left field, not right field.” Would you believe that this is all it took? She never hit another ball to right field. It occurred to me that I had not effectively communicated the outcome that I wanted up until that point; I was so focused on the “process” that I forgot all about the goal!  By communicating the goal, it allowed her to apply the processes that she had learned to achieve the desired outcome.

The second example is more relevant to the CRM space. I worked with a company that sold food ingredients, and one of the major scope items in their CRM implementation was to increase collaboration among their sales people. They listed all of the various interactions that were mandatory to log in the system: call reports, quote requests, sample requests, meetings, phone calls, etc. It worked by most measures. There was rather high compliance to the process, user adoption was strong, and revenues were on the rise. One day I was having a side conversation with one of the real rainmakers in the organization and I asked him how he was so successful. He described an involved process that he followed to understand his clients’ products, the pricing of competitive ingredients, and the calculations that he did before we walked into a sales call that made him confident that he could win the business. I said, “Does anyone else do this?” He responded, “I don’t think so.” So when I asked him why he hadn’t used the capabilities of this new system to share his well-thought out approach, he said “that isn’t the type of thing that anybody said I should be sharing.” Now, you can make the case that this is implied behavior, but the point is that the process was, once again, over prescribed and the end goal of increasing top line revenue was not effectively communicated.

The great thing about implementing Salesforce.com as a CRM solution is that it provides the flexibility needed to allow your end users to participate and own the processes. Change in the business is easy for the technology to adapt to so the business doesn’t have to constantly adapt to the capabilities of the technology.

Steven Covey says “Begin with the end in mind,” but don’t forget to communicate the end to those that are intended to get you there.

I have been working within the Salesforce.com ecosystem for more than 7 years. In that time, I have seen the technology grow from a CRM application targeted mostly at the SMB market to a technology platform that has gained serious credibility with some of the largest companies in the world. In my role, I have the opportunity to meet with all types of businesses about their strategy (or lack thereof) to gain efficiency by bringing solutions to “the Cloud.” I have recently been faced with a number of companies debating the question of whether it is appropriate to grow their footprint within a single instance of salesforce.com or whether to leverage multiple instances. Still other companies that have already acquired multiple instances look to consolidate into a single instance. The questions that they pose about which approach is superior presume that there is a one-size-fits-all answer. Although there is no single solution, this post will outline a set of decision criteria that should be considered.

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.

The fastest growing social media site in 2009 was without question Twitter. The notoriety seemed to explode with the Iranian election and ensuing chaos, where reporters were unable to provide accurate, timely information. With the government lockdown, the citizenry got information out to the world through Twitter on their mobile phones. A new dawn of media became legit overnight.

Twitter users rely on the service for more than just timely information, it has become a platform for open conversations around any topic. Company’s products and services have become fair game for both interested prospects and disappointed customers. Instead of calling a sales or customer service line, people are turning to other users for answers on Twitter – leaving companies in the dark. Anyone who has tried to navigate a customer service "dial 1 for X" menu understands why so many are reticent to use them.

Salesforce.com recognized this growing trend and created a truly elegant application that’s easy to use. Salesforce for Twitter allows companies to participate in conversations actively, and track those conversations within salesforce.com, providing a more complete view of their prospects and customers. This added information gives companies an opportunity to better serve these people, and in the channel of their constituent’s choosing.

With this application, if someone expresses interest in your company, you can respond to them on Twitter through salesforce.com. Likewise for customer service situations. I don’t believe there’s such a thing as a 360˚ view of a customer, but having more information on hand certainly allows companies to provide more relevant service.

Check the video demo out below:

I recently had a conversation with the VP of Sales at a large manufacturing company.  For the purposes of this discussion, I will call him John.  John and his sales organization have never had a centralized, collaborative CRM system before and they are about to begin a salesforce.com implementation.  Among the goals of the project is the need to consolidate the many point solutions they have used for managing their customers over the company’s 40-year history.   They recognize the need to establish consistent processes for the sales team and want to leverage workflow capabilities to improve communication.  After a series of fruitful meetings, John mentioned that he is working with IT to purchase mobile devices for the sales team because he has received a lot of demand from the team, and wants them to be as productive as possible with the new CRM tool.

The scenario described above is very common.  The benefits of leveraging mobile technology for a sales rep include increased productivity, more timely information, access to real-time data at the point of contact, and access to information without the overhead of lugging a clunky laptop.  All of this is theoretically sound, but don’t let your mobile strategy define itself without thoughtful consideration of questions that are sure to be raised as part of your implementation.  Addressing these issues proactively will allow you to separate fact from fiction and apply a mobile strategy that fits your organization and your users so that you can realize success.

Who are your users?
The diversity of the user base is a great place to start in defining a strategy.  It is common to have a mix of technologist and technophobes within the same sales team.  The technologists tend to demand all of the latest and greatest tools and technology as a means of making themselves more productive.  Without it, they claim that their efforts are diluted and they are bogged down with administrative overhead required to access information or log calls.  On the other hand, the technophobes will resist any sort of change, especially when it comes to technology, by claiming that the time spent to manage all of these new tools and gadgets will negatively impact the time they spend in front of the customer.

When it comes to mobile, you are wise to know your audience.  If your team is not accustom to using mobile technology for email and basic calendar management, you may want to take steps to introduce the device before you make it a critical component of your CRM strategy.  Users who have leveraged these tools in their personal lives or at a past job will be much more comfortable in adopting this technology as part of their work.

When it comes to people, it is also important to note that strong demand for a Blackberry, iPhone or other device from users who do not currently have these products, may be a red flag.  The grass may seem greener on the other side of the fence for those who have bought into the idea that these tools will make them more effective.  I recently worked with a sales group that insisted that they needed offline capabilities because they weren’t always “connected.”  Once we provided the offline functionality, they demanded mobile devices because they found it cumbersome to “lug around heavy laptops.”  Once they received the mobile device, they complained about the small screen and the difficulty of entering data with a small keyboard.  This is exactly the type of situation we want to control by proactively managing a mobile strategy.

How mature are your processes?
As the saying goes “Process before technology.”  Change management is a key component to any CRM implementation.  The introduction to new systems represents a disruption, and optimizing or changing processes will require that users have a clear understanding of their role and expectations.  The process of change must be managed deliberately to ensure that users are not left behind as they adjust to their new way of working. 

If process change is part of your implementation, it is common (and a good idea) for the mobile implementation is postponed to a second phase.  It is important that users are familiar with the goals they are trying to achieve before they take on learning how to manage multiple entry points. 

What do users need to do to get their job done?
It may seem obvious, but it is critical to give objective consideration to what your users need to accomplish using their mobile device.  A clear definition of use cases serves as the basis for streamlining key processes and maximizing efficiency for end users.  When defining mobile needs, many companies make the mistake of setting an expectation that anything that can be done with a laptop should be possible with a handheld, and this is simply not realistic.  Use case definition should help to separate fact from fiction when it comes to defining what functionality needs to be available.

The reality of a handheld is that the physical size, speed and ergonomics are significant challenges for some users.  These factors make processes that require consuming or reading data better candidates than those that require entering data.  This is especially true of complex data entry processes where there are many fields or pages to navigate.  This is not to say that call logging or data entry are not candidates, but scrutiny should be applied to processes that required extensive typing or scrolling as users will become easily frustrated. 

A failure to keep it simple when it comes to mobile will also likely equate to poor or incomplete data.  Typing on a small keyboard can be time consuming.  Moreover, navigating multiple screens can make a simple task daunting.  The resulting behavior for end-users is to cut corners, enter the minimum amount of data required, or neglect to enter anything at all.

What device suits your needs?
Mobile devices are not all created equal and there is no one answer to which is the best.  The strategy established must be consistent with the goals of the organization and the tools must be right for the job.  A thorough analysis of the right device should include alignment with the mobile use cases, feature functionality of the device, device-specific feature support offered by your CRM software, customization capabilities, and the service network.

How will security be maintained?
Finally, the need to secure your data and protect the intellectual property of the organization must be considered.  Users may demand access to ALL data through their mobile device, but the strategy must consider the risk of a lost or stolen device.  For ease of use, most systems do not require that users enter a password each time they are accessing their CRM application on the mobile device.  For this reason, it is important that data is evaluated by sensitivity so judgments can be made about what will and what will not be accessible.  Furthermore, a password policy on the device itself should be mandatory if there is risk of a breach.

This is not an exhaustive list of mobile strategy components, but does represent some key points of consideration.  The cost of implementing a mobile solution is not insignificant, so these basic questions will help to proactively plan rather than having to backtrack and repeat.
 

What do Siebel, RightNow, Oracle CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, and Salesforce.com all have in common? The answer is that none of them will change your business and further your CRM effectiveness all by themselves. If you are looking at any of these systems as being the savior for your organization, you are going to find yourself disappointed unless you augment your system with some conviction.

The benefits of CRM are well documented. Business of all sizes have, even in a down economy, made the investment in technologies and processes that will allow them to be more efficient, more effective, and more ROI focused in their sales and marketing activity. The recent economic slide has practically required that business leaders get serious about nurturing their existing customers and establish a sound plan for attracting new ones. However, the implementation of a CRM system does not, by itself, make for a CRM strategy.

The business problems (or opportunities) that drive the implementation of CRM foster deep-rooted convictions of the organization. These convictions represent the foundation from which the CRM strategy needs to be derived. Examples of common convictions include:

• customer retention
• margin retention
• market penetration
• growth rate
• reduction in sales cycle time
• response rate on new leads
• improved service levels
• competitive strategy
• market intelligence
• management of key sales activities
• and on and on and on….

The decisions that you make as part of your CRM solution implementation need to be targeted at accomplishing your strategy as you have defined it. User adoption and overcoming technological hurdles are important, but must not overshadow the core business needs that drive you to this investment.

When establishing your roadmap, make sure to communicate, design, train, reinforce, and manage to your convictions. Make no mistake that your success or failure is going to be more a function of your strategy in accomplishing these goals than it will by features and functionality of your software purchase.

Calendar2GO Lite for Salesforce CRM on the iPhone

We just found out Calendar2GO Lite was approved by Apple.  This is a free little application that allows you to easily see your Salesforce calendar on your iPhone and shows all the events for the current week, broken out into days and is very similar to the home screen in Salesforce.  You can drill into an event to see the detail, whether it is recurring, it’s description, etc…

There is a full version that should be approved soon that adds several nice features such as a daily view, weekly view, linkable phone numbers, email addresses. 

Check it out and let us know what you think.  I’m curious how many other organizations use Salesforce as their company calendar.  Also, any interest in seeing this on a Blackberry?