I've been working as much as I can on getting the Project object set up in Salesforce. It's the first step to getting the project management functionality of Dexter into Salesforce and I'm excited for it to be ready.
I don't mean to sound like I'm making excuses but I haven't been able to do as much work on it as I'd like because there are so many other things that I also need to do. A week or so ago I was lying in bed around 3 in the morning, unable to sleep, thinking and worrying about all the stuff I had to do. Finally I decided to just get up and clean up my Inbox. I thought at least I'd feel like things were more under control if I did that. I decided to delete or "folder-ize" anything that wasn't a task I needed to do, and the tasks I'd mark with a little green follow-up flag. I went through everything in my Inbox ... and ended up with a huge list of emails with green flags on them! Click scroll, scroll, scroll and everything has a green flag. Not helpful. I'm sure you all can relate.
Anyway, I will keep plugging away on the Salesforce Project. I'm hoping to have a pilot test team within a week or so. I'm feeling a little discouraged about finding an already-made application for managing projects in Salesforce. I'd hoped there might be something "out of the box" rather than my designing everything from scratch. So far what I've seen doesn't seem like a good fit. But I have an appointment next week to see a demo of one that our Salesforce rep recommends. For now I decided not to spend as much time on that search because I want to spend my time getting the Project ready. Then I'll get back into a more dedicated search.
Oh, I did have a kind of exciting development this week. Sandy talked to me about wanting to figure out a better way to manage bids / RFPs. She at first was thinking of ways we could assign teams, tasks, deadlines, etc. in Notes. We met to talk over how we could use Salesforce to accomplish this and I'm eager to work on that (again, waiting until I get the Project working). The exciting development was that when I mentioned this whole RFP management thing to our Salesforce rep he said, in so many words, "We have an app for that." Salesforce themselves has a process they use for managing RFPs and they are offering it to their customers. He sent me a link. Haven't checked it out yet but it sounds very promising.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Friday, July 2, 2010
Oh. My. Goodness.
Oh, my goodness (my version of OMG)!! Salesforce is even cooler than I thought! I finished a 4 day class on Salesorce Thursday and my brain runneth over. There are so many possibilities with Salesforce that I can hardly keep track!
Automation is one thing I think we are really going to like. I can create "workflows" that trigger when you save records. They can update fields, send tasks (to do list items) to yourself or others, or emails. It will be fun to figure out what will help you the most. They can be timed, too, so for example something can happen a week after you save a record, and then a week after that, and so on.
The final day we talked about leads and marketing. Very exciting. I already emailed Mica about meeting with our current email marketing partner, ExactTarget, which has an integration with Salesforce. Even the instructor said that to get the full benefit of marketing with Salesforce, it's best to work with a partner. Last week Mica was asking for updates to some vertical market lists. In the future, we can send the email blasts out, then see the results - even to the point of seeing when and how many times the recipient clicked to open the email.
One cool thing I learned is I can include "web tabs." Salesforce uses tabs, such as "Accounts," "Contacts," and "Opportunities." I can create tabs that are a portal to anything on the web. I already experimented with creating a "Khameleon" tab that brings up the login to Khameleon. We could have one for Kiosk, for Google, whatever. As we start to live in Salesforce more and more, this will make a lot of sense.
I've still got to work on the Lotus Notes connection first but I am so excited about the possiblities for us!
Automation is one thing I think we are really going to like. I can create "workflows" that trigger when you save records. They can update fields, send tasks (to do list items) to yourself or others, or emails. It will be fun to figure out what will help you the most. They can be timed, too, so for example something can happen a week after you save a record, and then a week after that, and so on.
The final day we talked about leads and marketing. Very exciting. I already emailed Mica about meeting with our current email marketing partner, ExactTarget, which has an integration with Salesforce. Even the instructor said that to get the full benefit of marketing with Salesforce, it's best to work with a partner. Last week Mica was asking for updates to some vertical market lists. In the future, we can send the email blasts out, then see the results - even to the point of seeing when and how many times the recipient clicked to open the email.
One cool thing I learned is I can include "web tabs." Salesforce uses tabs, such as "Accounts," "Contacts," and "Opportunities." I can create tabs that are a portal to anything on the web. I already experimented with creating a "Khameleon" tab that brings up the login to Khameleon. We could have one for Kiosk, for Google, whatever. As we start to live in Salesforce more and more, this will make a lot of sense.
I've still got to work on the Lotus Notes connection first but I am so excited about the possiblities for us!
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