Managing Projects and RFPs in Salesforce - Promising Stuff

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.

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!

So, now what?

Now that Salesforce is here, now what?

Well, my first priority is to get the Project object set up and sending itself down to Dexter so we can keep from having to duplicate data entry.

Beyond that, though, what do we want to accomplish with Salesforce? I've started reading a book called Salesforce.com: Secrets of Success by David Taber. Yes, believe it or not, there are nerdy people who go to that geeky area of the bookstore and not only buy but actually read those incredibly boring looking computer books! :) In one section, the author lists mandates for Salesforce.com (SFDC). Here are some of them:

• To be the only source of information about customer relationships. If other systems contain customer data, they need to be integrated with Salesforce.com over time so that the company achieves a 360 degree view of the customer.
• Not to be used as a spying machine or a micromanagement tool.
• To be used as the command center or virtual war room for winning accounts and keeping customers happy. The data entered into the system needs to be good enough to drive real decisions and allocate resources.
• To eliminate excessive emails, data reentry, and forgotten action items.
• To use Salesforce.com data for management meetings, as the system-of-record data.
• To enable the company to move toward an MBE -- Manage By Exception -- policy, meaning routine decisions should be handled "in process." SFDC's alerts, thresholds, workflows and reports should be used to handle normal situations and to automatically flag or escalate the unusual cases.

Sounds good, doesn't it? We've got some work ahead of us!!

Wanna chat? In Salesforce!

Today I went to a meeting of the Silicon Valley Salesforce.com user's group. The topic of the day was "Chatter," a new feature in Salesforce. It's still in beta but we can start using it any time we're ready.

Chatter gives us the ability to do a sort of combination Facebook/Instant Messaging within Salesforce. At first thought, it's hard to imagine what the benefit would be of that kind of capability. In fact, several of the speakers at the meeting today confessed they were skeptics but now they were all touting the benefits.

As with Facebook, you can post a status - something saying what you're doing - and those who are following you will see that status. But, even more interestingly, you can follow objects within Salesforce and have live discussions about those.

For example, you could go to an Opportunity and post a question about that opportunity - maybe "I'm with the customer and they're asking if we could show them an example of xxxx type of furniture." Everyone following either the person asking or that opportunity would see that question in a chat window, and could immediately chime in with suggestions or answers.

Soon we'll be doing projects in Salesforce. Think of the possibilities there. What if the leads for each project were able to instantly post updates on how the project was going? OK, they'd need a internet-connected device for doing that, but still, wouldn't it be cool?

You can post links and files and discuss those. We can also bring in feeds from external sources. For example, we have a Pivot Facebook page, we could bring in the updates from there. We could bring the updates from Herman Miller's page and other of our vendors.

Chatter in Salesforce is an exciting development! It'll be fun to explore it.

What's the best way -- or ways -- to organize a project?

After we roll out Salesforce to replace our Contact and Sites databases in Lotus Notes, the next thing I'll be working on is the Project "form," called an "object" in Salesforce. I'm creating the Project object there to replace the Project form in Dexter so that when you create a Project in Salesforce you can use the account, location and contact information from Salesforce in the same way as you use the company, site and contact information from Contact and Sites in Lotus Notes.

So that's the beginning. But ultimately I'd like to move us into the cloud for all that we do in Lotus Notes. That does not necessarily mean, though, that it makes sense to just re-do everything in Salesforce that we currently have in Dexter. As glad as it makes me that the databases in Notes which I created have helped Pivot employees to accomplish their work for all these years, I'd be the last person to say they are perfect. Well, nothing is perfect. As much as I wish it could be, Salesforce is not perfect, either.

But here's our chance to stop and look at how we work, and see if it makes sense to try a different way. A big piece of what we do in Dexter right now is project management. We create a project, and then a bunch of forms, requests, information and communications about that project. We use other programs for the project besides Dexter: Cap, Autocad, our network file storage, Khameleon, our time tracking spreadsheets or forms, email, faxing, scanning,...more? Lots of items are created that make up the project. Lots of steps make up the project process. What's the best way to organize those items and steps?

I am looking into different possibilities of tools we could use for our project management -- and then I'll be asking our managers and employees to look at them, too, so we can decide what makes sense for Pivot. There are lots of possibilities. Some examples:
- We could create a project in Salesforce, attach all the related files there in that project rather than on the F: or Q: drive or wherever we're storing them now. We could also do all our emailing right from that project. We'd need to figure out how to request others to do things such as create quotes/proposals, work requests, labor requests, etc. Use objects similar to our Notes forms? Or templates similar to Word & Excel templates? Automatic emails?
- We could create a website or a web page for each project and store all the files there.
- We could purchase an application that manages projects using a Gantt chart kind of flow, with milestones determining the flow of one process after another.
- We could do some kind of automation based on a project workflow.
Those are just a few possibilities.

It's fun to try to think about what we do with a clean slate, not assuming we should do things the way we do now, even if they are working. Have ideas? Pass them along!

Is that Mom or my IT Manager??

I read this article, "Mom's Voice Packs Soothing Power," and it made me think of  how someone at work once told me I had a calming influence -- in my role as an IT Manager. I do notice that everyone is very relieved to see me when they're having IT issues. I remember once driving to our San Francisco office because they were down. When I walked in the door, there was a cry of, "Mavis!" I thought to myself, "Little do they know I have no idea what's wrong or if I'll be able to fix it." But it's nice to create that feeling in others anyway.

I'm sure Paul has experienced this, too, and people in other professions have the same experience. When you're stranded on the side of the road and the mechanic shows up. When the doctor or nurse walks in the door. It's a beautiful thing.

But wait, there's more!

There's a lot more in Salesforce than the pieces that replace Contact (Accounts, Contacts & Opportunities). I haven't learned how to use all of the features yet and I'm not even sure I know what all the features are yet!

This morning there was an article in the San Jose Mercury News about IM (Instant Messaging) coming into the enterprise. They featured a lot of information on Microsoft's Sharepoint which will include IM in their next version. Salesforce already has that. They call it "Chatter" and it was released this Spring. I saw a demo of it at Dreamforce, Salesforce's annual users' conference. Besides being able to "chat" with people, as with all IM programs, in Salesforce's Chatter, you can chat with objects. So, for example, you could mark an Opportunity to let you know any time someone updates it.

I'm eager to learn more about Chatter and see how it can help us here at Pivot. As we move more of what we do in Dexter into Salesforce, I see even more opportunity for Chatter to be a very useful tool.

Another new feature released this Spring is "Answers". I've just started looking into this but it looks like a way to post questions to a community, then as people answer the questions and answers are kept on the web. I'm thinking this may be a good alternative to those emails the salespeople often send out asking, "Does anyone know where I can find....?" I think being able to keep all those questions and answers, and search in them, will be very useful. I could see the designers, and others, building up an excellent knowledge base with "Answers", too.

There's a Quotes module, too, that I plan to check out. Also a Self Service Portal that I believe we can use both for our customers to be able to see and submit certain information and for our vendors. There's a big module called Content for uploading and sharing files which will be very useful for marketing but also potentially for sharing files among ourselves, perhaps creating a vendor library online. There's an object called Cases which looks like it might be something we could use for our service and warranty work. And who knows what else there is in this cloud?!

I'll be reading, watching videos and learning about more of Salesforce's features as time goes on, and I'll be encouraging you to, too. In June I'm scheduled to attend a 4-day certification training on Salesforce and I'm hoping I'll come back for that bursting with new ideas and things to try.