Organizing your Salesforce Orgs

Does this sound familiar? You’re moving from an independent instance (or org) of Salesforce CRM to the consolidated corporate org.  While there will definitely be business benefits in terms of visibility, reporting, customer/prospect communication, support, responsiveness, enablement and general leverage of corporate resources, it still represents a potential loss of autonomy. But it’s the right strategy for your business. Or is it?

Whether you ended up with multiple Salesforce orgs through mergers and acquisitions, separate brands or divisions, or through organic growth: at some point your organization is going to need to determine what is the right approach to multi-org consolidation. Here is an overview of 3 approaches to consider.

Salesforce.com Multi-Org Consolidation from Darren Cunningham

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Congratulations to the 2012 Best of AppExchange Award Winners

Every year Salesforce announces the top partners by AppExchange category based on the quantity and quality of reviews. Today they blogged the winners. Congratulations to these partners who continue to demonstrate such a high degree of cloud customer adoption and success.

Sales: There are multiple winners in this category based on functional area.

Overall winner: Adobe EchoSign (They have now won 7 years in a row!  I actually thought the award had only been around for 5 years. Hmmm…. They have an astounding 2040 reviews for their electronic signature application.)

• Reports and Dashboards: Hoopla Scoreboard by Hoopla Software (we have the big screens running in our office!)
• Methodologies: Opportunity Management Optimizer by Sales Optimizer
• Geolocation: Geopointe by Arrowpointe
• Quotes and Orders: Configurator by Big Machines
• Compensation: Xactly Incent by Xactly

Customer Service: Clicktools Surveys and Scripts by Clicktools

IT and Administration: Informatica Cloud Integration for Salesforce (Informatica has been recognized 5 years in a row as the top cloud integration solution!)

Marketing: Marketo (Big win over Eloqua in a very competitive category – congrats!)

Human Resources (HR): Jobscience for Professional Recruiting by Jobscience

ERP: Ascent by Precisio Business Solutions (I’m interested in feedback on this app. Thought you’d see Financial Force here.)

Collaboration: SpringCM Free Content Management from SpringCM

Analytics: Sales Pipeline Visualization by SalesClic (First I’ve heard of this app – looks interesting.)

Congratulations to all of the winners and thanks to the Salesforce users who took the time to post their reviews!

 

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From SaaS Spree to SaaS Sprawl to SaaS Sanity?

I wrote earlier in the week that cloud integration suddenly seems cool. A few articles this week  reminded me that it’s not just about cloud integration, it’s about cloud data management. And in many cases, it’s about the need for Cloud Master Data Management.

• Cloud Services Becoming Foundational: “Through 2016, a hybrid model (cloud and captive systems) will become the platform of choice, a transitional platform en route to a future dominated by public and private clouds. By 2016, 75 percent or more of new enterprise spending will be cloud-based or hybrid according to Saugatuck’s research.”
• Geoffrey Moore: The Next Decade Will Be About Systems of Engagement: “Moore forecasts the emergence of an enterprise-focused tech industry that will offer workplace versions of consumer technologies that people actually will like to use. He imagines there will be enterprise versions of Facebook, Facetime, Twitter, etc.”
• And bringing it back to Cloud Master Data Management, Mike Vizard wrote about the concept of “Two-Tier MDM” noting:  “as integration issues become more pressing in the cloud, IT organizations are once again going to discover many of the same MDM issues that have plagued their internal operations for so many years — only this time it will involve a lot more applications that they have less control over than ever.”

It seems we have we gone from a “SaaS spree” to “SaaS sprawl” and now finally to “SaaS sanity”?

Here are three brief videos that explain at a high-level how the key capabilities of a cloud master data management (MDM) solution can help deliver SaaS sanity:

 

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#DF12 Presentation: Power the Connected Enterprise with Cloud MDM and Integration

The video of 3 great enterprise customers sharing their Salesforce integration and master data management stories at Dreamforce 2012 is now posted. You can read a blog post on two of the companies that presented so far:

• OppenheimerFunds Dreamforce Story: Lay a Foundation of Trusted and Complete Customer Information for Salesforce
• Interstate Batteries Dreamforce Story: How Can You Be #1 Without Trusted Customer Information?

And here’s the video (slides are here):

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Cloud Master Data Management from Informatica

I’ve written about the topic of cloud-based master data management (MDM) in the past:

1. 2012 Cloud Data Integration Trends
2. What do Salesforce.com Customers Care About?

This week Informatica announced the availability of a new Cloud MDM solution for salesforce.com customers. Here are a couple of perspectives on the news:

1. Will Salesforce be the Catalyst to Propel MDM to the Cloud?
2. Mind the Gap: How Sales Operations Can Overcome Five Customer Information Gaps in Salesforce

If you’re new to the topic of MDM and want to learn why a cloud-based solution built natively on force.com is so relevant to salesforce.com customers, be sure to check out this video:

Salesforce Integration in Manufacturing: Getting Sales and Operations on the Same Page

I hosted a webinar this week with a CRM developer, Salesforce.com-focused systems integrator and cloud integration expert who provided a demonstration of Informatica Cloud. The focus of the discussion was the importance of data integration to CRM adoption and success in manufacturing. Here is the recording and the slides.

Salesforce Integration in Manufacturing: Getting Sales and Operations on the Same Page

View more PowerPoint from Darren Cunningham

Cloud Integration for the Social Enterprise

Yesterday I moderated an Informatica Cloud webinar with CloudTrigger, “a leader in cloud professional services and applications that accelerate customer success by maximizing return on investment.” There were some great points made about the importance of data integration and data quality to cloud application adoption and to becoming what salesforce.com calls the Social Enterprise.  Here’s the recording:

 

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Cloud Integration Evolution: From Outside in to Inside Out?

A few years ago Informatica’s Ron Papas wrote a blog post called – Salesforce.com Integration – Inside Out or Outside In.  He defined an “outside in” cloud integration solution as, ” ideal for organizations with limited IT resources that will rely on their Salesforce Administrator or a line of business analyst to do that work.”

I was recently interviewed by Ron Powell of the ByeNetwork about the evolution of cloud-based data  integration  and noted that increasingly enterprise IT organizations are seeking to take advantage of this model to complement and extend their on-premise deployments in order to delver well-governed self-service to the business.

Chris Boorman, Informatica’s CMO, also picked up this theme in an update – Unification: Enterprise Integration meets Departmental Integration via the Cloud. He highlighted 4 key guiding Informatica Cloud principles:

1. Simplicity
2. Rapid Deployment
3. Security
4. Unification

So how much has really changed when it comes to cloud data integration in the enterprise?

Do you agree with this statement from my interview:

“Fast forward to 2012, and it’s amazing to see the tipping point we have reached. It has become cloud first. Now, in many – if not most – IT organizations, you have to justify why an application, platform, or infrastructure investment isn’t cloud based. It’s been an interesting transition over the last few years, and I think it has accelerated faster than anyone would have guessed.”

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Cloud Integration Do’s and Don’ts

I moderated a webinar today with a Director of IT who is truly cloud first.  The topic was cloud data integration and the impact the right strategy can have on your Salesforce.com and overall SaaS application implementation success. The discussion also featured implementation guidance from one the top systems integrator partners of both Informatica Cloud and Salesforce – Silverline. Gireesh Sonnad, a partner at the firm, outlined what he sees as the Top Cloud Integration Do’s and Don’ts.

Cloud Integration Do’s:

1. Build well rounded, cross-functionalimplementation core team
2. Pay special attention to understanding your complete process and data workflow
3. Make sure to compare your legacy application accessibility to the integration platform capabilities
4. Take advantage of  SaaS application (in this case Salesforce CRM) and Informatica Cloud native functionality (External IDs, Upserts, Error Logging, etc.)
5. Document what you build (You will need to refer to it often)

Cloud Integration Don’ts:

1. DON’T underestimate value of integration to overall SaaS adoption (Workflows are cross platform in real life, your systems should be also!)
2. DON’T ignore the value of detailed use cases and end-to-end testing with the entire team
3. DON’T try this without a full sandbox!
4. DON’T Worry, it WILL all work out in the end

Here’s the recording. Do you agree/disagree with this list? What else would you add?

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Salesforce Integration @Dreamforce #DF11 Webinar

The Informatica Cloud team hosted a webinar after Dreamforce 2011 to review the topic of cloud integration and share some of the insights from event. We also jumped into a comprehensive demonstration of Salesforce data integration in action. Here’s the recording:

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