Agile Accelerator: Salesforce's Not-So-Secret (Anymore) Weapon!

The agile development model has quickly earned its place in the software world, rapidly moving into territory previously ruled by the waterfall development model. Salesforce adopted it years ago, after which the cloud-computing leader saw major bumps in productivity and a huge increase in the turnaround time for major releases. A major reason Salesforce's successful implementation of agile development was a tool called GUS or Grand Unified System). GUS was built on Force.com with the purpose of consolidating scrum, quality assurance and bug tracking into a simple-to-use interface.

The SkyPlanner Parachute, your Monday morning source for great curated content!

It's SkyPlanner Parachute Monday! Find out what we at SkyPlanner, South Florida's premier Salesforce consulting company, have been reading, watching, listening to, and learning from during the past week. 

• With Heroku Elements, Salesforce has made it easier than ever for developers to create customer-facing apps. [via The SkyPlanner Blog] 
• Engagement means a lot of things in the world of marketing and sales. This is where many companies run into trouble: in an attempt to engage with customers broadly, they often forget to implement an efficient plan that focuses the right resources on the right type of engagement. [via Salesforce Blogs]
• Equal pay for equal work isn’t typically a mantra you hear from the chief executive of a multibillion-dollar company. Yet Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is taking the radical step of reviewing employee salaries to ensure men and women are paid fairly. [via the Huffington Post]
• How do you make a project plan that will actually work (i.e. successfully accomplish business objectives on time and under budget)? There’s no one-size-fits all answer, but there are a number of attributes that effective plans usually have in common. [via Salesforce Blogs]
• A Salesforce CRM is an essential tool for any business, but like any other tool it has to be wielded correctly. That's why correctly setting up data and its use within your CRM is crucial to its success. [via The SkyPlanner Blog]

At SkyPlanner, South Florida's premier Salesforce consulting company, we love to hear from ours clients and supporters so please feel free to comment or email us with suggestions for future content.

Salesforce Announces Heroku Elements

Salesforce has made it easier than ever for developers to create customer-facing apps. Heroku Elements is a new marketplace designed to give developers instant access to Heroku's ecosystem of powerful app components, services and tools. Developers no longer need to search for messaging services, payment systems, app monitors, data stores and other pre-built app elements on their own.

Another SkyPlanner Parachute, your Monday morning source for great content!

It's SkyPlanner Parachute Monday! Find out what we at SkyPlanner, South Florida's premier Salesforce consulting company, have been reading, watching, listening to, and learning from during the past week. 

• A Salesforce CRM is an essential tool for any business, but like any other tool it has to be wielded correctly. That's why correctly setting up data and its use within your CRM is crucial to its success. [via The SkyPlanner Blog] 
• Too often salespeople lose critical selling time because they’re focused on administrative tasks. They spend too much time doing things like developing presentations, building customer profiles, and composing e-mails—all things that aren’t necessarily the best use of their time, according to the EMI Industry Intelligence Report. [via Salesforce Blogs]
• When it comes to making yourself happy, you need to learn what works for you. Once you discover this, everything else tends to fall into place. And making yourself happy doesn't just improve your performance, it's also good for your health. [via Inc Magazine]
• An empowered internal Salesforce Admin team provides the backbone to the company and its infrastructure – so how can managers empower their team to be even more cohesive, business savvy, and more efficient? [via Salesforce Blogs]
• The number one reason for CRM failure is bad data, and duplicate records are a big part of turning your data bad. Duplicate Alerts and Blocking, a new feature found in the Salesforce Spring '15 Release, will help make that a thing of the past! [via The SkyPlanner Blog]

At SkyPlanner, South Florida's premier Salesforce consulting company, we love to hear from ours clients and supporters so please feel free to comment or email us with suggestions for future content.

The SkyPlanner Parachute: your source for great content every Monday morning!

It's SkyPlanner Parachute Monday! Find out what we at SkyPlanner, South Florida's premier Salesforce consulting company, have been reading, watching, listening to, and learning from during the past week. 

• A Salesforce CRM is an essential tool for any business, but like any other tool it has to be wielded correctly. That's why correctly setting up data and its use within your CRM is crucial to its success. [via The SkyPlanner Blog] 
• We love Game of Thrones here at SkyPlanner, and we absolutely loved this piece on marketing technology from Pardot! [via Salesforce Pardot]
  
• Work smarter, not harder. Having a strategy, not just being busy is what keeps your business getting better. Look at your business objectively from the outside, as touched upon in this article from the Harvard Business Review, to see where that strategy needs to lead you. [via HBR]
• Millennials: Can't live with them, can't live without them...especially since their habits are redefining the customer experience. [via Salesforce Blogs]
• The number one reason for CRM failure is bad data, and duplicate records are a big part of turning your data bad. Duplicate Alerts and Blocking, a new feature found in the Salesforce Spring '15 Release, will help make that a thing of the past! [via The SkyPlanner Blog]

At SkyPlanner, South Florida's premier Salesforce consulting company, we love to hear from ours clients and supporters so please feel free to comment or email us with suggestions for future content.

Data considerations for Salesforce implementation!

Data. It's important (duh!). That's why at SkyPlanner, South Florida's Salesforce consultants, we know that if your CRM doesn't treat your data properly then it isn't worth having. The importance of getting your data habits off right, beginning with implementation, is important because even a single misstep can start a snowball effect of bad data.. Below are some Do's and Don't of data implementation we found from the good folks at Salesforce: 

Data Implemention Do's: 

• Emphasize clean data. Develop data policies and management strategies for your new CRM implementation and stress the importance of following those policies beyond to your users. 
• When it comes to data migration, analyze your data to figure out what's essential to your business processes. Then build your application to include only the data you really need. Don't just build an application to house everything expecting to discard excess data later. 
• Create data maps for object relationships, field data types, and other requirements. Define points A and point B (and sometimes C through Z) of your data's interdependencies. You don't want your data to get lost thanks to a wrong turn!

Data Implemention Do's: 

• Don't get lazy and create unnecessary requirements (validations) if something can be accomplished by developing better processes or by training end-users on proper procedures. 

Sources: 

1. Frankfurt, Tal. "Salesforce Implementation Best Practices: Data." Salesforce Blog. N.p., 07 Apr. 2015. Web. 08 Apr. 2015.

A little late but still great...The SkyPlanner Parachute!

*Due to Comcast-related technical difficulties this week's SkyPlanner Parachute is a day late but still as full of great content as ever!

It's SkyPlanner Parachute Monday! Find out what we at SkyPlanner, South Florida's premier Salesforce consulting company, have been reading, watching, listening to, and learning from during the past week. 

• Salesforce has unleashed a new improvement to its already stout Service Cloud. The new tool is called the "Intelligence Engine" and it will harness data science to fuel the industry's smartest customer service. [via The SkyPlanner Blog] 
• Tony Robbins thought he'd reached a point of financial security where he didn't need to earn any more money...then he saw how many people actually depended on him and he decided that earning more wasn't greedy. Striving for more wealth can be a good thing! [via Inc]
• To say Dreamforce is getting huge is an understatement. But just how huge? So huge that hotels vacancy is practically zero and Salesforce has rented a cruise ship to make up the difference! Register now for a spot! [via Fast Company]
• Want to earn your customers trust and get more of their business? Walk a mile in their shoes first. [via Salesforce Blogs]
• The number one reason for CRM failure is bad data, and duplicate records are a big part of turning your data bad. Duplicate Alerts and Blocking, a new feature found in the Salesforce Spring '15 Release, will help make that a thing of the past! [via The SkyPlanner Blog]

At SkyPlanner, South Florida's premier Salesforce consulting company, we love to hear from ours clients and supporters so please feel free to comment or email us with suggestions for future content.

Salesforce unveils the Intelligence Engine for the Salesforce Service Cloud.

In the past few weeks SkyPlanner, South Florida's Salesforce consulting company, has covered many of the improvements Salesforce has made to its CRM offerings, mostly in the Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud. But today's post is about an improvement Salesforce has made to its Service Cloud suite of products. That improvement is called the "Intelligence Engine" and it will harness data science to fuel the industry's smartest customer service. 

Some of the features of the Intelligence Engine include: 

• Intelligent Business Processes Dynamically assign cases to agents based on skill set, case history, presence or communication channel—email, web, phone, video chat or SMS. Using advanced workflow automation, the Intelligence Engine can also trigger any business process, such as escalating cases beyond the support department to sales or marketing. For example, a support center can route cases from VIP customers to top agents or distribute potential sales leads to the best teams or individuals equipped to upsell.
• Intelligent Workload Management Automatically distribute and manage agent workload to respond to the unpredictable demands of omni-channel support. Rather than relying on a manual process to fill an agent's queue with cases, Intelligent Workload Management will automatically distribute cases to agents based on their expertise to handle specific types of cases, as well as their caseload, to maximize their productivity. For example, Service Cloud will suspend pushing cases to an agent if they're on a video chat or factor in how much to decrease the workload for an agent who will soon be on break.
• Seamless Omni-Channel Customer View Customers can start a conversation on one channel and seamlessly transition to another without having to continuously identify themselves, rehash the problem or bring a new agent up to speed. For example, a customer with an open email case who requests a video chat will automatically be routed to the same agent working on the email case for a seamless service experience.

The impact of the Intelligence Engine can be summed up in these comments: 

• The Service Cloud Intelligence Engine harnesses the power of data science to improve workflows, business processes and deliver seamless customer service across any channel,” said Mike Milburn, SVP and GM of Service Cloud, Salesforce. “Now companies are prepared to exceed their customer's increasingly high expectations for smarter service.”
• “We are building the next generation of travel that is highly personal and seamlessly connected across any channel—on the web, on email, phone, mobile, social media— and even at the train station,” said Antoine de Kerviler, CIO, Eurostar. “By standardizing the entire customer service platform on Salesforce, Eurostar is able to deliver a single view of customers so agents can deliver exceptional service at every turn.”

Sources: 

1. "Salesforce Unveils Service Cloud Intelligence Engine-Fueling Smarter Customer Service for the Connected World - Salesforce.com Canada." Salesforce Unveils Service Cloud Intelligence Engine-Fueling Smarter Customer Service for the Connected World - Salesforce.com Canada. Salesforce, 09 Mar. 2015. Web. 30 Mar. 2015.
2. Dignan, Larry. "Salesforce Adds More Intelligence, Data Science to Service Cloud | ZDNet." ZDNet. ZDNet, 9 Mar. 2015. Web. 30 Mar. 2015.