As a consultant there is nothing better than a small piece of config that delivers massive results for the client. One of the most common reasons companies initially move to Salesforce is to save time. They want to cut out exhaustive manual processes and make use of task automation all in the name of cutting […]

Does this picture look familiar when speaking about your CRM application? Most software implementations, even if initiated by the business – end up in the IT department. While not always the case, this transfer of responsibility for the CRM deployment starts a chain reaction that becomes increasingly difficult to stop. First, when requirements are gathered and […]

One of my Sales Directors has a motorbike.  Not any old motorbike; one of those huge motorbikes I’ve always dreamed of owning, the sort that make many women go weak at the knees if you offered them an opportunity to ride pillion. The sadness is I’m now in the bracket of middle age where I’m […]

Firstly, my genuine apologies are due to many past clients! It seems that all of those ERP integrations I have implemented over the years, nightly batch jobs, middle-ware syncronisations and roll-yer-own data-syncs… were all sub-optimal solutions! I’m sorry! Salesforce aligned with OData (Open Data Protocol) about a year ago with its introduction of External Data […]

As we have come to expect around this time of the year Salesforce.com has recently announced the general availability of their Summer ’15 release: The Ice Cream Van release. Some of these new features will feel like vanilla flavoured ice cream, nice but not special; in fact you may even think that it was high […]

The old order of traditional business intelligence and analytics is changing, Salesforce brings the cloud, consumer web influence and fast user focused data visualisations that empower the question-answer-question analysis flow. Analytics Cloud Pioneers Recently I was lucky to receive 4 days of intensive training, review and product demonstration with the UK Analytics Cloud Pioneers group, […]

Live Agent is a native Salesforce tool that provides the ability to communicate in real-time with your web site users. In this blog I am going to discuss my favourite of the basic ‘out of the box’ offerings and then talk through some of the customisation options available to you to enhance the standard product. […]

  My daughter was 18 recently and I gave her a present; a small car – well, it’s really for the family, but it is an extra car on which she can learn to drive. I hope it will survive as a first car for her siblings.  It was a pragmatic decision.  I thought it would […]

UPDATES FROM THE SPRING ’15 RELEASE  Salesforce has recently released the Spring ‘15 release notes which detail many new features and improvements across the Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud – and the all new Analytics Cloud! Why not take the next few minutes to read through our February blog – and find out how […]

I spend lots of my time connecting Salesforce to other platforms and systems; the most fun way these days is with some form of API or web-service. Connecting system-to-system to integrate at a data level is a fairly standard use case, so I was really excited when I heard about the littleBits electronics kits and […]

In the past year I am lucky enough to have travelled a lot for work. It has ranged from the westernmost coast of the United States to the far east of Asia, all in the name of delivering the Servicemax Admin Certification Program. Each country brings with it a unique set of challenges. From forcing down sea […]

Every training session presents a challenge. While the material for the Servicemax Admin Certification stays the same, each delivery must differ depending on the audience. Quickly (and correctly!) ascertaining the required information from a group of 15 people you have never met before is no easy task – but an essential skill for any trainer. […]

We all know how fundamental to corporate networking with LinkedIn has become. This applies to all areas of our professional lives, and particularly powerful in getting our sales teams closer to their new prospects, leads and accounts. LinkedIn has also become another administrative overhead, another task on the long list of things that a sales […]

I love public and open API data sources, they are what makes the web connected and programmable. Sometimes I find an API that is completely open and that makes my life really easy, but often, unfortunately we need to jump through some hoops to get to the free data. Recently I have been integrating to […]

This business is awesome! Thats the cloud, IT, business solutions, implementation, salesforce, mobile and colaboration business of course! Everything is just ticking along fine, and then you spin round and realise that everything has changed! Again! There are a number of fundamental changes I’m noticing here:  Mobile notifications, push, we have easier access to it. […]