Cloudforce 2011: CRM Savvy In New York City

Know the top sessions to target for more successful sales, service and CRM projects.

Heading to Cloudforce in New York City on March 3, 2011? Look for Innoveer’s stand, where we’ll be stepping people through our accelerators and CRM workshops, which help you identify the next “best step” to take with your CRM program.

Of course, you’re no doubt seeking insights from the Cloudforce sessions too. On that front, beyond Marc Benioff’s keynote, here’s my cheat sheet of the top CRM sessions to target:

1) AppExchange: Discover Top Apps

What are the top app add-ons for Salesforce.com? One of our clients, EveryScape, swears by Informatica and EchoSign. Also recommended: GridBuddy, which gives Salesforce.com a needed user interface boost, by offering a spreadsheet-like grid for manipulating multiple data points at once. It’s a big time-saver, not just for Excel addicts.

What else will rock your Salesforce.com installation? See our 5 Apps Supersize Salesforce.com CRM post, in which we name (more) names.

2) Sales Cloud For Customers: New Features And Best Practices

Why use SaaS CRM? As detailed in our case study with Innoveer client Genzyme Biosurgery, using Salesforce.com is a great way to increase sales efficiency, deliver more detailed information to sales managers, and replace dated, client-server-era functionality.

For Genzyme Biosurgery, since it’s a relatively small business, Salesforce.com also fits its CRM budget. Of course, it delivers the functionality they need too. That includes a mobile CRM application suited to the organization’s operating-room-based sales force, which typically carries BlackBerries in the field, not laptops.

3) Service Cloud: Welcome To The Future Of Customer Service

Why run service in the cloud? For the simple reason that SaaS CRM can increase your customer service effectiveness. That boost might come from improving call center functionality. Or maybe your organization just needs to shake up the way it does business.

At one Innoveer client, for example, after sales reps went on strike, senior-level executives started pulling shifts in the call center. That experience led to a number of rapid improvements in the company’s approach to service. This included overhauling the organization’s CRM system, to give agents the right information at the right time, as well as resolving issues on the first call, whenever possible. Customer satisfaction increased, in short, thanks to a combination of having the right approach, as well as access to the right tools.

4) Chatter: Social Collaboration For Your Entire Company

Does your organization need a Facebook-like interface for Salesforce.com? In fact, Innoveer’s clients have been investigating and adopting Chatter to give them a different way to follow essential contacts and accounts. Think of it as another tool for sharing just-in-time, client-related intelligence. See our Top 10 Tips For Salesforce.com Chatter for more information on how to benefit from Chatter.

5) Don’t Start With Technology

Yes, we’re discussing Salesforce.com here. But the standard caveat — for any CRM or indeed business project — applies here too: Don’t start with technology.

Indeed, if you want to build a highly effective CRM program, and deliver it both on time and on budget, start by identifying your business requirements. Really, that means having a plan. Making this a complex or a time-consuming endeavor isn’t recommended. But you do, briefly, need to identify your goals, to know when you’ve reached them. Next, build an organizational consensus for meeting those goals.

Final step? Identify and implement the best technology for the job. And sell it by maximizing the CRM benefits for employees as well as managers.

Learn More

Building a world-class CRM program demands business and management know-how. To ensure that your project excels, be sure to focus on the big picture. To help, review our “top 10” marketing, sales or service steps to see how your program compares to best practices and our benchmarks.