This week saw SalesForce launch version 9 of their popular online CRM product. The two things that interested me the most were the workflow visualiser and the free version of the SalesForce platform:

Workflow Visualiser & Process driven CRMs

In the CRM world there are three main types of CRM vendors; interactive, process driven and record centric CRMs:

At the moment the market leader for process driven CRMs is Ciboodle (who I used to work for) and with the Workflow visualiser it really reminds me of Ciboodle and a more process-driven CRM. Ok, you’ve always been able to do workflow in salesforce but they are now allowing you to see visually what your workflow actions are doing and how they flow into each other and with complex workflow actions this is really good news. The only limitation being you can only see your workflow and have to go back to salesforce to continue to edit the workflow.

What is a SalesForce Workflow?

Salesforce Visualiser of a purchase order process

In SalesForce you can setup workflow for a particular process, for example if you create a salesForce application to manage purchase orders you can then setup workflow to trigger manager approval if the purchase order exceeds £10,000. But, for more complex workflow it can be hard to see whats going on so sf have created the workflow visualiser which allows you to visually see the workflow you have created.

This is similar to how process driven CRMs work, where they can excel are in organisations that wish to implement strict processes, for example this could be an outbound call centre were you want to be efficient as possible in making calls. What I would be interesting in knowing is if they have introduced this feature to show SalesForce as being more process driven. In Ciboodle the core of the system is the process tree, linking and editing processes together which looks much like the salesforce visualiser but this only views the process. If you could create apps in this way linking visualforce pages together using workflow and simple create, edit, delete actions SalesForce really could move more into a hybrid system between a record centric and a business process driven system. I doubt they will go any futher than being able to edit your workflow in the visualiser due to the amount of work but always possible. Maybe by including more business process centric tools in SalesForce it could move itself into the Ciboodle area and really have some great features to complete over Microsoft Dynamics, Oralce and SAP.

SalesForce has released a free version of the platform!

Now when I heard SalesForce and free in the same sentence I thought that they may be heading towards a freemium business model, but alas not. I think I need to stress the word platform here, because it doesn’t include Accounts, Contacts, Campaigns, Leads, Opportunities, Forecasts, Products, Cases or SalesForce Solutions. So if you want to code up one application with up to 10 objects to be launched to up to 100 people then maybe you could use it… or maybe something else… up to you. If you want to sign up click here.

This month Tony Karrer’s blog asks the questions:

Where is your time spent?

How much time do you spend and how did you find time for all the relatively newer things like reading blogs, twitter, social networks, etc.?

What are you doing less of today than you were 3-5 years ago?

Do you have less of a life with all of these new things?

Where is your time spent?
With the amount of information available at the touch of a button I think the best way to answer this to say how I manage my time on an average day and how it now fits into it.

It takes me an hour door to door to get to work and I spend this time, on the way to work catching up with the latest and greatest information. This usually involves either listing to podcasts and/or catching up on my Google reader feeds on my phone. I’ve found google reader a great asset as I can mark interesting stories for my friends to read and they do the same, I also may send a tweat. When I get off the train it takes about 10 minutes before I’m at work so I use this time to check the days calendar and any outstanding emails from the previous day. I’m usually quite strict about emails and only read them 3 times a day, I find they can be quite distracting if your constantly getting pop-ups about new emails. That actually reminds me of an old boss, one day he came into work and tipped his entire in-tray into the bin and announced if it was urgent someone would tell him eventually.

Once at work its the Daily Scrum. This is key to my team to understand what we have done, what we are going to do and if we’re still on target. We stand up around the sprint board which lists all the tasks for the current sprint and I ask everyone the following three questions:

• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you doing today? (allowing them to pick up tasks from the board)
• Are there any impediments in your way?

This sets up the rest of the day. Usually spend lunch at the gym, on the way home I’m usually reading, currently I’m reading a brilliant book ‘First Break all the Rules‘. The book takes you inside the minds of some of the greatest managers to explain why they have toppled conventional wisdom and they reveal the new truths they have forged in its place, if you haven’t read it, READ IT!  (linked on the right hand side if you want more info).

I’m a bit of a foodie so I usually spend the evenings chilling out with friends or making food but to be honest usually turns getting updates from other consulting work. At the moment I’m about to start working for “Let Loose” a charity aiming to bring disabled and able bodied people together through the arts.

How much time do you spend and how did you find time for all the relatively newer things like reading blogs, twitter, social networks, etc.?

I think i’ve just become smarter at managing my time. One thing that did help me was speeding up my reading (after reading another great book, sorry I’m a bit of a book worm).

The new “Earning youth of today” grew up with computers, they have learned to sift through large amounts of information and easily pick out the information they want. Some marketing people I know call them “The Teflon Generation” because nothing sticks to them, they are used to being bombarded with information and adverts. So I’ve worked on being better at ‘thin slicing’ information, being able to evaluate snap judgements and first impressions and seeing I this can educated and controlled so instead of merely praising the mysterious process of instinct and intuition I can to see how these instincts can betray, the situations where our powers of rapid cognition can go awry and where you fail to read the signs (another good ‘Blink’).

What are you doing less of today than you were 3-5 years ago?

Watching TV, I just don’t have time for it anymore. I’m more comfotable understanding what my strengths and weaknesses are. I think I used to spend too much time trying to focus on improving my weaknesses rather than my strengths. Over the years I’ve decided that really I’ll just hire people who are far better than I will ever be so I can focus on getting even better at my strengths.

Do you have less of a life with all of these new things?

I think a categorical No. If I hadn’t done the work to adapt to the increased information or if I hadn’t have used twitter I would never of known an old friend was at the same gig as me so we could catch up, or been able to learn so much more than I thought possible. Also professionally being able to talk to like minded professionals about things that interest me.

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