Seize the Future by the Throat!

I can’t hear you over the noise!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:54:00 +0000

Few things are more frustrating than trying to hold a conversation in the midst of thousands of other people talking. It’s harder to converse in the hallways of a trade show than on the floor of a saw mill--why?

The din of a sawmill consists primarily of mechanical sounds. For example, the whine of the sawblades, the grinding of wood being ripped, and relatively little in the way of human voices. A trade show is opposite that. Mostly, the noise there is the babble of hundreds of conversations. The human ear takes it all in, but the brain can more easily filter things not obviously related to the conversation at hand.

In Salesforce.com’s Chatter, a private, internal collaboration network for their CRM users, the noise problem is similar. When faced with many fields on an object, users quickly learn to skim over those not relevant to them; that’s the sawmill. Unfortunately, when an administrator allows too much noise in the Chatter stream, the conversation becomes muddy and difficult to follow; that’s the trade show. With noise comes difficulty and with difficulty comes poor adoption and that’s something none of us want.

The solution is simple. Hush those objects when you roll out Chatter. It’s tempting to say, “Well, I have 82 fields on the account page and maybe someone will want to be alerted to changes on the most obscure, so I’ll just tick them all on the Feed Setting screen.” Don’t do it. If you do, every person following an account will get notified each and every time a field is updated in any way. I strongly urge you to have no more than three or four fields on an object in the feed. You can always add more later, but if you ruin their first impressions, they may not be back to see it.

The other big thing is, if your sales process is transactional, you may want to instruct your users to change their personal settings to prevent automatic following of records they own. You can also do this for masses of people quite easily, using Dataloader.

Key takeaways: Log in as users and see just how noisy their Chatter streams are. Take steps to quiet them down. Get user feedback.

Questions? Suggestions?

Salesforce CRM: The Definitive Admin Handbook

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:52:00 +0000

I'm old enough to remember when buying a new widget or a piece of software meant receiving an instruction manual. Now, if you're fortunate, there might be a single page quick start guide. Even with the proliferation of on line documentation, forums, and the ever present Google search, there is nothing like a well written, consistent, authoritative book to take a new Salesforce.com administrator by the hand and lead her in the paths of good practice.

Paul Goodey's "Salesforce CRM: The Definitive Admin Handbook" is just such a guide. Weighing in at 340+ pages, chocked full of screen shots, and useful diagrams, this tome is the antitheses of the Dummies or Idiot's books. In here, you find no cartoons, jokes, or light hearted banter. Instead, every page is packed with solid, useful, information. This is the book that Salesforce should give to every new customer, if only to cut down on calls to their support lines.

Goodey sets out the chapters in a logical order, starting with "Getting Started with the Salesforce CRM Application: Organization Administration". He moves the reader through the process of user logins, company profile, and interface. Each chapter builds on the previous in roughly the order an administrator would create and roll out a new org. Unlike others, he gets down to the fine details that often confuse new users. For example, a detailed discussion of Standard versus Custom Fiscal Years is included.

If all this book did was help a new admin get her org off the ground, it would be worth the price, but it goes much further. Chapter five is devoted to data analytics. In here, the author dives deeply into the world of reports, formulas, dashboards, and filters. This is where the rubber meets the road. These are the parts that are visible to the end user and will to a large extent, determine how successful the deployment will be perceived.

Chapter six walks the new(er) admin down the path of business processes, including workflows, approvals, and alerts. This is a treacherous zone where Salesforce shows both its power and its peril. A well built process and rule set can make life easier for the users and accelerate sales and support cycles. A poorly implemented workflow on the other hand, is like a clumsy knife juggler performing on a life raft--always one instant away from disaster. Goodey does an admirable job of not only getting the technical details correct on a complex topic, but in laying down basic principles for gathering the data needed to build the steps.

The next chapter, seven, dips a toe into campaign, lead, account, contact, and case management. This is perhaps the least satisfactory chapter, not for any defect in writing, but because each of the sub-topics warrants a book on its own. Still, the introduction is sufficient for the nature of this work and the author is accurate in his comments. Hard to ask for more in a general manual.

Eight is an interesting section. He introduces the reader to mashups, Visualforce, Apex code, and triggers. Even more than the proceeding chapter, these items are wickedly nuanced and need many more pages to fully immerse an admin in their care and feeding. The chapter does well giving an overview and builds a solid enough footing for the reader to go out and learn more on her own.

The only criticisms I have are minor. First, being a printed book, it is outdated as soon as the ink dries. For example, on page 73, the method of granting administrative access is no longer fully accurate. A minor point, but the reader should use some caution to verify with current documentation, before depending on printed matter. Second, I think it could have benefited by an appendix directing us to the huge amount of on line resources available.

Who is this book for? Let's start with who it is not suited for:

1. If you like funny cartoons and amusing examples

2. If you need someone to explain to you what the "internet" is

3. If you are a normal, non-admin, user of Salesforce.com

Who is it suited for:

1. If you are an new(er) admin or a very advanced power user of Salesforce.com

2. You are considering switching to Salesforce.com from another CRM system and want an overview of the technical aspects

3. If you are an experienced admin and you want a quick refresher or a good reference book

Overall, I give "Salesforce CRM: The Definitive Admin Handbook" by Paul Goodey, 5 of 5 stars.

The Problem Isn't the Cloud

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 23:35:00 +0000

When I was a young boy living in St. Louis in the 1960's, we experienced perhaps three or four electrical blackouts per year, each lasting from a few hours to a day or more. These days, I live in New Jersey and we have a significant blackout roughly every three to four years. Interestingly, the situation for internet access seems to be similar to what it was for electricity when I was a child.

If today, an area had a two day power outage, the news papers would cover it and politicians would be screaming for the heads of those responsible. If an area loses internet for two, three, or more days, it gets written off as a minor inconvenience and the service provider might, if they're feeling generous, offer a few free days to compensate.

The computing cloud exists, it works, and it is rapidly improving and evolving. The weak link in the chain is the infrastructure that delivers the cloud to our devices. There is absolutely no reason I shouldn't be able to board a bus in NYC and get off in LA, having never lost a strong, fast signal. No reason except for neglect and shortsightedness. My country has decided to fund the military industrial complex and let the in net grid go to hell. Until our priorities get right and we invest fully in our future, the cloud will always be held back by a lack of reliable, universal, coverage.

Moses, Jesus, Krishna, and Meetings

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 14:48:00 +0000

My friend Judy Sohn, a fellow Salesforce Dreamforce attendee and Vice President of Operations at Fight Colorectal Cancer, recently pointed out that Dreamforce 2012 is scheduled to overlap with the Jewish holy days of Rosh Hashanah. This is a serious problem to her and perhaps thousands of other Jews who might attend the conference.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, responded quickly and graciously with an apology and offers of assistance in making the best of a bad situation, but in reality, there is nothing to be done. A conference for 35-40 thousand people has to be planned years in advance. G-d is unlikely to move the new year, even for a cloud computing event of this caliber.

What should have happened was, a planner should have pulled up a website like this one and done a quick check. In only a few minutes, the conflict would have been obvious and avoidable. Like wearing a seat belt though, the time to do this is before the accident occurs.

We live in an increasingly multi-faith and multi-cultural world. In my own planning, I religiously (pun intended) use the following procedure, particularly if I don’t know every, single, attendee.

1. Is it a religious holiday? Check at least www.interfaithcalendar.org, where the “major” events for each religion are listed in bold. Unless I am aware that there will be Jainists, Sikhs, or other less commonly (in this part of the world) encountered groups, I check for Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu days.

2. Is it a national holiday? Obviously, look at the country where the meeting will take place, and the place where remote attendees reside. Nothing is more provincial and annoying than for an American to happily set up a meeting with a Brit on a bank holiday!

3. For face to face meetings, are the participants likely have any dietary, cultural, or disability related restrictions? Don’t be like me and serve ham and cheese sandwiches to the Rabbinical Council. Make sure that not only is the meeting room wheelchair accessible, but that the restrooms are too, if you have someone who is mobility challenged.

It’s a little more trouble than back in the day when we were all white, Christian, males (and even then, we really weren’t!), but the payback in good feelings and smoother meetings is fully worth the effort.

Beware the Cult of ROI

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:23:00 +0000

Mike, the shop guy where I take my car for service, taught me a very important business lesson. On the invoice, there’s a line item called “Shop Charge”. It’s always just a few dollars or even less and I never paid any attention to it until one day when it caught my eye.

Mike explained, “Rather than figuring out exactly how many paper towels the mechanic used on your car, plus maybe a few inches of tape to hold some wires, and a couple of tiny screws, we just charge you 0.5% of the total and call it a shop charge. It doesn’t make sense for me to force the guys to track every one penny washer or nickel’s worth of grease they use. I trust them and anyway, obvious waste is well…obvious!”

Compare that to some companies that require time sheets to the minute, demand ROI analysis on the smallest purchases, and use cost justification to bully employees into doing without. Who’s being the better business person, Mike the mechanic or Mary the MBA?

The next time you’re tempted to say, “Show me the ROI on that,” ask yourself if you really aren’t sure or if you just want to see how badly the employee wants to take the training. Are you looking for the best use of the money or are you seeing how much abuse you can get away with and still keep the “chickens laying”?

ROI is an important concept, but it’s only one metric among many. Not every good decision can be reduced to, “If I spend X, I’ll recoup X+3”. Sometimes you have to trust your people, go with your instincts, and take a risk. Beware the cult of ROI.

Lessons for Technology from the (non)Rapture

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sat, 21 May 2011 23:57:00 +0000

It’s now well past the 6PM, May 21st deadline for the Rapture of God’s elect, as predicted by false prophet Harold Camping of Family Radio infamy. I am still here, as is everyone else. Unlike many others, I did not sell my possessions or take any drastic actions, based on the world coming to an end.

I leave Mr. Camping to answer to his deceived followers and ultimately to the God that he mocked. For what it’s worth, I think he is in an even worse position than Microsoft, trying to sell their CRM solution! There are, however a couple of important lessons to be learned from this debacle.

First, just because something is complex and full of numbers, calculations, and jargon, it isn’t necessarily true. The proofs for the end of the world were head spinning in depth and so numerous as to sink commonsense. Still, they were wrong. Think about that, every time someone shows you how beyond any doubt whatsoever that “XYZ is the only possible solution”.

Complicated questions seldom have simple answers. Social media is not necessarily the answer for every business problem. Saleforce’s Chatter is great, but might not be the total answer for collaboration for every case. The truth is generally not red or blue, but a shade of purple. Don’t be dazzled by bullshit.

Second, don’t believe experts just because lots of other people do. Mr. Camping had predicted the end before, but was obviously wrong. Still, he managed to achieve a critical mass of devotees and that mass gathered others, like mice drawn to poisoned bait.

Examine revelations with a questioning spirit. Not every revelation or breakthrough is wrong, but don’t take the word of experts as gospel. Remember when we were all going to live 24/7 online and have packs of gum delivered to our doorstep in 10 minutes, for free? The People Who Knew told us to not worry about a business plan, to “just trust” them.

So, the world goes on, “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be”. I’ll be going to Mass at Holy Family Catholic church tomorrow, teaching an RCIA class, and going to work with technology on Monday. To be honest, I’m glad the world didn’t end. I’m not ready to quit serving my God and my fellow humans, here on Earth.

The Best Just Got Better

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 00:49:00 +0000

If you’re not yet using Evernote, why not? Evernote is a cloud based, free or premium, service that lets you capture, tag, and store just about any data. I use it for everything from recipes, to code snippets, to keeping track of all the size light bulbs in my house. People use it for lesson plans, novel writing, and organizing their whole lives.

On top of all the goodness already there, the Windows version received today a massive boost in awesomeness. This came in the form of greatly enhanced sharing. Now sharing an item is as easy as clicking a button to send an email, send to Facebook, post to Twitter, or even copy the URL to the clipboard. Simple, fast, and safe—even a salesman could do it.

If you aren’t familiar with Evernote, stop reading and get over there right now! Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Clouds, Crayons, and SaaS

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:59:00 +0000

Back in the pre-SaaS, pre-cloud days, applications tended to be rather uniform, monolithic, and limited. Certainly work got done and everyone tended to now exactly what to expect in each and every situation.

Things are sure different now! Suddenly, we’re no longer limited to an premises application that we purchased, installed, and (sometimes) kept updated. The crayon box got much, much bigger, in a very short time.

For example, my first Tweet was sent from a quite austere Twitter site. Today, on the PC I use Hootsuite web version about 90% of the time and Seesmic web or desktop for the rest. For the iPad, I use Hootsuite’s app nearly 100% of the time. On my Blackberry, I tend to read Tweets with Ubersocial and post with Hootsuite, because the latter allows me to schedule posts for a future time and neither Ubersocial or Seesmic can do that for that platform. Lots of choices, right?

Before the advent of the cloud and browser based applications, I could have never afforded the money to buy all these applications. Plus, the pain of installing, configuring, tweaking and making sure they didn’t collide with each other in my production environment would have been a killer.

The age of SaaS, cloud, and browser based applications gives us more choices than we could have dreamed possible only a few years ago. I can remember a conversation with a very technical gentlemen who’ll remain nameless. He proved to me, beyond any doubt, that non-premise software was of extremely limited value. Oh sure, maybe for some simple games or a few specific utilities, but for word processing, databases, CRM, photo editing, etc., local installation and local data storage were absolutely necessities. And I believed him.

Fast forward about five years and you’ll find both our nameless friend and me, deeply involved in SaaS, the cloud and all that comes with them. Being able to change your mind and change your course is critical in a fast moving industry. If you don’t, you can bet on ending up like any other evolutionary dead end.

I can’t predict the future, but I know that no matter the size, shape, or form my crayons take, I’ll be coloring for years to come!

MySql.com Hacked by Their Own Carelessness

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 23:05:00 +0000

What would you say about a firefighter who casually tossed a still lit match into a waste can full of wood shavings and gasoline? How about a heart surgeon who dined every meal on butter, eggs, and pork chops? You’d probably say they were were foolish, bordering on criminally stupid.

Between you and me, I don’t think the flamed firefighter or the suffering surgeon can even come close to the folks over at Sun and MySQL.com. According to Sophos’s Naked Security site, MySQL.com was hacked today. “OK”, you say, “hacking is a fact of life. It could happen to anyone.” That’s true, but the reason they were compromised was a SQL vulnerability on their site! If anyone in the world should have known better, it should have been them.

Had the story ended there, this would have been a humiliating, face palming moment for them, but it gets worse. The attackers published user names and passwords from MySQL and what do we find? The Director of Product Management has a WordPress password that is four digits long—maybe his ATM number? Other users have passwords such as, “qa”.

I’m sure we can expect yet another, dreary, predictable, corporate spin-doctor, PR release explaining how they “regret any inconvenience this unfortunate incident caused the community,” and how they are “working around the clock with authorities to track down the people who did this.” They will then assure us that they have taken all precautions to prevent it from happening again.

Bull****.

This is 2011. The first SQL injection attacks in the wild were in November 2005. Simply typing the phrase into Google yields nearly four million hits. This is not some zero day attack. Any halfway competent DBA or web designer knows, or should know, about SQL injection. The fact that this occurred is inexcusable.

Here are my suggestions for dealing with the problem:

1. Hire some knowledgeable people and scrub every, single, line of code on every page of every site under their administration, as well as run whatever protocols necessary to secure the place.

2. Get in touch with the people at LastPass and put some decent password control in place.

3. Fire whoever should have found this vulnerability.

4. Fire the supervisor of #3, above.

5. Let every user on their systems know that the next time a weak password is found, they will be terminated on the spot. No explanations. No second chances.

6. Issue a statement explaining exactly what happened and why it will not happened again.

I understand I sound draconian, but after the first few dozen times seeing major sites compromised, I get a little irritable. Did I miss any steps they should take? Am I over reacting? Sound off and let me know!

Telemarketers, Read This Before Calling Me

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:51:00 +0000

Telemarketers, let’s get something straight. I don’t hate you. I respect that you have to make a living and understand that the phone is a powerful tool. What I want to do is lay out the ground rules for effectively selling to me. While I’m just one guy, I suspect most people will respond favorably to these rules too.

1. Respect my wishes. Call me at work and unless the data center is on fire, you will probably get a polite, if not cordial reception. Call me at home in violation of US do-not-call laws and I will make you cry like a Libyan pilot in a no fly zone.

2. Have a reason for calling. “Just checking in” is not a valid reason unless I’m your parole officer. I stopped what I was doing to talk to you, now make it worth my while.

3. Understand who I am. At least have a vague notion of the type of customer I may be. Don’t be like the woman who recently called me to see if I was interested in buying the same type of software that my employer sells.

4. Speak. Clearly. And slowly enough that I can understand you. This is going to sound harsh, but if your grasp of English is so weak that every call is like climbing Mount Everest, get another job! You don’t see me trying to sell you something in Hindi, do you?

5. If you don’t reach me and decide to leave a voicemail, see #4 above. Leave me a clear, concise message and for the love of God, speak your call back number slowly and distinctly. By the way, don’t try to leave a “mysterious” message or one that implies it is an emergency. I will likely call you back quickly, but when I find out you tricked me, I will devote large amounts of time and effort to making your life miserable.

6. Be confident. Don’t mumble. Don’t be bashful. Tell me why your product is the absolute best. Be able to defend yourself when I tell you we use the competition. I will give you a fair hearing, but if you just fold like a sheet of paper, I will end the call.

7. Be human. I get that you have to read from a script sometimes. Be willing to deviate when I ask you a question. That usually means I’m interested.

8. Ask for the appointment or sale! I can’t count the times that the call has gone pretty well, I was interested, and then the salesperson just drifted off with a timid, “Well, I’ll just call and check in again in six months.”

9. Keep honing your art. Never stop learning how to be more effective. Personally, I've taken the sales course offered by my friend, Art Sobczak and recommend it strongly. Take a look at his site: http://www.businessbyphone.com/

Friends, don’t be ashamed of what you do for a living, just do it well!

Twitter! Facebook! Quora! Danger!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 01:07:00 +0000

What if a company spokesperson said this to you:

“Well, we did install some telephones and we like the way we can call folk and tell them about new products and sales. Now and then, some of our customers and even prospects call us, but we just let ‘em roll to voice mail. If someone thinks about it, we tell one of the interns to check voice mail every couple of weeks. Funny story; sometimes even our competitors check the voice mail and answer our customers!”

You would think they were absolutely the most incompetent, negligent, company on Earth, right? You might even say, they were asleep at the switch. Guess what? Many firms, from small one man shops to giant multi-nationals are doing exactly that in the realm of social media.

Anyone active on Twitter or the other sites has seen it. There’s the account, blabbing out PR releases, loud and proud from @AcmeWidget (by the way, I just made that name up, in case @AcmeWidget is actually someone’s account!). Soon, customers start asking questions, paying complements, or Tweeting complaints, tagging them with @AcmeWidget or using a hashtag of #acmewidget.

What follows is silence; deafening silence. Or much worse, a competitor over at Superior Widgets jumps in the conversation and steers Acme’s $7,000,000 account to them.

My friends in marketing and sales, if you don’t ignore the phones, don’t ignore social media! It needs to be someone’s defined job to monitor all social media streams that you participate in, as close to 24/7/365 as you can physically manage. Nature and business both abhor a vacuum. If you don’t provide the answer, someone will, and you may not like what they have to say.

Social media gives you the chance to shine and look like a hero. It also affords you the opportunity lose customers, offend prospects, and destroy a brand. In future installments, we will look at not only the need to respond, but how to do so without inserting the corporate foot into the corporate mouth!

Anyone want to share either company’s that do it right or those that don’t?

“Do Social Media” Without the Snake Oil

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 02:16:00 +0000

There are certain things that simply make me want to knock people down and drizzle boiling lava on them. In no particular order:

1. “I’m a social media guru.” Unless you’re from India and you teach meditation, knock off the guru stuff. You do not have devotees. No one is sitting at your feet, waiting to learn how to send a Tweet.

2. “I’m a social media expert.” Your ability to use Hootsuite does not make you an expert any more than my ability to follow a cookie recipe makes me a baker. Just because you ignore your real job to post on Facebook all day does not qualify you as a thought leader.

3. “I’m building my personal brand.” Coke is a brand. IBM is a brand. Kleenex is a brand. You are a person. You can make yourself more visible in your family, community, or industry, but unless you are Charlie Sheen, you are not a brand.

4. “I have 14,553 followers and have made 34,863 updates to my Twitter account. I am a legend.” No, most likely you paid some service that netted you 14,553 followers who are also looking to build a huge following. Most of them, along with you, are constantly Tweeting and no one is listening to anyone else.

5. “I greet each new follower with an automatic DM (direct message) on Twitter to welcome him and offering my newest, WEB 2.0 sales technique special, plus links to my affiliate websites.” You are a DM spammer. Die spammer, die.

6. “I want to be everyone’s Facebook friend, even people I have never met or spent any time talking to.” You are either promiscuous or a stalker. Maybe a promiscuous stalker.

Here’s the thing. Social media—Twitter, Quora, Facebook, and all the rest—is new and the rules are in a state of flux. Still, we need to apply the basic rules of humanity that have served us well for the last 10,000 years. I’m no guru, but here are Paul’s Guidelines to being a Decent Human in Social Media:

A. Always provide value. Don’t post just to jack up your numbers. If you have nothing to say, shut up.

B. Be considerate. That means, be kind to new users. Be thoughtful and giving toward your community, both in real life and on the net. Don’t waste people’s time.

C. Constantly remind yourself that this is not real life. Social media is a means to an end. We use it to promote a political view, engage experts, sell products, and to have fun. The end is not to have the most followers or the highest Klout number.

Have I offended you? Do you want to follow me @paulmyoung_net just to have the pleasure of unfollowing me? Go ahead, but first leave me a comment and tell me why I’m wrong.

Pepsi’s Chrysler Moment

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 17:42:00 +0000

When I saw the Tweet from @pepsico, I was puzzled. “when sailors go on shore leave, they don’t use e-harmony #frothornot #pepsicostage” When I checked the Twitter profile and found that @pepsico was the official, verified voice of a major, multi-national corporation, I was doubly puzzled. Did someone compromise their account? Was this some part of a marketing campaign? Were they having a Chrysler moment?

Shortly after I Tweeted my confusion, @pepsico responded dismissively that it was a funny quote from a panel discussion. I’m not entirely sure why, but that really got under my skin.

Understand that I’m not a flag waving, right wing sort of guy, but I do respect the women and men who put their lives on the line so that I can sleep in peace, comfort, and freedom. To stereotype them as carousing on shore leave seemed like a stupid comment to be made at the water cooler and a particularly dumb sentiment to be expressed by a huge company.

Not being present for the entire discussion, I’m going to cut them some slack. Perhaps in the context of the larger exchange this was some sort of nuanced, ironic, metaphor. Just the same, I think it was wildly inappropriate to throw out in the context of 140 characters of social media.

@pepsico, no worries; I take no personal offense. I just wonder how much of your product the US Department of the Navy purchases? Might be a good time for the Coke representative to call on them, don’t you think?

SFDC Job Postings and the Purple Squirrel

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:39:00 +0000

We’ve all seen them or been contacted by recruiters regarding them. The requirements call for 30 years of Salesforce experience, ability to code in MUMPS, Java, and VisualForce, willingness to travel 102% of the time, multi-lingual in English/Cebuano/Liturgical Latin, and with a minimum of a PhD. Position is a 1099 contract paying $40 per hour, with no benefits, requires relocation to East Nowhere (at candidates expense), and will last six months.

Take a look at some of these actual requirements for a low level, moderately compensated, job in Manhattan, NY for a global corporation with 19,000 employees.

* Possesses both strong and some tactical Salesforce.com skills to understand how changes may impact entire universe

* Work with sales training management team to develop and update training materials and communications to the user group

* Become the “voice” of the user community to represent to management commonly requested and needed changes to the application

* Conduct training of SalesForce.com to users

* Work with SalesForce developers on system extensions, customizations and integrations

* Respond to support requests and solve issues for Sales Reps and Managers

* Integrate with vendor partners and design optimal solutions for integration

* Provide on-going support and system administration to quickly fix production issues

* Act as the primary point of contact for Salesforce users

* Conduct training of SalesForce.com to users

There are 32 more requirements plus they demand a minimum of a BA in Finance and preferably a minor in Computer Science. Oh, and at least five years experience.

Seriously??

Listen to me carefully, businesses. Stop copy and pasting generic requirements from the internet. Stop looking up twenty SFDC administrator postings, culling the unique requirements from each, and making one, hideous amalgamation. You will never find the purple squirrel, waste much time looking for her, and turn off qualified hires.

How should a company compose their hiring requirements? First, talk to your Salesforce sales rep and/or customer success manager. They know what has worked for other, similar companies and will be happy to guide you. If you are using a consultant, ask her. She has done this dozens of times and will gladly share her knowledge of what to look for. If neither of those appeal to you, here are a few pointers to get you started.

1. Certification is not vital, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s a good place to start. Just be willing to be flexible if you come across a SFDC god with no papers.

2. Go to a conference (DreamForce or CloudForce) and talk to attendees and vendors. Make contacts. Pump them for information. Hire them!

3. Email me and I’ll do my best to help you flesh out your requirements. If it’s just a quick phone call, I’ll do it pro-bono, and if more, we can discuss cost.

By the way, why the “purple squirrel”? It’s a recruiter term for the unobtainable position or candidate. Just say no to purple squirrels!

CloudForce NYC 2011 Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 01:17:00 +0000

As my three, loyal blog readers may remember, I wrote a post last April called SFDC Cloudforce 2 NYC—a Review. In that review, I praised them for the good and then gigged them like a frog on a harpoon for the bad and the ugly. While I take zero credit for the turn around, SFDC managed to correct nearly every challenge.

A constant complaint—so widespread that it became an inside joke—was that nothing SFDC ever sponsored started or finished on time. In particular, the keynotes were notorious for starting 15 minutes late and running 25 minutes over, throwing everything following hopelessly off kilter.

This year, the “warm-up” mini interviews got the crowd settled 10 minutes prior to the start time and Marc kicked off the main even nearly to the second it was scheduled. Pacing was superb, with a good mixture of humor, announcements, tightly scripted demos, and case studies. And it ended on time.

Many of us have groused year after year that the physical plant where Cloudforce was held was grossly inadequate. This year, it was at the Javits Center and we had enough room to land a plane! It was such a joy to have space to walk, space for the vendors to spread out, and space to keep the noise level down to a mild roar. Oh, and plenty of restrooms!

Part one of this review spoke in broad terms about the content of the convention. On a more granular level, the breakout sessions this time were nicely focused and the three that I participated in were very well orchestrated. I saw a sense of purpose that was lacking in years past. I was also very happy to see a greater emphasis on audience questions. Good job!

That’s the good. Two things stuck out that could still use some work. First, the minor one.
This may not be in the control of SFDC, but they need to address with the Javits Center the complete lack of taxi cabs. After CloudForce ended, I joined a group of people who tried without success for 30 minutes to hail a cab. Not a single one stopped. How can you have a convention center with no cab stand?

The major challenge that absolutely, positively, must be addressed is WiFi and cell coverage. Marc spoke much about smart devices and how they are changing the world, but without a signal, they’re little more than costly paperweights. I understand that it’s hard, but without fail, there has to be adequate WiFi and cell coverage available. I don’t care if I have to pay something to use it. It’s hard to describe how frustrating it was to not even be able to send a Tweet at times because of no cell or WiFi signal.

Overall, I give this DreamForce an A-. What do you think?

CloudForce NYC 2011 Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 01:10:00 +0000

All the way on the two hour NJ Transit bus ride back to my bucolic home in the Garden State, my mind buzzed with thoughts of CloudForce NYC 2011. I fully intended to write this entry as soon as I got home. Once however, I showered the stink of the city off me and relaxed, I realized that like a fine box of $9.00 wine, my thoughts needed time to chill. Now, a few days later, I think I’m ready to uncork my musings. The first part looks at the content of the conference and the second, the physical aspect of it.

To do a level set, it was 24/7/365 Chatter. As in Chatter. And then some more about Chatter. Did I mention that Chatter was featured? Chatter. Was it overboard on Chatter? No.

At various points in our evolution as a civilization, we have reached pivot points. These are the points at which history took an unexpected turn and the direction of our movement veered, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. While no one can say with certainty until long after the moment, CloudForce NYC 2011 could well have been the most definable pivot point for the way technology moves.

The earliest technological advances were solitary. Some nameless primitive figured out how to use a stick to reach a honeycomb. Much later, an iron plow let a farmer till more ground in a day than his father could in a week. The PC gave a mediocre writer the ability to crank out blog entries at a rate that would make a medieval monk copyist, swoon.

Chatter has turned the isolated, knowledge worker paradigm on its head. Suddenly, email is slow and text messages are disjointed. The new way forward provides a smooth, documentable flow of information that is semi-automatically routed to the best person (“node”)—sort of like the way information flows on the internet itself. I understand people’s skepticism, I really do. I was the same way until I started using it and now I couldn’t imagine not having Chatter.

As useful a tool as it is, there is an even greater aspect to the pivot point and that is collaboration. If I had to give an overarching theme to CloudForce 2011 NYC, it would be that: Collaboration. Chatter happens to be the spear tip, but a myriad of other technologies were in evidence, too. A quick check of the non-consultant vendors revealed that the idea of linking users loomed large.

One example is Seesmic. Founded by my session co-presenter Loic Le Meur, Seesmic is a Twitter client. Well, that’s like saying a jumbo jet is a chair because it has a place to sit. Seesmic, which I will soon talk more about, is the Swiss army knife of collaboration clients and as such perfectly encapsulated the conference for me. It is something that is privately developed by a small team of fanatically driven people and it is poised to help the world pivot.

I’m curious to see how this pivot plays out in the coming months leading up to DreamForce 2011. My suspicion is that this only the very beginning of a shift in the way we work, play, and view our world.

Coming soon: The physical aspect of CloudForce NYC 2011 or, “Did they finally get more restrooms?”

No Maps

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 01:05:00 +0000

I’m old; really old. When I first started using a computer to communicate with other computers, what we now call the internet didn’t exist outside of a small network of military and educational machines. The entire routing table for the net would fit on a sheet of paper. My modem was screaming fast at 2400 Baud. My PC was a powerhouse 386SX. Most importantly, there were no search engines as we know them now. None. No Google. No Yahoo. No Bing. Nothing.

So, without a map, how did we manage to find our way from Tillery Hill to the Patoka Lake Overlook? It wasn’t easy. There were many BBS’s (bulletin board systems—think free standing websites). They often had the phone numbers of other BBS’s. Yes, I wrote phone numbers, because remember, this was before the internet. To get somewhere online, you dialed up someone else’s phone line and coupled with their modem. It was a one to one relationship. Want 10 users online at once? You needed 10 phone lines.

I know what you’re thinking (other than, “jeez, he is old”), how the heck did you find your first BBS with no search engine? Simple, you asked someone or even more commonly, you read it in the local computer newsletter. A newsletter printed on dead trees. Seriously.

Why am I bring all this up? Just to remind you and me both, search engines changed the world in ways we seldom think of. They are the basis for an entire economy that wasn’t even a dream in most people’s mind only 20 years ago. They are the root and guide of nearly everything we do on the net.

Have you hugged your favorite search engine today?

I don’t feel the Quora love

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:52:00 +0000

I have to admit, I just don’t feel the love on Quora. To bring you up to speed if you’re one of the nine humans left who isn’t gaga over it, let me bring you up to speed. In a nutshell, Quora is a site where registered users ask questions and other people answer them and yet other people chime in with comments, clarifications, and ratings.

Sounds like just about any other board on the net, right? The difference seems to be that the amount of hype and excitement has brought a very broad slice of respondents together. Ask a question about Dropbox and you may get responses from the founder, the founder’s mother, and half of Dropbox’s coding team.

That’s the good. The not so good is that it is an incredibly tight, insular, community. New comers are not exactly discouraged, but the learning curve is very steep. Everything from a confusing layout, non intuitive search function, and a remarkably well established set of norms, make diving in a rather daunting proposition.

I honestly don’t know how much time and effort I want to invest in Quora. I remind myself that I felt much the same about Facebook, Twitter, and texting, back in the day. I’m keeping an open mind for now.

There has been a good discussion taking place among my friends on Twitter. Due the limitations of Twitter, I have invited them to bring the chat here. Anyone else reading this is welcome to weigh in too. I’ve extremely interested in your opinion!

Hey Best Buy: How about NO!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 02:33:00 +0000

In the last month, I’ve helped two of my wife’s friends purchase laptops. In both cases, they went to their local Best Buy, one in New Jersey and the other in Pennsylvania. Each store was clean, well stocked, and had reasonably priced merchandise. Similarly, in each instance, the friend bought a lower end laptop—something in the $500-700 range. It was after the selection was made and before money changed hands, that the problem began.

I understand a stores desire to upsell and the need to offer service and accessories to people, I really do. What we were bombarded with in both cases was an “optimizing and set up” service. The first time, the salesperson was very vague, offering only generalities of “better performance” and “protection”. The second was much more specific. Below is a list of some of these services. My comments are in red.

We’ll install top quality anti-virus, because what they put on them at the factory is worthless. It came with a trial of Norton and they were offering Kaspersky. Both are OK, but pricey. I simply removed Norton and installed the solid, dependable, Avast.

The laptops are full of crap from the factory that needs to be removed before they’re usable. Like what? Both came with surprisingly few trial programs, no popups, no AOL pitches. I wonder how the manufactures would like to hear their vendors describe the products like that?

We’ll test that WiFi is working. The purchaser can do that too, by turning on the laptop at home. If it doesn’t, bring it back. Are you planning on testing every other function before it leaves the store? Are the network cards in your laptops particularly unreliable?

We need to remove all that stuff that Best Buy puts on there, because it will nag you and slow down your computer. Let me get this straight, you want to charge me to remove detrimental software that you put on there in the first place??? If I bought a new car, would you expect me to pay the dealer to remove cement blocks they put in the trunk?

Needless to say, after some firm discussion, we did not buy the optimization plan for $100. In each case, it took me under an hour, including time to explain what I was doing, to remove a few things, install a few things, and run defrag.

As I said, I’m good with stores trying to sell a service, but when they cross into the realm of fantasy and when they try to frighten non-tech savvy buyers, that’s not cool. Are you listening, Best Buy?

Hey Foursquare, I quit

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:34:00 +0000

I feel like such a failure. I tried and tried to like Foursquare; I really did. You know the drill. Log in from your mobile phone and let your friends know all the great places that you hang out. Find new eating spots, bars, and benefit from other users tips and business’s special offers.

That’s the promise, but the reality was quite different.

Why I quit Foursquare:

1. I lead a boring life. I quickly discovered that 95% of the places I go could be lumped into work, home, gas station, grocery store, and church. I seem to spend very little time exploring hip, new Jazz clubs.

2. The application is slower to get a location lock than molasses in Michigan in January. Do you know how uncomfortable it is to get “that look” from your significant other because she doesn’t appreciate standing in the parking lot while waiting for the Foursquare app to decide to cozy up to the GPS chip? Since other GPS dependent programs have no trouble getting a lock, and I’ve experienced it on two different phones, I’m blaming this squarely on Foursquare.

3. Plain and simple, the Blackberry version is awful. I can’t speak to Android or the iPhone versions, but along with half of the smart phone users in the US, I’m stuck on Blackberry. Being stuck on this platform, it doesn’t make me a happy user to be neglected. In more than a year, you guys couldn’t even figure out how to make your product WiFi aware?

4. Duplicates. This one is huge. Every time I go to check in to a major venue or a popular store, I’m confronted with choices on the order of WalMart, Wal-Mart, Wal Mart, WalMart #9337, Rt 9 Wal-Mart, and so on. Until Foursquare gets a handle on duplicates, the system is going to get dirtier and dirtier and less and less useful.

5. Lack of business support. In more than a year of off and on use, I’ve come across exactly one electronic offer for 10% off watch repairs.

If anyone can address these issues, I’d love to hear from you. I truly want to like Foursquare. It seems like it could be a fun diversion and I have no doubt that I’ll give it another try, but for now, no more mayorships for me.

I love my dentist

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 23:20:00 +0000

I have to come clean and admit it—I love my dentist. Well, not Dr. Bookman specifically, although Miryam is certainly a nice person and all. What I love is her practice and its use of technology.

As anyone who knows me in real life or reads this blog is aware, I live, breath, and bleed technology. It’s what I do for a living and what I do for a hobby, when my dear wife is not forcing me to get outside and enjoy some fresh air. The only part of my life heretofore untouched by technology has been dentistry. Even my medical doctor uses wireless tablets instead of a clipboard in the exam room. Only dental care seemed stuck in the mid 1960’s.

Dr. Bookman’s website is not going to win any awards for cutting edge design or art content, but that’s exactly as it should be. I don’t go to my dentist’s site to be amused by a 45 second Flash intro, unlabeled navigation tabs, or loud midi files playing 80’s music. When I go to the site, I’m looking for specific information such as location, appointments, and contact information. Let’s take a look at each of these on her site.

Location/Contact Information. On many sites, dental and others, it’s practically a state secret where the damn place is! The internet is global. A search engine may have brought me to you. Don’t assume that I just know the Beans Bar and Grill is in Los Angeles. Every sub page on Dr. Bookman’s website contains this:

Additionally, the location page has a full sized, live, Google map, complete with a “get directions” form:

Appointments. Every page has a Request Appointment button that invokes a simple form:

Here’s the important part. They actually seem to monitor it! When I submitted it for my first appointment, I had a call back within two minutes and an appointment for the next day. When my wife used the form, she received a call back within the hour.

Other pluses. You can take a virtual tour of the office and see actual photos of the premises. The pictures are crisp, clear, don’t require the download of some obscure plugin, and are of a reasonable size. The main page has a button linking to a decently done, fairly frequently updated, Facebook page. Good use of email reminders for appointments. Oh, did I mention that Dr. Bookman is also a great dentist?

Some suggestions.
1. Put a copyright date on the site and keep the date updated. Not only does that protect your legal rights, it keeps the site looking up to date.

2. Get a new picture for the shot of the outside of the building. The one you have is not flattering and is crooked. Think of it as a tooth. It needs to look nice and be straight.

3. Keep the Facebook page updated and moderated. Fresh content at least twice a week (daily, if possible) and close moderation will keep visitors coming back.

Overall, I give Bookman Dentistry’s website a solid A-.

Breasts and Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:09:00 +0000

Here it is, 2011 and when a woman living in an urban center of the United States needs to have a doctor at a major medical center look at a mammography done at another major medical center in the same urban center, how do you think it’s done?

Yes, you guessed right.

1. The patient makes phone calls.
2. The first center makes a phone call to the “long term medical records storage unit”.
3. Someone at the “long term medical records storage unit” finds a box and then locates the films.
4. A courier is dispatched to drive the films to the first center.
5. A receptionist at the first center looks at the hand written letter from the patient giving permission and then hands the (original and only existing) films to a man claiming to be the patients husband.
6. Patient and her husband drive the films to the second facility and give it to the new doctor.

Really?

I can download over an encrypted connection, an entire Linux distro in about 3 minutes, at home. How can hospitals possibly justify using medieval methods to move medical data? If this was an emergency, would they have dispatched a pigeon with the films tied to its back?

I Want My Google Toolbar

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 19:02:00 +0000

Some things in life puzzle me deeply. Why do we Americans drive on the right side of the road, but the English on the left, who was crazy enough to be the second person to eat a habanero pepper, and why can’t I install Google Toolbar on the Google Chrome browser??

I love Chrome. It’s fast, extensible, elegant, and stable, but why can’t I install the Google Toolbar on it? I have an extensive set of bookmarks set up in Google Toolbar, use the various other features constantly, and am just, plain used to it. The fact that I can’t add it to Google’s flagship browser makes no more sense to me than Ford building a super traction, highly gas efficient, 200,000 mile rated tire that fits every make of car except for Fords.

Anyone from Google listening? Why??

Dear Future Self

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 15:01:00 +0000

Dear Future Self,

Hello Paul. I know you're surprised to hear the future you, but I have to ask you to suspend your disbelief for a few minutes and listen, as I carry vital messages both for you and for the entire world.

1. I realize you’re buried in work, but take the time to document code, changes to systems, and in general, the reasons for just about anything of significance. You’ll thank me/you in six months or six years when you don’t have to spend Christmas eve trying to puzzle out why you picked a string literal for that particular field.

2. Don’t piss him off. Yes, it feels good now and the laughter around the water cooler when you tell the story will be enjoyable, but he’ll nurse a grudge for years. When you least expect it and don’t even remember the initial incident, he’ll sabotage your career and you’ll never know why you didn’t get the new position. Just be nice.

3. Slow down. You’re on the way to work on a Monday. Is it really necessary to go 22 MPH over the speed limit? You’ll avoid a nasty ticket and a big fight with your wife.

4. Make sure your passwords are all secure and complex. I can’t give you the details, but you really won’t enjoy your 15 minutes of fame on YouTube if you don’t.

And last and perhaps most importantly, don’t eat the sushi from 7-11 on March 28th, 2019.

Sincerely,
Paul

I Gave In

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Young) — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 00:39:00 +0000

Since the launch of the iPad, I've laughed at those who ended their communication with a tagline announcing that they were posting from one. Now I have joined the infected. Details to follow.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad