Embedded Software Primer
Saas Sales Analytics for Salesforce
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is disrupting traditional approaches to business analytics. The long deployment cycles, high costs, complicated upgrade processes and IT infrastructure required of traditional on-premise business intelligence solutions are no longer acceptable in the era of on demand. Instead a new breed of analytic solutions has emerged that are simple to set-up and simple to use and deliver immediate business value.
The difficulty for salesforce.com customers is in knowing where to start. With well over 50 analytic applications to choose from on the Force.com AppExchange and native transactional reporting features constantly improving in the CRM application itself, it can sometime seem like the status quo of “Excel Hell” is the easiest and safest choice.
Unless you’re happy managing and maintaining those unwieldy spreadsheets, pivot tables, disconnected Access databases, and numbers that often don’t even add up, here is primer to help you move from sales force automation to salesforce.com acceleration with on-demand business analytics:
Understand Your Sales Analytics Requirements
If you’re a Salesforce administrator, you already know how important it is to become proficient with the built-in reporting and dashboard capabilities of the application. If you’re not already up to speed, be sure to sign up for a training course, watch a Dreamforce presentation on the success.salesforce.com community website, and try downloading a few of the free dashboard applications on the AppExchange. (Adoption Dashboards, for example, are a great introduction and jumpstart to salesforce.com dashboards and they’ll also get you familiar with the process of installing applications on the AppExchange.)
But this is only the beginning. Inevitably with Salesforce, as is typical of transactional reporting, you’re always 4 or 5 reports away from answering the question you really want to answer. To understand your Sales Analytics requirements, you need to consider the following:
• What information do sales managers, the CFO and the CEO need today to be successful? (Having a clear understanding of their objectives and success metrics is critical. How many of these questions can you answer today?)
• What business questions are the most difficult to answer today? Who is asking these questions? When and why?
• Would people prefer to answer their own business questions or are they content relying upon the sales operations, business analysts, and/or IT function for information?
• How do managers prefer to access and analyze business information–dynamic dashboards, spreadsheets, pdf, PowerPoint, email, mobile device, etc.?
• What other sources of information do people need to access and analyze in order to achieve sales success? (Note that critical sales data is often locked in financial systems – orders, bookings, billing information; or lives outside of the CRM system in spreadsheets–commissions, quotas, forecasts .)
Know Your AppExchange Analytics Options
In their paper, Sales Management 2.0: Metrics, Not Hunches, Barry Trailer and Jim Dickie from CSO Insights describe the key sales analytics criteria this way:
“You can decide whether you need to pull and analyze data from multiple data sources (e.g., accounting, inventory, sales, etc.) or just one (CRM). Solutions are available either way; what you want is an application that will allow you to defi ne business rules, historic trends and exception reporting with a minimum of administrative/set up effort.”
Here’s an overview of some of the AppExchange choices available to salesforce.com customers and their pros and cons:
Production Reporting
These are tools designed for advanced report developers to create virtually any report on transactional data. Also known as “enterprise reporting”, these tools typically provide built-in scheduling of pre-authored, highly formatted, “pixel perfect” reports that may include prebuilt prompts or filters to make them seem interactive. For salesforce.com customers these tools, can create virtually any join, but the data size must be small. Attempting to replicate all of your transactional data in a desktop reporting tool in order to get the queries you need will not work. If people want to be able to ask spontaneous, iterative, or trend-based questions of their business data, these tools are not a good fit. If you have someone in house who understands SQL (and SOQL), and you just need a couple of static reports delivered, start here. Just be sure to find out about customization, support, and advanced report-writing costs up front and keep an eye on the enhancements coming in the native salesforce.com transactional reporting features. Also keep in mind what Neil Raden noted in his salesforce.com paper called, Accelerating Analytics Success with On Demand:
“Porting a desktop application by removing its user interface and replacing it with a Web front-end masks the fact that its internal operations have not been migrated to an on-demand, multi-tenant architecture. The result is likely to perform poorly, to require time-consuming labor for upgrades and patches, and quite possibly to be discontinued when the vendor releases its “real” on-demand product at some point in the future, likely with no satisfactory conversion path.”
Native Dashboard Applications
There are many interactive, real-time charting and Adobe Flex-based analytic dashboard components on the AppExchange today. Some are easier to set up and use than others. Most are eye catching. The native dashboard applications often impress executives and non-analyst roles in the company, but because they are built on the underlying transactional Force.com platform, they typically do little for the people struggling with disparate Excel spreadsheets and historical reporting and analysis requirements. Keep in mind that a nice-looking, mashed-up dashboard widget may have “demo sizzle” and may even make sense for your business process, but all dashboard-focused applications on the AppExchange are not alike. Be sure to find out about the vendor’s vision to go beyond operational or embedded business analytics for one transactional system in order to determine if they’ll be able to meet both your short-term tactical and long-term strategic on-demand information access and analysis requirements.
As stated earlier, definitely download the relevant free native AppExchange dashboard applications to jumpstart your sales analytics initiatives and to get comfortable with the AppExchange experience.
True Analytic Applications
Also known as online analytical processing (OLAP), it’s important to look for analytic applications that are built on a separate data platform designed from the ground up with user interactivity and information analysis in mind. They will allow you to monitor and track historical trends and get answers to ad hoc questions, not just static reports. These applications must be simple to set up and simple to use. They should also be built on an underlying on-demand business intelligence platform that takes care of the “heavy lifting” by integrating, cleansing, and aggregating data from multiple sources into a single reporting and analysis interface.
But beware of tools approaches. Instead look for true applications that deliver prebuilt best-practices and are designed for specific industries and roles. When Henry Morris coined the term “analytic application” over 10 years ago, he defined three key criteria as being essential:
1) Process support
2) Separation of function, and
3) Time-oriented, integrated data from multiple sources
Also be sure to find out about the trial process and how easy it is to get up and running with an on-demand analytic application on your company’s data.
Whatever You Do, Don’t Wait for Sales Analytics!
Putting off sales analytics is like putting off winning. But for many organizations, getting started can be equated to getting fit and joining a gym. You know you need to do it, but there always seems to be a good excuse not to. In order to get more out of your CRM investment and drive sales performance with data, not opinions, here are a few suggestions to help make sales analytics a top business priority for your company:
• Make analytics a business initiative. Determine the metrics that matter and build a plan. Executive sponsorship is critical to analytics success.
• Think big, but start small. Starting in one department or even one region will allow you to get some quick wins and you’ll be amazed at how fast word of your success travels. Have a vision to go beyond one area of the business, but don’t let a broader vision slow you down. The most important thing is to get started.
• Make it about business process. Sales analytics and the lead-to-cash cycle is a great place to start. And given that this is an analytics initiative, be sure to set clear goals and measure your success against those goals at every step along the way.
In difficult economic times, more and more companies are relying on sales analytics to give them the competitive edge and win. Make sure you’re one of them. No more excuses. No more surprises.
About the Author
SEO from India
13TH STREET „Last Call – The first interactive Movie (Software by Powerflasher)
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