The Official Salesforce Blog
The Official Salesforce Blog - Reporting and Dashboards
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Custom Report Types
Aug 20, 2007Basis of reporting
Reporting is one of the most-used features in salesforce, but users and admins have seen that either:
- the standard reports are not exactly what they want
- and that when building a report through the wizard, they see either too many or too few fields
In these cases, traditionally, the user has had few options, and the admin has either had to use the Excel Add-in, or use a partner solution.
Custom Report Types
Custom Report Types allow a user with "view setup" and the permission in their profile to create custom report types to build the flow through the report wizard. You might want to give this permission to users with advanced reporting requirements, because you don't need to be an administrator to create these CRTs (Custom Report Types).
The user chooses the CRT in the report wizard, just as they choose the report type today. In previous release for example, they could choose the "Accounts and Contacts" report type category:
The user has a list of the report types that are based on the Account and the Contact objects. With CRTs, when using the report wizard, the user has access to all the standard report types, as well as any new CRTs that are published.
Building a Custom Report Type
There are two general categories of CRTs:
- Those similar to existing report types, just with different fields (for instance, to add in "opportunity owner role", or to remove all the unused fields)
- New Report Types
In the first case, you can copy the objects used in the standard report, and work with the user requesting the report type to choose the extra fields. Fields accessible via records which are related through a lookup relationship (see the blog post "First Custom Report Type" for a guide on how to do that)
In the second case, you should look at:
- What object is the most important, and the object from which records should be returned under any circumstances. Also, the scope choices "e.g. My, My team, All" are on this object.
- Which other objects are related lists of this one do you want to report on
- which fields from objects related via lookup to those chosen for the 2 reasons above you want to include.
The ways you can make reporting better for your users
- CRT will allow you to make a simpler report wizard experience for users that only care about a few specific fields
- If you want to report on fields that are not in the standard report types but related to the objects, CRT will let you create a report type including fields from lookups
- CRT creation wizard includes fileds that are only present currently in the API
- If you want to report on more than 2 related custom objects, you can create a hierarchy of 4 using CRT.
Example - reducing fields:
Here, I've built a CRT based on Accounts and Contacts. I've removed all the address fields, because my telesales people only need phone numbers and states.
We base the report type on Accounts.
Then choose to relate accounts to contacts for the results we'll want.
Here, I've used the field layout on the Custom Report Type to remove many of the fields:
And here's the result in the report wizard - a much simpler experience for these users.The same fields, in the same sections will be available in the filtering, and the date fields here will be used in the date filters in resulting reports.
More information is available in the help, or in articles on the Analytics blog - blogs.salesforce.com/analytics
Contributed by Thomas Tobin
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Peer Performance Dashboard
Nov 21, 2006Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to dust off some old posts that many Salesforce customers might have missed the first time around. This one was originally posted in January 2005 but I think it's every bit as relevant today...
At salesforce.com we have a two tiered sales team, one which qualifies leads and the other which closes business. One challenge with this model is finding a good metric to compensate the inside sales team or the team that qualifies the lead.
In this dashboard you can se that we track three numbers. The number of converted leads which reach 20% provides a leading indicator to make sure the rep is on track and building enough pipeline. The next is the number of closed deals which creates incentives to work all leads and do what they can to build momentum. And finally, the amount of closed revenue which makes sure they work the big leads more aggressively than the small leads.
The second goal of this dashboard is to help the sales manager make apples to apples comparisions. Each rep takes time to get up to speed yet most of the reports that are run don’t take that into account. For each incoming class of reps we have created a peer performance dashboard. This gives me some sense of how long it takes for reps to ramp and it shows which reps are most deserving of being promoted.
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AppExchange Apps to Drive Sales Performance
Aug 28, 2006Darren blogs on the Salesforce Analytics blog about 2 new apps that "are designed to help improve sales productivity and performance and (of course) both use dashboards and reports."
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Service and Support Dashboard on the AppExchange
Jun 14, 2006
I noticed
that there was a pretty good Service and Support dashboard posted on the
AppExchange. It tracks things like service quality, customers and channels, and
agent productivity. It’s a great starting point for building your own
dashboards. You can download it for free from the AppExchange and the whole
installation process takes less than two minutes. Once you have it set up in
your org, you can drill down into the reports, see how they were set up, and
tweak them to fit the needs of your business. I’d love to see more of these dashboards for things like Sales, Marketing, and Competitive Intelligence. Does anyone have a good dashboard they’d like to share? Publish it on the AppExchange and we'll write it up.
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Quick Win to Reduce Channel Conflict
May 3, 2006Deal registration is a PRM (partner relationship management) strategy used to reward partners for early registration of approved deals. There are many ways to make this a reality using Salesforce.com. One cost effective way is to use web 2 lead. This feature offers an extensible way to capture partner deal registrations and extend your enterprise to your partners.
Here is a link to a customer that is benefiting from a salesforce driven deal registration program: Click here for F5 Networks Web 2 Lead Deal Registration Form. You can see the types of questions this company requires its partners to answer in order to have
their deal registrations approved. Using custom fields, page layouts, record types, web 2 lead, workflow, assignment rules, and reports/dashboards, this company is able to reduce channel conflict, increase channel revenues, and improve partner loyalty. Here is a sample dashboard showing the result of partner deal registrations. This dashboard demonstrates the benefits of having an integrated SFA and PRM system. If you're interested in some guidance or support to set up your own deal registration program feel free to contact product management at Salesforce. -
Partner Visibility App Launched by Sigmatrak
Feb 21, 2006Point of Sale (POS) data is the holy grail of channel management. Sigmatrak has successfully solved this age old mystery with their B2B messaging appliance. Their equipment improves the accuracy and consistency of data that is passed between trading partners. Now, the data that is processed, is inte
grated with Salesforce and is mapped to partner and customer accounts. Using Sigmatrak and Salesforce.com together, empowers sales and channel executives to know exactly what their partners are selling and who they are selling to. Channel sales activity is analyzed, inventory levels are tracked, and rebate claims are reconciled. Click here to take a test drive or install this AppExchange application. I really like the service monitor feature which demonstrates, on a Google Map, the locations of the messaging appliance within a partner community. It really brings the idea of a channel coverage map to life. Imagine having this powerful data and appliance inside your Salesforce.com system? -
Reporting Success Benchmark
Oct 26, 2005
In October we introduced a new success benchmark around custom reports. To get the most out of salesforce.com it’s vital that your reps have the confidence to build their own reports and tweak them over time. To train your reps we recommend that you require them to start with three simple reports.
- Build a list of contacts and accounts using salesforce.com
- Set up a report to display your tasks and completed activities
- Create a customized report listing the opportunities in your pipeline
As a manager or salesforce.com administrator it’s worth taking 20 minutes out of your team meeting to go through this exercise step-by-step and answer any questions they might have. Once they’ve set up a report, have them click “save as.” Explain that they can save reports to public folders which everyone can see or private folders which only they have access to. For the purposes of this exercise have them add it to “My Personal Custom Reports Folder.”
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Create Groupings Using Custom Formula Fields
Jun 15, 2005The Summer ’05 release has already started to change the way I analyze data in salesforce.com, bringing forward trends that were once hard to distinguish.
The first formula I’ve started using is a simple average calculation. For example, you might want to divide the number of employees by the number of users to calculate your penetration in an account.
{!Number_Users} / {!Number_Employees}
Note that that you'll have to substitute your custom fields when building this formula but it shows you the basic design pattern.
This calculation is very similar to the way analysts do a Price/Earnings ratio so that they can get an apples to apples comparison.
I’ve also found that I’m using custom formula fields helps with categorization. For example, on the account record you might have the number of employees but for reporting purposes you want to create buckets. To do so you can create a nested if statement that looks something like this.
IF({!Employees} = 0, "",
IF({!Employees} <50, "Tier 1",
IF({!Employees} <= 200, "Tier 2",
IF({!Employees} <=500, "Tier 3",
IF( {!Employees} <= 1,000, "Tier 4", "Tier 5")))))
With these two data points you can create a report to measure penetration at different tiers. I’ve left the stage, summary fields, and tier thresholds blank but it should be enough to spark some ideas for your organization.
To learn more about how custom formula fields work, I highly recommend Getting Started with Custom Formula Fields presentation and the Custom Formula Field Blog.
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Numbering Picklist Values
Apr 29, 2005This might be stating the obvious, but a good best practice is to number status values so that they are easier to scan and appear in order on your reports.
For example, the lead status field might read;
- Open
- Working
- Qualified
- Archived
You can apply the same logic to campaigns, opportunities, and other entities.
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Trending Reports
Feb 18, 2005Here is a great way to chart performance month over month. This is ideal for tracking closed business throughout the month and comparing your progress against previous months. The chart will plot cumulative totals each day as the month progresses and show you some very insightful trends. Give it a try. Create a custom, opportunity, matrix report. (Leads, Cases etc can also be tracked)
At the select grouping step, follow these instructions. Specify row headings
Close Date, Ascending, Day in Month
and then by
Close Month, Ascending, Month
Do not specify any column headings.
Proceed to Select Criteria and set the appropriate time (FQ, Month, etc) and opportunity parameters (any, closed won etc).Proceed to Select Chart Type and select Line - Grouped Cumulative.
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Competitive Intelligence Dashboard
Feb 9, 2005
In the attached screenshot you’ll see an example of how you might use salesforce.com to track your competitors. These dashboards are instrumental for spotting trends in the marketplace, allocating resources, and responding to competitive pressure.
The first column in our sample dashboard displays wins and losses by competitor. Obviously the goal is to have greater weighting in blue than red across your primary competitors. Not pictured here, but other good dashboard might be a cumulative line graph showing losses or wins over the past 12 months against each of your competitors. While these numbers can often be skewed by a big deal, they can sometimes show who’s gaining on who.
The table below displays the top competitive wins / losses by competitor. If you want to take this step further you might want to create another chart to display reason for loss.
The next two columns in the dashboard are used to view pipeline participation by each of the competitor as well as the pipeline value in which you are ahead, behind, and even with your competition. Once again, you might also add the top deals where you are ahead or behind a specific competitor. -
Customer Dashboard Gallery
Feb 3, 2005Here is a link to the customer dashboard gallery we did last May. There are some great dashboard ideas you might revisit.
Customer Dashboard Gallery
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Reporting
Jan 28, 2005 -
Data Quality Dashboard
Jan 27, 2005
One
critical element of managing a team is watch over workload and data quality. The first of the three dashboards pictured tracks open leads. We have committed ourselves to a 24 hour response time so I know that if any rep has more than 50 open leads, we aren’t following up as fast as we should be. To make sure this is more than an idle threat, we spell it out at the top of the dashboard, “>50 Leads = Lead Router Turned Off.” Since this is their lifeblood, you can bet that they pay attention to it.
The second dashboard depicts open tasks. It’s very easy for reps to get in the habit of setting tasks and never closing them out. This hurts collaboration in a significant way because when a task list becomes unrulely it’s very likely a rep will miss a new task assigned to them. It also means that someone at some point in time is going to have to delete the task for them. In any event, that’s why we decided to crack down and put in place a policy where in there should never be more than 100 overdue task.
The last dashboard is an example of an exception report. When a field isn’t filled out or an account is assigned to the wrong person, you can put their name up on the wall of shame.
All three of these elements are visible to the reps and gone over inside the application during team meetings to reinforce the desired behavior.
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Team Challenge
Jan 27, 2005
When I was working with our inside sales team it quickly became apparent that there was a big gap between the top of the class and the bottom. With a large group of reps to manage I realized that the fast way to turn things around was through competition, peer pressure, and team mentoring.
I paired up two senior reps who were consistently hitting their number with one junior person who was struggling. I then created a dashboard with all six teams and put in place a small spiff for the two teams who finished on top. With five sales days left in the month, all of the junior reps have made dramatic improvement. We’ll give it a try again next month and see if we continue to see progress.
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Snag-it and Dashboards
Jan 27, 2005
There is a great screen capture tool called Snag-It which I would recommend to just about anyone. The closest thing I can equate it to is have a good pair of scissors at your desk. As a sales manager, one way I use snag-it is to create quick snapshots of a dashboard element that I want to bring attention to. I then do a quick annotation to emphasis what I’m seeing, and then I send it out to the team.
For example, “Hey guys take a look, Conor hit his number today. Congratulations! Carly, Anish, Jen, Jared, and Dana are inching closer. Who will be next?”
As a manager this is a great way to drive adoption because the reps realize that you are watching dashboards intensely and rewarding behavior accordingly.
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