March 2006 - Successforce Blog

Dynamically Required Picklists to Capture...

There have been some really interesting best practice ideas emerging from customer and partner blogs. This week Scott Hemmeter wrote about how you could use dependent picklists to create dynamically required picklists.

The example he used was a field to capture reason lost, a field that often appears on the opportunity page layout. Are you loosing deals based upon company viability, features, price, lack of references? This is valuable information. The challenge that most companies face is that they can’t make it a required field because the rep won’t know the reason for the loss until it’s closed. On the flip side they can’t ensure that it’s filled out consistently without it being a required.

His simple solution makes the reason for a loss required only when the stage is equal to closed lost. To learn how it’s done, visit Perspectives on Salesforce. Scott great work!

Dynamically Required Picklists to Capture...

There have been some really interesting best practice ideas emerging from customer and partner blogs. This week Scott Hemmeter wrote about how you could use dependent picklists to create dynamically required picklists.

The example he used was a field to capture reason lost, a field that often appears on the opportunity page layout. Are you loosing deals based upon company viability, features, price, lack of references? This is valuable information. The challenge that most companies face is that they can’t make it a required field because the rep won’t know the reason for the loss until it’s closed. On the flip side they can’t ensure that it’s filled out consistently without it being a required.

His simple solution makes the reason for a loss required only when the stage is equal to closed lost. To learn how it’s done, visit Perspectives on Salesforce. Scott great work!

AppEx Baby

This is a brilliant piece of guerilla marketing by Vertical Response, a salesforce.com partner who does mass email and direct mail. If you look on the AppExchange their product gets pretty high marks as well.

AppEx Baby

This is a brilliant piece of guerilla marketing by Vertical Response, a salesforce.com partner who does mass email and direct mail. If you look on the AppExchange their product gets pretty high marks as well.

Success Using Salesforce to Recruit Partners

Most companies around the world today in almost every industry are struggling with ways to improve their partner recruitment initiatives. Last week I posted a blog on the topic of using Salesforce.com to recruit, qualify, and ramp up new partners. In the spirit of demonstrating to our customers successes, here are two examples of companies that have recently launched a new partner recruitment process using Salesforce.com. The two compmanies I'd like to highlight are: Phoenix Technologies and Meru Networks; Phx_logo both are leaders in their respective spaces. Both published a partner recruitment web2lead form and implemented a closed loop partner recruitment process. Click here to take a look at the Pheonix Technologies registration process and click here to review the Meru Networks form. Both of these companies are now benefiting from improvements in partner recruitment processing as defined by reduced time to recruit, qualify, and ramp up new partners. If you are using Salesforce.com to recruit new partners, we encourage you let us know so we can share your successes with other customers.

Success Using Salesforce to Recruit Partners

Most companies around the world today in almost every industry are struggling with ways to improve their partner recruitment initiatives. Last week I posted a blog on the topic of using Salesforce.com to recruit, qualify, and ramp up new partners. In the spirit of demonstrating to our customers successes, here are two examples of companies that have recently launched a new partner recruitment process using Salesforce.com. The two compmanies I'd like to highlight are: Phoenix Technologies and Meru Networks; Phx_logo both are leaders in their respective spaces. Both published a partner recruitment web2lead form and implemented a closed loop partner recruitment process. Click here to take a look at the Pheonix Technologies registration process and click here to review the Meru Networks form. Both of these companies are now benefiting from improvements in partner recruitment processing as defined by reduced time to recruit, qualify, and ramp up new partners. If you are using Salesforce.com to recruit new partners, we encourage you let us know so we can share your successes with other customers.

Partner Recruitment Mash Up with Google Maps

One of Salesforce's Partner Management subject matter experts, Todd Janzen, has created a day in the life for a channel manager trying to recruit more partners. (Thanks Todd!) This demonstration is available for you to review. Click here to access the demonstration. Besides the business value of being able to more effectively and efficiently recruit more partners using Salesforce, Todd has creatively enabled a real cool feature. He's created a channel map showing the number of partners that have submitted an application to become a partner. How many of you have wished you could easily create a channel map or white space analysis? He created the channel map using Google Maps. Here is an example of how new partner prospect registrations show up on a Google Map. Visit the Partner Management feature page for full details on Salesforce.com's Partner Management and Partner Portal solution.

Partner Recruitment Mash Up with Google Maps

One of Salesforce's Partner Management subject matter experts, Todd Janzen, has created a day in the life for a channel manager trying to recruit more partners. (Thanks Todd!) This demonstration is available for you to review. Click here to access the demonstration. Besides the business value of being able to more effectively and efficiently recruit more partners using Salesforce, Todd has creatively enabled a real cool feature. He's created a channel map showing the number of partners that have submitted an application to become a partner. How many of you have wished you could easily create a channel map or white space analysis? He created the channel map using Google Maps. Here is an example of how new partner prospect registrations show up on a Google Map. Visit the Partner Management feature page for full details on Salesforce.com's Partner Management and Partner Portal solution.

Creating Fiscal Period Formula Fields in a Custom Fiscal Year Org

If your business’s fiscal year is not based on the Gregorian calendar but follows a different structure consisting of fiscal weeks, periods and quarters deviating from the regular calendar year, you can set up your fiscal year structure using the Custom Fiscal Year (CFY) feature in Salesforce.

For example, your company may run on a “4-4-5” structure and a 13-week quarter may be represented by three periods of four, four, and five weeks rather than by three calendar months. Or may be your fiscal years consist of 13 fiscal periods consisting of 4 weeks each.

As specified on the CFY enablement page in setup as well as in online help and release notes, a side effect of enabling the CFY feature for an organization is that you will not be able to use the fiscal period columns (Fiscal Year, Fiscal Quarter, and Fiscal Period) in opportunity, opportunity with product, opportunity with schedule reports or opportunity list views otherwise available in non-CFY organizations.

Here is the tip: Using the formula field capability in Salesforce, you can create custom fields on the opportunity object that can calculate the fiscal year, fiscal quarter, fiscal period or a combination of these for you. These custom fields can then be exposed in all opportunity reports and list views and you can also filter by values in those fields. If you were using the fiscal period columns in opportunity reports prior to enabling CFY, you can recreate the columns via this formula field approach to retain reporting functionality that you may have been used to.

Creating Fiscal Period Formula Fields in a Custom Fiscal Year Org

If your business’s fiscal year is not based on the Gregorian calendar but follows a different structure consisting of fiscal weeks, periods and quarters deviating from the regular calendar year, you can set up your fiscal year structure using the Custom Fiscal Year (CFY) feature in Salesforce.

For example, your company may run on a “4-4-5” structure and a 13-week quarter may be represented by three periods of four, four, and five weeks rather than by three calendar months. Or may be your fiscal years consist of 13 fiscal periods consisting of 4 weeks each.

As specified on the CFY enablement page in setup as well as in online help and release notes, a side effect of enabling the CFY feature for an organization is that you will not be able to use the fiscal period columns (Fiscal Year, Fiscal Quarter, and Fiscal Period) in opportunity, opportunity with product, opportunity with schedule reports or opportunity list views otherwise available in non-CFY organizations.

Here is the tip: Using the formula field capability in Salesforce, you can create custom fields on the opportunity object that can calculate the fiscal year, fiscal quarter, fiscal period or a combination of these for you. These custom fields can then be exposed in all opportunity reports and list views and you can also filter by values in those fields. If you were using the fiscal period columns in opportunity reports prior to enabling CFY, you can recreate the columns via this formula field approach to retain reporting functionality that you may have been used to.