Ugh. do I have to use Salesforce.com..?

As I get ready to head out to Dreamforce this week where I will brave the crowds, transportation headaches and silly expensive hotel rooms, I'm reminded that after all this pomp and circumstance, the Salesforce.com experience is still, well, very Meh. I should know, I'm supposed to use it every day. It's functional and it generally works, but presumably the primary reason my company bought it is because it was cheaper than Oracle and SAP and less expensive to deploy. I'm sure there are thousands of other companies who will trek all the way to San Francisco this week who feel the same way. Don't get me wrong, Salesforce.com has smartly captivated the CRM market with hosted software for the masses that seems to be good enough.

Yet with all this energy and excitement, curiously none of my customers have realized the full promise of Salesforce. Yes, many have large deployments, they've invested millions in the service while lining the pockets of well-intentioned integration partners and they do have some adoption, but I can't say that any of them are thrilled with the results. After all, though, everyone needs a CRM system and Salesforce is a solid option.

But, when it comes to the last mile of delivery to the tired, toiling sales rep, there are few advocates of Salesforce in the Field. Web adoption among the most critical cogs in the sales wheel - the field personnel, is often low and mobile access through Salesforce1 is usually worse.

There are bunch of reasons for this:

1. Native analysis tools are, well, uh. Salesforce does a terrific job of capturing data as an operational CRM system of record, but from an analysis perspective the native tools are permissible at best. I've been warned not to get lost in "scroll hell" as a reference to the clunky UI (and yes, we have upgraded to Lightning...).
2. The history is missing... Historical information isn't captured for longitudinal analysis over many historical time periods. TY v LY, Q/Q is great, but what if I need more than that?
3. Need that Finance and HR data in your report? It's difficult to get all of the data needed for holistic business insight from other corporate systems outside the CRM into Salesforce.com and the cost often precludes companies from going down that route.

Yeah, you could try to fix these items with thoughtful strategies conceived by more expensive Consultants, but the biggest reason your Salespeople aren't using Salesforce is because:

...there is no perceived value-added return for the investment of their time in entering data into Salesforce.com.

No elaborate carrot or stick scheme can truly solve this problem. So, the question is...what have astute Sales Operations practitioners done to fix this?

• They recognize the need for a reciprocal "give/get" relationship between active usage of the system and realized value in the hands of the salesperson by prescriptively serving-up targeted insight (derived from the inputted data by the salesperson) at the point of customer interaction.
• They understand that Salesforce is really just another data source for more comprehensive analysis objectives that can only be met by combining data from multiple systems within and outside of Salesforce.com.
• They appreciate the value of presenting salespeople with graphically-rich, workflow-driven Web and Mobile applications that behave as customized, bespoke apps without a single line of custom code.
• They offer the ability to interface with other underlying corporate systems through a single user experience while serving as a platform for capturing Task/Opportunity/Notes/etc. information and seamlessly synchronizing it back into Salesforce.

Salespeople will consider using the the system if it is intuitively designed, performs and is tailored to their needs. They will only embrace it if brings value back to them.

Come grab us at #Dreamforce this week at Booth #445 and see how Global Asset Manager, Alliance Bernstein (AB) maximizes their investment in Salesforce.com via SIMON on Wed 9/26 @ 10:30 at the Hilton Union Square - Plaza A.

AB's SIMON dynamically combines content from Salesforce.com and other corporate data sources to deliver a unified mobile experience that drives efficient territory management and sales productivity at the point of Financial Advisor interaction.

Don't miss the AB session! Click to add it to your Agenda Builder today: HERE!

See you all in SF!