Marketing Campaign Planning

Campaign Planning for our two clients was very similar to the planning activities of many other traditional B2B and B2C organizations.  Their goals included:

-          Identifying leads and contacts (campaign members) based on specific demographic information

-          Specifying and setting up the activity plan to engage campaign members

-          Defining specific campaign goals and determining the metrics to track the campaign successes

Users can use the Salesforce.com marketing campaign object to search contacts and leads based on up to 5 filter criteria and mass add new campaign members based on the results.  The key here is that the standard contact and lead objects in Salesforce.com are configured to include the additional demographic information if users have entered the needed data into the system.

Additionally, the campaign object within Salesforce.com can be configured the same as every other object in the system, so different quantitative and qualitative campaign goals (outside of the standard ROI figure) can be set from within the campaign.  (Note that configuring the campaign object requires a system administrator to make the changes.)

Marketing Campaign Execution

The initial stages of campaign execution for our two clients are very similar to the traditional B2B and B2C campaign models.  Our clients contact the campaign members with an offering and then begin to track the response that they receive…which is where the differences begin.

In many circumstances once our clients have received a response from a campaign member the final outcome is a phone call or email.  Within Salesforce.com this is tracked as an activity, so our clients may log the activity against a user and campaign, update the campaign member status and stop tracking additional activities from within the campaign.

For example, one of our clients may notify a large group of individuals that updated pamphlets are available and to respond via e-mail if the campaign member would like the additional collateral.  Once a member has responded the additional material is sent, and no additional follow-up activities are necessary.

Another difference is that when an opportunity is created there is no financial outcome from the opportunity – in fact, in the case of our clients the opportunity represents a project with stages rather than a sales cycle.  The marketing campaign ROI won’t be tracked by the opportunity, but reports can be quickly created to compare Salesforce.com marketing campaigns to determine success.

Advanced Salesforce.com Campaign Execution

Campaign Hierarchies – One client had a need where following an initial campaign a secondary email blast would be sent out after a specified duration of time.  Within Salesforce.com this organization could setup a child campaign and add campaign members that had responded to the initial email blast and a separate child campaign to follow-up with the non-responders.

With this type of hierarchy our client could quickly report on response rates from initial non-responders and responders, and track separate activities between the two.

Workflow – Another advanced feature of the Salesforce.com campaign functionality is the workflow.  During a discussion with one of our clients there was a need to have an activity assigned to a Salesforce.com user depending on a campaign member’s affiliation once a member had responded.  With the marketing campaign object in Salesforce.com this is quickly handled by setting up a workflow to trigger when the status of a campaign member is changed to “responded”.

Summary

After speaking with our clients we believe that even though not every organization using Salesforce.com has a traditional B2B or B2C business model the marketing campaign functions in Salesforce.com add a significant amount of value:

• Ability to track campaign response rates and corresponding activities to determine what is and is not working
• Automated workflow to assign activities and tasks as campaign members respond
• Simple to select campaign members based on specific filter criteria

The bottom line is that campaigns don’t necessarily need to have a dollar-value associated or calculated in order to determine ROI.  Within Salesforce.com the ability exists to configure the campaign object to hide the financial ROI fields and add custom fields to track ROI and campaign success based on each organizations’ individual needs.

Salesforce.com Sales Cloud

For the most part we were a little disappointed by the Sales Cloud upgrades as part of the Spring ’12 Release.  There wasn’t any new, ground breaking functionality and what was included in the release was expected.

We believe that the important new functions were as follows:

• Social Contacts – Expanded the functionality to the Account and Lead objects, and added integration with YouTube and Klout.
• Dashboard Filters – The number of filters was increased from 1 per dashboard to 3 per dashboard.  (Allows users to slice data in multiple dimensions)
• Outlook Sync – New functionality was added for the Salesforce.com to Outlook Sync so it’s easier to prevent private meetings and contacts from being synced in Salesforce.com.
• Cases – Salesforce.com users can now create cases directly from their e-mail by forwarding information into the system
• Mobile – An Android Mobile app for tablets will be included in the Spring ’12 release which provides users a completely customizable interface for the Android Tablet.

Chatter

Like the Sales Cloud there were no major changes to Chatter – however, it  seems like the focus here was increasing usability and system intelligence.  Below are the key changes to Chatter:

• Bookmarks – Users can now tag (bookmark) posts and files so they can quickly revisit information again in the future.
• Chatter Favorites – Searches that are used frequently will be able to be saved and used again for future searches.
• Smart Search – The Chatter search functionality was expanded to add a new level of intelligence.  Results for the search will take into account the past searches that a user has completed, the objects and information they typically review and the popularity of Chatter posts.
• Chatter Recommendations – Files and documents will be recommended to users based on the popularity within Chatter, as well as the information the user has reviewed in the past.
• Chatter for Android – A Chatter App for the Android Tablet will be released.

The biggest piece of functionality that will be released as part of Chatter is the Chatter Messenger Pilot, which we discussed in our Winter ’12 post.  This new functionality will provide users with a way to chat in real time via an instant messenger within Chatter.  For organizations looking to increase collaboration within their Sales Organizations (but outside of the firewall) this provides a great option and we would entice our clients that could benefit from the chat functionality to have it turned on within their orgs.

Force.com

Salesforce.com seemed to make some nice changes and upgrades to the Force.com Platform for developers (and admins).  Some of the most noticeable changes included:

• System Overboard Dashboard for administrators to easily monitor system metrics (i.e. licenses, usage, storage, etc.)
• A new Developer Console (…more to come later on this)

Additionally, “Drag and Drop” seemed to be a new focus for Salesforce.com.  As part of the Spring ’12 release a new drag and drop schema builder was added, and new drag and drop tools for SiteForce will be released.

Our Summary

As we mentioned earlier we were underwhelmed with this release.  Salesforce.com seemed to focus heavily on making some small changes that help increase usability, but didn’t have any major changes that would make anyone stand up and cheer.

In fact, some questions lingered after we reviewed the release notes:

1. Where is Salesforce Touch? We assumed that this would be released officially with the Spring ’12 Release, but it definitely was not included, and the Touch website still doesn’t have a date.  Also, the release of Android based solutions seems to be a temporary solution for the lack of rolling out Touch.  We are curious if this may suggest that Salesforce.com is struggling with the release of Touch?
2. Analytics Edition?  A new product (license) is being introduced for the Analytics Edition.  This license (which was introduced at Dreamforce 2011) will give organizations a new Business Intelligence tool with advanced reporting functions.
3. Chatter External Limitations – As part of the release Salesforce.com announced that beginning in September 2012 the Chatter External Licenses will be limited (currently unlimited).  Organizations will be able to maintain the number of licenses that they have used, but limitations will be set.  We are curious what the driving change was here.

We hope that the big release of Touch for Salesforce.com will be shortly after the Spring ’12 Release and give users the extra boost of new tools for sales users.

Salesforce.com Phased Deployment

Salesforce.com lends itself well to implementations that are deployed in phases and create small wins for an organization instead of the implement everything at once.  We have found that many of our clients prefer this phased implementation approach as they are able to quickly realize benefits from the system and can add sophistication over time.

With the user license model, our clients are able to purchase enough licenses to cover the initial core users of the CRM system and add additional users when it is necessary (and when new functionality is added).

With an ELA agreement a company may consider extending the implementation in order to get everyone on the system at once in order to help justify the large purchase.  We do not recommend this approach for Salesforce.com where success is normally built over time and small-wins are the norm.

Product Needs
Many companies that need additional Salesfroce.com licenses don’t always need all of the functionality that is included in the Sales Cloud.  Some additional use cases have included:

• Custom apps built on the Force.com platform – organizations tend to scale their org with new applications that are used by cross-functional teams but don’t necessarily require access to the core SFA objects (i.e. contract management, project/team management, etc.)
• Collaboration – users that need to collaborate in Salesforce.com don’t necessarily need SFA.  They just need to be able to discuss with other people using Salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com provides a license model that allows an organization to purchase core licenses for the Sales Cloud and then purchase (and scale) additional Platform only licenses.  We recommend taking the time to analyze what the true needs are of Salesforce.com users to make sure that the Sales Cloud licenses are not being over purchased for users that only need access to the Platform.  Additionally, Chatter licenses can give users the ability to collaborate at either no-cost or a very minimal cost.

The Cloud Model

Unlike many of the traditional ELAs that sales reps push we find Salesforce.com’s (preferred) buy as you go model to be a major benefit of selecting the CRM provider.  In summary, some of the key benefits of the Salesforce.com model include:

1. Multiple license types are available to help organizations ensure that they don’t over buy functionality that isn’t necessarily needed
2. The ability to add/remove user licenses when needed
3. A straightforward process for negotiating licenses costs because ELA are not typical in the cloud – that is, the ranges of number of licenses that are needed to get a larger discount have a minimal number of breaking points
4. Free Chatter licenses that can be implemented to let users slowly grow accustomed to the collaboration environment before diving in with paid licenses

We also like the idea that with the Salesforce.com license model (and minimal capital investment) companies are not “all in” on their CRM investment.  This means that there is constant pressure on Salesforce.com to keep their customers happy and continue investing in their product to ensure that their users don’t begin leaving for other CRM solutions.

As the trend towards SaaS and cloud based solutions continues to move upward we believe that many software companies will begin to move towards more of a subscription-based license structure instead of ELAs.

• Authentication between Liferay, Alfresco and Adobe Connect
• Communication between Alfresco and Liferay
• Usage of the Liferay SDK
• OpenSearch Integration

Authentication between Liferay and Alfresco

Authentication between Liferay and Adobe Connect

Communication between Liferay Portlets and Alfresco Webscripts

Most of the Liferay portlets created for myInfinitec required communication with Alfresco Web Scripts. Within the portlets, calls were made to the Alfresco Web Scripts and the response templates generated by Alfresco were rendered directly into the views of the Liferay portlets. This allowed us to move and rearrange content within a Liferay page using its dynamic page authoring tools. This is one of the benefits of using a portal framework, the modular approach to arrange content on a page (similar to Sharepoint or .NET Web Parts).

Usage of the Liferay SDK
As an open source portal platform, Liferay does provides a very useful SDK that allows customizations of your portal as little or as much as needed. The SDK provides simple methods to build and deploy portlets, themes, hooks (used to override basic portal functionality), an extension environment (used to override complex portal functionality), among other things. Most of these items can be hot deployed, which means no restart of the web application server is required. While the documentation around the SDK is sometimes lacking, the Liferay wikis and forums are extensive if one is willing to take the time to search.

OpenSearch Integration

The myInfinitec portal provides a large number of resources to teachers, so the ability to search content in both Liferay and Alfresco was extremely important. Alfresco and Liferay both use the OpenSearch format for exposing content to other systems so the integration was rather straightforward. A search portlet was added to the Liferay portal that was aimed at the Alfresco OpenSearch endpoint. Any time a user uses the search function, both Liferay and Alfresco will report their results and display them to the user.

Documentum D2 – Some Positive Thoughts

Currently the complete webinar recording is available for download here and there have been additional live web presentations announced as well.

The main theme of the webcast was “configuration not code” and the “new face of Documentum”.  Documentum D2 has been built with the idea of being able to update  many common actions through a configuration screen.  In some cases, these are standard Documentum functions (attributes) in other cases they are specific only to D2 (lifecyle and PDF manipulation are different for D2 then for normal Documentum).  One really nice point, configuration changes can be made without an application restart – something that is not supported in most of the other Documentum tools.

Overall the interface is very robust and, from an initial review, supports most of the functions users are used to from Webtop or other robust authoring interfaces from Documentum.  We particularly liked the import functionality where, upon import of a document, the user was prompted for the configured attributes and the document was auto-named and filed in the correct folder/subfolder based on those attributes.

The interface appeared to function fairly quickly and, for those authors used to internet explorer, had a somewhat consistent look and feel.

Documentum D2 – Some concerns

We saw one slide from Momentum Berlin that suggested that Documentum D2 would replace eRoom and CenterStage.  From our review, it is difficult to see D2 as a collaboration platform rather than a replacement for Webtop.  Our major concerns focus on what we don’t know about D2.  These include:

• Where has it been successful? – the webcast mentions a company that has 800+ configurations but doesn’t mention the company name.  We are used to Documentum presenting the logo slide with all the folks that have successfully implemented the solution.  Without the logo slide at all, it leaves us wondering just how many clients have deployed it successfully.  In looking at the website , we only saw minor industry examples and, from discussions with others, have a strong feeling that D2 has only been successful in Europe.  Maybe future webinars could have more relevant client case studies.
• Pricing – From all initial reviews, this would appear to be a new product with a D2 Premium available for power users as well as a D2 +Pack add-on utility for Office and PDF Documents.  For clients that have bought Webtop, would this be another purchase?  Our initial thoughts are pricing will be something like the older Webtop price but with no upgrade available.  We would think that, given a new purchase price along with similar functionality, existing webtop users would not consider D2 as a replacement.
• Who maintains it and supports it? – Without knowing the licensing agreement, did the engineers that developed the solution stay involved when the solution needs to be enhanced?  For the product to be adequately maintained and enhanced, we would like to see the resource pool for engineering.
• Internet Explorer Only – from the D2 website , the application is only supported on Internet Explorer.  With so many of our clients looking for support for other browsers and Mac, we would like to know the plans for other browser and Operating System support.
• Consumer Search -  While the host of the webcast talks about “most people just want to search and retrieve”, D2 is clearly an authoring platform just like Webtop.  Also, the search interface has a very similar look and feel to “building a search” just like Webtop.  We have talked about this multiple times – a consumer doesn’t want and typically shouldn’t be exposed to all the complexity of an authoring tool.  See our whitepaper for additional detail on a consumer interface as well as thoughts on Mobile, what we think is the future of consumer based search.
• Separate lifecycle engine – since D2 utilizes a lifecycle engine outside the normal Documentum repository, we have concerns about data integrity as well as the configuration-only approach.  If a document is accessed from Webtop or another client tool (checkout/in, promote/demote, etc) triggering  a lifecycle action or TBO code to run, there could be data integrity issues between those actions and the D6 lifecycle.  Also, many of our clients rely heavily on Lifecycle code, especially in approval workflows.  It’s tough to imagine that the lifecycle actions that our clients request can be achieved only through configurations in D2.
• Robust versus simple – There is a big difference between robust and simple.  D2 is definitely robust but our concerns with these types of complex interfaces is it leaves users with the ability to easily get confused or make a mistake, both items that lead to dissatisfaction with Documentum systems.  Most of our customizations in Webtop have always been to remove functions to prevent mistakes.
• Never Code Concerns – Lastly, the push by Documentum to “never code” might be appealing in a sales process but, as just mentioned, some code can simplify common functions and prevent user mistakes.  For example, we typically see the need to simplify and prevent mistakes during the approval process as many tasks are not simply an “Approve” or “Reject”.  Things like multi-doc approval, packet approval, task delegation, and reassignment are specific for the business process and difficult to configure given different roles.  Small amounts of code are helpful here and we saw no way to even add small amounts to D2.  We haven’t seen many clients be successful with a “never code” approach.

D2 Unknowns

For some items, it was hard to label these as concerns but rather unknowns.  These included:

• What are the infrastructure components – will it co-exist in our current Documentum architectures?
• Simple Workflow – demo mentions simple workflow but, what about more complex workflows?  Is there integration with BPM?
• Will existing DCTM implementations and taxonomies be able to fit into D2 easily?
• Has there been volume/performance testing?  Demo seemed geared to a rather small repository.

Documentum Roadmap  – Sales versus User Driven

For those that read our review of EMC World in 2011, the next question might be “what does this mean for D7 and the other development efforts (ex: Restful Web Services, Unified Web Interface)”?  Unfortunately, we would propose that the purchase of D2 represents another example of Documentum focused on a sales driven culture.  As we have mentioned before, Documentum/IIG has not been growing as rapidly as other areas of EMC (ex: VMWare) and has actually been fairly flat in regards to revenues.  Also, the push by SharePoint as well as open source alternatives to Documentum like Alfresco have pushed the industry to more of a commodity pricing model.  The licensing of D2 starts to make more sense if you put it in this context:

• Documentum Product Development – “We are looking at a D7 release in second half of 2012 with Unified Web Interface as well as other enhancements.”
• Documentum Sales – “What will be the pricing for the Unified Web Interface or any of the updated products?”
• Documentum Product Development – “We are going to offer them all as upgrades to their existing infrastructure or Webtop.”
• Documentum Sales – “So I don’t get any new products to sell to existing clients now or in 2012?  Can you add something to the price list that we can sell now?”

The addition of a new product on the pricing list allows the sales reps to sell something to their clients now.  This makes even more sense as our awareness of D2 itself was something our clients were telling us their sales reps were pushing them to evaluate.

Summary

Overall, we would initially say that Documentum D2 is:

• Very robust – similar functionality with Webtop.
• Good overall performance – at least from what we saw in the Webinar
• Highly configurable – with no ability to add code for items that are not configurable

Our concerns include:

• Too robust and complicated – especially for consumer-only access but for many authors as well
• Would Webtop users really look at replacing one author interface with another, particularly if they are using functions from Documentum (Lifecycle, PDF Manipulation) that is not compatible with D2?
• Who else has been successful with D2?  What are the lessons learned?
• What is the long-term team and development path for this tool – did the agreement come with the people to maintain the application for Documentum users?
• Where has the application been successful?  Most Documentum users don’t want to be first.
• What is the price point and will the benefits outweigh the cost of another implementation and training for existing Documentum Webtop users?

Overall we would say it makes sense to evaluate D2 for “net new” efforts but would not see it as a replacement for Webtop given the points listed above.

Comment with your thoughts below and look for an upcoming screencam as we start to test D2 internally.

Dynamic Workflow

Most ECM workflow tools achieve dynamic workflow through allowing administrators to define business rules within the workflow template.   In other words, you can define a rule in the template that says “if property x is y, go to Activity A” and “if property x is z, go to Activity B”.  While this is a definite upgrade over a static workflow template, we’ve seen some limitations with these types of workflow processes:

• If a particular form has a business process that doesn’t fit into an existing template, a new template definition must be created.
• All workflow templates require IT assistance to create and manage the template.  If business rules change, IT involvement is required to make any necessary template updates.
• For a particular form instance, the workflow runtime is limited to the constraints within the workflow template itself (more on this below). There’s no opportunities for “one off” processes that do not fit the template.

Active Wizard Dynamic Workflow

The Active Wizard takes dynamic workflow a step further – there are no approval workflow templates defined at all.  A component within the Active Wizard’s administration module allows business users to define workflow rules based on the user’s answers to questions within the form.  When the approval workflow is started, the Active Wizard evaluates the rules and generates a workflow template on the fly.  For our IT readers out there,  don’t worry – these templates are cleaned up nightly so that the repository is not littered with unused templates.

The Active Wizard’s approach to dynamic workflow includes all of the benefits of a dynamic workflow template, but it also provides the following benefits:

• The workflow rules can be configured by a business Subject Mater Expert (SME).  The IT department does not need to be involved to create templates or modify them when business rules change.  This can be key when dealing with a lot of forms.  One of our clients has over 400 forms, each with a potentially different workflow process!
• Some of our clients have requirements that certain users can modify the workflow before starting it for a particular form.  Typical requirements can include reordering tasks, splitting out tasks, adding new tasks, and removing tasks.  Since the Active Wizard doesn’t rely on a workflow template, we can enable all of these requirements by manipulating our rules XML before generating the template and starting the workflow.  These requirements are extremely difficult for a template-based solution to meet.  If your business process doesn’t allow for this type of flexibility, the functionality can be disabled, forcing the user to abide by the rules evaluation results.

In our experience, we’ve found that the Active Wizard’s approach to dynamic workflow is much more flexible, especially for systems with many forms, oft-changing business requirements, and/or systems dealing with Change Request.  These solutions typically have very complex requirements that are better suited to the Active Wizard’s workflow method.

To learn more about the Active Wizard, check out our website and the TSG Learning Zone for demos.  We would be interested to hear – what are your experiences with dynamic workflow?  Comment below!

Activiti was first announced in May 2010 by Alfresco.  While Alfresco officially launched Activiti, the product is managed independently and is completely open source, licensed under the Apache License. What this means is that not only can you leverage Activiti as part of Alfresco’s ECM platform, but it can also be used as a BPM platform on it’s own.

For our Controlled Documents proof of concept, we successfully launched Activiti workflows using  HPI and Active Wizard running against an Alfresco repository.   During the project, there were a number of items that impressed us about Activiti:

• Activiti is pure java, which is nice for us given that most of our development is Java-based.  Activiti also has great integration with Spring Framework, which makes configuration easy.  This means that if we need to customize tasks, auto activities, etc., we can rely on Java APIs to get the job done.
• Activiti is based on the BPMN 2.0 standard.  Relying on a standards-based product is a key to having a choice of many different 3rd party tools for items such as process modelers, as well as integrations into other 3rd party systems.
• Activiti utilizes XML-based templates.  This is nice for the Active Wizard, given that we need to generate a workflow template based on the rules evaluation process.  It’s much easier for us to generate the template in XML, versus using a proprietary API.
• Activiti can be clustered for robust scaling.  If you’re using Activiti embedded within Alfresco, Activiti will scale right along with your Alfresco instance.  If you’re using Activiti as a standalone workflow engine, it can be scaled just like any other J2EE web application.
• Activiti provides nice reporting tools that detail workflow templates, in-flight workflow processes, outstanding tasks and more.

Given the results of the POC, clients that are using Alfresco should check out the TSG Learning Zone.  All of the demos that show workflow review and approval could be applied to an Alfresco repository as well as Documentum.  Given that Activiti can be deployed as a standalone product, our Documentum clients looking for advanced BPM capabilities should evaluate Activiti as an open source alternative to EMC’s proprietary BPM product contained within xCP.

The first question we commonly hear is: Does Alfresco contain all the necessary functionality?

The short answer is yes. Alfresco does contain all of the key content management components (versioning, lifecycle, workflow, security, etc.) that Documentum and other ECM solutions contain (See Table Below).  To prove this out we recently took our High Performance Interface (HPI) and hooked it up to run on Alfresco.  The demonstration, which will be posted in our knowledge base shortly, really shows off that Alfresco can handle the typical controlled documentation requirements. It also shows off how the user can be unaware of the technology platform that is being leveraged… HPI/Alfresco looks just like HPI/Documentum!

Many of our clients have customized the OOTB Documentum interfaces to enable business specific functionality (only allow delegation of a workflow task to users in my groups, specialized linked CR processing, etc.). Do not expect Alfresco to contain OOTB logic to support these types of customized business processes.  Alfresco does have the framework (rules, actions, web services architecture, spring, etc.) to enable business-specific rules to be integrated as well as integrations with other third party products.

This table lists the Alfresco functionality evaluated. For more detailed information on any of the topics below, feel free to contact us.

Minneapolis – January 24th, 2012 (11:30-AM to 1:30 PM)
Rock Bottom Brewery
800 LaSalle Plaza
Minneapolis, MN 55402

Chicago – January 25th, 2012  (11:30-AM to 1:30 PM)
Technology Services Group
22 W Washington 5th Floor
Chicago, IL 60602

Kick in the New Year by learning what’s new with Alfresco 4.0!  Click here to Register.  Hope to see you there!

Technology Services Group
http://www.tsgrp.com

Employees: 33 employees
# of Local Resources: 32
HQ: Chicago, IL
Offshore: No

Appiphony
http://www.appiphony.com

Employees: 12 employees
# of Local Resources: 12
HQ: Chicago, IL
Offshore: No

Appirio
http://www.appirio.com

Employees: 400 employees
# of Local Resources: 32
HQ: San Mateo, CA    (offices in Chicago, IL)
Offshore: No

Bluewolf
http://www.bluewolf.com

Employees: 240 employees
# of Local Resources: Unknown
HQ: New York, NY
Offshore: Unknown

Emerging Solutions
http://www.emergenow.com

Employees: Unknown
# of Local Resources: Unkown
HQ: Offices in Chicago
Offshore: No

Ossia Systems
http://www.ossia-systems.com

Employees: Unknown
# of Local Resources: Unknow
HQ: Chicago, IL
Offshore: Unknown

Sakonent
http://www.sakonent.com

Employees: 100 employees
# of Local Resources: Unknown
HQ: Chicago, IL
Offshore: Yes

Soliant Consulting
http://www.soliantconsulting.com

Employees: Unknown
# of Local Resources: Unknown
HQ: Offices in Chicago
Offshore: Unknown

Tigris On-Demand
http://www.tigrisondemand.com

Employees: 33 employees
# of Local Resources: 32
HQ: Dayton, OH
Offshore: No