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No matter your role in an organization, you've probably been frustrated trying to use technology to get your job done. Collabrax promises to promote growth, scability, and cost savings so that you can get back to what you do best, running a succesful and profitable business.

Utilize LinkedIn with Salesforce CRM

 

LinkedIn and SalesforceLinkedIn is the largest business-oriented social networking website with millions of members and growing rapidly. Just as popular, Salesforce.com continues to lead the way in the CRM industry. Being able to tie your Salesforce Contacts to that person’s LinkedIn profile is a valuable resource in learning more about customers, prospects, and other business related contacts.

When searching Salesforce’s AppExchange for apps related to ‘linkedin’, about a dozen are tied to LinkedIn in some way or another. A highly reviewed and free app that Collabrax chose was in|force Connector by Redkite. With this app you can view your contact’s LinkedIn profile directly within Salesforce Contact pages.

LinkedIn Profile in Salesforce Contacts

LinkedIn Profile in Salesforce Contacts

Installation of the in|force Connector only takes about 5-10 minutes and then you can be on your way to connecting LinkedIn profiles to Salesforce Contacts.

There are four primary steps:

Step 1 – Install App

Clicking Get It Now from the AppExchange listing begins the installation process into your instance of Salesforce. Follow the steps as defined in the deployment guide.

Step 2 – Get LinkedIn API Key

Because LinkedIn has limits on the number of times per day an application can make calls to its API — and this is controlled by the API key — each organization installing the in|force Connector must have its own API key. Go to www.linkedin.com/secure/developer to get your key. Again this is nicely described in the deployment guide.

Step 3 – Configure Connector

Once you have acquire the API key, switch to the in|force Connector App in Salesforce where you will be asked to enter the key. You will need the API Key and Secret Key. Enter those values then click save.

Step 4 – Add Connector to the Contact Layout Page

From the Salesforce Contact layout configuration page click on Visualforce Pages and you should see a new LinkedIn Profile widget. Start by dragging a new Section to the page, naming it LinkedIn Profile, as a container to hold the profile. Then drag the new LinkedIn Profile widget to your new Section and save the page layout.

Contact by contact, you are now ready to connect LinkedIn profiles to your Salesforce Contacts,

For questions about this process and any other Salesforce capabilities, contact Collabrax today.

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14.May.11 CRM, LinkedIn, Salesforce.com Comments (0)

Automate Lead Collection On Your Website With Salesforce

As we work with existing or potential salesforce customers, we have found Salesforce’s Web-to-Lead feature to be one of the least utilized. Available in the Group, Professional, Enterprise, Unlimited, and Developer Editions, Web-to-Lead lets you gather information from your company’s website and automatically generate up to 500 new leads a day.

Below is a step-by-step guide for the basics of setting this up for your business. You should have access to the following prior to beginning:

  • Either you are a System Administrator for your Salesforce organization or you can get help from one.
  • You are a webmaster for your company’s website or you can get help from one.
  • Basic knowledge of HTML and CSS is helpful in making your web form look pretty.

STEP 1

To begin, navigate to Setup>App Setup>Customize>Leads>Web-to-Lead. When you click on Web-to-Lead you are brought to the below screen where you can begin setup. Setup includes editing Web-to-Lead settings and creating the Web-to-Lead form based upon the Lead fields you want in your form.

Salesforce Web-to-Lead

Salesforce Web-to-Lead Settings Page

STEP 2

Click on the Edit button to set the basic settings. Web-to-Lead Enabled must be checked in order for this feature to function. Then specify which Salesforce user will be the Default Lead Creator. When the Lead is created from a form being submitted on your website, this user will be set as the Lead owner. If however you have Assignment Rules enabled, the Lead owner may change based upon the criteria in your assignment rules. Finally, you should set a Default Response Template. This is a email template that is sent automatically to the person completing the web form based upon the email address they supply. Depending on the edition of Salesforce you have, you can use Auto-Response Rules to vary the email template that is sent depending on defined criteria.

STEP 3

Now that the settings are complete, it’s time to Create the Web-to-Lead From. The first step is to pick the fields you will be using in your web form. You can use standard and custom fields. All Available Fields are list and simply select the ones you want and click the Add arrow to move them to the Selected Fields list. Then you will want to specify the web page location the person with be taken once they submit your web form. This is often referred to as your “thank you” page.

Salesforce Web-to-Lead

Salesforce Web-to-Lead Form Builder

After you click Generate, you will be give the necessary HTML code to insert into your website. If you are not the webmaster for your website, give this code to someone that has access to edit it. The code includes basic instructions and debugging capabilities for testing. If everything is setup correctly you should be able to submit the form from your website and within a few minutes you will see a new Lead in your salesforce CRM.

If you are using WordPress to manage your website, try WordPress-to-Lead.

For questions about this process and any other Salesforce capabilities, contact Collabrax today.

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16.Apr.11 Cloud Computing, CRM, Salesforce.com Comments (2)

Marriage Between Social Media and Cloud Computing

The ability for businesses to use rich Internet application technologies, SaaS, cloud computing, business intelligence, social-media driven metadata — all leveraged, integrated, and automated business processes — is changing the nature of business. Companies now know that they can (and should) do business differently, but they don’t yet know how to pull all the services and parts together to do it.

Some organizations would benefit from utilizing outsourced consulting experts to help IT needs and social marketing to get to know each other better. The bottom line, however, is that successful businesses need to be able to merge IT and enterprise social software.   These solutions are increasingly aligned to integrate and leverage traditional IT strengths with the best of the web and social marketing.

In today’s market, businesses can’t have meaningful and scalable social business strategies without a solid and accessible IT infrastructure.  Companies need to make that essential but, to date, rare connection between the IT infrastructure and the social media marketing drivers.  The natural progression is moving business toward cloud computing solutions and integration with aggressive social media marketing tools.

“This gets us poised for what happens next: The coming half-decade is going to be a tremendously important and exciting one in the business world as organizations look to fundamentally retool for the 21st century, an era that has quite different expectations and requirements around business and how it gets done,” said Dion Hinchcliffe, an internationally recognized business strategist.

Salesforce ChatterAn example of the impressive marriage between technology and social media: Salesforce.com’s expansion of Salesforce Chatter, a Facebook-style social networking platform for enterprise. And now AppExchange 2, the next generation of Salesforce.com’s enterprise app storefront, will includes a “ChatterExchange” for social networking business apps.  To stay one step ahead of the competition, Google is continually expanding and improving it’s Google Apps for Businessplatform.  Google’s web-based messaging and collaboration apps require no hardware or software and need minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings for businesses.  Google is also developing it’s social platform, “Google Me,” which is expected to be introduced this fall.  The service will introduce what Google calls “a social layer” into its existing product base.

The business world will one day soon no longer begin and end its days in an email in-box, but on a “wall” that defines business process through social interaction.

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13.Feb.11 CRM, Salesforce.com Comment (1)

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