Salesforce.com: Top Dreamforce 2012 Takeaways

Dreamforce 2012 – Salesforce.com’s 10th annual user conference – was held in San Francisco from Sep 18-21, 2012. Referred to as “The Cloud Computing Industry Event of the Year”, this spectacle of a conference had around 750 informative sessions with more than 350 partner companies and 90,000 attendees. Bigger than ever before and possibly the largest user conference organized by any IT company in history!

Going by the response of participants sampled from across the web, many of the attendees came away feeling very satisfied and positive about Salesforce.com innovations and its future direction. Some of the key takeaways to have grabbed the most attention include the following:
1) Work.com: Salesforce.com’s re-branding of Rypple as Work.com and making it a key investment area signals the transformative effect it will have on how work is organized and managed in organizations of the future. Work.com, already adopted by Salesforce.com itself among its 7000+ workforce, will result in more flexible, network-based (and less hierarchical) organizations that sell, service, and market better.
2) Community: A new Chatter-based product called Community is going to be launched in the summer of 2013 for Salesforce.com customers and partners. Chatter, initially targeting internal collaboration, is being broad-based in significant ways to eventually become the bedrock of external facing customer and partner communities. Community will entirely replace old customer/partner portal products, make the CRM experience more social for all stakeholders, and unlock possibilities of new revenue streams for businesses.
3) Marketing Cloud: Salesforce.com’s marketing cloud – a unified social marketing suite covering social listening, social content, engagement, social ads, measurement, workflow and automation – is getting immensely powerful and becoming a well-differentiated product. This comprehensive end-to-end solution – with Buddy Media, Radian6, and CRM platform integration – will enable organizations to listen, connect, and align better.
4) Salesforce Touch: Salesforce Touch – in keeping with Salesforce’s early recognition of a multi-device and multi-context future – uses HTML5 to make its mobile strategy cross-platform. Salesforce Data.com Social Key, which unites enterprise and external contact data into a more meaningful global, is set to usher in a brand new paradigm.
5) Service Cloud Adoption: Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud is maturing into a great product (through multi-channel integration, third party app integration flexibility, social & mobile dimensions). With Service Cloud adoption steadily rising, it is well placed to gather further momentum and develop into a mega business.

In addition to the above, enhancements like Salesforce Chatterbox, Salesforce Identity, etc. seem to set the stage for great new possibilities.

We at Mindfire Solutions – a top Salesforce development services provider with a fully-certified Salesforce development team and a strong track record of serving Salesforce customers across diverse industries and business needs – are excited about the way Salesforce.com is transforming customer relationship management landscape to become the “enterprise nerve center”. If you want to customize and/or extend Salesforce Customization Services help, get in touch with Mindfire today – call 1-248-686-1424 or email sales[@]mindfiresolutions.com – to leverage the solid experience of Mindfire’s trusted Salesforce Application development team to personalize and extend capabilities and build cloud apps.

How to Sell Your App on Salesforce AppExchange?

What is Salesforce AppExchange?
AppExchange is a marketplace for cloud computing applications and consulting partners. Launched in 2005, Salesforce-AppExchange is credited to be the world’s first and largest online cloud computing applications and services marketplace. Applications sold or distributed on the exchange have been built by Salesforce.com partners or third-party developers for the community. Users can browse, test drive, and install (from over a thousand apps) to add to their Salesforce.com environment including apps for sales, customer service, marketing, IT & administration, human resources, finance, enterprise resource planning, and collaboration.

Advantages
Whether you are a Salesforce.com user or an independent software vendor (ISV), Salesforce-AppExchange can be immensely useful to you.

If you fall into the first category - users, AppExchange can let you extend Force.com to more departments and functions easily. Through AppExchange you can leverage the power of the Salesforce community to find best solutions to your business needs. You can instantly choose from a large pool of well-thought-out apps for common needs (without having to reinvent the wheel investing a lot of time and effort). Moreover, Salesforce-AppExchange lets you test drive your chosen app by letting you interact with it to your satisfaction in a sample instance or your production environment sandbox.

If you are an independent software vendor (ISV) into cloud apps development, AppExchange listing can be your gateway to millions of potential customers. By letting you make your app publicly available on AppExchange to 100,000+ customers, AppExchange listing dramatically improves the odds of your app’s success. The listing provides app providers with one of the fastest ways to take their applications to market, showcase those to a world-wide target audience of millions of users, and helps build rapport with potential customers.

How to List Your App on it?
Selling on AppExchange is easy: become a Salesforce.com partner & publish your app. For becoming a partner, first select the Program Model (ISVforce or Force.com Embedded) that best suits your business. ISVforce lets you build, market, and sell your app to Salesforce.com customers. Force.com Embedded lets you build, market, and sell your app to any customer. After choosing the best AppExchange Partner Program Model for your context, you can submit your registration and accept terms of agreement. For publishing your app, set up your Salesforce-Partner Portal, create and list your app, pass a security review, and go public to millions of potential customers. For a step-by-step summary of listing your app on the exchange, you can refer Mindfire's "Sell Your App on AppExchange" guide.

Need Some Help?
Expert development service providers like Mindfire Solutions, backed by years of experience in Salesforce customization and Force.com development for global clients across industry domains, can help you create engaging cloud apps and get those listed on the exchange. The fully-certified Offshore Salesforce development team of Mindfire's can also powerfully customize and/or extend your Salesforce.com CRM to help you leverage its true power for your business. If you want to customize or Hire AppExchange product developer and need some development help, get in touch with Mindfire today – call 1-248-686-1424 or email sales[@]mindfiresolutions[.]com – to leverage the strong track record and solid experience of Mindfire’s Salesforce Application development to personalize and extend capabilities and build cloud apps.