Cloudy’s Bright Ideas: Find Your Data – Search!
Whether you are a brand new Salesforce user or an old hand, consider these bright ideas to streamline your workday, increase productivity, and get the most out of your salesforce org! Effective use of the Salesforce search bar is often the fastest way to find what you need. Good search habits also help keep data clean by reducing duplicate entries. Some of the functionality of Salesforce search is common to other web search tools, and some is unique to Salesforce, so it does pay to familiarize yourself with it. You should also consider some best practices that are ...
Salesforce for Nonprofits – Campaign Mailing list for Households
For nonprofit organizations, two of the most useful features of Salesforce and the Non Profit Starter Pack are Campaigns and Households. But what happens when it seems these two handy features don't play well together? Campaigns allow you to create groups, track marketing efforts and results, manage events, organize email mailing lists.... and the list goes on! Campaigns are one of the most flexible and powerful tools in your system. Households (or Household Accounts) allow you to group contacts who live at the same physical address. This allows you to see and understand the relationships, activities, and combined giving totals ...
Cloudy Presents
Our website and blog are clean, professional, and informative. So what is missing? Our website and blog appear to be written by a technical person, for technical people. But many of our current and potential customers are not technical people (that is why they might hire us!). To someone without a technical background, the Website is boring, and thick with webs of technical jargon. It is easy to get lost and confused. The Blogs contain a lot of information, but they are more likely to be scanned than read. (This is useful for customers who DO want to just scan ...
Cloudy’s Favorite Apps: SyncApps by Cazoomi
So your Salesforce org is up and running, and you are starting to think about how to connect it to other systems. If you are like many others, Email Integration is at the top of your list. Email integration can be a big slippery subject, as there are many possible requirements, and just as many possible solutions! Recently, Cloudy discovered a solution that is both robust AND user friendly: SyncApps by Cazoomi offers an "integration framework", capable of connecting Salesforce with many common Email platforms (among other things). Let's see how SyncApps by Cazoomi is able to connect Salesforce with one popular Email Marketing ...
Cloudy’s Favorite Apps: MORE from Apsona!
One of Cloudy's Favorite Apps just keeps getting better! Apsona has long been one of Cloudy's top picks for enabling all kinds of easy data management tasks in salesforce.com. Now there is an add-on that allows easy merges to documents, spreadsheets, or email. Read on to see how easy it is to set up a merge for Thank You letters - in batches or one at a time! (**note: this demo uses Salesforce + Non Profit Starter Pack with 1:1 model. Other data models and merge processes will vary in the details**) First create a Word document with merge fields ...
Big Data – Small Business : Part III
Big Data means bringing all the parts of your business into one place. If you have followed along with Part I and Part II of this series, you are beginning to understand what Big Data means to your small business or nonprofit, and may be wondering if you are up to the challenges. Here are some important pointers to guide you on your journey: Leverage the salesforce.com platform. Not only should you bring all your data IN, but make sure you are using the tools available in salesforce.com: workflow automation, live reporting, systems integration, AppExchange add-ons, etc. Act: You are about ...
Big Data – Small Business : Part II
Last week we discussed what Big Data means to your small business or nonprofit. It is now commonly touted that "90% of all the data in the world has been created in the last two years." Even if you feel you are a tiny star in the universe of big data, you would probably agree that your own company's data inputs are growing. But if your information is segmented in different little orbits, you are not getting the benefits you should from your data. Salesforce.com is a standard-bearer in the big data movement. Cloudy and the consultants at Redpath ...
Big Data – Small Business : Part I
What does Big Data mean for your Small Business or Nonprofit? Big Data simply means bringing ALL the parts of your business into ONE PLACE. No matter the size of your enterprise, you are juggling many data sources and data points: Customers * Clients * Leads * Lists * Registrations * Customer Service Issues * Social Media Contacts * Important Relationships * Vendors * Partners * Content * Board Memebers * Web Inquiries * Marketing Initiatives * Documentation * Email and Marketing Analytics * Event Attendees * Roles and Responsibilities in your organization * Accounting and Financials * Spreadsheets and multiple databases * The list could go on... At least a handful of these are certainly familiar to your business, and perhaps you can think of more. Have you brought ALL of your business under ...
