November, 2017 - gettectonic.com

23Nov

Why We Love Pie But Not Pie Charts

Everybody loves pie, but not all of us love pie charts (except when it’s a chart about pie). It turns out, our brains have a hard time comparing the area of shapes. When it comes to visualizing data, we prefer simple and easy to understand. Consider making that pie chart in your next presentation a bar chart. This unsavory position against pie charts reflects Tectonic’s passion for effective data visualizations. When done properly, visualizations help us quickly see new things and digest the size and scale of your business and market. Visualizations that allow you to interact with data and easily see areas where you need to focus, make decision making easier. But many of us are stuck managing from charts of numbers, or at best static visualizations in a power point. You know those presentations that someone spends weeks creating each month to describe the events in the prior month. Is this the kind of efficiency we thought 2018 technology would deliver? When you finally get the information, how do you correctly tie individual results to the trends in your business and markets so you can draw the right conclusions and make decisions? For example: are we generating enough leads, in the right industries, for the right products to generate the revenue we need in Q4? In other words, how do you translate how much pie you have eaten into how full you are? On the surface, it seems easy: If I’m eating pie, it’s late in the meal and I’m probably already full…but what if those assumptions don’t hold true? Are you willing to risk your comfort on it…or your business on it? At Tectonic, we help you align your desired business results with the events and activities in your business. These “analytical pathways” make it simpler to use data to drive your business. We can show you how to unlock the trends in your business and use data to drive new results. Happy Pie Season! Like1 Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more How Travel Companies Are Using Big Data and Analytics In today’s hyper-competitive business world, travel and hospitality consumers have more choices than ever before. With hundreds of hotel chains Read more A World Series Lesson for Your Business The Houston Astros won the World Series last night. The first time the organization has won the World Series since Read more Why Your Company Isn’t Like a Baseball Team Recently, Chris shared an excellent post about the new World Series Champion Houston Astros. In short, it was a reminder Read more

November 23, 2017in Salesforce Implementation Services

19Nov

What is the Salesforce AppExchange?

The Salesforce AppExchange is a robust enterprise cloud marketplace, adept at swiftly addressing unique business challenges for organizations of any size, department, or industry. The AppExchange is a marketplace where third-party developers can list their apps for Salesforce users to browse and install. Some are free to use and some have a charge. But all are available because of their integration ability with Salesforce. Each app has its own listing page with a detailed description, screenshots, user reviews, and pricing information. Introduced by Salesforce.com in 2005, the AppExchange website marked the inception of the first public directory of its kind. These powerful apps make a substantial impact by automating tasks, streamlining information and systems, and fostering closer integration with Salesforce. Catering to diverse organizational needs and budgets, the AppExchange offers a mix of both free and paid apps. If there is something you want to do in Salesforce, chances are good there is already an app for that – and you will find it in the Salesforce AppExchange. Navigating through the extensive array of apps, with over 9 million downloads, might seem daunting. Salesforce simplifies this process by providing App Guides that swiftly pinpoint optimal solutions for various business challenges across different sectors. Alongside apps, users can discover components, bolt solutions, lightning data, flow solutions, and consultants. The App Guides spotlight customer-favorite apps, categorizing them based on department or industry-specific business pain points. As users search and install apps, the AppExchange tailors personalized recommendations, enhancing ease and efficiency. Among our preferred apps are: Magic Mover – This remarkable app facilitates the seamless migration of classic notes to lightning-enhanced notes and classic attachments to Salesforce files. It expedites the conversion of numerous attachments and notes into enhanced files. S-Docs – A document generator capable of creating diverse outputs by amalgamating Salesforce data from standard and custom objects. The template editor in S-Docs allows for the design of outputs incorporating data from formula fields, rich text, parent records, child, grandchild, and related objects. Finished documents can be effortlessly emailed directly from Salesforce, capturing the entire interaction seamlessly as an activity. Slack – A highly popular communication and team collaboration hub integrated with Salesforce. This integration enables teams to stay informed about their records within Slack, responding swiftly to new opportunities and fostering seamless collaboration. Customized notifications in Slack provide updates on key information in Salesforce, while slash commands facilitate the search and preview of Salesforce records, including accounts, opportunities, and cases. The AppExchange empowers users to continually tailor their Salesforce experience, enhancing quality, productivity, and efficiency. Content updated January 2024. Like4 Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

November 19, 2017in Salesforce

10Nov

Why Your Company Isn’t Like a Baseball Team

Recently, Chris shared an excellent post about the new World Series Champion Houston Astros. In short, it was a reminder of how data-driven thinking can have massive results. But what does it take for an organization to achieve this? The first is leadership committed to a long term goal. It took the Astros 6 years of hard work and commitment to a new way of thinking to achieve their goals. The book/movie “Moneyball” does a good job illustrating all of the previous thinking that had to be overcome. After all, people had made life-long careers on that thinking, so why change? If your leadership isn’t committed to this long term, it simply won’t happen. However, it just takes one leader of a part of the organization to lead the way. The second thing you need is data. The baseball world is full of passionate and focused score keepers. Pitch counts, speed, game time temperature, at bats vs lefties, etc. Google actually has a free baseball stats dataset: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/baseball. Unfortunately for most of us, there isn’t someone recording each and every movement we make at work (that may be a good thing for some of you). However, it does make it hard to be data driven if you don’t have data. So how do you convince a leader to become data driven and how do you decide what data to capture? Business leaders care about results, so aligning to those will get their support. Those results are driven by actions taken by the organization, so the data that describes those actions is what needs captured. When you take this approach you may find that some of the actions aren’t being recorded at all, many don’t have enough information about them and all of them are difficult to pull together and understand. Even when those hurdles have been overcome, you then face the issue of how to get information back into the hands of the masses who can use it to change the result. At Tectonic, we’ve combined world class salesforce implementation expertise with data science and analytics know how to drive innovative business results. We can help you navigate the above complexities so you can play better baseball. Original url: https://www.gettectonic.com/single-post/2017/11/10/why-your-company-isnt-like-a-baseball-team Like1 Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

08Nov

Salesforce Hashtags in Chatter

In Salesforce Chatter, using hashtags serves several purposes, enhancing collaboration and content organization within the platform. Here are some reasons why users might use hashtags in Chatter: Remember that the effectiveness of hashtags in Chatter relies on users adopting and consistently using them. Encouraging a common understanding of hashtag usage and promoting their benefits can lead to improved collaboration and content organization within the Salesforce environment. For instance, suppose you share an update mentioning your ongoing work on a sales presentation for Universal Paper, a customer of yours. Enhance your post by adding the hashtag topic #UniversalPaper. Users can simply click on this topic to access more details about Universal Paper and view ongoing discussions involving individuals and groups interested in Universal Paper. Additionally, anyone can conduct a search for Universal Paper, and the topic will feature in the search results. Clicking on the topic reveals all accessible areas where the topic has been assigned. When composing an update, simply type # followed by your chosen text. While typing, choose a topic from the provided suggestions or press ENTER to include it. Each topic can comprise up to three words. Topics are automatically concluded by commas ( , ) and closing square brackets ( ] ). Other punctuation, symbols, and separators are supported in topic names. Afterward, click Share. The hashtag topic transforms into a link leading to the topic detail page. Furthermore, the topic (excluding the hashtag) is automatically appended to the top-level post in your update. For example, by including #UniversalPaper in a comment beneath your colleague’s post, the topic Universal Paper gets added to your colleague’s original post. Following the posting of an update, the exclusive method to eliminate a hashtag topic in Lightning Experience is by either deleting or editing the post or comment. In Salesforce Classic, removal of the topic from the top-level post is possible. Like2 Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

November 8, 2017in Salesforce

03Nov

A World Series Lesson for Your Business

The Houston Astros won the World Series last night. The first time the organization has won the World Series since the club was established in 1962. Since its foundation, the organization has an aggregate won-loss record of less than .500, and more recently been perennial losers and bottom dwellers. Jim Crane, a successful billionaire entrepreneur, bought and took over the team in 2011. In the six years since purchasing the team, he has changed the culture, attitude and environment of the organization in large part based on the more sophisticated use of big data and analytics throughout the organization. The more advanced and aggressive use of data and analytics, and its benefits, is well documented in player valuation, player match up advantages, statistical based strategy, etc.. For more on this, see The Analytics Series: Dodgers-Astros is a Win for Sabermetrics Both teams stress the heavy use of analytics, so it’s only fitting that they are pitted against one another in the World Series. https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2017/10/23/16515642/dodgers-astros-world-series-analytics What is less appreciated and reported is the use of data and analytics and its related advantages throughout the organization. I had the pleasure of hearing Jim Crane speak five years ago. He lamented about the poor reputation and track record of the Astros. However, he committed to changing the environment and attitude of the organization into a first class winning organization from top to bottom. How was he going to do it? A key component of his vision and strategy was introducing, embedding throughout over time, and ultimately driving the business through the aggressive use of sophisticated data and analytics in all phases of the company. The benefits would not only be a better product on the field, but better results across the board: marketing, sales, operations, process improvements, expense reductions, employee productivity and evaluations, company morale, customer perceived value proposition, enhanced brand value and ultimately significant increases in revenues, profitability and overall enterprise value of the organization. The results for the Houston Astros are clear and self-explanatory. It is a timely and great case study showing “winning businesses” are the ones which over time adapt, incorporate and drive their businesses through the use of more sophisticated data and analytics in all elements of their business. If you are not aggressively exploring ways to use data and improve your business through analytics, then beware that someone else in your industry is. The examples are endless: Netflix used customer data, trends, preferences and analytics to build a new business model. Netflix went from start up to multi-billion dollar media and content distribution company, while competitor Blockbuster, having every conceivable advantage at the start, is now out of business a few short years after the emergence of Netflix. Where is the retail industry today versus the astronomical rise of Amazon? Where are the teams that are not using data and analytics compared to the Astros? The Astros are the latest example of a bottom to top change in competitive dynamics and market leader in an industry in less than five short years. Are you interested in a dialogue on how you can start your path to more aggressively use data to help in your company? Understanding your customers, your markets, unearth new opportunities, reduce expenses, shorten the time involved in various phases of your operations, improve your customer experience, enhance your brand value, drive sales, enhance cross sell up sell opportunities, etc. The benefits are real and tangible: grow your revenues faster, reduce expenses, become more efficient and automated, make decisions based on information rather than gut feel, and ultimately significantly enhance your market position, growth opportunity and enterprise value for yourself and your investors. At Tectonic, this is what we do. Please call us to start a dialogue. Tectonic can help your start down the path by: As in the case of the Astros, we can help you transform your business into a data driven organization and help generate all the benefits and opportunities that come with it. Give us a call and we are happy to help you start today. Because if you are not, someone else you are or will be competing against is. Chris WilsonPresident Tectonic, LLC Original url: https://www.gettectonic.com/single-post/2017/11/03/a-world-series-lesson-for-your-business Like1 Related Posts Salesforce OEM AppExchange Expanding its reach beyond CRM, Salesforce.com has launched a new service called AppExchange OEM Edition, aimed at non-CRM service providers. Read more The Salesforce Story In Marc Benioff’s own words How did salesforce.com grow from a start up in a rented apartment into the world’s Read more Salesforce Jigsaw Salesforce.com, a prominent figure in cloud computing, has finalized a deal to acquire Jigsaw, a wiki-style business contact database, for Read more Health Cloud Brings Healthcare Transformation Following swiftly after last week’s successful launch of Financial Services Cloud, Salesforce has announced the second installment in its series Read more

November 3, 2017in Salesforce

02Nov

How Travel Companies Are Using Big Data and Analytics

In today’s hyper-competitive business world, travel and hospitality consumers have more choices than ever before. With hundreds of hotel chains and personal property rentals going above and beyond to surprise and delight consumers, their expectations have grown rapidly. Consumers now expect to be provided with a personalized experience. They expect that hospitality companies know their likes and needs and provide them with an experience based around those likes and needs. The speed with which companies need to respond to guests is ever increasing. Who would have predicted that 5 years ago AirBnB would have a valuation comparable with brands like Marriott? Companies are seeing value coming from frictionless customer experience and the way they use technology to lock customers in. The excitement in the travel and hospitality industry is around technology, which is now designed to help manage the customer journey and provide companies the ability to manage the guest experience across sales, service and marketing. Technology is allowing data to be more accessible and integrated, allowing companies to begin shaping customer behaviors in months, as opposed to years. We are seeing that companies that are leveraging the millions of customer touchpoints, data and analytics, are paving the way in providing a seamless, personalized customer experience and have gained a large share of consumers budgets. Companies are spreading their marketing and IT budgets around solutions that span the entire customer journey, from acquisition to cross-sell and up-sell strategies to personalized service throughout their stay. Those who know what their customers wants and needs as well as when and how they want it, are creating loyal, repeat guest visits. Caesar’s Entertainment grew from $3 billion to $12 billion by leveraging technology to deliver personalized service and marketing initiates across its many hotels and casinos. They created a repeatable model across over 90,000 employees, allowing cocktail waitresses to know a customers worth, their favorite drink and how best to interact with them. Caesar’s also enhanced their loyalty rewards program by analyzing their data and implementing rewards that their customers wanted, increasing how much these customers stayed, played and spent on their properties. The evolution of technology has made data more accessible and interpretable, allowing companies to mold customer behaviors and maximize their spending potential. Some of Tectonic’s clients have looked to us to help them shape their customers behaviors. Tectonic has developed an approach, called Insight 2 Action, to help their clients shape behaviors. Insight 2 Action (i2a) helps customers ingest and understand their data and leverage technologies that help guide and influence customer interaction – how they buy, receive services, interact today as well as tomorrow. One of Tectonic’s clients, a luxury vacation company, has grown into a several hundred million dollar organization by understanding customer needs and proactively reaching out to guests with cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. They leveraged their cloud based technologies to manage their data and analytics, marketing & CRM. The implementation took 6 months and a $2 million dollar investment. If our client had chosen to leverage non-cloud based technologies, they would have had a 3 year, $50 million dollars implementation. At the core of personalized service is the ability to react quickly. For example, a new restaurant is being built in which every floor manager and sommelier will be wearing an Apple Watch. When a VIP customer walks through the front door, their favorite bottle of wine can be immediately taken to their table by the floor manager. This also allows for personalized interactions such as greeting a customer when a new table is seated, approaching a guest who waits too long to order her or his drink, or when a menu item runs out, every manager will get an alert via the tiny computer attached to their wrist. This is not a new concept but shows the power of leveraging technology in providing a more personalized guest experience. In providing seamless customer experience it is important to look at embracing cloud technology and what it has to offer. One of our behavior shaping clients acquires, correlates & stores 10 petabytes of data at a 10th of what it cost 4 years ago. From a delivery perspective, this took 6 agile sprints of behavior shaping actions to do approximately 50 behavioral use cases to drive a m reduction in marketing expenses. Our clients are also using cloud tools such as Salesforce to deliver personalized and prescriptive actions across the globe. Our agile approach allows for clients to deploy small stories so that we can deliver quickly for clients, allowing them to measure and iterate with different stories. Content updated January 2024. #technology #travel #hospitality #bigdata #agile #analytics Like2 Related Posts Email Marketing for Hotels and the Hospitality Industry Email Marketing for Hotels

November 2, 2017in Data, Google Analytics, Salesforce, Salesforce Data Cloud, Salesforce Einstein, Salesforce Hospitality Travel and Transportation, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), Salesforce Personalization, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Technology

Monthly Archives: November 2017

Why We Love Pie But Not Pie Charts

What is the Salesforce AppExchange?

Why Your Company Isn’t Like a Baseball Team

Salesforce Hashtags in Chatter

A World Series Lesson for Your Business

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