How to get your clients to

buy more Force.com licenses

Jonathan Sapir

Every business unit in every company has

applications that:

– Are not being built, because IT does not have the time or resources

– Are not being built, because the business unit doesn’t have the budget to hire consultants

– Are being built, but with inappropriate tools like Excel, Access and Notes, resulting in kludgy, inadequate solutions

These applications are usually “situational”

Situational / Opportunistic• Applied to a new or still-changing environment

• Focus on effectiveness

• Key metrics: time-to-productive-use, good-enough

• Lifespan expectation: short

• Basis: mostly Information Delivery, some Business Process

• Decision Maker: primarily LOB

• Evolving, adapting

Systematic / Operational• Applied to stable, well-understood environments

• Focus on efficiency

• Key metrics: cost / ROI, performance, error-free, secure

• Lifespan expectation: long-lived

• Basis: mostly Transactional, some Business Process

• Decision Maker: primarily IT

• Status Quo

Application Landscape

A situational application is:

“Good enough” software quickly built to address a particular situation, opportunity or challenge, and evolves over time

Must be:

• Quick to develop

• Easy to change

• Quick to deploy

Situational Application Example

Build a Student Database for

a college department to

track attendance

Student Database System

1. Start with a simple Database

2. Later, integrate with Google Apps

to get access to student work

3. Provide students controlled access to the

system using their own IDs

4. Add workflow to handle work submission,

approvals, reminders, notifications, etc.

5. Provide mobile access to the system

TIME

The system is evolved as needs (the “situation”) change

Situational Applications are well-suited to

Force.com because:

• No upfront costs

• Much of the required functionality is available “out the box”

• Can be built primarily by an analyst, with some additional programming as needed

• Can be built in an evolutionary manner, because deployment is so easy compared to traditional development

• Includes a significant amount of cloud-related functionality that would be very costly to develop from scratch

Business User Benefits

• Alternative to inadequate solutions (Excel, Lotus Notes, etc.)

• Alternative to waiting for IT

• Effective way to build and evolve solutions

• Ability to react quickly to problems/opportunities

• Low risk/cost:

– no upfront non-recoverable costs

– immediate benefits (deploy in stages, instant feedback)

– significantly less resources (people/time) required

IT Benefits

• Helps IT service their user base more

effectively

• Does not mess with core IT

• Maximizes IT resources and budget

• Is low risk, low cost

Where to start?

Typical low-hanging fruit can be found where you are:

• Using multiple spreadsheets that include a messy tangle of forms

and formulas

• Emailing spreadsheets around for data collection and synthesis

• Putting spreadsheets on a shared drive for access and update

• Unsure how a spreadsheet that is part of a core process actually

works

Force.com Implementation Plan

Startup: Build a Proof of Concept to get a

good understanding of what can be

done.

Strategize: Develop a plan for how the

organization can best leverage the cloud.

Empower: Build a support structure to

empower business units to build their

own solutions

SilverTree Systems Success Kit

Publications Description

How to Identify Candidate

Applications for the Cloud

A comprehensive questionnaire aimed at

unearthing situations in your organization

that could significantly benefit from a

Force.com solution.

Migrating Operational

Spreadsheets to the Cloud

The benefits of ending spreadsheet “abuse”

– like using spreadsheets as databases – and

how to migrate them to take advantage of

the cloud.

Cloud Computing for SMBs How cloud computing will transform

small/medium businesses and how to make

sure you are not left behind.

Power in the Cloud:Building Information Systems at the Edge

of Chaos

How to build a resilient and agile

organization that can react quickly to

changes in the marketplace.

How to Build an Enterprise

Situational Application Center

How to implement the methodology,

training and support required for situational

applications in your enterprise.

Call: (312) 283-4419

Email: jon@SilverTreeSystems.com