Monday, April 9, 2018

Salesforce Working On Blockchain Product, Says CEO Benioff


Salesforce is working on a product based on blockchain technology, the cloud computing company's CEO has revealed.
Marc Benioff, who founded the company in 1999, revealed the news when speaking to Business Insider's Julie Bort at the TrailheaDX Salesforce Developer Conference on March 28 (check out the video below).
Benioff said he'd begun to hone in on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency after an encounter at a hotel bar in Davos, Switzerland, in January. The World Economic Forum he was attending coincided with a cryptocurrency conference, and a conversation with one of that event's attendees led Benioff to consider the ways his company could integrate the technology.
"I had been thinking a lot about what is Salesforce's strategy around blockchain, and what is Salesforce's strategies around cryptocurrencies and how we relate to all of these things," he said.
After the Davos conversation, Benioff told Bort, he came to the realization:
"You know if you do this, this and this, you could put blockchain and cryptocurrencies into Salesforce."
While not providing details on the upcoming product, Benioff said that he hopes to "have a blockchain and cryptocurrency solution for Salesforce and for all of our customers" before Dreamforce - a conference the company will host in San Francisco from Sept. 25 to 28.
Salesforce is best-known for its cloud computing software for customer relationship management. The company made $10.5 billion in revenue in the year ending Jan. 31.
Salesforce image via Shutterstock
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Thursday, December 14, 2017

Salesforce Marketing Empowers the Local Marketer

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff
Dispensed advertising and marketing, Salesforce's newest release, wants to aid entrepreneurs add personalization to company-degree advertising and marketing campaigns. the new product makes it possible for native, franchise, and companion entrepreneurs to add personalization and context to company advertising developed for countrywide audiences.
here's how it works: A countrywide, company marketer will create an automation in Salesforce advertising and marketing Cloud's journey Builder. This pathway is regularly occurring, nameless, and built for a mass audience. With disbursed advertising, native entrepreneurs can hop into a earnings Cloud, a service Cloud, or a group Cloud version of Salesforce so as to add the personalization and context required to capture the attention of the customer or prospect.
if you're an auto dealership, you then doubtless have a string of customary emails that you ship to customers within your advertising and marketing checklist. With allotted marketing, native dealers can pop into Salesforce, discover a client with whom they've recently interacted, and tweak the campaign to encompass the customer's name, any contemporary interplay statistics, and localized offers.
"The research says that purchasers expect related and customized experiences," talked about Meghann York, Director of Product advertising for Salesforce advertising Cloud. "They need it to be obvious they're opening an email or on the web page, that each of those touchpoints is related and that they are known as themselves on each of these channels."
"For our clients who've accomplice networks, that turns into in reality intricate," York persisted. "You could have corporate advertising managing countrywide campaigns, but you've got relationships being built outdoor of corporate advertising and marketing. those homeowners or buyers or partners are communicating in a very personalized way but they should not have entry to the branding or the company message. So it looks like the enterprise is speaking in two distinctive voices."
Compliance and Analytics
Salesforce is also touting dispensed advertising and marketing as a method for country wide entrepreneurs to set expectations for local and associate marketers. by means of growing the initial crusade in advertising Cloud after which distributing the campaign to native marketers, they profit more advantageous handle over how the enterprise's messaging is crafted. sure, the native marketer can add personalization and make changes but the fundamental framework of how the company as an entire interacts with its consumers is there.
"that you could take a corporate advertising, branded e mail but go away areas open for a broker or partner to customize it," stated York. "This makes bound the company advertising message is up so far with the final local conversation that turned into had."
Secondly, the tool offers native entrepreneurs who may additionally now not be regular with advertising and marketing software the skill to see the types of analytics businesses benefit through the use of email advertising, client relationship management (CRM), and advertising automation tools in conjunction.
"at the associate degree, advisors, franchise house owners, and buyers can now see how each and every particular person client is interacting with the messages they've delivered, whereas company entrepreneurs can see how the journeys they've developed for partners have carried out in an aggregate view," according to a Salesforce remark advertising the new product. "for example, after sharing recommended journeys with all of its franchisees, a fast food franchise can look at engagement analytics to uncover that e-mail marketing works superior than digital promoting when providing a seasonal discount."
dispensed advertising from Salesforce is attainable as Salesforce Lightning accessories in income Cloud, carrier Cloud, or community Cloud in constrained pilot these days, and will be frequently obtainable in February 2018. Pricing could be introduced all through normal availability.
The Salesforce experience
Salesforce has put giant quantities of time, effort, and supplies into beefing up its advertising and marketing chops. In June, the enterprise introduced Einstein Account-based mostly advertising (ABM), a business-to-enterprise (B2B)-focused device that seeks to automate the work done between earnings and advertising and marketing teams to identify target money owed, marry records between sales and marketing databases, and execute campaigns to each and every account's fundamental determination maker. suppose of ABM as a mutation of Einstein artificial intelligence (AI), CRM, and Pardot advertising and marketing automation—apart from every thing is geared towards prospect businesses as opposed to particular person potentialities.
The business additionally constructed Salesforce Lead Analytics for facebook, an answer for lead technology that lets marketers tie statistics from fb, Instagram, and the fb audience network (facebook's ad platform). The tool monitors particulars equivalent to a customer's first interaction (filling out a lead form) to a first purchase via to subsequent resells and upsells. The Lead Analytics for fb dashboard indicates entrepreneurs ad performance metrics (i.e., views and leads generated), advert-connected sales performance (i.e., "Did somebody convert subsequent to clicking on this advert?"), and AI-based mostly lead scoring via Einstein.
additionally, Salesforce wishes entrepreneurs to have more suitable entry to agencies of facts from trusted partners. therefore, they've announced Salesforce data Studio, a standalone product that falls beneath the Salesforce marketing Cloud umbrella. The platform may also be purchased entirely for the intention of promoting and purchasing information. it may even be delivered to the advertising and marketing Cloud for integration with Salesforce tools catered to email advertising, mobile marketing, digital promoting, and social content material introduction, among other use circumstances.

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Specialists weigh in on the way forward for blockchain CRM know-how

Blockchain technology recasts customer expectations round information privacy, bringing opponents collectively to raise records analysis and beef up customer connections -- making it a chief candidate for the next disruptor of CRM.
The technology in the back of bitcoin and different cryptocurrencies might be difficult to explain -- or to keep people attracted to -- since it involves infrastructure, and never a sexy new expertise comparable to artificial intelligence. Yet consultants anticipate accelerated usage of blockchain CRM expertise over the next decade, and predict enterprise verticals including healthcare, assurance, utilities, government, provide chain, publishing and precise estate will find uses for the technology as smartly.
Blockchain creates disbursed, encrypted ledgers that can operate without centralized administration and serve as incredibly trusted repositories for transactions, digital rights and delicate facts, reminiscent of identities and property information. Transactions can self-execute by way of sensible contracts that eliminate friction and switch statistics and value with out the participation of natural intermediaries.
SearchCRM spoke with three consultants at this month's Blockchain for company and IT Leaders conference in Cambridge, Mass. whereas blockchain CRM technology may be in its infancy, the consultants stated they see skills for its broad-ranging application in the sector.
Blockchain can tackle privacy considerations, records analysis
Paul Tatro, co-founder of the Blockchain practicing Institute, mentioned CRM methods will be affected by new expectations round records privacy. patrons had been required to share personal tips and expose themselves to chance through hacks, such as the breach at Equifax this autumn, and are hungry for alternate. A blockchain can save and encrypt own statistics and make sure details upon inquiry without really sharing them. 
"The complete CRM house will soon be tied to what I call self-sovereign id, as a result of purchasers will are looking to have handle of assistance about them as a substitute of letting it be bandied about," Tatro noted. "With self-sovereign id, you're taking control of your personal identification and reveal characteristics, now not information."
CRM systems will need to modify how they deal with customer facts in an effort to meet buyers' rising expectations, he spoke of. 
Tatro mentioned he also expects the future of blockchain CRM technology to encompass new opportunities for significant-scale facts evaluation. A networked CRM-category device may provide varied businesses -- including rivals -- with deep insights into consumers' preferences, opinions and buying habits. The excellent of insights would enhance with scale, and blockchain's community architecture would eliminate the want for an middleman records supervisor. For the sort of shared gadget to work, builders will deserve to create disbursed ledgers with specific access privileges in order that business information is covered, he spoke of. 
Blockchain-based functions should be would becould very well be restrained in scope within the near term, but champions can justify early funding to make sure that the company is ready to stream at once and create alternatives.
"We're seeing stalwart companies like IBM and Microsoft providing blockchain features," Tatro referred to. "Even Intel is pushing SGX chips which are optimized for transaction processing and quicker consensus on the blockchain. here is anything organizations need to have their eye on, the same method you needed to recognize about the information superhighway when it turned into rising."
Tatro noted he established the Blockchain working towards Institute to present blockchain schooling and certification. working towards is offered online to allow clients to study at their personal pace.
Blockchain know-how enhancing incentive courses
Lynne Dunbrack, a analysis vp at IDC health Insights, observed she sees blockchain CRM carving out a job in healthcare.
"CRM is fairly new in healthcare," she spoke of. "One area the place blockchain is probably going to make an have an impact on is in consumer incentive charge classes for achieving health milestones."
Healthcare suppliers usually advocate undertaking classes, such as jogging 10,000 steps a day, by which patients can accrue aspects which are redeemable for rewards, equivalent to merchandise.
"americans can lose hobby in pastime courses after their short-time period dreams are met," she noted. "probably they desired to be fit for a pregnancy or shed weight before a college reunion or wedding to look first rate in household photographs, but then they revert returned to historic habits."
The way forward for blockchain CRM expertise could encompass strengthening the affected person's connection to the motivation application with the aid of enabling near-real-time processing of video display information as frictionless micro-transactions.
"Now they can find out in real time how they're progressing toward their reward goals, in its place of waiting for a monthly commentary," Dunbrack mentioned. "here's a method to make it fun and engaging and assist clients reside concerned for the long run."
The utility of blockchain to CRM know-how will raise consumer lifecycle administration. here is a growing situation in healthcare, as the vertical turns its focus from billing and repayment to patient-centered health results.
"The entire idea of sufferers as consumers is comparatively new," she noted. "It was once physicians would refer their patients to a specialist or provider and they went there, however now, they're searching around to look in the event that they can store funds by using going in other places. Healthcare companies should capture consideration and control client lifecycles identical to other industries."
using blockchain CRM to make lead generation out of date
Jacob corridor is co-founding father of Agingo Corp., which has developed a search platform that uses blockchain and desktop getting to know to establish which businesses are most depended on in additional than 200 subjects. Agingo users can discover new organizations within their chosen areas of pastime as those groups benefit have faith within the Agingo neighborhood.
groups aren't in a position to purchase their way to the true of the quest pile on Agingo, because it is not ad-pushed.
"We consider the present ad space is broken, and we want to trade how people engage with the brands and americans they love," corridor spoke of.
One enterprise aren't capable of dominate assorted categories in retail, as a result of groups ought to opt for their search categories on Agingo.
"the fewer key terms you have got, the greater you rank to your top class," hall referred to. "There should be no focused advertising and marketing. We take that away and provides the person the energy to say what they want and never need to see the equal factor over and over because someone is monitoring them and retargeting them."
in keeping with corridor, Agingo's method will affect CRM-primarily based lead technology.
"organizations have had to promote for leads and buy facts and not using a way of telling the place it got here from," he observed. "or not it's no longer like people provide information lineage for their e-mail addresses."
Fellow co-founder Kyriakos Skiouris said smaller businesses will be able to compete conveniently for consideration in Agingo through earning believe.
"we like innovation and mom-and-pop stores. With usual search, if you are looking to open a cafe and get found, you need to be organized to spend hundreds of thousands on advertising," he said. "When the people with the most cash can get to the correct, of course they are going to video game the system. it truly is what we are trying to suitable."
Like Tatro, hall stated that the way forward for blockchain CRM expertise can be littered with person issues related to privacy. Agingo clients can keep their very own records in encrypted wallets and simply come to a decision what suggestions they want to share.
"As you see more and more breaches like Equifax, americans are going to appear to have interaction with individuals they believe," hall talked about.

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Salesforce Opens Dreamforce with big Google surprise and more

Describing their new partnership as a natural fit, Salesforce and Google yesterday announced plans to integrate their functions for "smarter, greater collaborative experiences."
As a part of the deal, unveiled all the way through the first day of Salesforce's annual Dreamforce convention in San Francisco, Google Cloud will become the favored cloud capabilities issuer for Salesforce, while Salesforce will integrate Google's G Suite productiveness capabilities into its own client relationship administration (CRM) platform.
Salesforce the day prior to this also introduced myTrailhead, a customizable learning platform for corporations; the Quip Collaboration Platform for place of work teams; and updates to other capabilities, including myEinstein for synthetic intelligence (AI), myLightning for personalized CRM apps, and myIOT for business strategies constructed on internet of things (IoT) statistics.
Integration of Google Analytics an 'business First'
via its new strategic partnership with Google, Salesforce referred to it is going to use the Google Cloud Platform to assist its personal core capabilities whereas working to extend its global infrastructure. in the meantime, the addition of G Suite to the Salesforce CRM platform capability Salesforce clients will profit seamless access to Google services ranging from Gmail and Calendar to Hangouts, drive, medical doctors, and Sheets.
lots of the new integrations, so that it will additionally add sales and advertising and marketing data through Google Analytics 360, are anticipated to roll out in 2018. Salesforce consumers that haven't prior to now used Google's paid enterprise functions might be capable of use G Suite for no further charge for up to one year.
The addition of Google Analytics 360 to Salesforce's capabilities is an industry first, Ryan Aytay, Salesforce's govt vice chairman of strategic product alliances, talked about in a weblog submit. as an example, advertising and marketing professionals should be able to "create personalized audiences in Analytics 360 and easily push them to advertising Cloud for activation in direct marketing channels akin to e-mail and mobile," he observed. "moreover, Analytics 360 information may be available at once within marketing Cloud, providing entrepreneurs one holistic dashboard of client engagement facts."
In a separate announcement from Salesforce, Google senior vice president of ads and commerce Sridar Ramaswamy referred to the brand new partnership aims to "address one of the greatest challenges dealing with our shoppers -- connecting the insights of their CRM with the prosperous facts in their analytics. For the primary time ever, our shoppers will be in a position to seamlessly join what's happening across sales, advertising and promoting, and take motion throughout our ads systems and Salesforce."
Quip Collaboration Platform
Salesforce the day prior to this also launched the Quip Collaboration Platform to allow users to work together on live files. The providing is constructed on technology bought remaining 12 months when Salesforce purchased a San Francisco startup named Quip for an estimated $750 million.
the new platform enables organizations to create and work on documents that can encompass true-time facts through the use of embedded functions referred to as are living Apps. among the many information sources supported through are living Apps are Salesforce information, calendars, and kanban boards. more such apps are being developed by using DocuSign, Atlassian, and different companions.
The Quip Collaboration Platform will help groups be "greater nimble and productive without using email or switching between dozens of apps and looking for lost information," Quip co-founder and CEO Bret Taylor talked about in a Salesforce announcement. the new Quip features additionally encompass Salesforce files join for Quip that lets users attach live Quip documents in Salesforce Chatter feeds, corporations, and different apps.
myTrailhead for Gamified practising
an extra update unveiled the day gone by will see Salesforce's three-year-ancient Trailhead getting to know platform extended with new capabilities for groups that need to personalize their in-condo practicing environments. The myTrailhead growth will let companies create centralized, gamified components for onboarding, skills practising, and carrying on with education.
the new platform includes a trail Maker guided setup tool, a Trailhead Profile to supply an entire view of each employee's skills and practicing checklist, a trail Mixer device for developing customized getting to know applications with content material from varied sources, a trail Tracker app for motivating employees with gamified leaderboards, and trail Checker for designing interactive challenges with quizzes, stand-and-deliver evaluation tools, and more.
A pilot offering of myTrailhead is expected to launch sometime in the first half of 2018, with the platform becoming attainable to a much broader viewers later within the yr. greater details about pricing could be introduced at the moment, Salesforce observed.
targeting the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution'
moreover the Quip Collaboration Platform and myTrailhead, Salesforce is also rolling out loads of different features updates aimed toward helping companies deliver "smarter, more customized digital experiences that location the client at the core of their enterprise."
those updates include new capabilities to allow authorities to better connect with purchasers using AI, IoT facts, and other advanced technologies. Chairman and CEO Marc Benioff noted the updates are designed to fulfill company needs within the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution.
expertise adjustments mean client expectations are additionally altering, while extra statistics and statistics-pushed insights are being used to enhance business products and functions.
are expecting more Salesforce news this week, as Dreamforce 2017 runs November 6-9, with keynotes on the way forward for Work, Equality, the service Cloud, revenue Cloud, Commerce Cloud, fiscal capabilities, B2C advertising and marketing, artificial Intelligence, the information superhighway of issues, and extra.
photograph credit: https://www.sciencealert.com.

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

What is the difference between SAP CRM vs Salesforce CRM?


It’s all about the brand!
Since you have hundreds of CRM systems on the market, and you chose to ask about the difference between SAP and Salesforce, I’d answer giving some assumptions about why you asked that.
Both Salesforce and SAP are enterprise-based CRM systems aimed towards large companies with many salespeople. Both are overly complex and sold to management and not to the salespeople themselves (who say many times that they are not usable for their needs).
The main difference is branding:
  • SAP is made by SAP, a giant software company, known for its ERP offering
  • Salesforce is made by Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM vendor, and first provider of a SaaS (software-as-a-service, i.e web-based) CRM, dating back to 1999
It seems that you (and many others) choose what to buy according to branding, which is very common. You trust the brand, you like the brand, you buy the brand.
So you choice will be affected by how you feel about that company and by the feelings of other people you know.
The truth is, both will serve the same purpose and will probably yield similar results in your company.
You can expect:
  • High reliablity of the servers, 99.9% uptime (as with most other CRM vendors)
  • High standards of safety for your data, encrypted SSL connection (as with all other CRM vendors)
  • Software that has a solution for almost any need you can think of (but needs special care to activate that solution)
  • Lots and lots of buttons that solve any use case imaginable given by the many customers they have
  • Long time to adapt the software to your needs
  • Having a dedicated person to maintain the software for your employees
  • Lots of salespeople that can come to your office to help you and try to make the sale (you don’t have that with many other CRM vendors)
  • Long discussions with their field engineers who will help you figure out your needs and how to adapt the software (costing lots of $$$)
  • High cost per head
So if you have very intricate and complicated needs from a CRM, and can’t afford not to solve all of your business needs, this MAY be the way to go! Especially for very large companies.
Are there any other powerful yet affordable CRM´s out there?
Online Course CRM resources

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Instantly Generate Documents from Salesforce and save in SharePoint

With WebMerge you can automatically populate all kinds of documents from your favorite cloud apps like contracts, quotes, reports, letters, and more.  Along with generating documents with the click of a button, you can also save your documents in cloud storage like SharePoint so your whole team has instant access to the files.

In this example, we’re going to show you how to automatically generate a proposal from an Opportunity in Salesforce, then we’re going to automatically save that proposal inside SharePoint in a customer-specific folder.

To get started, we’re going to setup the template for our proposal using a Word document.  Inside Word, we’re going to add our logo, contact info, and other repeating information, then for the spots that we want to customize with our customer/opportunity info, we’re going to use merge fields that look like: {$AccountName}, {$Amount}, etc.

Here’s what our proposal template looks like:
 

Once we have our template ready, we need to upload it to WebMerge.  From the Documents page in WebMerge, click the New Document button and enter a name.  On the next step, choose Office Document as the document type and then pick the file from your computer.
 

After you’ve uploaded your template, you’ll be taken to the Settings tab where you can modify various options like the type of file that we want to generate and the name of the file.  For this example, we’re going to generate a PDF and include the name of our opportunity in the file name.
 

Next, we’re going to setup the delivery of our document so that the merged document is automatically saved in SharePoint.  On the Deliver tab, click the New Delivery button and select SharePoint from the list.

To authenticate your SharePoint account, you’re going to need to enter your SharePoint Site URL which looks something like https://example.sharepoint.com/sites/Examples/  (you can find this URL by logging into your SharePoint account and grabbing the URL from that page).
 

Once you authenticate your SharePoint account, you’re going to need to pick the folder that you want to save the proposals in.  We’re going to save the documents in our Shared Documents folder, but we’re going to use a merge field to dynamically create subfolders for our customer.  You can find this option under More Options.
 

After you save your SharePoint delivery, we are done with the setup process inside WebMerge and we’re ready to setup the integration with Salesforce (or any other cloud app).

Inside Salesforce, we’re going to setup a new WebMerge Mapping.  For this example, we’re going to give it a name then choose Opportunity as the main Salesforce object.  Then we’re going to select the document that we just setup in WebMerge.
 

On the next page, we’re going to match up the merge fields from our document with our Salesforce fields.  In the Field Mapping section, you’ll see your merge fields on the left and then a dropdown of your Salesforce fields on the right.  Go ahead and pick the corresponding fields for each one.
 

Once you have matched up all of your merge fields, go ahead and save and activate your mapping.  We’re ready for a test!  Open up one of your Opportunities and then click the WebMerge button to populate the proposal.

Once you click the button, Salesforce will send the information over to WebMerge and your document will be generated and then saved in SharePoint.

Here’s what our proposal looked like ready to use inside SharePoint.
 

Congrats, you’re all done!  You can now instantly populate and save documents in SharePoint from your favorite cloud CRM, online forms, and more.  Can you think of any other ways you can use WebMerge to simplify your paperwork process?

Sunday, July 9, 2017

19 Epic Ways to Automate Documentation with Zapier

As consumer demands become more unique and varied, in order to keep up with big businesses, small businesses must change their back-end operations. With the accessibility and affordability of automated software solutions, this demand is not only possible, but it also saves time and money for small business owners.
Where do you start? That’s easy! Zapier and WebMerge.
Zapier provides businesses with the ability to sync any application they want. Based on the uniqueness of your operations, you could use Zapier to share new Tweets on Slack, send RSS feeds to Buffer, and more. With Zapier and WebMerge’s powers combined, you can automate your documentation process and eventually… rule the world!
Here are 20 ways you can use Zapier and WebMerge to automate your business:
  1. Create and Sign Real Estate Contracts with CudaSign
    Real Estate agents are always on the go.  From meeting with new clients, running around town showing homes, to closings, real estate agents are rarely in the office. Here’s how you can create quick contracts and save some energy.
  2. Create Contracts and Agreements from Nutshell CRM
    Managing your contacts, leads, and opportunities can be a daunting task, but with choosing the right CRM can be a life saver.  Nutshell is a great CRM and in combination with WebMerge you can save your sales team countless hours.  In this example we’re going to show you how you can create a contract from a lead in Nutshell and automatically send it to your customer.
  3. Generate Contracts from Opportunities in TrackVia
    Managing your workflow can be a daunting task, but with tools like TrackVia, you can keep track of everything from start to finish – all within a single platform.  From managing a projects to collecting data in the field, TrackVia is a great solution.
  4. Send a Letter of Engagement from Clio
    Document generation in the legal world is a must-have.  By auto-populating letters, contracts, and other types of legal documents, attorneys and paralegals can save countless hours.  Another way lawyers can save time (and their sanity) is by using a practice management system like Clio.
  5. Populate a PDF Receipt from a Formidable Order Form
    Formidable is a popular Wordpress form plugin for creating contact forms, order forms, registration forms and many more types of web forms.  But what if you want to take that information collected on the form and populate a Word document or PDF?  Your options are very limited.  Unless you haveWebMerge, of course!
  6. Send an Order Invoice from Smartsheet
    Smartsheet is a pretty cool tool that allows you to easily collect data from customers and team members, plus offering an easy platform to manage that information.  It’s like Excel, but on steroids.  In this example, we’re going to show you how to send an invoice created with WebMerge directly from Smartsheet as a new order is entered into our sheet.
  7. Create and Send an NDA from Zoho CRM
    Keeping track of all your customer information can be difficult, but getting data out of your CRM can be an even bigger hassle.  Most often you end up re-typing information into other systems, documents, etc.  With Zoho CRM you can easily capture your leads, plus manage your customers, partners, and opportunities.
  8. Send Customized Invoices for Magento Orders
    Let’s face it – e-commerce is here to stay and is an important part of any business.  Today there are many services out there that can help you build and maintain an online store front without the need of expensive coding or customization.  One of the most popular services is called Magento and they offer a product that can fit your every need.
  9. Send Welcome Letters to Hubspot Form Leads
    You’ve jumped into the world of HubSpot marketing and sales tools, collecting all of this data on your website visitors, leads, and customers.  But, you don’t have an easy way to populate documents (letters, contracts, offers, etc) from that customer data.  Until now!  With the help of WebMerge (via Zapier) you can take your HubSpot data and populate documents on the fly.
  10. Create PDFs and Reports from Knack
    If you’re looking for an easy way to build an online database application without the need for programming, you need to check out Knack.  With Knack you can get rid of those clunky spreadsheets and build easy to use web applications such as a custom CRM, proposal tracker, order management, and more.  Knack allows you to build some pretty powerful apps and we’re going to show you how you can easily generate documents directly from Knack using WebMerge.
  11. Create Service Contracts from Batchbook
    If you’re looking for a great CRM to help you with organization and productivity, then we suggest you take a close look at Batchbook.  With Batchbook you can track your contacts, manage your deals, maintain your communication with customers, and more.  Let's take it one step further and generate documents from Batchbook using WebMerge.
  12. Create and Send Contracts from Solve CRM
    In today’s competitive landscape for the CRM space, it’s tough for services to stick out from the rest.  You have to fit the needs of specific verticals or use-cases and do that really well.  In the case of Solve CRM, they have wisely picked a deep integration with Google for Work and all the apps that come along with it.  From Calendar syncing, to Gmail integration, to managing Google Drive files, Solve integrates seamlessly.
  13. Create and Manage HR Documents from ZOHO Creator
    Managing your HR processes can be a daunting task.  From collecting new employee information, tracking time off, and handling payroll, there is a lot to keep track of and a lot of documentation to go along with it.  No sweat!  There’s a great tool called ZOHO Creator and you can build a customized HR app that allows you to manage all of your HR data across your entire business.  Then, combined with WebMerge you can generate employee contracts, insurance applications, state forms, and more.
  14. Create Custom Invoices and Letters from Harvest
    Managing projects, finances, timesheets, and deliverables can be a job in itself, but with Harvest you can make life a whole lot easier.  Harvest can track all your expenses throughout a project and make it easy to bill your customers when the project is complete.  Sounds great, right?  Well, we agree, but what if you want to customize the invoices or send letters to your new customers?  Your options are limited.
  15. Create and Send a Custom Payment Receipt from Freshbooks
    Freshbooks is one of the leading accounting solutions on the market and they do a great job of helping your manage your invoices, time, and expenses.  You can keep track of all of your customers and send invoices in minutes.  But what if you want to create a customized invoice or send a receipt to your customer when you receive payment?  Your options are very limited.
  16. Send Customized Payment Receipts from PayPal
    PayPal is a great way to get paid for things online without the hassle of gateway fees, setup charges, or merchant accounts.  You can easily integrate PayPal into your shopping cart, website, or registration processes.  However, your options are limited if you want to customize the receipt that a customer receives when they pay your through PayPal.
  17. Create Customized Invoices from Xero
    Managing your small business has never been easier than with Xero accounting software.  From your billing to payroll to contact management, Xero has got you covered and will save you hours upon hours every month.  Xero has a built in feature to send invoices to your customers and it will show you when they have viewed the invoice, but customization is limited.
  18. Create Customer Receipts from Stripe Charges
    Let’s face it, Stripe is awesome at making payments easy.  You can integrate with their API in a matter of minutes and collecting money instantly.  The best part is that you don’t have any monthly fees to worry about.  You only pay when you get paid.  The only downside to Stripe is that it is hard to send customized notifications to your customer about their payment.  Unless you’re the developer behind the Stripe integration, your options are limited.
  19. Upload a TypeForm Medical Patient Intake Form to Box
    Have you ever thought filling out forms is a pain in the neck? TypeForm makes the experience of filling out forms fluid and fun. At the doctor’s office, filling out an intake form is often the first experience the patient has upon arriving for his or her appointment. If you have a medical practice, then you might be interested in improving your intake process. With TypeForm, in conjunction with WebMerge, you can merge the form submissions with a template document and automatically file them in your digital document storage system and/or as easily print them out as hard copies.

Friday, June 30, 2017

Send Annual Subscription Renewals in Batch from Salesforce

Managing all your customers or donors from Salesforceis a great way to keep track of their history and make sure none of them fall through the cracks.  Add WebMerge to your Salesforce org and you can automatically generate all kinds of documents like contracts, thank you letters, receipts, and more.

In this example, we’re going to show you how to automatically send out annual subscription renewals from Salesforce to all of our customers with the click of a button.

To get started, we’re going to setup the template for our subscription renewal.  We’re going to build this using a Word document.  Inside Word, we’re going to add all of our normal info like our logo, contact info, and then for the spots that we want to insert our customer’s details we’re going to use merge fields that look like {$Name}, {$Address}, {$Amount}, etc.

Here’s what our renewal template looks like:
 


Once we have our template finished, we need to upload it to WebMerge.  From the Documents page in WebMerge, click the New Document button and then enter a name for the document.  On the next step, click Office Document then select the file from your computer.
 

After you have uploaded your template, you’ll be taken to the Settings tab where you can modify various options like the type of file that you want to generate and the name of the file.  For this example, we’re going to generate a PDF and we’ll include the name of our account in the file name.
 

Next, we’re going to setup the delivery of our document so that it is automatically emailed directly to our customer.  From the Deliver tab, click the Edit button under the default email delivery.  For the To address, we’re going to choose the merge field for our customer’s email address.

If you don’t have a merge field in your document for the customer’s email address, then choose <<Other>> from the dropdown then enter something like {$Email} in the box.

Feel free to edit any of the other settings in the email.  You can use merge fields in any of the settings as well.
 

Once we have our email delivery saved, we are done with the setup process in WebMerge, and we’re ready to setup the integration with Salesforce.

If you haven’t already, please install the WebMerge managed package from the AppExchange and follow these Setup Instructions.

Inside Salesforce under the WebMerge Mappings tab, we’re going to create a New Mapping.  Go ahead and enter a name, then for the Object, we’re going to choose Contact.  Then we’re going to choose the document that we just setup in WebMerge.
 

Next, you’ll be taken to a page with more settings for your mapping.  Specifically, we want to go to the Field Map section where you’re going to see a list of the merge fields in your template.  For each of the merge fields, you need to pick the corresponding Salesforce field from the dropdown on the right.

This tells the system how to pull data from your Salesforce database and send it over to WebMerge so that it’s populated in the correct spot on your template.
 

Once you have matched up all of your merge fields, go ahead and Save and Activate your mapping.  The last step of the process is going to be settings up a Button on your List View so that we can generate multiple docs (in batch).

Since we’re creating the documents from the Contact record, we need to go to Setup > Customize > Contact > Buttons, Actions, and Links.  On this page, we’re going to create a New Button.  After we give it a name, we’re going to choose “Execute Javascript” as the behavior and we’re going to show this button on the list view page.

In the big box on the page, we’re going to enter Javascript that will trigger the merge.  Click here for a full how-to article with the Javascript code.
 

Once we’ve created our button, we need to add the button to our list view page by going to Search Layouts, finding the List View layout and clicking the Edit button.

Now, when we go to our Contacts list view page, you should see the button you just created.  We’re going to select a list of contacts that we want to send our renewal notice to and click that button.  Then you’ll see a message that the documents have been created.
 

Once you click that button, all the data for those records is sent over to WebMerge and your renewal notices will be generated and sent out.  Here’s what our merged notice looked like:
 

Congrats, you’re finished!  You can now automatically generate all kinds of documents (one at a time or in batch) from your Salesforce org.  Can you think of any other ways you can use WebMerge to simplify your paperwork process?