How about properly and efficiently implementing Salesforce CRM, Salesforce PRM, or Salesforce Service and Support across your entire business?

Apprivo Quick Starts let you do just that, getting your business up and running in less than 30 days.

But we don’t just turn it on and leave you hanging. We handle everything, from an initial review of your business to final testing and handoff. Our fixed-price implementations leverage Apprivo best practices, allowing you to benefit from the real-world lessons we’ve learned and enabling us to get Salesforce up and running in 30 days.

Each Quick Start follows our proven implementation methodology:

Phase 1: Business Process Review

First, we’ll conduct a business process review (BPR) session with your designated business stakeholders. Market dynamics and the intended strategic value of your Salesforce implementation are discussed and current and future business processes are reviewed. We’ll use that data to generate to a formal agreement of requirements and priorities. Be sure to bring a pen or No. 2 pencil.

Phase 2: Design

Next, Apprivo will document the BPR findings and recommend a set of best practices to meet your unique business requirements. The outcome of this phase is the solution design workbook, a design document that captures the page layouts, required fields, custom fields, pick-list values, and profiles required for your Salesforce implementation. A talking pop-up version of the workbook is available at an additional fee.

Phase 3: Configuration

Thirdmostly, which isn’t a word but should be, Apprivo will use the approved solution design workbook to configure the implementation. During this phase, we’ll perform two to three review sessions to verify that the configuration approach is following the approved design.

Phase 4: Testing & Customer Handoff

Finally, Apprivo will perform end-to-end tests from each user constituent perspective. We’ll also conduct one internal training session with your business users, and one technical handoff with your Salesforce administrator. You can film these sessions and edit them into a training montage complete with Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” in the background if you so desire.

You’re probably ready for me to tell you how much all this costs. Well, that depends on your circumstances. But I assure you, no matter the size and scope of your implementation, Quick Starts are worth every penny. Implementing Salesforce in less than 30 days means a fast ROI for your business and the elimination of the costs and headaches of attempting implementation yourself.

Quick Starts are offered for a fixed price based on the number of licensed users. Changes in scope for additional services are subject to additional fees and require approved change orders.

The implementation must be completed within 30 days of the project kick off meeting. Therefore, you must provide Apprivo with ready access to key business stakeholders and adhere to the agreed upon project timeline. Additionally, all Salesforce licenses must be purchased prior to kick off.

There are a few things that Quick Starts don’t cover. They don’t handle data migration, installing new applications, language support other than English, and custom development including Apex and S-Controls.

To learn more, download the Quick Start data sheet or contact Apprivo now.

To the point…

• Apprivo Quick Starts help your business implement Salesforce CRM, Salesforce PRM, or Salesforce Service and Support in less than 30 days
• Apprivo handles every aspect of implementation, from initial analysis to final testing and handoff
• Quick Starts are a wise business investment that accelerate your Salesforce ROI

If you need advice regarding how to implement Salesforce Customer and Partner Portals for your organization, contact Apprivo for a free, no-obligation consultation.

A recent IDC study, which you can read in full here, found that participants experienced five key benefits when building custom enterprise applications on the Force.com platform, compared to traditional in-house development.

Those benefits:

• Faster. Custom applications were developed and deployed in 76% less time and required 76% – 85% fewer developer hours.
• Lower cost. Companies were able to reduce their three-year TCO by 54%, saving $560,000 per application.
• Higher quality. Users of the custom applications built on the Force.com platform reduced annual downtime by 97% and spent 60% less time dealing with the service desk.
• Better performance. The combination of the first three benefits contributed to better business performance and generated an additional $3.9 million in annual revenue for each firm.

So using Force.com to build your portals is a pretty good idea—definitely better than trying to build using traditional in-house development platforms. But there’s an even better solution, one that offers top-notch performance and saves on IT costs in the long run.

Overall, purchasing Salesforce customer or partner portal licenses is a smarter, more cost-efficient decision than building a portal yourself.

I get asked about this at least twice a month. Why buy when I can build? Well, my 3+ years of experience in this area has helped me develop:

THE TOP TEN QUESTIONS TO ASK WHEN DECIDING TO BUILD OR BUY

1. Do you have the IT Resources?
Do you have the IT team with the right skills? Even if you do, is that really how you want to spend your IT resources? What is the opportunity cost of them doing this? What gets pushed?

2. Is this really a fair match?
Sure, your IT people are great, but is it really fair to expect them to build something comparable to what scores of experienced, dedicated developers at Salesforce have created over the past 10 years?

3. How much flexibility will your application have?
Will your development efforts build in flexibility to allow for any/all of the following?

• Granular user profiles?
• Robust security model (object and field level security)?
• Role hierarchy to drive record visibility?
• Workflow?
• Approval processes?

4. Do you have the hardware and software to scale?
Realistically, where will you host this solution? Will it be 99.99% available?

5. Can you measure what you manage?
When you’re done with the basic plumbing to make your application operational, will you have the budget and the time to build a flexible reporting and dashboard engine to report on your business?

6. Are you really saving money?
Factor in the price of IT, software, and hardware. Are you still saving money?

7. Are you really saving time?
Can you afford to wait 6-12 months for your IT department to build a portal? What are your competitors doing?

8. Can your application grow with your business?
Your business will change. How quickly can you add new features to your custom solution? Salesforce has hundreds of plug-and-play applications.

9. Will you have a single customer view?
If you are already using Salesforce to manage customer accounts, contacts, opportunities and other customer-related data—think about it—does it really make sense to have another system?

10. Can you make it all fit together?
Do you need to integrate with external systems (orders, ERP, etc)? Salesforce provides out-of-the-box integration capabilities versus point-to-point integration, which is the likely route for home-developed applications.

To the point…

• Utilizing assets on Force.com is proven to be a better solution than building customer enterprise application compared to traditional in-house development
• In this economy, you need every edge you can get—so make sure you carefully evaluate the build vs. buy decision before you make it
• There are numerous reasons why purchasing Salesforce portal licenses can be a better business decision than attempting to build portals in-house

If you need advice regarding how to implement Salesforce Customer and Partner Portals for your organization, contact Apprivo for a free, no-obligation consultation.