Salesforce “Success on Demand” Sydney

I just got back from this event and decided to give a quick rundown.

Quick Stats:

Salesforce.com (SFDC) has over one million users worldwide
2600+ companies using it in Australia
- This number has doubled in the past 12 months

The Business Web: Ben Taylor

Ben (from Salesforce) spoke about how the consumer web and the business web are merging (ie the technology used by amazon, ebay, etc can also be applied to business scenarios. Here is a very brief summary (he spoke for an hour or so).

Wisdom of Crowds
- ie the influence of Digg (and its clones)
- Salesforce Ideas (and Dell’s version of this - IdeaStorm
  - Dell implemented this to see what their customers wanted. Turns out, they wanted linux (yay, linux!). Dell didn’t really think that would work, so they ignored it at first. It became more popular. They added an option to vote ideas down, in an attempt to bury the idea. The users buried everything else, making their demands stand out even more - Dell released Ubuntu (Linux) machines. This is a good story!
Personalisation
- fairly standard things - iGoogle and the like
- SF allows renaming of tabs & fields. Useful, but not exciting.
UI - I didn’t write anything down here…
Directories
- Appexchange - I have used this a few times before, it is good. It is a developer community thing, where SFDC apps are offered to customers.
  - Tony McGrath from eWay spoke briefly (about credit card payments, their system)
Mobile - I cared about this
- William Luxton, Apple’s System Engineer for Corporate and Government presented SFDC on the iPhone (actually just played this video of it - below)
- According to him (quoting someone else), 71% of website visits from a mobile device are from an iPhone. Very impressive
- He claimed that the reason behind the iPhone’s success was the lack of roadblocks. I actually laughed out loud (quietly!) at that. It is about the most “roadblocked” device on the market at the moment. First of all, you can’t even buy one in Australia. If you do, you need to hack the thing to get all the apps that users want on it. That said, if they release a 3G one with 60GB+, I’ll be very tempted. I played with the iPhone’s weak little sister, the Touch. They certainly know how to design a good looking device. According to a few people there today, the iPhone will be released here by the end of the year. That is way too much delay, but anyway.
- Integration with SFDC was demonstrated (see video)

There may have been one point that I missed..

Next there was a panel featuring the following:

Haley Lyons - Challenger - CRM administrator
Harry Henderson - UCMS - Executive GM
Nick Boulton - Viocorp - Sales/Marketing Manager
Tony Pollock - Mission Australia - CIO

That seemed to mainly be a sales pitch, and bashing of other products. All I wrote down were their names

After the coffee break, Derek Laney demoed salesforce - “Campaign to Cash” they called it. It was cool to see all the features that you can use, like softphone integration, and a few other little things. Also, I had not seen the “Content” thing before - it is a document management system, and looks pretty good.

Their were technical issues for the first half of the event. The internet didn’t work, the mics kept screwing up.. there were problems all round. If felt really sorry for them. A lot of people walked out. I think the internet going really damaged the image of SAAS, and their “No Software” slogan. Some software may have been useful in a sans-internet environment.

Other than that, the lunch was good (even if we were late), there were free drinks at close, and it was in a beautiful location. I enjoyed myself and learned a few things. I also entered into countless prize draws, mainly for the iPod Touch that was on offer at most sponsor booths :). I am sure my inbox will be busy over the coming days, as I am probably now a lead in a few Salesforce instances

Dear Firstname,