Dreamforce '07: Highlights from the Salesforce.com Scene

SAN FRANCISCO -- Not all of the news coming out of Salesforce.com's Dreamforce '07 here this week belongs to the company; numerous partners and other vendors have announcements of their own. Here's an alphabetical sampling of some highlights from the convention floor:

Aprimo announced the availability of two new applications for Salesforce.com's AppExchange:

• Aprimo Professional Marketing Resource Management (MRM) helps users coordinate campaign planning and operational processes such as production workflow, project management, financial management, digital asset management, and creative review and approval. The workflow between these products will allow the sales channel to submit activity requests to marketing and will also provide access to the marketing calendar and marketing collateral directly through the Salesforce interface itself.
  
• Aprimo Lead Management for AppExchange connects the lead management, campaign planning, and execution capabilities of Aprimo to the sales prospecting and account management functionality within Salesforce.com's SFA (Sales Force Automation) application. Lead Management offers additional capabilities to develop and execute multichannel, multiwave communication plans that automatically and continuously deliver leads to Salesforce without additional marketing effort. In addition to generating and capturing new prospects, Lead Management can also nurture prospects into becoming leads and assign qualified leads to the correct salesperson.

Bluewolf will open an Authorized Training Center (ATC) in New York, providing training for Salesforce.com customers, partners, and developers. Bluewolf's instructors -- trained and certified by Salesforce.com -- will initially provide the following classes: Enterprise Adminstrator; Professional Administrator; AppExchange Mobile; Building S-Controls; App Lab; Data Migration; Apex Training; and Partner Boot Camp. "The training center is designed to help maximize the value of an organization's investment in Salesforce.com, by empowering users with knowledge they need to get the most from Salesforce CRM, the Force.com platform, and the AppExchange," said Eric Berridge, principal and cofounder of Bluewolf.

Centive announced the pre-launch of Sales Plan Accelerator (SPA), a solution to help companies create and distribute well-designed sales compensation plans. Built as a native tool on Salesforce.com's newly announced Force.com on-demand platform, SPA is scheduled for release by year's end. Centive SPA provides a wizard-like solution that streamlines sales-plan design and offers users context-sensitive best-practice tips and suggestions as they move through the plan-design process. In addition, SPA automates the distribution of sales-plan documents through integration with Salesforce.com's role-hierarchy controls; the software also tracks acceptance by plan participants.

CODA Group announced a strategic alliance that will see CODA develop the first on-demand financial system built natively on the Force.com platform. The new service, CODA 2go, will offer companies of all sizes a real-time, global finance system on demand. The first release of CODA 2go is expected for delivery during early 2008, and will address revenue management, including creating and managing sales orders, generating invoices, posting cash, and cash management. CODA also unveiled an integration application, CODA Integrator for Salesforce.com, to allow users of Force.com and CRM applications to interact with CODA's current enterprise accounting system, Financials, creating an integrated front-office-to-back-office application.

DreamFactory announced the availability of two new applications on AppExchange:

• DreamFactory Time & Expense and Resource Management, which lets users optimize their expense processes, whether deployed as a standalone application or as an extension of the DreamFactory Project Management Suite.
  
• DreamFactory DoX, which improves work collaboration with ad hoc work groups and painless document collaboration.

Marketbright announced the availability of two AppExchange applications:

• Enterprise Website Management, which offers self-service content management, menu-level integration with Dreamweaver and Contribute, and membership and profile management. The software is also intended to help customers accelerate their Web-site capabilities, drive sales, and clearly link Web-site performancewith demand generation while improving overall customer experience.
• Channel Marketing, which enables any company that manages a channel of partners, distributors, or resellers to allow those partners to run online campaigns without having to build an e-marketing system of their own. Using this solution, channel marketing managers can empower their channel partners to run demand-generation programs on their behalf through a subdomain, while maintaining control over the brand and gaining visibility into the results.

Xactly announced enhancements to its Incent for AppExchange offering, extending integration with Salesforce CRM for users to leverage the power of an enterprise sales compensation management application within the AppExchange framework. The Xactly Commissions mash-up with Salesforce will help the sales team determine where to focus its selling energies and which opportunities will most immediately impact business processes and earnings. Xactly also announced its new Xactly Payroll Navigator feature, which provides customers with the ability to facilitate easy transfer of compensation data with any major third-party payroll vendor, including ADP, Ceridian, Intuit, Paychex, and Ultimate Software, for accurate and efficient incentive payment processing.

Related articles:

Salesforce.com Keeps Its Apex Promise
The much-anticipated Apex platform may lead to a long tail of advanced small-niche solutions.

Salesforce.com Previews AppStore
Partners get the ability to market, sell, invoice, and deliver applications to customers through the AppExchange.

Salesforce.com Releases ApexConnect
The on-demand provider unveils a family of tools to address integration woes.

Is Salesforce.com Changing Direction?
The vendor is implementing vertical solutions after long shyness. Plus, questions for the CEO.

Google and Salesforce.com: The Word
Salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords is an integrated product for small businesses.

Salesforce.com Takes SOA Offsite
The company announces its plan to offer service-oriented architecture on demand.

Cisco and Salesforce.com Get Connected
The companies announce Unified CallConnector, strengthening a partnership.

Salesforce.com Plays Pandora
A slew of new Web 2.0-based document management solutions leaves the realm of strictly CRM.

Salesforce

Related Articles

Dreamforce: Releases Galore

Dreamforce '09: A roundup of product releases and enhancements that came out of the so-called "Cloud Event of the Year."

Gen. Colin Powell Is Part of the Force

Dreamforce: In a moving speech to a global audience, Colin Powell reinvigorates the need for the purpose-driven individual.

Salesforce.com Brings Social to the Enterprise

Dreamforce '09: The software-as-a-service pioneer unveils what it calls its fourth cloud -- the Collaboration Cloud -- as well as a product called Chatter.

Salesforce.com Invests in a Provider of Software-as-a-Service Accounting

Coda 2go, an application built natively on Salesforce.com's Force.com platform, becomes FinancialForce.com, a new company backed by Salesforce.com and Unit 4 Agresso, parent company of accounting software vendor Coda.

Cloud-y Announcements Surround Salesforce.com

Dreamforce '08: Salesforce.com's partners capitalize on conference momentum with a number of new announcements and product releases.

Salesforce.com Doubles Down on CRM

Dreamforce '08: The SaaS vendor ups research funds for CRM, declaring this a critical time to listen to and invest in customers and employees.

Salesforce.com and Amazon.com: Superpowers Team Up in the Cloud

Dreamforce '08: Salesforce.com cofounder, Chairman, and CEO Marc Benioff announces the cloud company's foray into Web sites and its integration with Facebook and Amazon Web Services platforms.

The Industry According to Benioff

Gartner Web Innovation Summit '08: Salesforce.com chairman and CEO weighs in on the evolving software landscape and his CRM company's monumental leap onto the platform.

Salesforce.com Partners Introduce a Range of Integrated Applications

Dreamforce '04: Dozens of software vendors are now tying their CRM capabilities to the on-demand CRM platform.

Salesforce.com Upgrades Its Flagship Products

Dreamforce '03: Salesforce.com today unveiled major upgrades to its two main products at its first annual Dreamforce user conference.

Things I Learned at Dreamforce '07

A few more takeaways from the fall's big event.

Salesforce.com Unveils Winter Release Details

Dreamforce '04: New customizing manager and customer service capabilities are key updates.

Dreamforce: Wonders of the Business Web

Dreamforce '06: At the annual Salesforce.com event, Colin Powell stressed the importance of the Web and how businesses can leverage it to for a competitive advantage.

Salesforce.com's On-Demand Dream

Dreamforce '05: Marc Benioff details visions of 'the eBay of enterprise applications' with Appforce.

Salesforce.com's Dreams of Apex

Dreamforce '06: Marc Benioff outlines the company's new customization and programming platform, discusses community development, and announces Winter '07.

Salesforce.com's Soapbox Is the Platform

Dreamforce '07: AppExchange says hello to its younger, bigger sister: Force.com, touted as "platform-as-a-service"; the family also welcomes a cousin: Visualforce, hailed as "user-interface-as-a-service."