The people at Quickbooks Online are listening

As I was sending yet another reminder to one of my clients about an invoice, it hit me. Why am I sending an email with a .pdf of an invoice?

Actually, it didn't hit me until I was walking later that morning. I should be able to send the "transaction" directly to my customer's payable ledger. It was a minor epiphany, since we regularly send transactions (paypal) all the time.

So, I sent an email to Quickbooks online support suggesting this feature and they responded within 15 minutes. My suggestion included the idea of a queuing mechanism on the customer side, essentially approving and receiving the transaction into their ledger. Completely removes data entry errors (and effort) and could improve my cash flow.

The Quickbooks rep was very excited to tell me that it was an "awesome suggestion" and they would put it in the feature queue. We shall see.

Facebook for Business

I am seeing many examples of people and businesses using Facebook to extend their brand. Facebook pages provides a simple and easy way to create a mini-site about your business/brand and attract new fans/prospects/customers.

Guy Kawasaki has a great post that summarizes some basic steps to get started. He pulled these from Jesse Stay's I'm on Facebook - Now What??

Using Salesforce and Google Docs (part I)

I will be posting a series of articles on using the newly integrated Salesforce with Google Docs. ETS uses Salesforce for incident management. We have also been "light" users of Google Docs to create and share documents and spreadsheets internally.

Installation of Google Docs within Salesforce was a breeze. Just clicked on the "get started" link and was brought to the setup module for our Salesforce instance. There were five options to add Google Docs and we added all five. Clicking on "add" for each one prompted a license agreement and then it was complete.

One minor snafu was that in order to use the integrated package, you need a Google Docs Business account. This did exist for our domain (setup months ago), but all the existing Google Docs were under my personal account.

So, in order to get the functionality you need your domain and users configured on Google Docs for Business. This is a bit of a hassle since Google has no current linkage to our email users. For example, in order for the user jdoe@domain.com to get all the functionality running on GD/SF, you need to have jdoe@domain.com defined as a salesforce user AND a user on Google Docs with all email settings configured.

I *think* this means that jdoe@domain.com needs to be setup on GD to be the primary mail client. Which of course means that you would need to setup the POP3 settings in gmail so that email will flow. More to come on this...

Another hiccup occured when we tried to create a GD from the SF interface and was prompted for the GD login. Entered the credentials for the business account, but received a "server error" on the GD side. Still don't have this working..

So basically, nothing is working, but I am confident that we will work out the configuration to getting it going. Once we do, we'll put it here.

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Implementing Tech Projects - Part V

Phase V - Project Review & Closure


Now that the technology solution has been successfully implemented and everyone has been trained, you will need to setup measures to ensure that the solution is effective.

1. Create an anonymous survey for employees to provide feedback.
a. Survey questions should include: overall project success, training materials and responsibility impact.

2. Develop metrics that can measure the profit and/or efficiency that was achieved as a result of this project. This will help you identify the true return on investment.

3. Continue to refine training.

This phased approach for managing a technology project is meant to be a guide. There are many details within each phase that would be too lengthy to describe here. There are also many books on this topic.

Here is a website that is a great reference for project management:

http://www.pmi.org

Implementing Tech Solutions - Part IV

Phase IV - Implementation

So now you have confirmed that the pilot is solving some or all the problems identified in phase I, now you are ready to rollout the full solution. It is very important to closely manage your vendor and be sure they are delivering what they promised within their proposal.

1. Create a project plan that consists of key milestones for the implementation of your solution.

A sample plan is shown below:
* Project Kick-off
* Budget review
* Set timelines for remainder of project
* Determine training requirements
* Technology install/enhancement
* Document the changes in your existing workflow
* Create a forum for employees to provide feedback during this process
* Develop a suite of tests that verifies the newly installed technology does not break any existing processes.
* Develop a suite of tests that verifies the newly installed technology meet the expectation of the proposed solution.
* Insure your timelines are being met and budget is not growing.
* Implementation complete
* Begin training

2. After the solution has been installed, consolidate all the documents and training materials in one repository for quick reference.

Implementing Tech Projects (Part III)

Part III - Pilot

(no, not this kind)

Implementing any technology project can be challenging in that technology itself changes so quickly and your employees may have different expectations with the solution. A pilot phase is very effective to "test" the solution and confirm all expectations are met.

1. Once your vendor has been identified, you can request a pilot or trial solution be put into place for limited use to test results.

2. Establish a set of metrics that will be used to validate your ROI and overall effectiveness of your goals.

3. After the pilot solution is implemented, be sure to measure the effectiveness and verify that the problems in phase I are being solved.