Earlier today, I went along to the Salesforce 1 World tour,
to find out what their latest offerings have to offer for the NFP and charity
sector. Sales force as a company are unashamedly sales orientated their
language and style is exuberant to say the least and the event had a
personality to match. The keynote speeches include lasers, gymnastics displays
and even a Salesforce controlled drone. The day saw them announce proudly that
Heron Tower is set to become Salesforce tower, in typically larger than life
move.
Despite its NFP foundation, despite its 1/1/1 commitment and
despite some pretty big charity’s on their books, the whole Salesforce
Ecosystem just doesn't seem to gel, with the sector, at least not in the UK.
You have to work hard to see beyond the showmanship and look to the
functionality of the platform then you begin to see a flexible solution that
does some really neat tricks. The question is can you get through all that
bluster. The exhibitors at the event where all part of the Salesforce
Ecosystem, i.e those working within or on the salesforce platform. They fell
largely in to 2 categories Apps or implementation partners. It’s fair to say
that none of them had a specific NFP focus. There were some rather cool apps on
display Riva CRM integration, Cognizant and Cipher cloud to name 3. But as with
any smartphone app store there are lots of apps and finding the right one for
your requirement is not a simple task for a charity to understand.
Theoretically, it’s possible to implement Salesforce without
an implementation partner, and a big part of Salesforce 1 is to increase what
admin users can do, and to speed up user led change. But for a NFP it remains
beyond the key skill set of the organisation so better to look for an
implementation partner. But here too the Salesforce Ecosystem is huge and as with
anything else there are partners and there are partners. Some understand the
sector, but from the conversations I had at Salesforce 1 it’s clear that most
don’t. Most focus is on delivering Salesforce and making the platform do
whatever it is that you want it to do, irrespective of who you are, talk to
them about specific functionally such as an organisational renewal process, or
member events, and they approach it as just another sales process, which to an
extent is true but rather misses the point.
It would be very easy to rule out Salesforce, and look to a
more sector specific CRM, but the fact remains, it has some good functionality
and can deliver just what some charities or associations need. If you've
decided you need a CRM, it would be folly not to at least look at Salesforce,
just as it would be not to look at dynamics, but you also include more sector
friendly solutions.
The big tag line of the moment is “Internet of Customers”
which is an evolution of the “Internet of things” concept where an internet
world connects everything, from your smartphone to you clothing, from your
fridge to the light switch. The concept is a good one that points out that
behind every THING is a customer, and I’d like to move on the debate one step
further by starting to talk about an “Internet of members”, or even an
“internet of supporters”. If you remove the sales speak the principal is the
same, and that hasn't changed for years. The people you want to engage are out
there and they will do what they do in any number of ways our job is to create
interactions that work for them so that we can progress organisational goals,
and this is just what CRM’s should enable. So think about what your
members\supporters are doing day to day, then what they want from your NFP. The
last question is what you can do to make those interactions as simple as
intuitive as possible.
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