Salesforce is renowned for making new and timely launches that promise to change the face of productivity and interactivity.
Whether it’s about an ERP solution or a CRM system; the sheer comprehensiveness and scope of its products have catapulted the entity’s reputation among the big guns including Oracle, Microsoft and SAP.
Salesforce Chatter: Chatting to Work
Chatter is self-explanatory as it can get. However; one may do well not to be allured by the simplicity of the word because it is way more profound than that.
Chatter has attracted more than 400,000 users worldwide within a relatively short span of time, and this number is only going to increase in the future.
Mobility
The recent launch of Salesforce Chatter Mobile now ensures that you can connect the application on many smart phones including bit not restricted to Android, Apple, iPad and BlackBerry.
Furthermore, it can also be integrated with a number of different applications, something which can be checked on the company website.
What does it actually do?
So what exactly defines Salesforce Chatter? What does it really do? To put it simply, Chatter makes Business become Social through a collaborative medium.
The software lets users engage in a vibrant community within their respective departments to take part in real-time, non-threatening knowledge-sharing sessions.
These engagements are strictly professional in nature and are designed to bring about transparency, connectivity, accountability and vigilance.
In that sense, it is a combination of social media platforms like Twitter, Google Wave and Facebook. That’s not at all a bad trio to be compared with.
Staying true to its word, Chatter actually lets the employees perform their duties with great efficiency cutting across organizational lines.
So if you’re looking at authentic service cases, interesting business development ideas, innovative campaigns and research papers, you’re likely to have your workflow simplified significantly.
Key Features
Social convenience
That apart, it automatically keeps you abreast of any new updates through timely feeds. This means that you can get to knowwhat’s happening as it happens.
Then there is the useful smart search feature that helps you easily locate information you’re searching for by displaying frequently searched terms.
This is what social integration actually does for those who want to utilize its potential optimally.
Social interaction
Through the profile section, you allow yourself to get acquainted and connect with your co-workers, peers and other people.
You know when they’re online and when they’re not, also following colleagues to augment your professional network. When use sensibly, such social connectivity can help enhance your productivity to manifold.
Groups
This is all about having your teams work like one. Sharing information, streamlining processes, communicating key facts, and share files; all of this can be undertaken through Groups.
There are three options:
- Private Groups
- Pubic Groups
- Customer Groups
You can create private groups to share sensitive information and work together on special projects.
Of course, public groups are to be created to share information that can be used by anybody within your firm. Using customer groups, you can easily connect with vendors, suppliers, creditors and external clients.
Sharing files
Never has file sharing been easier than it is on Chatter. You can have access toany document right through your web browser.
The good thing is that you can just drag and drop to share these documents with your peers, groups and other teams. Better still, one can also upload more than one file at the same time- to the tune of 2 GB.
Feeds
This feature allows users to monitor their colleagues, clients, groups and otherrelevant players on important assignments using real-time feeds.
These feeds assume great importance when you need to work with your team on key projects and sales-related developments.
Messenger
The feature is similar to most other chat messengers that we use in our daily life, albeit in a different context. It makes it very convenient for you to make conversations, both with individuals and groups, in a safe platform.
Also, it isintegrated seamlessly with the cloud.
Status Updates
This is not the same as a normal Facebook or Twitter status update. The status updates in the broader context of business use means that you can now see what your colleagues are up to throughout the day to track their progresses.
This is an indirect method to boost productivity because everybody knows that they’re being looked at, closely and constantly. Reduction of distraction is another major plus.
Integration
One of the biggest strengths of Chatter is to integrate your social media (say Twitter) data into your profile to make it easy for your team members to follow it. It also lets you append important data to internal records for further referencing.
Pricing considerations
Pricing and confinement to existing Salesforce subscribers are two major hindrances that are highlighted by its skeptics.
It is true that most of the features are freely accessible to those who’re existing users; however; that’s true for other companies as well.
Secondly, the pricing for an Enterprise-level solution would obviously be higher because of the technical updates and other nuances. That’s indeed a consideration for individual and small businesses, but that isn’t surpassing.
The pricing mechanism is pretty much well defined, in that you’re paying a high price for a CRM system that could potentially save you thousands of dollars, if not more. A thorough analysis of the situation reveals that smaller firms may not need collaboration software of this scale/magnitude and could explore other cheaper options to connect.
To those who need to collaborate and engage at a micro-level; experts opine that they do invest in software such as Salesforce Chatter, which is simply one of the most respected brands out there in the CRM market.