The document discusses best practices for improving resource management in service agencies through integrating business applications with Google platforms. It recommends: 1) Tracking all employee time, including non-billable tasks, to improve visibility. 2) Managing resources by breaking work into tasks, estimating hours, and allocating tasks to employees based on availability. 3) Using resource management tools like Google Calendar and Mavenlink as "working documents" to allow ongoing adjustments. 4) Leveraging reporting from tools like Mavenlink to measure utilization, profitability, and determine hiring needs.

1. Best Practices Series
Produced by:
CRM Media
What’s the biggest problem associated with rolling out new business
technology of any type?
User adoption.
How can you overcome this universal hurdle?
By making the process the least intrusive and cumbersome as possible,
which is much easier if you incorporate tools that your workforce already
feels comfortable using. In this case, we’re talking about integrating
serious business applications with the Google platform, which has become
ubiquitous among workers at all levels of technical acumen.
In the following Best Practices section, we present four
scenarios of how to increase user adoption rates
for your “serious business apps” by integrating
with Google and leveraging the comfort zone
of your existing and new employees.
Some great ideas to follow!
Bob Fernekees
VP/Group Publisher
CRM Media
Information Today, Inc.
GOLD SPONSOR SILVER SPONSORS
Mavenlink
PAGE 26
HOW SERVICE AGENCIES
CAN IMPROVE RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT IN 4 STEPS
Cloud Sherpas
PAGE 29
ADD VALUE TO YOUR CLOUD
WITH A GOOGLE AND
SALESFORCE INTEGRATION
Cirrus Insight
PAGE 30
MAKE REPS ACTUALLY WANT
TO USE SALESFORCE
Bring Salesforce into Gmail
(literally) to get a 5x increase
in Salesforce adoption
Cloud Sherpas
PAGE 32
GOOGLE MAPS AND
SALESFORCE INTEGRATION IS
THE ROUTE TO SUCCESS
47 Discovery, Suite 200
Irvine, CA 92618
888-803-5595
Mavenlink.com
3525 Piedmont Rd NE Bldg
8 Ste #710
Atlanta, GA 30305
(888) 260 7660
www.cloudsherpas.com
23046 Avenida de la Carlota
Suite 600
Laguna Hills, CA 92653
(800) 678-4950
www.cirrusinsight.com
sales@cirruspath.com
Bob Fernekees,
Group Publisher
212-251-0608 x13
bfernekees@destinationcrm.com
Adrienne Snyder,
Eastern/Midwest Account Director
201-327-2773
adrienne@destinationcrm.com
Dennis Sullivan,
Western Account Director
800-248-8466 x538
dennis@destinationcrm.com
‘Google-ize’ My CRM
The consumerization of
business technology
and why that is a good thing

2. WP26 January 2014 | CRM Magazine Sponsored Content
by Kasim Aslam, Co-Owner, Solutions 8
Resource management is like human
accounting. If you’re in a professional
services field, resource management should
be as important to your management staff
as accounting is to your financial staff.
Speaking from personal experience,
resource management tends to be
overlooked by growing agencies because,
in the beginning, you probably didn’t
need it. However, as your business grows,
resource management takes its place at
the table of crucial business practices that
can make or break your organization.
So where does effective resource
management start?
Management is decision making. If you
run a business, department or team you
are a professional decision maker, and one
of the most important things a decision
maker can have at hand when making key
decisions is visibility.
The general idea behind resource
management is to improve visibility for
key decision makers by providing an “at a
glance” overview of where their resource
allocation stands at any given time. That
said, here are the four crucial steps to
effective resource management:
1. EVERYONE NEEDS TO TRACK
THEIR TIME...ALL OF THEIR TIME.
Many service agencies bill by the hour
so time tracking isn’t a foreign concept. If
you aren’t tracking time for any particular
reason (maybe your firm bills by output or
milestone), be prepared for some inevitable
push back from your team.
Employees often view time tracking as
cumbersome and, in some cases, intrusive.
It is extremely important to have the
complete buy-in of your entire staff in order
to ensure that the results you get from your
time tracking are as accurate as possible.
There are a couple steps you can take
to mitigate potential resistance from
employees. First, help your staff “begin
with the end in mind” by explaining the
need for resource management. Let them
know that resource management will
actually protect them from overload by
keeping their full scope of responsibilities
visible to management.
Additionally, make sure to employ a project
management application that is intuitive and
easy to use. It should only take a few seconds
at most for your employees to switch between
tracking time for individual tasks. We use
Mavenlink for our project management
because its onboard time-tracking capabilities
and interface are extremely intuitive, easy-to-
use and adopt companywide.
Moreover, just because a task isn’t
billable doesn’t mean that it’s not payable.
If your employee is spending their time on
something, you are paying for the output.
When our staff first started tracking
time, there turned out to be a number
of surprises in store for us. First, it was
shocking how much time our staff spent
on email.
Once we realized this, we were
empowered to take some corrective
measures to mitigate the number of emails
being sent back and forth (including
a group mock for interoffice chat) and
we also made sure to account for email
management as a time requirement when
we took stock of available hours.
2. MANAGE RESOURCES BY TASK
We manage our resource allocation on
a monthly basis since the majority of our
initiatives tend to roll out every 30 days.
Depending upon the size of your projects
and how long each associated task takes,
you might decide to manage resources by
the week, month or quarter.
Break all of your initiatives up into
individual tasks; for larger organizations,
this might be easier to do by department
or even by project. After breaking up your
tasks, be sure to determine the following:
• Assign an hourly estimate to each
task. If you don’t have historical data
to assist with your estimates, take an
educated guess. This will allow you to
compare how long you thought tasks
should take versus how long they’re
actually taking.
• Determine if the task is stand alone
or interdependent. Interdependent
tasks rely upon each other for
completion (i.e., “task B” can’t begin
until “task A” is complete so “task B” is
dependent upon “task A”).
• Determine the due date for each task.
Make sure that your due dates are
consistent with your dependencies. In
the example above, if “task B” takes
two full days to complete you have to
make sure “task A” is finished at least
two days prior to the due date for
“task B”.
Once you have a complete breakdown
of all of your tasks, you now have a full
representation of your entire workload.
The next step is to define your available
resources. Determine the number of hours
you can reasonably expect out of each of
your employees.
Once you have defined your tasks and
available resources, put them together.
Allocate the tasks to resources according
to their bandwidth. In our organization,
we have our employees take the tasks that
are allocated to them and assign each
with specific dates and times on their
How Service Agencies
Can Improve Resource
Management in 4 Steps

3. Sponsored Content CRM Magazine | January 2014 WP27
shared Google calendars. This provides us
with instant visibility into their daily task
allocation, bandwidth and availability.
3. USE YOUR RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
TOOLS AS A WORKING DOCUMENT
Don’t simply perform resource
management at the beginning of every
month and then lock it away. The
information you now have available to you
should be utilized on a daily basis to make
ongoing management decisions.
When we first began resource
management, a frequent piece of feedback I
received was that it would be very difficult
to feasibly schedule every single task at
the beginning of every month. This is
even more reason to undertake resource
management.
Use your resource management blueprint
as a working document. Accept that it’s
inevitable that changes will be made on an
ongoing basis. As unforeseen situations arise,
you are now readily equipped to postpone
tasks or bring tasks to the forefront as needed.
The benefits of using Google Apps and
Mavenlink together:
At our firm, we utilize Google Calendar
as our relative “working document”. Every
employee has their own shared calendar
which is made available to everyone within
our organization. Since our employees
load all of their tasks into their shared
Google Calendar it allows for immediate
visibility of any single employee (or group
of employees) in an instant.
Google Calendar allows users to view
multiple calendars at a single glance as
well as toggle calendar views “on” and
“off” quickly and easily. This allows our
staff to view each other’s schedules as well
as identify availability for one or multiple
people instantly.
Google Calendar is also a fantastic
“working document” for resource
management since it features an extremely
easy drag-and-drop utility. Throughout
the month, as tasks are pushed, pulled and
otherwise “played with”, it’s extremely easy
to drag tasks around in Google Calendar; it
ensures that there are no conflicts or overlaps.
Another critical piece of this puzzle for
us is the fact that Mavenlink – our growth
management software for online project
management – syncs seamlessly with
Google Apps. A few of the reasons we use
Mavenlink to track the status and progress
of our tasks and project collaboration is
because it provides high-level reporting and
comprehensive Gantt charts (which show
task and project dependencies) in a visual,
intuitive interface.
Now, using two applications could
potentially result in redundant processes,
but as mentioned, Mavenlink offers
seamless integration with Google. All of
the tasks loaded into Mavenlink sync to
each user’s individual Google Task list.
Google displays a user’s Task list alongside
their Calendar, which gives our employees
the ability to cross-reference their master
task list with their Calendar to ensure
adequate reconciliation.
The real “take home” message is that
your employees’ task lists should be reflected
on their schedule. As obvious as that may
sound, I find more often than not that
people tend to think of their “to-do” list
and their daily schedule as two independent
tracking mechanisms. Ironically, the daily
schedule is meant to reflect what it is you

4. WP28 January 2014 | CRM Magazine Sponsored Content
mean to accomplish for that day. If a “to-
do” item never finds its way to our schedule
how can we plan on getting it done?
4. REPORTING
As with all things in the digital world,
resource management should be measurable.
Make sure to utilize the information you
gather on an ongoing basis in order to shed
further light on your business.
Effective reporting on resource
management will allow your business
to leverage a world of metrics. You can
define profitability on projects with near
pinpoint accuracy, determine which tasks
are taking longer than estimated, identify
clients who require more iterative processes,
manage scope creep and measure employee
efficiency. The reporting can be completely
tailored to your business and should be tied
back to your resource management as you
further clarify the metrics used to allocate
your resources.
Reporting should also assist with high-
level management decisions, such as how
much more work you can feasibly handle
with your existing staff or when you should
begin onboarding additional resources.
Having these numbers available to you
keeps the “when to hire” dilemma from
becoming a guessing game.
The value and depth of your reporting
will be tied directly to the software and
applications you use. One of the reasons I
insist on the continued use of Mavenlink
at our firm is because of the reports and
analytics that Mavenlink provides.
For example, I can immediately query
utilization metrics and determine which
members of my staff are being over or
under-utilized for any specific window of
time. This is extremely helpful in the event
of client emergencies or “fires” as it provides
me with a real-time view of which of my
resources is available and how much of their
time I have available to allocate.
This is also helpful when determining
“when to hire” as it allows a snapshot of how
busy my employees are over a specified period
of time. Mavenlink’s time tracking reports are
absolutely invaluable to my ongoing resource
management initiative as they provide me
with a very clear picture as to how long tasks
are taking and what my expectations should
be of my employees moving forward.
The time tracking capability is also
helpful in our profitability reports as it
allows me to determine the exact total
resource expenditure for each client or
initiative. Mavenlink allows me to apply a
“cost” to each of my employees (as well as
a billable rate) so I can view the amount
billed as well as my hard costs to ensure we
remain in the black.
While resource management isn’t a magic
bullet by any means, it has become as crucial
to our business as accounting is. The clear
line of sight that it provides when managing
our staff and contractors is absolutely
invaluable to providing the highest level of
service to our valued clients.
For additional information on Mavenlink,
please visit Mavenlink.com. For additional
information on Solutions 8, please visit
Sol8.com.

5. Sponsored Content CRM Magazine | January 2014 WP29
Implementing cloud technology is about
more than just adopting a new solution.
An integral part of any organization’s
cloud strategy should be integration, as the
ability to integrate multiple cloud solutions
gives end users the ability to work more
efficiently and maximizes the benefits of
the cloud. While the types of integrations
that are most beneficial vary from one
organization to the next, some of the most
common integration needs for enterprises
are between their sales automation and
customer relationship management systems
and their email and collaboration platform.
To fulfill this need, many organizations
choose to integrate Salesforce and Google
Enterprise solutions, specifically Google
Apps. With its full CRM suite that
includes Sales Cloud, Service Cloud and
Marketing Cloud, Salesforce is among
the most popular cloud CRM solutions
for businesses of all kinds. Similarly,
Google’s cloud solutions are becoming
increasingly commonplace in the enterprise,
as they provide unprecedented levels of
collaboration and mobility and are already
familiar to many users.
WHY INTEGRATE SALESFORCE
AND GOOGLE?
Many organizations implement CRM
from Salesforce to help automate and
support sales, service and marketing
activities, but the value of Salesforce
extends far beyond simple CRM practices.
Salesforce is a flexible cloud solution that
integrates easily with other cloud solutions,
such as those from Google Enterprise. By
integrating Salesforce with other clouds,
organizations can receive additional
benefits from their CRM systems including
greater visibility into customer information,
increased mobility, enhanced business
intelligence, better synchronization of data
and much more.
For organizations that link Salesforce
with Google Enterprise, the benefits are
limitless. This type of integration, which
seamlessly connects CRM data with
email, calendar, documents, and much
more, provides users with one, cohesive
working experience across a variety of
different business solutions. Rather than
having to switch back and forth from client
data in Salesforce, to mail and calendar
in Google to schedule an appointment
with a customer, users can complete
everything from directly within a custom
Salesforce tab. As a result of the seamless
integration, users are able to access all of
the information they need more quickly,
making for a more productive workforce.
ACHIEVING SUCCESS
WITH A SALESFORCE AND
GOOGLE INTEGRATION
So, what are some top Salesforce and
Google integrations and how are they
adding value to businesses?
Integrating Salesforce and
Google Apps for Business
When it comes to integrating Salesforce
and Google Apps, there are three types of
integrations: native (or out-of-the-box),
which uses native features available in each
platform, third party, which introduces
another cloud application, and custom, which
requires new solutions to be built on either
the Salesforce or Google cloud platform.
Common native integrations between
Salesforce and Google Apps include
integrating Google Docs and Gmail with
Salesforce. By adding Google Docs to
Salesforce, organizations can reduce storage
costs and collaboration pains associated
with storing contracts, documents and
attachments directly in Salesforce and gain
quick access to the first-rate collaboration
capabilities of Google Docs as well as
the ability to associate documents with
Salesforce entries. Meanwhile, integrating
Gmail and Salesforce adds value by allowing
users to automatically log email activity
by associating emails sent from Gmail to
records in Salesforce. Organizations can
even take this one step further by adding
Gmail compose functionality directly within
Salesforce itself.
The integration options expand when
third party and custom solutions are added
to the mix. A few top third party
integration projects include adding single
sign-on capabilities, automatically capturing
and viewing new leads based on email
activities and more closely aligning Google
Docs and Salesforce for enhanced contract
management. When it comes to custom
integrations, the options are even more
expansive, as they can be anything designed
to fit each organization’s specific and
unique needs. However, these projects tend
to focus on sharing data between Salesforce
or Chatter and a specific Google App, such
as Google Calendar, Google Drive or
Google Sites.
Born in the cloud, Cloud Sherpas provides
cloud technology and advisory services for
the world’s leading brands. As a top Cloud
Services brokerage, we offer services that
span the complete lifecycle - from strategy
and implementation to integration and
customization - of cloud solutions from
salesforce.com, Google, ServiceNow and
more. By helping organizations adopt,
manage and enhance their solutions, Cloud
Sherpas becomes a trusted partner and guide
for businesses seeking to take advantage of
all the benefits cloud technology has to offer.
Visit www.cloudsherpas.com
for more information.
Add Value To Your Cloud
with a Google and
Salesforce Integration

6. WP30 January 2014 | CRM Magazine Sponsored Content
Your business runs in Salesforce, but
your reps live in their Gmail inbox. After
all, the inbox is where the customers are!
Q: How do you get your team to utilize
customer data from Salesforce, and how
do you get everybody to update Salesforce
with the latest customer interactions?
A: Cirrus Insight.
Cirrus Insight literally brings Salesforce
into Gmail via a convenient side panel in
the Gmail inbox. (And coming in early
2014, Cirrus Insight brings the power of
Salesforce to your iPhone and iPad inbox!)
Every time you receive or compose
a message in Gmail, Cirrus Insight
displays real-time information about the
matching lead or contact from Salesforce.
That way, you always have relevant
contact information, activities,
opportunities, and cases from Salesforce
at your fingertips inside Gmail.
MAXIMIZE SALESFORCE ROI
Cirrus Insight enables you to quickly
save important information to Salesforce
right from Gmail.
For example, with Cirrus Insight you can
attach emails to Salesforce leads, contacts,
accounts, opportunities, cases, and custom
objects, too. No more BCC to Salesforce!
You can also create and update
Salesforce records right from Gmail:
Just received an email from a prospect?
Update the sales pipeline by creating
a new contact and a new opportunity
in Salesforce right from Gmail.
New contact information for your
best customer? Update the contact
and account records in Salesforce in
real-time without leaving the inbox.
Kudos for providing great customer
support? Mark the case as a resolved
in Salesforce via Cirrus Insight.
Need to set a reminder to
follow up with a customer? Create
and assign Salesforce tasks from
the side panel in Gmail.
Sending prospecting emails or replying
to customer inquiries? Cirrus Insight
allows you to use your Salesforce templates
in Gmail. Simply choose a template and
Cirrus Insight will merge the Salesforce
fields into the message in Gmail.
Crushing your sales meetings?
Cirrus Insight syncs Google Calendar
with Salesforce. It’s also the only
app that syncs event attendees.
That way, your Google Calendar
appointments automatically attach to
your customer records in Salesforce.
Have a highly customized Salesforce
organization? No problem. Cirrus
Insight automatically supports your
Salesforce profiles and permissions,
record types, custom fields, required
fields, and validation rules.
Want to utilize other Salesforce
apps for key business processes? Cirrus
Insight automatically integrates the
most popular Salesforce AppExchange
apps with Gmail including Marketo,
Pardot, Conga, LevelEleven,
Geopointe, and dozens more.
Need to track metrics and KPIs
in Salesforce? You can easily track all
records created in Salesforce via Cirrus
Insight so you can optimize sales and
support and reward top performers.
The result?
Sales and support teams love Cirrus
Insight because it makes CRM easy.
The app brings real-time Salesforce
customer intelligence into the inbox.
And it enables reps to create and update
Salesforce records right from Gmail.
Yes, reps will actually want to use
Salesforce via Cirrus Insight. And why
not? We all love apps that provide
overwhelming value and are easy to use.
At the organization level, Cirrus
Insight customers report an average
5x increase in Salesforce usage and
adoption. That translates into better
customer engagement and higher sales.
But don’t take our word for it.
The fastest-growing, highest-
performing organizations in the world
use Salesforce, Google Apps, and
Cirrus Insight to build sales growth
charts that look like hockey sticks.
Dropbox, HootSuite, Change.org, and
VolunteerMatch are four great examples.
CASE STUDIES
Dropbox is the world’s most popular
file-sharing service with more than
200 million users. Dropbox’s top
three wins with Cirrus Insight:
1. Dropbox uses Cirrus Insight to
log email correspondence with
Make Reps Actually
Want to Use Salesforce
Bring Salesforce into Gmail (literally) to
get a 5x increase in Salesforce adoption
“This app has evolved into the best Gmail and Salesforce
integration tool out there. I live and breathe in Salesforce and
Gmail and now I am able to seamlessly integrate the two.”
Cirrus Insight for iPhone Cirrus Insight for Gmail

7. Sponsored Content CRM Magazine | January 2014 WP31
leads and contacts from Gmail
into Salesforce, without having
to copy-paste a long BCC-to-
Salesforce email address.
2. Cirrus Insight minimizes context
switching between Gmail and
Salesforce so that Dropbox reps
can maintain their workflow and
optimize their efficiency. Plus,
Salesforce email templates are fully
accessible to reps within Gmail.
3. Cirrus Insight syncs Google
Calendar with Salesforce, which
enables Dropbox to track scheduled
activities within Salesforce.
HootSuite is the leading social
media management platform with
more than 1 million users. HootSuite’s
top three wins with Cirrus Insight:
1. HootSuite reps can hover on any
name or email address in Gmail
to do an instant Salesforce contact
lookup. And reps can quickly create
new leads and contact right from
Gmail using Cirrus Insight to fill
up the sales pipeline with prospects.
2. HootSuite has two critical custom
fields in Salesforce for universal
activity-based KPI’s across all
teams. Cirrus Insight enables
reps to populate and update these
two fields right inside Gmail.
3. HootSuite reps always comply with
internal data standards by using
Cirrus Insight. Each Salesforce
profile only sees the fields they need
to see in Gmail, and the HootSuite
admin can define layouts by profile.
Plus, all validation rules as defined
in Salesforce apply in Cirrus Insight.
Change.org is the world’s largest petition
platform with 50 million users. Change.org’s
top three wins with Cirrus Insight:
1. Cirrus Insight helps Change.
org keep track of updates from
sales, finance, marketing, and
other departments by enabling
reps to sync email from Gmail
to the correct opportunity in
Salesforce for each account.
2. Change.org maximizes business
productivity by eliminating back-
and-forth between browser tabs.
Cirrus Insight enables reps to
capture the right information from
Gmail into Salesforce with a click.
3. Change.org reps save a lot of time
by having the basic functions of
Salesforce inside Gmail, especially
New Task and Log a Call. Reps
no longer have to go through an
endless series of clicks in Salesforce
to find the right record and create
an activity. Cirrus Insight brings all
that functionality right into Gmail.
VolunteerMatch is the web’s largest
volunteer engagement network serving
93,000 nonprofits and 10 million
site visitors. VolunteerMatch’s top
three wins with Cirrus Insight:
1. The clean, intuitive user
experience enables new reps to
get up and running with Cirrus
Insight (and therefore with
Salesforce) in record time.
2. Cirrus Insight saves reps time by
bringing vital CRM functions
(e.g. create a task and update an
opportunity) into the Gmail inbox.
3. Cirrus Insight is constantly
evolving and rolling out new
features to VolunteerMatch users.
Dropbox, HootSuite, Change.org, and
VolunteerMatch are four examples of
innovative companies that are powering
exponential growth by utilizing Salesforce,
Google Apps, and Cirrus Insight.
ABOUT CIRRUS INSIGHT
Since launching over two years ago, Cirrus
Insight has been ranked the #1 app on
both the Salesforce AppExchange AND the
Google Apps Marketplace for integrating
Salesforce with Gmail, Google Calendar, and
Google Contacts.
Cirrus Insight installs in seconds as an extension
in your Chrome or Firefox browser. It integrates
Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google
Contacts with any edition of Salesforce.
Start your FREE 14-day trial (no registration!)
at www.cirrusinsight.com
ABOUT CIRRUSPATH
Cirruspath, the company that makes Cirrus
Insight, specializes in making apps that integrate
Salesforce with Google (Gmail, Google
Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Docs,
Google Sheets, and Google Drive). We love
delighting our customers with apps that help
them get the most out of Salesforce and Google.
Meet the team and see the apps at
www.cirruspath.com
NEW APP! SYNC GOOGLE DRIVE
AND SALESFORCE
Sync files and folders between Google Drive
and Salesforce to keep all your customer files
organized and accessible. Simply open a
record in Salesforce and get instant access to
all the relevant files from Google Drive. You
can also sync new files and folders in Google
Drive to matching records in Salesforce. Learn
more at www.cirruspath.com/apps/drive

8. WP32 January 2014 | CRM Magazine Sponsored Content
Today’s businesses must strive to keep
up with the rapid changes in technology
in order to help employees work more
efficiently and deliver the high level of
service that consumers have come to expect.
There are countless new technologies, many
of which are cloud solutions, that are helping
organizations achieve these goals, and it’s
important that enterprises do not overlook
the value of certain options. Geospatial
technology, in particular, is one area that
should top the list for every organization.
Among the countless integration
possibilities, one of the most common is
integrating Google Maps with Salesforce,
as combining the power of these two
solutions provides unprecedented visual
insight into CRM data and allows
organizations to better understand their
relationships with suppliers and customers.
By using backend Salesforce data,
Google Maps, and Google Maps Engine,
makes it easy to integrate, visualize and
interact with data in a geospatial context
through a familiar and intuitive interface.
While there are many possible projects
when you integrate Google Maps and
Salesforce, there are a few projects that
serve as great starting points.
For example, some top integration
projects include placing pins on maps to
designate customer locations and creating
heat maps. The pin functionality helps
organizations view customer locations in a
simple and more visual way by displaying
the location of particular customers and
showing the distance between
various customers, among
other functionalities. Many
organizations also choose to
create heat maps based on
Salesforce data in order to
better visualize the density
of customers in particular
locations. In both cases, users
can easily access these maps
through Salesforce via a custom tab that is
added to the CRM interface.
Beyond helping organizations visualize
data in new, simpler and more meaningful
ways, these integration projects also help
businesses highlight their sales activities by
geographic region and identify new trends.
Organizations that have a Google Maps
and Salesforce integration, find that they
can make sales efforts more efficient by
planning optimized routes and visualizing
key account data. Similarly, organizations
can also use this geographic data to
simplify territory planning and geographic
assignment, which can ultimately help to
reduce overhead and increase revenue and
conversions. Additionally, organizations that
have easy access to this enhanced data are in
a position to make more informed decisions.
Salesforce and Google Maps integrations
are becoming increasingly commonplace
in the manufacturing industry, where
companies are using mapping technology to
overlay supplier information with customer/
distribution data. With this type of overlay,
manufacturers have the ability to determine
which suppliers are low on inventory as
well as the ability to communicate the
whereabouts of shipments in real-time,
which helps them identify exactly
how much of a product needs to be
shipped to each supplier. Furthermore,
manufacturers are taking advantage
of geospatial technology to identify
which suppliers and distributors may
have been affected by major weather
events and will need extra support.
These functionalities - made possible
by integrating geospatial technology
like Google Maps with a CRM system like
Salesforce - helps manufacturers identify
the “where” of their data and have a better
understanding of the demand for their
supply. Manufacturing organizations can
then use this knowledge to help them make
key strategic decisions, such as the best place
to open a new factory.
ADDING VALUE WITH A SALESFORCE
AND GOOGLE INTEGRATION
Google Maps and Salesforce are prime
for integration, and doing so unlocks new
views of key business data. The capabilities
made possible by such an integration allow
organizations of all kinds to visualize their
data and be more informed than ever,
helping organizations be more prepared to
make both everyday and key strategic
decisions that affect their businesses.
Ultimately, this kind of knowledge is
helping organizations map out the route
to success.
Born in the cloud, Cloud Sherpas provides
cloud technology and advisory services for
the world’s leading brands. As a top Cloud
Services brokerage, we offer services that
span the complete lifecycle - from strategy
and implementation to integration and
customization - of cloud solutions from
salesforce.com, Google, ServiceNow and
more. By helping organizations adopt,
manage and enhance their solutions, Cloud
Sherpas becomes a trusted partner and guide
for businesses seeking to take advantage of
all the benefits cloud technology has to offer.
Visit www.cloudsherpas.com
for more information.
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