Chatter Communities - Generally Available

Salesforce Communities can be seen as the next evolution of the existing portal (customer, partner) offerings.  Key differences include an updated native interface as well as the integration of Chatter into portals.  Additional capabilities, such as access to dashboards, is also a key difference from the legacy portals.  Similar to the portal products, Communities can be customized to incorporate a company’s brand, custom navigation, and other functionality.  This customization can be done using both Force.com Sites as well as Site.com.  Watch for a future blog post in regards to leveraging this new portal platform.

Site.com Enhancements

Site.com has been deemed Salesforce’s long-term solution for building and maintaining web sites/pages on the Force.com platform.  Site.com provides business users with the ability to contribute text, images, and data without coding via a rich-text editor.  Meanwhile, control over which items can be edited, and by whom can be closely controlled to ensure site integrity.  Additionally, dynamic content can be added to pages through an integration with the existing Salesforce.com database. This is especially valuable when needing to display data that is already stored within Salesforce.  Good examples might be product and pricing information as well as partner (dealer/distributor) information.

With the Summer ‘13 Release, Site.com is getting some key enhancements to increase its usability:

Authenticated Community Support - Site.com currently only supports publishing to public web pages.  However, with Summer ‘13, Site.com can be coupled with the aforementioned Communities platform, allowing for sites, or even specific site resources (folders/pages) to be restricted to certain, authenticated users. 

Site.com Sandbox - Currently Site.com is only available to be used in the production environment.  This can be problematic when the site you are working to build is integrating with Salesforce.com data objects/fields that may not be in production.  With Summer ’13, Site.com is available on sandbox environments.  It is important to note that with Summer ‘13, you can’t move any work from sandbox to a production environment and there is an additional cost associated with Site.com sandbox.

Custom Widgets - With the new widgets feature, existing page elements, custom code, and CSS can be combined to create completely custom, reusable widgets. This feature will undoubtedly further enable business users to be able to construct more pages with less help of a web developer or admin. 

Customizable Price Books and Archiving

Price books are a key component of opportunity management within Salesforce.  However, the ability to customize the price book object, like can be done with other Salesforce objects, was limited.  With Summer ’13, you can now add custom fields, record types, and page layouts.  This enables companies to add another layer of flexibility to how they are managing their products and pricing.  Previously, each logical product group or business segment could have their own price book, but this was essentially a logical separation with no opportunity to customize for the unique needs of the product group.  With Summer ‘13, custom fields can be used in conjunction with record types and page layouts to give each product group this flexibility.

Data.com Social Key (Beta)
As Salesforce continues to integrate Social data capabilities into the platform, capturing social profile information about customers and leads becomes increasingly important.  Without having the various social handles for each contact, there really isn’t any value of Social Contacts in Salesforce.  Currently, each contact in Salesforce must be manually linked to each of the social profiles.  This can certainly be daunting to obtain and enter several social network handles for each existing record. 

With Summer ‘13, Salesforce is releasing the Beta version of Data.com Social Key to solve this very problem.  Similar to the existing Data.com offering that helps to ‘fill in’ data such as phone numbers and titles for existing contacts, the Social Key will help to automatically capture social network handles for contacts.  Social Key Beta will currently provide social handles for LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook for contacts and leads in the United States only.

For this reason, it is important the implementation team members are able to effectively gain an understanding of both the functional requirements (what the system must do) and the business drivers for the solution (why the solution is being sought).  When both the business stakeholders and implementation team share a common understanding of the solution needs, the design and implementation tasks are able to be executed more effectively and the ultimate solution will more fully meets the business needs. 

Just as the discovery process is the foundation for the entire project, proper planning is the basis for facilitating discovery effectively.  Business stakeholders are typically lending the implementation team precious time for conducting discovery interviews/discussions, it is important to have an appropriate plan for these sessions.  Without proper planning, often times the wrong stakeholders can be interviewed and the questions being asked will not actually meet the needs of the implementation team.  As such, there are three key planning activities that should be completed prior to the first discovery interview being conducted:

1. Define Goals and Outcomes - the implementation team and the primary (1-2) business stakeholder(s) should clearly identify not only the goals of the project, but the goals of the discovery process.  The stakeholders should have clear agreement as to the level of detail and completeness of the business requirements.  In some scenarios, it may be appropriate to only gather and document at a high level, where other scenarios may allow for more detailed analysis and definition.  It is important that there is agreement on this so that the deliverable(s) coming out of discovery meet the stakeholder expectations and provide sufficient information for completing subsequent work on the project (e.g. architecture and implementation).

2. Stakeholder Analysis - after defining the goals and outcomes, it is important to develop a common understanding of the individuals that should provide input to the discovery process.  Not only is this important to ensure that the list of stakeholders can provide the appropriate information to meet the discovery goals, but this also allows the implementation team to prepare for facilitating the actual discovery sessions. 

3. Determine Facilitation Method - with both the discovery goals and stakeholders defined, the implementation team can go to work to develop the appropriate tools and techniques for completing the discovery.  There are any number of different approaches to take for facilitating discovery and both the goals and the stakeholder analysis should influence the approach taken here.  It is important that the implementation team work with the stakeholder(s) to determine the best method to ensure success.

By clearly outlining goals, stakeholders, and the facilitation method(s), the discovery process should be able to be executed effectively, resulting in a solid, common understanding of both the business goals and functional requirements.

Now, I would never say that I am a avid coder.  I learned to code various languages in college, but never took my abilities much beyond what I was required to do for class.  However, I definitely agree with the quote from Steve Jobs at the beginning of the Code.org video:

“Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer…because it teaches you to think.”

Whether you code full-time, or only have dabbled enough to be dangerous, coding is an entry point to thinking critically about problems.  Coding forces you to break down problems into logical pieces that must be reassembled into a system that works together.  There is no skipping corners or talking your way through the problem; you have to factor for as many scenarios as you can think of, and then even that isn’t typically good enough.  Coding, and technology in general, make you think through not only what is possible, but what it will take to actually make it happen. 

In my current professional role I do very little, if any, coding.  However, I still attribute learning to code as one of the primary reasons for how I think about business problems.  Success in helping our clients comes through being able to take a critical view of any business need and break it down into numerous small solutions that can work together to solve for the need as a whole.  It is this ability to impact the real world through thought process that is the reason that I love working in technology.

Code.org Video:

Chatter Enhancements:

1. Chatter Tasks - Staring in Spring ‘13, task related posts will be available in your Chatter feed.  As soon as a task is created on any record (e.g. an account), the task appears right in the Chatter feed for that record.  Additionally, you can now enable the creation of tasks right from the chatter feed for a record:

2. Chatter Group Search - Currently chatter search is across all chatter groups.  With Spring ‘13, you can search within a specific group directly from the group page allowing for a more direct, refined search.

3. Post to any public group - Currently, in order to post to a group, you must be a member of the group, even a public group.  With Spring ‘13, any user can post to a public group regardless of membership.  This can be helpful for posting announcements and other information to various groups within your organization without having to be a member of each group.

Salesforce Touch Enhancements:

Salesforce Touch became “Generally Available” with the Winter ‘13 release, but there were some significant limitations that has lessened it’s adoption by many organizations.  Several of these limitations have been addressed as part of the Spring ‘13 release.

1. Chatter no longer required - Previously, in order to activate and use Salesforce Touch in your Salesforce org, Chatter needed to be enabled.  Although using Chatter is definitely recommended, there are no doubt many organizations that have decided to not use Chatter for one reason or another.  Fortunately, with the Spring ‘13 release, Chatter is no longer a requirement for using Salesforce Touch.

2. Expanded Tab Access - Prior to Spring ‘13, only the Sales Cloud app and it’s standard tabs were available.  With the new release, users can access any application, including custom apps that have been configured.  Additionally, users can work with the following in any app: accounts (including person accounts), cases, contacts, dashboards, opportunities, tasks, and all custom tabs.  Inclusive in this list is any tab that is being rendered via a visualforce tab.  Other visualforce components are not yet supported.

3. Dashboard Access - You can now view dashboards in Salesforce Touch.  Dashboards in Salesforce Touch provide the user the ability to view recently viewed dashboards, search for dashboards and refresh dashboards.  Additionally users can select data segments on a dashboard to view more details for that data.

Other Notable Changes:

Force.com - One App license changes - Currently, Salesforce offers the “Force.com - One App” license that allows users access to one custom app (tabset) that includes up to 10 custom objects and read-only access to Accounts and Contacts.  This license has typically been leveraged for those users that only need access to a small set of non-CRM system functionality. In order to allow for some more flexibility in this model, Salesforce is sunsetting the Force.com - One App license and replacing with two new license types:

Force.com Light App - This license is very similar to the current one app license, except that this license has a more restrictive API capability.  Specifically, this license does not give access to Sharing, Bulk API, or Streaming API.

Force.com Enterprise App - This license is also very similar to the current one app license, except that it provides read/write access to Accounts and Contacts.  Previously, in order to have write access to these standard objects, users needed to have, at minimum, a Force.com Enterprise App.  This new license type allows for giving users access to a more extensive “one app” while keeping the license cost down.

Note that Salesforce has not yet released any pricing information on these two new license types.  Additionally, any existing Force.com - One App licenses users can continue to be leveraged and be renewed.

State and Country Picklists—Beta - A long awaited feature is to provide picklist versions of the standard state and country address components.  State and country picklists allow users to select values from predefined, standardized lists, instead of entering state and country data into text fields. According to the Spring ‘13 release notes: “The state and country names in the picklists are based on ISO-3166 standard values, making them compatible with other applications as well.”  The release notes also indicate that this feature is being released in “Beta,” meaning that the feature is ready to be used in a production application, but there may be limitations or issues with using this new feature.

Of course, there are many more new features and changes coming with the Spring ‘13 release.  This post is intended to hit on the features that have the most probable value and/or impact.  Be sure to check on the Spring ‘13 release notes for detailed information on these and other enhancements.

Manage Risk
Whether the project is implementing a new technology or a new process, risk plays a major factor in whether the business stakeholders will move forward with the proposed change.  No matter how many case studies from other companies you throw at the problem, the reality is that every company is different and there is some level of risk in implementing something new.  The pilot project can be used as an opportunity to implement the solution in a limited capacity where the impact of failure is limited.  Once the pilot project is executed, the risks that were identified at the beginning of the project can be evaluated in terms of the actual solution being implemented in the organization.  Obviously, a pilot project is limited in its process and/or organizational scope, so it is important to design the pilot to be able to test the most contentious risk areas.  Whether this be the most complex business process or the most complex technology being implemented, it is important that the risk evaluation be reasonable in order to be confident with the risk that will be carried forward to a full implementation project.

Validate Benefits
While risk falls on the cost side of the equation, a project would not be considered unless it had some reasonable perceived benefit.  Often times the potential benefit of a solution is an area of much debate and most organizations tend to struggle with understanding and/or quantifying a solution’s benefits.  A pilot project is a great opportunity to discover and/or validate benefits by applying the solution concepts in a limited-scope fashion.  Similar to the risk side, it is important that the scope is reasonable in complexity and representative of the long-range scope.  Additionally, measurement on the pilot’s value is important to have in place in order to gain insight into the benefits side of the equation.  If you are looking to determine mathematical return on investment for the long-range solution, it is essential that you are able to measure associated costs and revenues prior to and upon completion of the pilot implementation.  If these things are in place, this type of pilot can be one of the best mechanisms for selling the internal stakeholders to the validity of a solution.

Evangelize Change
The biggest hindrance to change in any organization is the people within it.  Regardless of how much you ‘sell’ the solution with ROI statistics and qualitative benefits, there are always those that will only ‘believe it when they see it’.  As such the pilot project can be a great approach to appeasing the dissenters of the organization and bringing them along as supporters. 

But even beyond the direct detractors within the organization, a pilot project can be great for taking a new idea and spreading it throughout the organization.  One of my all-time favorite quotes is:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead.

If nowhere else, this quote holds true in every business organization.  Change starts with one to a handful of individuals that generate a great idea for making their organization more effective and/or efficient.  Unfortunately, even the best idea will struggle to take hold without sound example(s) of how this idea can work and the benefit(s) it can provide.  The good news is that small victories, such as a pilot, speak volumes in terms of bringing other parts of the organization along.

With each of these reasons for executing a pilot project, the key is to obsess over the details that will springboard the pilot into a full-blown project/solution.  Without sound details regarding risk and/or benefits, the pilot will be limited in its effectiveness to garner support by the wider organization.  As project stakeholders, we tend to stay focused on the functional requirements of the project while non-functional requirements, such as benefit metrics, are the first thing to slide.  It is important to keep your eye on the larger goal and ensure that by the time the pilot has been implemented, you have a sound example of success.

• Customer Satisfaction
• Product Development
• Pre/Post Event Evaluations

From one perspective, this list demonstrates that the primary intent behind customer-driven surveys is to gain insight across different customers and less about deriving information about the customer/prospect as an individual.  Often times the driver of such surveys is not sales, or even marketing, but product-centric groups that are often more interested in the aggregate survey results than the individual responses.  This, of course, is a legitimate and logical use case for these groups, but often times this is where the data flow ends and the potential for survey data to be used to drive individual sales and marketing insights is lost.

From an individual perspective, these same surveys have great potential to enhance the view of the customer/prospect; opening up the potential for more informed sales and marketing activities.  In order to gain this value, one must look into how this survey data can be integrated into the existing customer record used by sales and marketing.

For each of the previously mentioned survey use cases, each has potential for integration into the customer record in different, but valuable ways.

• Customer Satisfaction: Individual customer responses can be linked to the customer record in order to give sales a reference point to the level of satisfaction for an individual customer.  When customers receive and complete multiple surveys over time, trending can also be captured for quick reference by sales/marketing.  Lastly, it is important to consider if there are survey responses that can be leveraged to determine/impact individual customer measures such as likelihood or timeframe to buy.

• Product Development: Product development surveys are a bit more difficult to gain immediate customer value from, but from a long-range perspective responses to product development surveys can be used to determine a individual customers likelihood to purchase a new product being developed, including add-on products for a product already owned by the customer. 

• Pre/Post Event Evaluations: Events that are part of a larger marketing campaign or sales effort can be leveraged to determine the customer/prospects movement through the buying cycle.  The key to gaining benefit from these surveys is to ask questions that move beyond evaluating the event itself, but additionally, dig into how the event may have influenced their buying decision/timeline.  Additionally, event surveys may be able to inform sales about a customer/prospect’s specific product interest.

These are just a few examples of how customer/prospect surveying can drive customer insight.  The key to these and other approaches is to tie individual responses to the customer record within the CRM or other system and determine what value can be gained from individual responses.  The challenge to this is keeping up with the many surveys that are being conducted from all different aspects of the organization.  Having a common tool and area responsible for creating/distributing surveys can be a good starting point.  This way, surveys that may be initiated by endless areas of the organization are filtered through a single point where decisions can be made for how the surveys being conducted may be leveraged for purposes of gaining additional customer insight.  Educating the individual(s) responsible for survey creation on the value of individual responses may also help to drive better/additional questions that are specifically of value to marketing/sales.

Of course, the best way to summarize Dreamforce ‘12 is in terms of the key product announcements and/or launches that continue to expand the ability for Salesforce to reach all aspects of the professional organization. 

Salesforce Touch

The vision of a single, universal mobile platform was announced at last year’s Dreamforce and brought full circle at this year’s event.  The much-hyped Salesforce Touch is intended to be a one-size-fits-all mobile solution for a platform that for years has struggled to keep up with demand for pushing out mobile capabilities to disparate mobile operating systems.  The touch interface is built using the emerging HTML5 standard, which enables it to run on any device.  Touch was deemed “generally available” during Dreamforce and I am excited to start seeing companies tap into this platform.  Not only is Salesforce Touch great for enabling Salesforce’s native capabilities on the road, but it also promises to be a great mobile platform for enabling custom mobile apps that can be leveraged throughout the enterprise. 

Marketing Cloud

Salesforce has had marketing features and components for years (e.g. Campaigns, Google AdWords). But, until this year, Salesforce never really touted itself as a Marketing Automation tool.  Salesforce has many partners that serve this space and likely Salesforce thought it in their best interest to collaborate rather than compete.  With the emergence of the social as a marketing channel, Salesforce has determined that the value of social to be too high to not double down on its investment in Radian6 (Social Listening and Engagement) and Buddy Media (Social Ads).  As a result the Salesforce Marketing Cloud has been born.  Personally, I would like to see Salesforce add “Social” to the title to better distinguish this tool as almost exclusively for social marketing.  This is apparent in the laundry list of features that the Marketing Cloud brings to the table, which is largely an integration/mashup of the capabilities acquired through Radian6 and BuddyMedia.

Social Listening - effectively listen to social conversations and gain insights about your brand, products, market and competitors using real-time data.  http://www.radian6.com/what-we-sell/analysis-insights/

Social Content - create and deploy social content to customers wherever they are - on social networks, websites and mobile.  http://www.buddymedia.com/products/profilebuddy  http://www.buddymedia.com/products/reachbuddy

Social Engagement - discover and respond to customers directly and in real-time through multiple social channels. http://www.radian6.com/what-we-sell/engagement-console/  http://www.buddymedia.com/products/conversationbuddy

Social Advertising - promotion of content through targeted social ads. http://www.buddymedia.com/products/buybuddy

Social Workflow and Automation - create leads, cases, or contacts based on social interactions.  http://www.salesforce.com/crm/sales-force-automation/workflow/

Social Measurement - measure across social channels in one place to understand engagement, sales influence and more.  http://www.buddymedia.com/products/analytics http://www.radian6.com/how-we-help/measure/

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is immediately available for existing Salesforce customers.

Chatterbox

Back in May, I wrote a post about embracing personal cloud tools for use in the Enterprise.  In this post I mentioned that organizations would be attracted to finding enterprise-caliber tools that met similar needs as their personal-use counterparts.  It just so happens that this is exactly where Salesforce saw a compelling need and is launching a new product/feature as a result.  Chatterbox is Salesforce’s play to fill the need for a Dropbox for the enterprise. According to John Taschek, senior vice president of marketing strategy at Salesforce, “Chatterbox is taking away the promiscuity of Dropbox and the antiquity of SharePoint”. 

Undoubtedly, their is some real potential to be uncovered by using Chatterbox.  The question will be how quickly enterprises will abandon existing solutions (e.g. Sharepoint) and how well Chatterbox will be integrated into the rest of the Salesforce platform. Salesforce.com has no shortage of ways to store files inside the platform (Chatter, Files, Attachments, Content) and it likely is time to work toward integrating/streamlining all of the distinct content solutions offered.

Chatterbox will be available in pilot in the first half of 2013

Chatter Communities

Salesforce continues to evangelize the idea of social collaboration, this time pushing this idea to the outside of the organization.  Chatter Communities is set to be Salesforce’s solution for collaboration with both Partners and Customers.  Enabling Chatter in both the Salesforce Partner and Customer Portals has been a highly requested feature in Salesforce’s idea exchange and Chatter Communities brings this request home. For partners, Chatter Communities enables a branded collaboration space where companies can work with partners on accounts and opportunities, in addition to facilitating direct communication to the entire partner channel in a way that allows for immediate and transparent feedback.  For customers, the classic product/service discussion forum is empowered by Chatter to be both a place for customer-to-customer engagement, but also a channel for directly addressing customer issues.  Sales and Marketing also get the benefit of having detailed customer interactions directly associated with an account and contact record inside Salesforce.  Both of the Chatter Communities solutions bring much needed empowerment for working with partners and customers inside the already familiar Salesforce environment.

Salesforce Communities is available in a limited pilot in Fall 2012 and is expected to be generally available in the second half of 2013.  Once available, existing Portals customers can enable the community functionality to their service and partner portal licenses at no additional cost.

Last year was my first year attending Dreamforce, and, more than anything, I was impacted by the sheer size and scale of the event. I have been to several technology conferences in the past, but never to one that took over several blocks of a major city.  It would be almost impossible for you to be anywhere near the Moscone Center and not know something BIG is happening—each building in the area had hung larger-than-life banners and signs related to Salesforce and the Social Enterprise. Every few steps on the sidewalk brought you to a sign below your feet indicating directions to specific buildings and/or events of the conference. Best of all, every street corner (and several points in-between) had a conference staff person available to direct you to your next session or answer any questions you had. So, not only was I continually amazed at the size of the conference, but I think Salesforce did a tremendous job making sure no one got lost along the way.

Most people attend conferences to find new/renewed inspiration. In that regard, Dreamforce definitely does not disappoint. The keynotes were a great place to get a combined emotional and intellectual ‘high’ and were jam-packed with examples of how a wide-variety of businesses and industries have been transformed through the use of the cloud and Force.com platform. Furthermore, the messages of those keynotes were aptly reinforced and taken deeper through a number of sessions about a wide spectrum of topics. Needless to say, there is no shortage of great ideas to be discovered! 

With all of the great ideas entering your brain, you need to be careful not to let your brain overload. I found it especially helpful to socialize and connect with fellow ‘Dreamforcers.’  Whether it was grabbing a drink after the last session of the day, enjoying the fabulous dining opportunities within blocks of Moscone, or rocking out at the Gala, it was certainly helpful to take advantage of opportunities to unwind. Dreamforce is definitely not for the faint at heart, but the good food and atmosphere certainly help.

Obviously, this is just a glimpse of what Dreamforce has to offer. I encourage everybody to go into the week with an open and engaged mind in order to maximize your value. And, if you can disconnect from your work back home, that will definitely help too!

Outbox

I hate snail-mail.  It doesn’t matter if it is a bill, a magazine, or even a personal card - I would be grateful if I never received another piece of paper again.  I would rather receive bills electronically (and preferably auto-pay) and am more likely to read a magazine on my iPad.  I love personal cards and handwritten notes, but I constantly struggle with which ones to keep and which ones to toss.  And of course, with all of the above, determining an efficient and effective way to file and archive all of these paper documents is nearly impossible. 

Enter Outbox, an Austin, TX based start-up that is working with the USPS to intercept snail-mail prior to arriving in your mailbox.  Outbox opens and scans each piece of mail they intercept and make it available via a secure website to read, sort, and purge.  Any piece of mail can be forwarded to you in the event you need or want the actual physical document.

At this time, this service is released in beta and is only available to those in the Austin, TX area. 

Clipboard

I personally have yet to jump on the Pinterest bandwagon.  I think part of me just has an aversion to adding another social media outlet that I feel a need to monitor.  That said, the part of me that is always on the lookout for new ideas, such as new cloud apps, likes the idea of Pinterest for capturing those “Someday, Maybe” ideas and inspirations.  I have tried using other apps such as Evernote, Google Tasks, or Pocket for capturing these items, but in general they don’t quite fit the bill.  All of these apps are more tactical-focused in that anything that isn’t of immediate importance/interest gets buried to never be found again.

Clipboard seems to have found a niche market for those persons, such as me, that are looking for a place to store visually inspiring ideas, but are not necessarily looking for another social platform.  One tech reviewer said of Clipboard, in comparing with Pinterest,

What’s important to realize about these applications is that while they take some visual and design cues from Pinterest, the heart of their services lie in data and productivity. Pinterest is aspirational; Clipboard is organizational. Pinterest isn’t inherently about getting things done, and these sites are – or at least want to be.

Clipboard has recently been opened up for public sign-up.  Get your account here: www.clipboard.com

Learnist

Keeping with the Pinterest-inspired theme, another app has entered the scene with the intent of curating on-line learning resources.  Learnist is a visually stunning approach to organizing information for sake of learning.  Think about the last time you sought out to learn something new.  Typically you do a Google search and find a bunch of articles that seem relevant, then spend significant time weeding through the articles to find ones that are actually worthwhile toward your learning goals.  Additionally, your Google search does nothing in terms of placing article in any kind of logical order to actually help you learn. 

Learnist is a bit of Pinterest meets eHow for complex topics.  Field experts are able to pull together online content for the sake of helping others learn a specific field or topic.  Personally, I see a compelling business case for enabling company leaders to pull together applicable online resources for their employees. This can be great for on-boarding new hires or promoting new ideas within the organization. 

As of now, Learnist is an invite-only beta, but you can explore existing topics without a user account. Request your invite here: http://learni.st/

The only problem with this situation is that sometime this functionality isn’t really needed and can cause more problem than what it is worth to businesses. Sure, everybody loves free stuff, but in the long run, I didn’t really need an electronic egg cooker and the blender I had worked just fine.  Before too long, you end up with kitchen cupboards full of small appliances that are rarely used and take up space and get in the way of the things that I really need to use.

As it is with cloud solutions, the need to try and be all things to all people, can sometimes cause headaches to businesses trying to manage their own solution and feature set for their business users.

In a typical business-driven solution, the business is responsible for identifying the needs that they have for their system solutions and then prioritizing these needs for the IT team to implement.  With cloud solutions that provide features automatically, the business team is often faced with having to spend time evaluating new features in order to understand them and how they might be able to be applied to their business.  In some scenarios,  these new features are quickly embraced as new innovative ideas that will support the existing solution model effectively.  Other times, the new features don’t quite match with the way that the business solution is implemented.  In this situation, the business must then work to identify the best to either disable or minimize the impact of these solutions.  This time can be seen as counter productive and preventing the business from getting what it really wants out of the cloud solution.

However, when the business does embrace the inevitability of new features being added to the cloud solution, it is important to have a clear communication and training plan so that system users are not caught off guard by the change.  In this scenario, having a unprepared user community may negatively impact the overall user experience and satisfaction with the solution.  System managers and stakeholders should get in the habit of developing a method of educating users for each release of the cloud solution.  It is important that this does not just consist of the general documentation that the cloud vendor supplies for everyone.  Often this documentation provides too much technical detail regarding the new functionality and can reference other system capabilities that may not be currently used by the business users.  Instead, it is better to provide users with very specific documentation on what the change is, how it will benefit them, and how it will manifest itself in their implementation. 

Overall, most businesses will probably find that the value of ‘automatic’ feature enhancements from cloud solutions to be a bigger benefit than a headache. So long as the costs to evaluate and manage these new features can be controlled and the business users well educated, the solution will benefit in the end.