6 Fundamentals of a Successful Salesforce.com Community Platform

© 2015 Rightpoint

These days business moves fast.

Breakneck fast.The whys are well known; swift proliferation of data, a consumer-driven demand for anytime, anywhere access, and unprecedented global competitiveness.

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Companies aiming to enlarge their customer base and grow sales, strengthen brand distinction, and enable innovation are quickly shifting to a new paradigm; the archetype of communities.

Once, companies could make do with the bloated blend of inherited systems and current technologies that many possessed. These clumsy concoctions often included; dowdy intranet sites with a thread of social collaboration shoved in, separate lines of business applications front-ended by dull, complicated user interfaces, and awkward connections to files, documents and videos.

Today, this outmoded style of operations is a sure-fire growth killer.

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Community.What’s it all about?

Salesforce.com, builder of the Community Cloud, says it simply:

the Community Cloud is an online collaboration and business process platform that connects employees, customers and other stakeholders; such as partners, suppliers and distributors.

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These fully branded public or private communities join members directly with each other, as well as provide immediate access to relevant content, data and business processes. Combined with the power of social and mobile, communities propel the flow of business.

The bottom line is, the community concept provokes a modern reimagining of how work gets done — transforming processes and speeding results. When executed well, those results can be eye-popping.

Many organizations have reported an average Return on Investment (ROI) of

325% within a few months.

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Drive remarkable efficiency and increase

engagement among employees by

48% Develop deeper

customer relationships via real-time direct

interaction and improve customer satisfaction by

45%

This innovative platform can:

Enable smooth collaboration with partners to power

through challenging processes and increase

partner sales by

43%Sounds good, right?Let’s observe how it works. We’ll start with a couple of examples to illustrate the point.

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Here’s what most of us are used to. An employee arrives at work, excited to begin a productive day. She’s an energetic sales person (we’ll call her Sarah) about to construct a complex proposal for a significant client. There’s a lot to do. The first action item — gather the technical details of the offering and begin to build the elements of her proposition. Sarah, recalling that a team member crafted a similar solution for his biggest client last month, jots an email asking for a copy. Immediately, the ping of an out-of-office notice flashes on her screen. Ugh!

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Her next move? She forwards the email to his manager. But waiting is not her thing, so she switches her screen to the corporate Search application. This outdated app looks like an antiquated spreadsheet laced with instructions on how to launch a successful quest. After an hour at this frustrating exercise, she’s received about eight hundred hits of mostly useless, poorly formatted, misses. The results, no surprise, are less than gratifying. While some of these hits may actually have viable data in them, Sarah would need a telescope to uncover the sparkle in the dust. So the now slightly less enthusiastic sales person, once hot to create a blockbuster proposal for her client, is forced to turn her attention to less crucial tasks. And wait it out. Setting her most pressing needs, and those of her client, aside. For now.

He’s on vacation for two weeks.

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What if? Sarah was headed to the office, but missed her train. Too much time sipping cappuccino and pondering the structure of her winning proposal. On the way back to her apartment, she pulls out her smart phone. Her company implemented Community Cloud a few months back and the sales teams have already embarked on full-scale adoption. She logs in to her favorite community, the one designed specifically for the division’s top rain makers, and jumps into the non-stop action of the community thread. Sarah tags her colleague and asks about the proposal he won with last month.

“Hey, @BigWinner, can I get a copy of the Paragon proposal? I heard it’s your best ever.”

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Instantly, another colleague responds.

“@BigWinner is in the Adirondacks for two weeks. Tough life, right? But he flipped me a copy last week. I used some of the ROI stats for a recent deal. Had a few issues reformatting though. Ended up cutting and pasting or retyping some of the content. Good luck with it.”

He attached a copy of the proposal directly into the conversation thread.

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Before Sarah reached her apartment, another colleague chimed in.

“@SarahCuda The formatting is locked, but I can help. @BigWinner and I created the template together, I know the in’s and out’s. I’ve got some time open this morning when we can connect. What works for you?”

“In 15 minutes? Can we vid conference and go through it? I’ll be in my home office.”

Sarah jumps on the offer.

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The differences between these illustrations are stark.

When the video call ends, she goes back to the community to publicly thank her colleague for his contribution. She even posts a badge of excellence and calls him out as an expert on template revisions.

Next, Sarah needs an architectural drawing which illustrates the migration to the new system she’s hoping to sell. Clicking on the Topics tab, she locates the Migrations section, and has the drawing she’s after in seconds. Within an hour of missing her train, Sarah is well on her way to creating the proposal she envisioned.

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It’s clear that relying on historically rigid, inert portals with no real collaboration won’t get you the kind of agile, engaged interaction that businesses today require. And those legacy discussion forums! You know the ones—each a screen full of tables laden with sad, empty boxes begging for users to enter questions or comments. They’re mainly limited, limiting, lifeless porticos. And whether employees, customers, or partners; modern users (who’s personal lives are overrun with tools that not only draw them in, but offer real information and genuine solutions) are disenchanted when forced to settle for less.

So, what are the makings of a strong, successful community platform?

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Here are six fundamentals:

Data needs to be available from anywhere — including third party systems. Members, internal or external, want to create records, update them, share documents, get answers and fully participate in day-to-day processes. The idea is to extend business processes and connect them by integrating any record or object, embedding custom or third party apps, and yielding opportunities to move processes forward directly from within the community.

Business Integration

When it comes to actually getting things done, users require access to business critical files. 01

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These propel action by connecting participants directly to data and to each other. Knowledge and experts are readily available to provide insights, answer questions or drive towards the next step. Fast moving issues are addressed due to the ability to participate in business actions right from the feed. There’s no need to switch applications, log in to another system and initiate tasks from somewhere else. It’s all done right in the feed, in the space of community.

Social Feeds

Another advantage is the creation of groups. Groups, whether private or open, can be defined in ways that best suit users. Typically, they are associated with specific interest areas such as; events, teams, special projects or accounts. These collections of like-minded individuals bring structure to discussions and activities. The creation framework allows for groups to be fully open, or designated as private or invitation only. There’s even an allocation that essentially renders groups stealth. In these cases, not only is the group locked, but other community users don’t even know it’s there.

A dynamic and engaging social feed is critical.

02

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Employees and customers alike benefit when they are welcomed by complimentary and consistent brand and design elements. Accordingly, community templates support simplicity when it comes to branding and customization. These templates offer a straight-forward approach and can be used out-of-the-box to easily create stunning online environments. But the range of requirements is often diverse, so community templates also allow designers the flexibility to alter visual elements in varied ways. There’s even the capability to create sophisticated custom community layouts to meet nearly any specific design or business need.

03 Branding & Customization

Without argument, the best communities are interactive extensions of your brand.

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Community platforms are built on the premise that anywhere, anytime access on any device is an absolute mainstay.

Mobile

Not only are the powerful collaboration elements instantly available to mobile users, including active feeds and touchpoint access to business processes; but the rich branded experience applies across the board. Whether the user logs in on a laptop, smartphone or tablet, the communities are immediately recognizable and offer simple navigation options that look familiar. In truth, this aspect of any application is crucial. Mobile applications (in essentially all cases) must be intuitive, uncomplicated and responsive.

04

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When it comes to communities, they’re nothing if they’re not thriving. The word itself comes from the Old French comunete’, a broad term for fellowship of individuals who…wait for it…define the relationship as important. If users don’t routinely participate and consider the platform vital, it’s useless. Clearly, every aspect of communities mentioned above comes into play here. And Social Intelligence soundly ups the game. As users gain familiarity and become more engaged, they reveal more of who they are and what interests them. When the community knows more, it can give more — delivering suggestions and content that’s relevant to each individual.

Social Intelligence

The outcome invites deeper participation and keeps community members coming back for more.

05

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Trust

With all this instantaneous sharing of sensitive processes and data, the need for secure infrastructure essentials is apparent. Community Cloud is anchored on a platform that uses some of today’s most advanced technology for internet security. This foundation is not only secure, but scales easily to expand as community needs evolve and grow.

Community members and technologists alike can be confident that the information shared via communities, and the interactions therein, are protected.

06

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What winning looks like!Consider how one of our innovative clients went ‘all in’ on crafting a robust community for more than

20,000 key stakeholders.

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One of the world’s leading providers of advanced analytics and data solutions for risk, safety and claims management had a problem. The complexities of serving clients well was beginning to surpass the company’s ability to keep up. One overriding challenge stood out.

The company had long been comprised of disparate groups; with data, applications and expertise dispersed among them.

This structure, more and more, was creating significant drag when it came to efficiently providing information, knowledge and answers to clients.

To address this challenge, they wanted to build a single, integrated risk, safety and claims platform that could draw correlations across the entire risk lifecycle. It was a tall order. The client’s team, in partnership with Rightpoint consultants, knew to begin with a big picture focus.

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A platform constructed with risk, safety and claims workflows in mind. Members could personalize their home pages and pin the apps they use most frequently. Plus, intuitive navigation was a design imperative, allowing swift access to active or recent apps. What’s more, communication with key stakeholders had to be accomplished with a single click. In short, everything a user needed could be located with effortless ease.

The lofty objectives included

three key scenarios:Connecting the entire ecosystem, including thousands of clients, brokers, consultants and other stakeholders was paramount to the effort. Collaboration tools, both desktop and mobile, would make it simple for all stakeholders to converge in real-time, streamlining workflows and advancing resolutions. Members could quickly share knowledge and information including dashboards, to keep everyone up-to-speed.

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Data value would need to be unlocked through the use of advanced analytics, integrated right into the processes. Users would have access to powerful interactive tools offering immediate insight. This means members could create ad-hoc reports, dashboards, and what-if scenarios within the context of normal workflow. And with the availability of global database resources, they could analyze risk exposures, benchmark performances and predict claims severity, all on the fly.

The intended outcome was comprehensive and ground-breaking. It would be the first of its kind in the industry. A wholly original undertaking, never before attempted.

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But there were a number of specific challenges that required deft resolution, including:

There was no platform that allowed collaboration between employees, customers and other stakeholders. The effort had to start from scratch.

The current situation offered zero mobile accessibility. None.

The security protocols and tools required to allow sharing of sensitive data were not available in the organization.

There wasn’t a framework that would support leveraging their extensive collection of knowledge and data. (More than 125TB worth.)

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So, how to get to that

bold vision?

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Rightpoint’s practiced approach (designed to uncover, dissect and topple any challenge) is based on five key elements:

Content Strategy/User Experience

Engaging Visual Design

Sustainable Technical Solution

Change Management

Ongoing Support and Maintenance

Let’s look at each element in more detail.

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3

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Content Strategy/User ExperienceContent Strategy guides content goals, style, tagging strategy and content development. It also considers the process of content migration. There are five crucial aspects of content strategy that must be deliberated and scored: Accurate, Necessary, Authentic, Effective and Strategic. With regard to User Experience, the process includes using Journey Maps to identify and define user groups and their key tasks. The intent is to bring vibrant life to critical points in their journeys.

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When it comes to creating a design that draws users in, a wide range of factors come into play, including; demographics of the user communities, tone of the brand, company culture, ethnography of its customers, and so on. Once those aspects are well-understood, we create an interactive blueprint, test the blueprint with end users and stakeholders, and then finalize the design specifications. If this sounds like a simple process, it’s not. In today’s business environment, this is the piece de resistance. Build it and they may actually come, but if they aren’t happy in that space, they won’t be coming back. And if they’re forced to return, they’ll be kicking and screaming.

Engaging Visual Design

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This is where our technologists dissect and reconstruct the logical and physical architectures required to sustain the technical foundation. This includes security, data migration, content structure and more. The objective is to specifically define and articulate every single key structural component of the overall solution.

Sustainable Technical Solution

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Our Change Management philosophy comprises three critical elements. They are; creating the climate for change, engaging and enabling the organization, and implementing and sustaining change.

Change Management

MAKE IT STICK

BUILD ON THE CHANGE

CREATE QUICK WINS

EMPOWER ACTION

COMMUNICATE THE VISION

CREATE A VISION FOR CHANGE

FORM A POWERFUL COALITION

CREATE URGENCY

Implementing and Sustaining for Change

Engaging and Enabling the Organization

Creating the Climate for Change

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Maintaining the fluidity, availability, functionality and vibrancy of a thriving community requires a reasonable amount of care and feeding. We offer our clients a full range of managed services options to ensure the communities that members have come to rely on don’t let them down. The broad portfolio includes 24x7 ownership of client applications, proactive monitoring and reactive support, user adoption assistance, governance, IT training, and much more.

Ongoing Support and Maintenance

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The View from Here.

The payoff is a thoughtfully-crafted, truly revolutionary dynamic risk management platform. This cloud based solution gracefully integrates data, apps, analytics and the individuals who use them. It’s intuitive, personalized and simple to use. Our experienced group of technologists and user experience professionals built it — so the myriad of users across the ecosystem would come. And return. Again and again.

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If your company is looking for ways to unify stakeholders, streamline access to data, propel quality and banish fragmentation — to truly transform the way you do business and capitalize on the proven value of communities, look no more.

We’re here for you. We specialize in creating digital workspaces that drive engagement, and our average client satisfaction score is 9.19/10. So call or click.

Your Communities Await.

We’ll help you build it. So they will come.

9.19

© 2015 Rightpoint

Rightpoint is a technology and design services company serving Fortune 1,000 companies. The company makes experiences that amplify brands and business through creative and technology services including CRM, web, mobile, social, IoT, eCommerce and cloud.

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