Businesses drastically needed more efficient and economical enterprise software, and once customers were experiencing success with our CRM application, we realized that we could achieve something even more significant. What if we made our platform available to let others build their own cloud apps? The idea to offer our platform as a service was also a way to resolve our own problem: customers were demanding more apps, and we couldn’t build everything ourselves. But – more importantly, and something that as an engineer I could truly appreciate – it offered an opportunity to change the landscape for anyone who created applications.

There was so much that was arduous about software development. (If you haven’t been there, trust me; I was one of those sleep-deprived developers.) There were the purchases: networking devices, storage systems, databases, app servers, data centers. Then we had to write the software and ensure it was fast, high quality, mobile and above all scaled for the Internet. There were technology issues to address, such as authentication and availability. It seemed as if the to-do list never ended…

Those are the words of Parker Harris, Cofounder, salesforce.com. They have been excerpted from Parker’s Foreword for my recent book, Thinking of … Force.com as your Key to the Cloud Kingdom, co-authored by Ian Gotts.

To read the entire Foreword from Parker Harris, download a free book summary here:

http://navatargroup.com/book-force-com-as-your-key-to-the-cloud-kingdom.html

Alok Misra

If you’re part of a Government agency that engages volunteers, you may be interested in this recorded webinar from HandsOn Connect and salesforce.com:

Transforming Government Volunteer Management in the Cloud

In this webinar, you will learn how HandsOn Connect, the volunteer management solution that runs in salesforce.com’s cloud, helps agencies:

• Manage volunteers and volunteer opportunities
• Track projects, events, sponsors, and donors
• Host and manage your public-facing web site
• Access real-time reports and dashboards for decision support and impact tracking

HandsOn Connect is an out-of-the-box cloud product that requires no hardware or software. Since Navatar built HandsOn Connect, I participated in this webinar. One of the several good questions that an attendee asked me was:  What is the advantage of managing volunteers through salesforce.com, as opposed to any other platform?

For answers to this and several other key questions, watch this webinar now:

Transforming Government Volunteer Management in the Cloud

Alok Misra

Editorial Director Tom Steinert-Threlkeld says it is now possible to measure funds sales performance across various channels.
“Take Navatar. This is a buzzword-friendly service that works “in the cloud,” giving you access to tools for managing relationships with brokers, banks and financial advisers “on demand.” Alternately, you can consider it “software as a service,” running on top of a suite of services offered by Salesforce.com, which pioneered the concept of letting companies subscribe to online versions of computer programs which they didn’t have to install or maintain.

Navatar’s mutual funds add-on to Salesforce.com lets sales managers see aggregate sales data from different regions of the country or by broker-dealer firm or other overall measures. But it also breaks down sales to the transaction, so the performance of any individual rep can be tracked and evaluated.”

Navatar Mutual Fund Cloud is used by prominent firms such as Jefferies & Co., Guggenheim Partners, Alps Funds. It includes transfer agent data from DST, Sungard, Envision and others. It also includes intermediary feeds from Schwab, Fidelity, DST and others.

To learn more about Navatar Mutual Fund Cloud, visit:

http://sites.force.com/appexchange/listingDetail?listingId=a0N300000016cPkEAI

To read the full article, you can sign up for a free trial of this publication aimed at leaders in asset management http://www.mmexecutive.com/.

Please join us to meet other Salesforce.com customers in the great State of New Jersey, network, to learn more about this important initiative as well as share your tips and best practices! Hope to see you there!

Date/Time:   Wednesday, December 2, 2009 •  5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Location:      Princeton Overlook – Regus Business Center • 100 Overlook Center, 2nd Floor • Princeton   Location Information

RSVP: njusergroup@gmail.com by Wednesday, November 25, 2009.

Agenda:       

5:30 p.m. – Networking & Refreshments
6:15 p.m. – Introductions & Announcements
6:30 p.m. – Application Demo – Ketan Khandkar, Navatar Group

7:00 p.m. – New Salesforce.com Community Site Preview

Hope to see you there!

Does the world really need another Online Event Registration system? Yes, the world needs an Online Event Registration system that is integrated with your salesforce CRM. Let me ask you this. Wouldn’t you want to track attendance in events, conferences, webinars or trainings, in your salesforce system? It would help you understand your customers and prospects for upselling, cross-selling or better service. Navatar’s Online Event Registration system built on Force.com Sites is completely integrated with salesforce.

Aren’t there other existing Event Registration systems that are already integrated with Salesforce? Sure, there are. The key difference is that Navatar’s Online Event Registration system runs on Salesforce.com’s cloud. In other words, it is completely native and is hosted on the Salesforce.com servers. You do not need any other hardware, software or integration solution. It is all done for you.

So how can the event registration system help me? Try to answer the questions listed below. If you find yourself answering yes to some of them, this system may be for you.

1      Publishing events: Do you want to, without IT’s involvement and with a few clicks, publish an event on your website, open it for registrations and then remove it after the event is over?

2      Event Marketing: Do you want to prepare a list of participants based on last year’s events attendees?  Do you want to further filter this list to filter out email opt-outs? Do you want to drive email marketing campaigns to send out mass email invitations?

3      Multiple Sessions: Do you want to manage multi-session conferences? Do you want to allow participants to register for multiple sessions within an event?

4      Multiple Discount Types: Do you want to allow for various kinds of discounts based on the number of registrants, type of registrant, and type of registration- full/partial?

5      Multiple Payment Types: Do you want to give the registrant multiple payment options to choose from? Do you want to provide online credit card processing?

6      Registration Confirmation: Do you want to automatically send out acknowledgement mails confirming event registration?

7      Event Attendance: Do you want to track attendance and no-shows for the event?

8      Private Events: Do you want a mechanism to facilitate online registrations for a private event that won’t be posted on your website?

9      Event Analytics: Do you want to run analytics to gauge an event’s success? Do you want to generate a list of confirmed attendees to prepare a seating chart? Do you want to know how many different types of meals to order for an event? Do you want to know the names of registrants for each session of your event?

If you want to learn more about the product, you can view an online demo.

For further inquiries, you can reach our sales team at sales@navatargroup.com or 212 461 2140.  You can also write to me directly at skumar@navatargroup.com.