‘Force.com Platform’ Category

A couple of weeks ago we launched the first Online Event Registration product on Force.com Sites (view demo). After launching some pioneering Financial Service products for Private Equity, Hedge Funds, Mutual Funds, M&A and Capital Markets on the Force.com platform, this is yet another “first” from Navatar Group on Force.com sites. We were flooded with inquiries in the very first week. Everyone was very intrigued and interested, but also confused. I thought it would be worthwhile compiling some common questions that prospects have been asking.

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.

I recently reviewed a book titled “Thinking of …. offering a Cloud Solution? Ask the Smart Questions.”  Great book, if you are looking to build a Cloud product on one of the platforms such as Force.com or Azure.

We find that an ISV usually realizes that moving to the Cloud isn’t optional, before they come to Navatar Group for help. The ISV doesn’t realize, however, that simply Cloud-enabling their On-Premise software won’t translate into a profitable business model. We recommend this book as a ‘must-read’ for every ISV so you can make an informed choice between selling a ‘product’ and providing a ‘service’, based on your customer needs and your ability to change. Answering the Smart Questions will provide a basis for a realistic cost benefit analysis as well as help you understand what will resonate with your customers and where you will need advice or partnerships.

You can buy the book at Amazon. The link is:

Thinking of … Offering a Cloud Solution? Ask the Smart Questions.

Join salesforce.com and Navatar Group for the Force.com Tech Talk webinar, Architecting Commercial Applications on August 4th at 10AM PDT.   This webinar will help you answer several critical questions, such as:

• Benefits of a native app
• Pure platform or extending SFDC
• salesforce editions that your product will support
• Force.com features that you will be using
• How to create a rapid prototype
• Benefits of Visualforce vs. Standard Page Layouts
• When to write Apex Triggers
• Reporting/analytics requirements
• Benefits of Sites and Customer Portal
• Incorporating Security Best Practices
• Maintaining your product
• Supporting your product

Learn from top Force.com experts Sati Hillyer, Force.com Evangelist, salesforce.com and Ketan Khandkar, Principal, Navatar Group.  Also read the new article Architecting a Commercial App as well as Ten Common Mistakes Architects make when building a Force.com App.

View recorded webinar now.

Who is Rexlo Joe? He is one of the top Cloud architects today, with some of the most complex salesforce Financial Services products under his belt. (Read the Success story of Rexlo Joe).  He directs the Navatar Force.com team in New Delhi, India on all architecture issues.

How did he begin?  By simply jumping in.  Register for the Force.com Cloud Developer Challenge, happening now through July 31, 2009. By registering you will be able to submit your application for the challenge, and receive additional communications such as hints and tips.

Submit an application and you will receive a t-shirt (while supplies last) from salesforce.com. Impress us with innovation or creativity and you might be rewarded with an Apple MacBook Pro, iPod nano or touch.  Who knows, you may also be on your way to becoming one of the top Cloud architects.

Go to the Force.com Cloud Developer Challenge to learn more.

Are you ready?

I recently came across a good posting from Daryl Plummer at Gartner titled Delivering Cloud Services: ISVs – Change or Die or both!.  This article highlights the opportunity as well as issues related to an ISV (Independent Software Vendor) migrating to the cloud. It points out that “the vast majority of ISVs will have a very difficult time” taking advantage of the opportunity that a move to the cloud may offer them.

Why? According to the article, “It is not enough to just cloud-enable your software. You still have to deliver it as a service and that is simply not the business of most ISVs. So, you might have to change.”  Further, “some software vendors will either change their business entirely, or go out of business if cloud computing becomes the mainstream norm for delivery of systems.”

We agree. We at Navatar have been helping several ISVs (large and small), that have an existing On-Premise business, “cloud-enable” their products on salesforce.com’s Force.com platform-as-a-service.  We find that, not surprisingly, most ISVs are convinced that simply migrating their product to a cloud platform would turn them into a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) or a Software As A Service (SaaS) provider.  Since they do not understand the change required to shift from a product-based to a service-based model, their Cost/Benefit analysis for the effort is often flawed. As a result, they are able to SaaS-enable their product, but they struggle to make money on it.

For more on this subject, download a whitepaper that we recently wrote, at http://navatargroup.com/WhitePaper.html. You will learn about the experiences of ISVs such as Thomson-Reuters and CODA as well as opinions from Deloitte Consulting experts. The whitepaper is free.

Alok Misra

Will Google’s cloud-based email platform eventually kill MS office? We don’t know, but companies have surely started looking at Google’s platform more closely. Leena Rao of Techcrunch points out in her article at http://tcrn.ch/1rg that Google struck a partnership with Valeo, an automotive components manufacturer, to deploy Google Apps on the company’s entire global workforce of about 30,000 internet-using employees. We already know about Genentech adopting the Google Cloud platform for 20,000 users.

It will take some time before large companies start replacing MS Office. However as third parties create more commercial products in the Cloud that are tightly integrated with Google Gmail, docs, calendar etc, we may see more organizations considering the switch from Office to the Google platform. We will be testing the waters soon with Navatar’s Financial Services products for Force.com, taking advantage of the tight partnership between Google and salesforce.com. 

Stay tuned!

Alok Misra

We liked the way VentureWire said it – “noteworthy for who isn’t included…” The lead paragraph from their story is below and pretty much says it all.

Allan Siegert

Cloud Standards Effort Could Turn Into A Dustup
VentureWire, May 04, 2009

“A trade organization whose members include IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and a laundry list of other tech companies announced this week that it has formed a group to create standards for a way of accessing information over the Internet known as “cloud computing.” But the new effort is just as noteworthy for who isn’t included: Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Salesforce.com Inc. and other Internet companies….”

It is very exciting to hear that salesforce.com has released Volunteerforce, for a company to manage their volunteering impact.  Navatar’s association with nonprofits has been long and deep – complex salesforce implementations at nonprofits such as AARP, United Way, Girls Inc, Council On Accreditation, Points of Light Foundation, participation in the salesforce.com Foundation Power of Us program, as well as my own role on the Board of United Way in New Delhi and in India overall.  Volunteerforce will be great for companies no doubt – it will also help nonprofits as more companies provide better mechanisms to help engage their employees in Volunteering activities.

Here’s the link to downloading Volunteerforce – it’s free

http://sites.force.com/appexchange/apex/listingDetail?listingId=a0N300000016cifEAA

Alok Misra

I recently read a few articles about what it takes to build your own Private Cloud. It sounds like a good challenge to undertake if you want to prove your credentials as an Enterprise Architect. However, if you are an ISV seriously considering a SaaS strategy to build a recurring revenue stream, lower costs, improve service or open new markets for your business, there may be more important issues to think about before you jump into building Private Clouds.

 
The most critical one, in my view, is of making the SaaS product profitable. You need to understand who will buy your product and why, what they will pay for it, what the costs of building, marketing, selling and servicing will be, etc. I can tell you, from first-hand experience (Navatar Group is a leading provider for Force.com products for the Financial sector), that it is easier to build a SaaS product, than it is to make money on one.

 
Why? Because SaaS customers expect more flexibility, adaptability and constant improvement – all at a lower price. Simply building a Private Cloud (or for that matter using someone else’s Cloud) and migrating your existing On-Premise product will not solve much. Before investing too much into Cloud development, it may worth spending some time to understand the cost of acquiring and servicing customers for your SaaS product.

 
For more on this subject, download a free whitepaper that I recently wrote, at http://navatargroup.com/WhitePaper.html

Alok Misra

NEW YORK, April 21, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Navatar Group, a global salesforce.com partner in financial services, today announced several new customers, including KStone Partners, Kelvingrove Partners and Zebra Capital. The firms are using Navatar’s customized CRM for Hedge Funds, a cloud computing application to manage hedge fund and fund of funds operations. Navatar CRM for Hedge Funds is built and run entirely on the Force.com platform from salesforce.com and is available on the Force.com AppExchange. http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/news.html?d=163434

It was at the same place the G-20 met but there were no protesters.

The attendance was massive and from some of the largest firms in Europe. Some estimates were 4,000 people. Discussions were lively! We’d tell you more but the true spirit of the event is well captured by the force.com blog – so we’ll point you there: http://blog.sforce.com.

Have a great weekend!

I’d like to invite you to participate in the launch of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest at the Silicon Valley Developer Force User Group at Santa Clara on March 18th, 2009. The User Group event will have a quiz as part of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest with exciting prizes and I will be the moderator.

The user group is committed to learning all we can from each other on building apps on Force.com with its rich tools and technologies.  This forum is for networking, questions and inquiries on the platform and technologies, and general interaction between members and interested parties. Please come and contribute to our/your success!

When

Wednesday: March 18, 2009?

Time: 10 – 12pm PST

Don’t worry if you miss the launch at the User Group event, though – you will still be able to participate in the contest by registering at http://www.navatargroup.com/slumdogcontest.html.

Look forward to seeing you in Santa Clara!

Ketan Khandkar.

Who

Developers, Power Admins, IT

Where

2700 Mission College Boulevard

Santa Clara CA 95054

408.988.1500

Speakers

Ron Hess & Mike Kreaden: Sr. Force.com Platform Evangelists

Ketan Khandkar (me), Principal, Navatar Group

Agenda (Subject to change)

10:00 am: Sign in, Reception & Networking

10:15 am: Force.com Apex code & Visualforce with Spring ‘09 platform updates & Demos

11:00 am: Short break/Networking

11:15 am: Slumdog developer contest launch (Navatar Group, sponsor of UG meeting)

11:45 am: Prize Giveaways

Welcome to the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest for Cloud Developers, happening now through April 30, 2009. Anybody can participate, starting today. We want to see how far you can take the Force.com platform, and the new Force.com Sites in particular. We’ll be handing out iPod nanos and iPod touches for interesting applications that show innovation or creativity.

Simply register to participate and learn more. There aren’t many rules to hinder your creativity. After the contest, we will give away iPod Nanos and iPod Touches to the five most exciting submissions. In addition, if your submission is one of the five selected, you will also have an opportunity to have your resume considered for joining the exciting and fast-growing Navatar team in the United States or in India. Sound interesting?

Why is it a slumdog contest? Because at Navatar we are doing some of the most exciting things happening today in the Cloud Computing world with Force.com, even though most of us came from humble beginnings. For instance, read the success story of Rexlo Joe who came from a remote village of Tamil Nadu, India a few years ago to become a top Cloud Computing Architect on Wall Street (read Rexlo Joe’s success story). With the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest, we want to recognize and highlight your talent and your work.

Launch of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest

We also invite you to participate in the launch at the Silicon Valley Developer Force User Group at Santa Clara on March 18th, 2009. The User Group event will have a quiz as part of the Navatar Slumdog Developer Contest with exciting prizes. Don’t worry if you miss the launch at the User Group events, though – you will still be able to participate in the contest by registering at http://www.navatargroup.com/slumdogcontest.html.

Have questions or suggestions? We’d love to hear from you.

The Navatar team.

If you’re building a serious industrial-strength app on Force.com, you’re probably beginning to think about the right design and architecture, after working through the basics. We’ve all been there – figuring out the optimal design to avoid rewrite later, make the app scalable, reduce development time & cost, ease of maintenance, etc.

Check out my paper, Ten Common Mistakes Architects Make When Building a Force.com Application, at the developer.force.com site. It provides several recommendations and best practices during critical stages of initial decision-making, designing and developing. These recommendations come from our own experience in building very complex products and apps on Force, including Navatar’s Financial Services products, and I’m very confident that you will find them useful.

You can also download a pdf copy at http://navatargroup.com/download1a.php?download=10MistakeWhitepaper.

As always, would love to hear your thoughts, as well as any additional advice you can offer from your own experience.