Best Practices for Implementing Salesforce CRM - Cloud Experts

Choose the right tools to customize and extend Salesforce CRM• Extend the business benefits of Salesforce CRM to more of your departments and employees –Take advantage of specialized applications developed by the “long tail” of the software developmentworld to address your business needs beyond sales and customer service.• Leverage the integration power of native Internet technologies – Partners can use Web services andservice-oriented architectures (SOAs) to deliver virtual application suites for various businessrequirements across industries. Such suites offer better modularity and easier integration than traditionalsuites.So check out the AppExchange to see what applications are available before developing your own. Whenconsidering available applications, just keep a few limitations in mind:• “Unmanaged” packages can’t be upgraded – The AppExchange includes both managed andunmanaged packages. Managed packages include support for all application components and can beupgraded. In contrast, unmanaged packages, which are usually free, can’t be upgraded. However, they’reuseful as templates or basic building blocks for an application. They’re also a great way to learn how tobuild on the platform.• Beware of object limits – Applications may include custom objects or tabs that exceed your edition’sobject limit. Note that objects and tabs in “Aloha” apps don’t count toward the limit.• Beware of edition requirements – An application may include features not available for your edition.Approach #3: Develop enhancements and applicationsYou can use the Force.com platform to develop, package, and instantly deploy applications, without anyinfrastructure. If you need an application that isn’t already on the AppExchange—or if you want tocustomize beyond the capabilities of the configuration tools—the development tools on the Force.complatform are right for you.Note: A study performed by IDC compared time, cost, quality, and ROI of application development on theForce.com platform compared to traditional on-premises platforms. The study found that applicationdevelopment required 76 percent less time—and companies could reduce their 3-year TCO by 54 percent,saving $560,000 per application. For details, see the IDC white paper “Force.com Cloud Platform DrivesHuge Time to Market and Cost Savings.”Custom development on Force.com is well suited for data and process-centric applications for individualdepartments or across an enterprise. You can quickly build applications based on the following types ofrequirements on Force.com:• Relational data• Forms• Reporting and analytics• Workflow and approvals• Call scripts and multi-step page flows• Audit and compliance• Data security and sharingThe remainder of this paper describes the tools for custom development on Force.com:• Force.com pages (Visualforce) for creating flexible user interfaces and navigation• Force.com sites for running your Intranet, corporate websites, or syndicated content on other websitesBEST PRACTICE 3