Patrick Shaw’s Weblog

It’s easy to assume (at least for me) that most if not all of my nonprofit customers have been able to acquire a nice broadband connection. So I was surprised (but shouldn’t have been!) when one of my customers wanted to know what the bandwidth usage would be like if they moved their work to Salesforce. They have a shared infrastructure and some stringent requirements for ensuring that a certain amount of their pipeline is available to their constituents.

We considered an onsite usage test - but we would have had to reveal customer data - plus - we’d be making things up - what they really wanted to know was "how much bandwidth will OUR implementation of Salesforce use?"

So -we asked Salesforce -and they provided a LOT if information. Here’s the key points:

Bandwidth Required for Users
Salesforce.com is designed to use as little bandwidth as possible so that the site performs adequately over both high speed, dial-up, and over the air Internet connections.

• While average page size is on the order of 90KB, salesforce.com uses compression as defined in the HTTP 1.1 standard to compress the HTML content before it is transmitted as data across the Internet to a user’s computer. The compression often reduces the amount of transmitted data to as little as 10KB per page viewed due to the lack of image content. The site was designed with minimum bandwidth requirements in mind, hence are extensive use of color coding instead of images. Our average user also is known to view roughly 120 pages from our site per day.
• Our application is stateless, therefore, there are no communication requirements in the background once the page loads like traditional client server applications e.g. Outlook. Therefore once the page loads there are no additional bandwidth requirements till a user queries or writes information to salesforce.com.
• In short, it is difficult to specify customer bandwidth because of the nature of the Internet and individual corporate usage. Network latency, peering issues, bandwidth at upstream providers, users using their Internet connections for other use besides salesforce.com, etc. all affect the perceived performance of the connection and the amount of bandwidth required to keep performance adequate.
• A Salesforce.com deployment of 80 users with 75% of the users concurrently logged in with a think time between transactions of 2 minutes: Avg Bandwidth = 120 * 60 / ( 120 + 2 ) = 59 Kbits/sec

Obviously - your mileage may vary depending on the nature of your connection to the internet as well as what other internet related work you are doing. It’s likely more helpful to know your total bandwidth needs and to understand how they all fit together rather than to know what Salesforce uses by itself.

We’ve been customizing Salesforce.com for nonprofits for more than a year now - we’ve helped enough nonprofit’s customize, migrate data, integrate with payment tools, Vertical Response and more - and we have just enough information from all of those projects to begin to see what happens AFTER we’re done.

As most know - moving to a new tool of any sort provides benefits and challenges. When I upgraded to the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, I had to fight with the toolbar, and finding the “print” button was excruciating - I wasn’t used to where things were, wasn’t ready to explore new offerings - I just wanted to have all of the new features available so I could use then when I was ready. I’ve been using Word and the other Office tools since their inception - so I’ve been through this before, but I was reminded that even an updated tool, with a LOT of user and usability testing can pose adoption challenges.

Imagine what it’s like moving from MS Access, or FileMaker Pro, or eTapestry to Salesforce then? Add in a complicated data migration, some thinking about doing things in new ways -and all of a sudden Monday morning with that new tool can be grim. Here are some things that you can do to get ready to adopt and adapt!

• It can be easy to overlook some of the key players in your agency - the volunteer that enters data, the finance expert that reviews and reconciles donations, the program team that matches volunteers, the development officer that plans events. Using Salesforce successfully means that your WHOLE team uses the tool actively - not just for reporting. So - you’ll want to make sure their voices and need are heard during planning - so that when the tool rolls out - they know what they are getting!

• Every agency needs a product champion, a go get it, I love it, this is great, I can help you make it work for you. You don’t want to rely on your vendor for this - you need to OWN this expertise in house. This should be the person in the agency that is excited about Salesforce, participated in planning, has read the documentation, and isn’t afraid to try.

• We provide documentation for all of our projects, and you should expect that from a vendor. Make sure that it has both general information (how do I look up a contact) as well as information specific to your needs (how do I match a volunteer with a client). The information you need to “do it yourself” is probably in your documentation

• That’s right - no one knows better than you. Make a quick “job aid” - a one page tip sheet, a “I always forget this step” list, and more. You can help your team over the hurdles with some very targeted, agency specific help documents

• On launch day, have your vendor on hand. Sure, it will cost more -but if your team is frustrated on Monday, and doesn’t get help until Friday - you might not ever get them to use the tool

• This is an on demand, use it every day type of tool. It won’t add much value if you update contacts, create follow up notes and activities, and create opportunities only every once in awhile. Meet someone at a party that might support your mission? Add them to Salesforce, create a giving opportunity, and make a follow up note to call or write.

• Don’t forget the 70/30 rule - about 70% of your time and money will be in the planning, training, and retraining category, and about 30% in the actual implementation. That sounds like a LOT of money - but if your team can’t get a driving license - the care won’t help much.

We’ve been implementing Plone and Salesforce for the last pair of years - and I was thinking about my early days at NPower. When I began working here 5 years ago - there weren’t a lot of software options from the open source community that we thought were a good fit. Sometimes, it was because the software wasn’t ready. Sometime it was because the software was great - but there wasn’t any documentation. And sometimes it was because there didn’t appear to be a strong enough community to support that software.

That has changed a lot - and lately, I’ve been thinking about the different way some software is described - here’s a quick primer:

• Open Source: This is software that you can acquire and install and can modify the underlying code to make it do what you want. For example, Plone is open source, and Photoshop is not.
• Open Data Model: This has more to do with the vendor than the software - but when I think of “open” software, I think of if I can access and manipulate that software and if I can integrate it with other tools. For instance, both Plone and Salesforce have an open data model - they can exchange information freely (provided someone knows how to connect them, and we do!) without breaking a licensing agreement or paying an additional fee. Blackbaud products aren’t open - if you connect without purchasing an additional license, you void your contract.
• Open Pricing: This is admittedly fuzzy. But I think that if a vendor is selling a product, they ought to commit to a pricing structure, even if they best they can do is offer a range. Some tools are free or freely available. For instance, Plone is free to use (but probably not free to configure). Salesforce will grant you 10 licenses if you are a qualifying nonprofit - but you should probably find an expert to help you configure and import your data. And many Microsoft products are available for an administrative fee.

I’m pretty excited about the combination of all three of these “open” descriptions - some items are free or freely available, some are easy to integrate, and some are transparent about their pricing model. All told - this translates to good news for the nonprofit sector!

Great news today from the folks at Vertical Response - they offer an enewsletter delivery system that integrates with Salesforce.com -so if you are using Salesforce and Vertical Response, you can keep all of that key information in one place.

They’ve just announced a “Non-Profits Email for Free” program - all of the details you need are here - but here are some of the key items:

What you get

VerticalResponse for Non-Profits is a program that enables Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) to effectively communicate with their supporters via email. Once accepted into the program, NPOs will be able to leverage VerticalResponse’s email marketing to send up to 10,000 emails per month. All for free!

How it works

Once you’re enrolled in the program, you’ll get 10,000 free credits at the start of each month. It’s a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ system, so credits will expire at the end of that month. Not to worry – we’ll give you 10,000 more the following month. Simple, right?

Getting started

If your organization is a 501(c)(3), then you’re eligible. Simply fax us the application form, we’ll check to make sure that you’re not fibbing about your 501(c)(3) status, and flip the switch. You’re ready to start sending professional looking emails.

One of the advantages of using a hosted solution such as Salesforce.com is that your vendor manages many of the update/backup/keep secure items that you’d have to manage if your software were installed on your computer or server.

Salesforce has a solid track record with all of those things and have a lot of redundancy -after all -their business model depends on you having access to your data!

At the same time - they’ve made it easy for you to get a backup of your data -and you should - that data most likely drives your important work, and having an additional layer of backup makes sense.

Some quick notes, though, about what you actually get (and what you don’t):

• You can request your data weekly in a CSV (comma separated value) file - but it isn’t incremental. That is, the data you get today is a full snapshot of your data. And if you get another snapshot next week - it’s also the whole enchilada - everything from last week, PLUS the changes. So you can’t “easily restore” just a few contact records without some hard work.
• We can’t help you easily integrate an older CSV file with your live data. If you remember your initial data migration process - this would be similar.
• We MAY be able to integrate a subset of data more easily.

Here’s how to request a backup:

1. Click on Setup | Administration Setup | Data Management | Data Export
2. Select the “Include attachments” check box (if desired).
3. Select any data that you would like to include by checking the box next to the name of the object. Selecting the “Include all data” box will include data from all tables.
4. Click the “Data Export” button

A confirmation email will be sent when the export has completed, with a link to the export files. Thanks to Chris Atwood at Salesforce for the how to steps!

When to Request a Backup:

• Just before you make a substantial change to your data!
• Weekly or monthly, depending on your internal IT practices
• Just before you ask a vendor to make modifcations or updates to your Salesforce instance.

Salesforce and Google are in the news again -this time because they’ve announced new integration features. Information is still trickling in - but it looks like Salesforce will now integrate with Gmail. Additionally, Google Docs are also going to be integrated in Salesforce. I haven’t had a chance to dig too deeply here - but am generally excited about the possibilities. This may mean that some nonprofits could use those two offerings for all or most of their practice.

There are a lot of news stories this morning - here are links to a few:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080414/tc_nm/salesforce_google_dc_1

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20080414/tc_pcworld/144505

Just a quick note - I had a terrific meeting with one of our customers on Tuesday - we helped them move most of their nonprofit data into Salesforce, and they’ve really done a great job of using the tool. We’ve added a few features here and there, and a bit of support, but they have really been committed to using the tool - and it shows.

They are getting a new website, and we met to talk about modifications to Salesforce so that they could provide more information via the web. And while we were talking about one possible feature, the customer asked how much it would cost.

When we said we thought we could build that feature for about $500, she said to skip it - it wouldn’t add enough value.

I was delighted - that is exactly the type of conversation I want to have with my customers - are we adding $500 (or more!) worth of value by implementing something? If not -we shouldn’t implement!

So - next time you need an addition, or a feature, or a modification - be sure to ask - and make sure you have an internal sense of how that feature or addition will return value to your agency!

Terrific article available online (tip of the hat to my brother Frank for sending it along) about how Starbucks has launched a customer forum (powered by one of the tools NPower Seattle uses, Salesforce.com) to solicit customer feedback.

I’m excited about this for two reasons:

1. We haven’t used Salesforce this way for any of our nonprofit customers yet. But now that we know how it is being used elsewhere - we can add this to our list of ways to leverage Salesforce to help nonprofits better meet their mission.
2. It’s easy to forget that the people we serve can provide and seed innovation, can help us better understand the difference between how we think we’re doing and how they think we’re doing, and much, much more.

The article is worth a read, even if you don’t follow the rest of the links.

I’m biased of course, since we implement Salesforce for nonprofits! We’ve spent a lot of time working with the tools that Salesforce offers, and we’ve created a template that we use as the start for all of our Salesforce projects. More about that in a bit.

There are at least three templates (or versions) that we know about:

• Salesforce Enterprise
• Salesforce Nonprofit Template
• NPower Seattle Template

Enterprise is what Salesforce delivers to their for profit customers. It’s terrific - it includes a set of standard defaults for how things work. Granted, it doesn’t do some of the things that many nonprofits need (manage households, for instance), but it is full-featured. We think it is a great starting spot for nonprofits - so we use this as our base layer.

The Salesforce Nonprofit Template is the basic installation that many nonprofits install when they sign up for donated licenses from Salesforce. In this template, some of the names have been changes (An Opportunity is called a Donation, and a an Account is called an Organization, for example). And there are a few basic tool additions, too. We’ve actually used that as our starting layer a few times - but found that for everything that we really liked, there were an equal number of things that we had to undo. This template may very well meet your needs,and is the best choice for nonprofits that do note have a Salesforce implementation consultant to help.

The NPower Seattle Template is terrific alternative to the Nonprofit Template - we start with the Enterprise offering, and then build out the needed tools for managing households, for creating and tracking matching and soft credits, recurring and pledged giving, sets the stage for deeper tracking for volunteers and more.

Even so - we further customize that template for almost all of our customers. Most nonprofits have business needs that are particular (even if they aren’t unique, if you get what I mean). For instance - we assume that any nonprofit that is tracking donations opportunities will have stages, such as:

1. Prospecting
2. Pledged
3. Won - Need Thank You
4. Closed Won (or Lost)

But some agencies might include a stage for “Held Meeting” or something else - a way to manage grants or major gifts - so your process may include additional steps

Additionally - some agencies have particular needs around, say, tracking guardianship, or selling books, or managing an event schedule. So even though our template is fully formed - there’s more work to do, such as integrating inquiry forms from your website,  working with PayPal or another payment vendor, and more!

Great question -and the answer is surprising when you start adding things up!

If you are a nonprofit customer using the Enterprise Edition, you get:

• 1GB of “general” storage
• 250MB of document storage.

If you’re managing your music or picture collection on your computer at home or at work, you know that you can burn through 1GB pretty fast. But when all you’re storing in Salesforce is text based data - name, comments, giving history, contact history - well - that takes almost no space at all.

We’ve helped many nonprofits use Salesforce, and we’re using it, too. And no one has hit more than 5% of that storage limit. When I try this on for size, it helps to to remember:

• One gigabyte can hold over 1,000 novels at 100,000 words per novel
• Is about 18 hours of MP3 music
• Is about 12 hours of Flash video
• The Human Genome is less than a gigabyte of data!

Of course, if you are adding documents, pictures, or other files to your Salesforce database - you’ll want to monitor your usage - and make sure that you touch base with the Salesforce Foundation to inquire about purchasing more if needed!