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vyas-raj20 · 1 year ago

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salesforce data loader

Salesforce Data Loader: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction to Salesforce Data Loader

Salesforce Data Loader is a powerful tool that allows users to import, export, update, and delete large amounts of data in Salesforce quickly and efficiently. Whether you're migrating data from another system, performing regular data updates, or cleaning up your Salesforce instance, Data Loader is an essential tool for Salesforce administrators and developers.

Key Features of Salesforce Data Loader

Import Data: Data Loader enables users to import data into Salesforce from various sources, including CSV files, databases, and other Salesforce instances. It supports the import of standard and custom objects, making it flexible for different data migration scenarios.

Export Data: With Data Loader, users can extract data from Salesforce objects and export it to CSV files for analysis, reporting, or backup purposes. This feature is valuable for generating custom reports or integrating Salesforce data with external systems.

Update Records: Data Loader allows users to update existing records in Salesforce by matching them with unique identifiers such as record IDs or external IDs. This functionality is useful for mass updates, such as modifying contact information or updating opportunity stages.

Delete Records: Users can delete records from Salesforce using Data Loader, either individually or in bulk. This feature helps maintain data integrity by removing obsolete or redundant records from the system.

Schedule Jobs: Data Loader supports job scheduling, allowing users to automate data import and export tasks at specific times or intervals. Scheduled jobs ensure timely data updates and reduce manual effort for repetitive tasks.

Command-Line Interface (CLI): Data Loader offers a command-line interface for advanced users who prefer scripting or automation. The CLI provides additional flexibility and control over data operations, enabling users to execute tasks programmatically.

Getting Started with Salesforce Data Loader

To begin using Salesforce Data Loader, follow these steps:

Download and Install Data Loader: Visit the Salesforce website or AppExchange to download the Data Loader application. Follow the instructions to install the application on your computer.

Configure Data Loader Settings: Launch Data Loader and configure the settings as per your Salesforce instance requirements. You'll need to provide login credentials and specify connection parameters such as the Salesforce endpoint and API version.

Authenticate with Salesforce: Once the settings are configured, log in to your Salesforce account using Data Loader. You may need to authorize Data Loader to access your Salesforce data by providing the necessary permissions.

Select Operation (Import/Export/Update/Delete): Choose the data operation you want to perform—import, export, update, or delete records. Select the Salesforce object(s) you wish to work with and specify any additional settings or filters.

Prepare Data Source: Prepare your data source accordingly based on the selected operation. For imports, ensure your data is formatted correctly in CSV files with column headers matching Salesforce field names. For exports, specify the fields you want to retrieve and export data to CSV files.

Map Fields (Import/Update): If you're importing or updating records, map the fields from your data source to corresponding Salesforce fields. This mapping ensures that data is correctly matched and aligned during the operation.

Execute Operation: Once everything is set up, execute the data operation using Data Loader. Monitor the progress and review any error messages or logs generated during the process.

Verify Results: After the operation is completed, verify the results in Salesforce to ensure that data was imported, exported, updated, or deleted as expected. Check for any discrepancies or errors that may require further action.

Best Practices for Using Salesforce Data Loader

Understand Data Volume Limits: Familiarize yourself with Salesforce's data volume limits and governor limits to avoid hitting any restrictions during data operations. Batch your data into smaller chunks if necessary to stay within the limits.

Use External IDs for Record Matching: When updating records, consider using external IDs instead of Salesforce record IDs for matching. External IDs are custom fields that uniquely identify records and can simplify the update process, especially when integrating with external systems.

Enable Bulk API for Large Data Sets: For large-scale data operations, enable the Bulk API option in Data Loader settings. The Bulk API is optimized for handling large data volumes and can improve performance significantly compared to the standard SOAP API.

Schedule Jobs During Off-Peak Hours: If you're scheduling data jobs, choose off-peak hours to minimize impact on Salesforce performance and user experience. Avoid scheduling heavy data operations during peak usage times to prevent disruptions.

Backup Data Before Deletion: Before deleting records from Salesforce, make sure to back up the data to avoid accidental data loss. Export the records to CSV files or use Salesforce's data export functionality to create backups for archival purposes.

Monitor Error Logs and Retry Failed Records: Keep an eye on Data Loader error logs during data operations. If any records fail to process due to errors, review the logs to identify the cause and retry the failed records after addressing the issues.

Test in Sandbox Environment First: Before performing data operations in a production environment, test your processes and configurations in a Salesforce sandbox environment. Testing helps identify any potential issues or pitfalls before impacting live data.

Common Use Cases for Salesforce Data Loader

Data Migration: Migrate data from legacy systems or other CRM platforms to Salesforce during system implementations or migrations. Data Loader simplifies the process of importing large volumes of data while maintaining data quality.

Mass Updates: Perform mass updates on existing Salesforce records to correct errors, update information, or align data with changing business requirements. Data Loader streamlines the update process by enabling bulk updates across multiple records.

Data Extraction for Reporting: Export Salesforce data to external systems or reporting tools for in-depth analysis, visualization, or custom reporting. Data Loader allows users to extract specific datasets based on criteria and export them in CSV format for further analysis.

Cleanup and Deletion: Delete obsolete or redundant records from Salesforce to declutter the database and improve system performance. Data Loader facilitates bulk deletion of records based on specified criteria, such as inactive accounts or expired opportunities.

Integration with External Systems: Integrate Salesforce with external systems by importing data from external sources or exporting Salesforce data for use in other applications. Data Loader supports seamless data exchange between Salesforce and various third-party systems.

Conclusion

Salesforce Data Loader is a versatile tool that empowers users to manage data effectively within the Salesforce platform. Whether you're importing, exporting, updating, or deleting records, Data Loader offers robust features and flexibility to streamline data operations and maintain data integrity. By following best practices and leveraging Data Loader's capabilities, organizations can ensure smooth data management processes and derive maximum value from their Salesforce investments.

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elbertkiek00278-blog · 6 years ago

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How Do I Merge Tracks? — Crazy Discussion board

These audio cutter software program program capabilities not only let you trim pointless parts from audio recordsdata, but also embody features like multi-format support, phase trimming, merge functionality, and a lot more. The Merge Clips dialog field launches. Though the audio quality is usually a bit staggering for the consultants as you may discover a slight bounce on the merge point, it does a good job for the novice. The fact that Merge MP3 is a portable software and requires no set up makes it wanted. So, you possibly can simply download the program, export it to your thumb drive and it is possible for you to to hitch MP3 files in conjunction on any LAPTOP with Windows OS. Repeat the process until all the audio tracks are merged. You can merge audio-only clips with different audio-only clips; a video clip will not be required for a merged clip. You can use just one clip containing video. Sadly, this system helps splitting solely the MP3 format, but when MP3s are all you need to work on, then this lightweight software is a good device to make use of. Just a few more issues to think about when playing MP3s on a automobile CD player or other in-automotive leisure system. Obtain and set up Merge MP3 if you want to convert audiobook information in MP3 format (see Resources). Be aware: For performance reasons, the Mass Merge Duplicates command processes a maximum of one hundred information. To merge greater than a hundred information, run the command repeatedly until all duplicates are merged. In addition to standard MP3 format, MP3 Toolkit helps most of popular audio & video formats like WMA, WMV, MP4, WAV, OGG, FLV, MOV, M4P, M4A and more, also supports prime quality audio like FLAC and APE. With MP3 Toolkit, you are able to convert, minimize, merge, rip and document MP3. With the monitor within the clipboard left click on the location of the other track the place you want to paste your music into. Should you just want to merge, click the position on the very end of the track and press Ctrl-V to add the music there. You'll be able to select any other place when you favor Merge MP3s that.

Nothing might be of as high stage as MP3 Cutter and Joiner that helps break and merge mp3s MP3 and WAV files in no time. You'll be even joyful to find that it will get installed actually quick (not various seconds) and also you see it in your desktop in a flash. The principle interface has two separate tabs, every for cutting and joining. After your audio recordsdata are merged and transformed to your chosen filetype, choose the "download" button and save the file to your computer or gadget. Again, it can save you it to your machine, a file-sharing medium like Dropbox or Google Drive, or you possibly can simply listen the merged audio on the web site. Official music video for "Would That Not Be Nice" by Divine Fits, taken from the album A Thing Called Divine Matches, out now on Merge Data. Apowersoft Free Online Audio Editor is an efficient tool which designed for editing audio information quickly. It enables you to reduce, trim, cut up, merge, copy and paste audio with nice ease. Using it, you additionally will be capable to append, combine, overwrite audio or add varied effects into it. It supports plenty of media file formats which embody MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WAV, M4A and many different extra, so simply import the audio and re-create it instantly. Does exactly the one thing it must do completely. My venture involved making an attempt to merge 4 dozen or so tracks, so as, from every folder so each folder constituted one track, with every folder representing about an hours value of fabric. I anticipated to be able to do this easily in Audacity and was very, very flawed; it might've taken a half hour each in Audacity. With this software, I only had to Choose All in every folder and drag & drop them. They landed in the same order and took lower than 20 seconds to finish every. Only 20 seconds. I used to be anticipating flaws at such pace and located none; it labored perfectly on my cellphone. As soon as the recordsdata are dragged & dropped into the device, you simply Choose All again and choose Merge from the file choices. You may even enter metadata besides. Merge MP3 cho phép người dùng có thể thay đổi thứ tự các file Mp3 được ghép nối để có bản nhạc hoàn chỉnh theo ý muốn của mình. Người dùng cũng được hỗ trợ công cụ để nghe trước những file Mp3 này trước khi được ghép lại với nhau. Additionally to reverse would be nice, to slit mp3s into multiple recordsdata (preferably with silence detection). Choose to play the new output file that features the 2 MP3s you merged collectively. When the Merge Data dialog field opens, rigorously assessment the changes that can be made to the target record. One of the major avantages is that you can do batch adjustments. Load the recordsdata you wish to merge and begin the process. Mp3 Cutter Joiner will do it. When you intent to upload your tracks to OSM then don't upload this merged model. As an alternative upload a separate observe for each of your gadget. Alternatively, you possibly can merge music with the Audio Joiner internet app. That app merges MP3, M4A and WAV recordsdata together. This is how one can mix sound information with Audio Joiner. Audio MP3 Cutter Mix Converter lets customers cut MP3 for ringtones, merge two or more audio information, combine audio clips and alter the metadata fields like Artwork Cover, Music Album title, and so on.multi observe, Convert from one format to a different - MP3, AAC, WAV and the record of app options goes on.

Is there an easier approach to merge a number of mp3 files and save them as a single audio wav file? Let me know within the feedback. The ID3 tag of the first mp3 file might be used for the merged file (utilizing mp3cat -tag). Fortunately, there are some native tools constructed into Salesforce that will help you discover and merge duplicates. There are numerous ways to address the issue, however here is one easy example in Salesforce Lightning. Because MP3Wrap strips and replaces the ID3 tags with its personal data, ID3 is used to copy the tags from one of many information. MP3Val repairs any errors in the pre-merged files copied into the merged file or produced throughout the merging course of.MergeMP3 helps batch mode operation, joining total folders stuffed with audio information with just a few mouse clicks. Word: Ebix recommends clicking Sure when the system asks whether the supply contact ought to be deleted. If the supply file is just not deleted, two information with the same information will exist in the database. Additionally, some information is actually moved, not copied, to the target record. In consequence, referred contacts, documents and time log info are no longer present within the source file after the merge.

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valoriecone21-blog · 6 years ago

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PDF Merge

The Record Merge utility consolidates the contents of a "supply" file into a "target" file to create a single, merged document. Mp3splt offers a set of an open-supply digital audio splitter to separate mp3, ogg vorbis and FLAC recordsdata with out decoding or recompressing. It runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows working methods. With mp3splt you may cut up single MP3 and OGG recordsdata into smaller components in a very simple approach. Merely open up the file after which choose the splitting methodology you would like to use: set the break up points manually, inform this system to divide the file in line with silence breaks between tracks, use a cue file or search an online CD database for details about the album. Proper-click (Management-click for Mac OS), and then choose Merge Clips from the shortcut menu. Click on the check field in front of each of the 2 similar information to merge. The utility is particularly useful when duplicate data are found in SmartOffice, e.g., when the Duplicate Records characteristic is used. However, the utility can be used to merge data that are not duplicates however are otherwise redundant. 2. Click on "Submit" button to start processing. The audio recordsdata you added to merge must have the same format and bit rate and many others. The brand new audio file will likely be appended to the latest audio file created. For example: You submit audio files A, B and C one after the other, the newest output audio file will be file A+B+C mixed collectively. On this tutorial, I'll present you Learn how to Merge Multiple MP3 Audio Files in Audacity. The first thing that you must do is ensure that you have downloaded and installed the LAME MP3 Encoder. This encoder is required with a purpose to export audio in MP3 format. You'll be able to examine the separate tutorial I've created on find out how to install the LAME MP3 Encoder (see hyperlink under). Set the File popup menu to All Files, after which enter metadata for the merged clip. Any data entered into a property might be entered into the XMP for each of the part information that make up the merged clip. @tony: I don't know of any tools for Home windows which can merge AAC (.m4a orm4b) tracks with a reasonably simple-to-use interface. If I did, I'd add it to this submit. Perhaps another reader will recommend a software they have used and like. MP3 Joiner is an easy and efficient FREE MP3 Joiner. It has the potential to combine, merge and Be a part of MP3 information into one new complete file. Key features of this MP3 Joiner might be listed as below. MP3 Toolkit is a collection of six separate audio manipulation instruments that are all useful in a roundabout way: Converter, Ripper, Tag Editor, Merger, Cutter, and Recorder. For this text, we're most interested in the Merger and Cutter. Click the Add tracks button to pick out the music information to merge. The online app then displays the chosen tracks as in the snapshot immediately under. When iTunes pulls up the CD data you wish to merge, spotlight the tracks you want to merge. You can do this by right-clicking the first monitor after which urgent the Shift key for the other tracks. It's possible you'll be tempted to simply deactivate or delete one of the information however that will lose any historical past and data for that file. The best, and recommended possibility is to merge the information collectively. You'll be amazed (good and unhealthy) at some of the data that one report has vs the other(s) as you merge them together. You may also must know which information is accurate if discrepancies are present. Note: For efficiency reasons, the Mass Merge Duplicates command processes a most of a hundred records. To merge more than 100 records, run the command repeatedly till all duplicates are merged. Moreover normal MP3 format, MP3 Toolkit helps most of well-liked audio & video formats like WMA, WMV, MP4, WAV, OGG, FLV, MOV, M4P, M4A and more, additionally helps top quality audio like FLAC and APE. With MP3 Toolkit, you are able to convert, lower, merge, rip and file MP3. With the observe within the clipboard left click on the location of the opposite track where you need to paste your music into. In the event you just need to merge, click on the place on the very finish of the track and press Ctrl-V to add the music there. You may select any other place if you happen to prefer that. Step 4. Select the output format and next click on on Vacation spot" to specify output folder. After that, verify "Merge all tracks into one output file" box and then click on on Again. Wish to merge a number of MP3s into one file? Look no further… Our Free Merge MP3 is your final station. It might probably enable you to merge a lot of audio information with different formats into one larger file with one format similar to MP3, WAV, WMA and OGG with out trouble. With this highly effective application, it's also possible to combine many separate music tracks into one non-cease audio CD.

Weeny Free Audio Cutter ought to be another audio merging and splitting software program for you. The software program helps MP3, OGG, WMA and WAV recordsdata as the input audio codecs, the DRM protected WMA recordsdata excluded. Because of the constructed-in audio editor of Weeny Free Audio Cutter could be very helpful for creating customized ringtones or managing long audio recording recordsdata. Another excuse to choose the software program must be the different parameters you may choose to adjust the audio information, such because the sampling frequency, channel mode and audio bitrate. Just add a number of audio recordsdata into the listing, and merge these information into one audio file with the software program now. So one of the best I can do is: use the instrument to merge all your m4a recordsdata into a smaller mp3 recordsdata. use a freeware mp3 merge instrument to merge all the mp3 information re-import the new merged mp3 file into itunes as an m4a file rename it as an m4b file. If you wish to join MP3s collectively, Merge MP3 is a straightforward program that does precisely that very effectively, and no extra. ID of the report to be merged. You have to specify PRODUCTID of the record to be merged. Merge the tracks right into a single, long track. Click the Join button to merge mp3s the chosen tracks collectively. Be aware that it does take a while for the app to merge the recordsdata collectively. Getting into metadata You may enter metadata to a part clip or for all the merged clip. Simple tools in Salesforce will help you retain your contact database in line and up to date. Strive as you may, typically you come throughout duplicate contact data in the system. As a substitute of deleting one or a number of of the duplicate records and probably dropping useful info in these records, you should use Salesforce to merge contact information easily.

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kbmax-cpqsoftware · 4 years ago

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How Configure, Price, Quote Solutions Solve Manufacturing Challenges

In the not-so-distant past, specializing in one or two products – and then hammering out thousands of them as quickly as possible – was the standard operating procedure for any successful manufacturer. Thanks to new technologies, mass-produced items were finally feasible and affordable for everyone.

These days, customers aren’t so easily impressed.

Research shows that at least 63 percent of customers expect personalization as a standard feature – whether that’s in the shopping experience, or in the final product itself. In response, brands have reoriented themselves to offer as much customization as possible.

But for companies with complex items, customization presents its own challenges for the sales cycle and manufacturing processes.

If you’re facing challenges related to either of these things, this one’s for you. Here’s how configure, price, quote software can support your goal of producing customized products at scale.

What Is Configure Price Quote (CPQ)?

Configure Price Quote solutions empower companies to offer customized products by providing them with a means to collect and process customization requests quickly, with fewer errors.

As the name implies, there are three parts to all good CPQ solutions:

Configuration. This may take the form of either a customer-facing 2D or 3D visual configurator, or an internal configuration interface for your sales team.

Pricing. Real-time pricing that automatically updates as users select different options keeps things transparent and efficient.

Quoting. Once all options are configured, many solutions can generate and approve quotes automatically, delivering the final estimate to the customer’s email.

That might all sound arcane, but these solutions appear regularly in ecommerce. If you’ve ever played with an interface on a website that lets you “design” a product by changing its color, materials, size, or similar characteristics, then you’ve interacted with the public-facing tip of CPQ software.

5 Challenges Configure Price Quote Software Can Solve

Getting to design your own shoes or build your own custom garage is fun from a consumer perspective, but for a business, it can be a nightmare.

From guaranteeing the availability of materials to keeping the details straight as the order moves through the business, here are five challenges that companies can overcome with Configure, Price, and Quote software.

1. Lengthy Sales Cycles

Customization used to be reserved for high-end products. That’s because it required customers to collaborate with a sales rep and communicate exactly what they wanted. While it’s largely obsolete (except in the case of certain, white-glove retailers), this process still routinely surfaces with complex products like machinery or biotech devices.

It also means that the sales cycle slows to a crawl, potentially putting months between first contact and product delivery.

A solid CPQ solution can help with this, shortening your cycle from multiple weeks to under an hour. (Here’s how Merck did it.)

Rather than relying on humans to take care of everything, CPQ can:

Automate rote tasks. Whether it’s quote approval or invoicing, many good CPQ solutions rely on automation to handle repetitive tasks, so that your sales team can spend more time working with clients rather than paperwork.

Streamline scheduling. Keep your schedule on track by never missing client meetings or manufacturing deadlines, and by keeping the right team members in the loop with developments.

Generate schematics for manufacturing. A good solution can take what your customers input and turn them into orders that your manufacturers can understand – without you ever lifting a finger.

2. Training Staff

Hiring and training staff is expensive. Research shows that small companies (under 1,000 employees) have invested an average of 49 hours of training per year in each employee since 2017. Likewise, the cost of replacing a single employee stands at around 21 percent of their annual salary.

But when you’ve got unique processes that can’t easily be learned elsewhere, training and replacing staff becomes even more inconvenient (and expensive.)

A CPQ solution can help with this. By reducing the learning curve associated with your customization processes, your team can get to work more quickly, with less frustration. Likewise, rather than inundating new hires with confusing documentation, it can:

Reduce the learning curve with intuitive interfaces and visual controls.

Make answers readily available with knowledge bases and tech support.

Simplify tasks with automation and easy input requirements.

3. Process Bottlenecks

Does your sales team seem to get stuck at the same steps? Do customers consistently vanish at a certain point in the sales cycle?

Those are both good signs you’ve got a bottleneck in your sales process. Bottlenecks occur when information or orders get stuck at specific places in the cycle because there aren’t enough resources to handle them. One common example we’ve found happens when your office relies on one or a few people to manually approve quotes. Bottlenecks also frequently happen during:

Document processes, such as proposal creation

CAD drawing or the product design phase

Product configuration, when conducted by sales reps

CPQ software can help with this by automating many of these tasks. Likewise, it can also help keep information from becoming siloed in one team by making it available via the platform. That means your sales reps always have what they need, when and where they need it.

4. Complicated Implementation

CPQ solutions are powerful, but we’ve found that they’re not always super-easy to implement. The complicated implementation sometimes required can turn businesses off to using them altogether.

Your preferred solution shouldn’t require you to rip and replace your existing business infrastructure.

Fortunately, it’s become much more common for CPQ solutions to work with existing ecosystems rather than demanding that companies operate solely within their software. Some signs that you’re looking at a good solution include:

Integration with major CRMs and ERPs, including Salesforce and SAP.

The ability to work with multiple file types, especially CAD files.

Options to export files into different systems or create files that are compatible with outside systems.

5. Legacy Processes

Last but certainly not least, companies that offer customization can quickly find themselves hamstrung if their business processes still occur manually.

Many people assume that legacy processes – typically manual tasks – only exist when paper is involved. For example, physical invoices or order forms that must be entered into a computer by hand constitute legacy processes.

That’s not always true. Legacy processes can occur in digital form whenever you’re using a tool that requires manual attention. One of the most common places we find legacy processes lies in companies still using Excel sheets to track their components for configuration.

Legacy processes are a problem because they create more work, introduce more opportunities for errors, and keep your information ecosystem fractured. In contrast, a CPQ solution automates many of these tasks, eliminating time use and errors, while keeping everything available and up to date.

Are your sales teams still doing things by hand? Get CPQ software and give them a break.

Bottom Line: Configure, Price, Quote Solutions Should Solve Challenges, Not Create Them.

If you plan on offering customized products, you need a solution that can help you configure, price, and quote them. Otherwise, you’re fighting an uphill battle against manual processes and potentially complicated implementation that hampers your ability to give customers exactly what they want.

We’ve looked at five of the most common challenges that CPQ solutions can solve. With this handy software, your team and your customers will have what they need to offer customized offerings quickly and efficiently.

Don’t wait until you hit a bottleneck. Start out with your best foot forward and seize that competitive advantage.

#Configure Price Quote Solutions #CPQ software #CPQ #salesforce cpq

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teckview-blog · 5 years ago

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Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional

Salesforce is known as one of the first companies to offer customer relationship management (CRM) technology and helped make the concept known in the industry. Since then, Salesforce added to its impressive success by extending its offerings beyond CRM. The company's core product, Salesforce Sales Cloud (starts at $25 per user per month), offers plenty of CRM capabilities, and the prices scale up according to each tier's capabilities. Salesforce easily leads the market when it comes to cutting-edge CRM features and offers a deep suite of easily integrated Salesforce back-office apps and an impressive ecosystem of value-add partners, too. With these strong points, Salesforce earns an Editors' Choice honor in our CRM roundup along with Apptivo CRM and Zoho CRM. While the Sales Cloud is where the CRM product lives, we tested the version that costs $75 per user per month, which is called the Lightning Professional tier. This tier is deployed as a cloud service and includes Salesforce Lightning technology, which allows for deeper customization around each customer's unique workflows. The Lightning Professional tier sports a streamlined sales pipeline, lead management features, instant alert and best practice recommendation pop-ups, and improved drag-and-drop dashboard functionality. The company's Salesforce Einstein Analytics product uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automate time-consuming tasks that occupy sales teams, such as data entry, lead scoring, and forecasting. You can add Einstein to a Salesforce Lightning implementation for an additional monthly subscription cost. All that makes for a great platform, but Zoho CRM, another top pick, offers many of the same customization options and even some of the advanced features at a far lower cost. If you don't need all of the features Salesforce has, remember that the CRM space is large enough that it can pay to look around.

Salesforce Pricing

Salesforce started as a CRM company, but now has many different Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offerings, which can make it confusing to get started. For this review, we tested Sales Cloud, the Salesforce automation and CRM software. Service Cloud is a separate product intended for running a customer service desk. Marketing Cloud provides email marketing and campaign management, Community Cloud enables customer self-service, and Einstein Analytics offers business intelligence and analytics. The Salesforce Platform lets you build apps without coding expertise, Lightning Data cleans leads and contacts, and Pardot offers marketing automation. Finally, Chatter is the social network for the organization. There are several tiers within Sales Cloud: Salesforce Essentials, Lightning Professional, Lightning Enterprise, and Lightning Unlimited. The Essentials plan ($25 per user per month billed annually) offers sales and marketing for up to 10 users. It comes with guided onboarding, account and contact management, opportunity monitoring, lead scoring and assignment, email and event tracking, customizable reports and dashboards, and mobile access. It's relatively basic feature-wise, so you should consider cheaper and easier-to-use options such as PipelineDeals or Zoho CRM if this is all you need. The Lightning Professional plan we reviewed ($75 per user per month with annual subscription) has no user limits and offers campaigns, customizable dashboards, products, quotes and orders, mass email, and role-based access for users. This plan is the one best suited for small businesses, and it has some advanced features, such as collaborative forecasts. Overall, however, it feels expensive compared with other software. Based on price alone, it's still tempting to go with the $12 per user per month Zoho CRM, though once you dig in, you'll find that there are some under-the-hood reasons that more than justify paying more for Salesforce. The Lightning Enterprise plan ($150 per user per month with annual subscription) is the company's most popular and shows why Salesforce is still at the top of the heap. Along with all of the features mentioned above, this level includes workflow and approval automation, report history tracking, enterprise territory management, profile pages, custom app development, and access to the web services API. The Enterprise plan also includes Salesforce Identity and Salesforce AppExchange. The former allows for single sign-on to all enterprise apps, and the latter is for creating a corporate app store.

The Lightning Unlimited plan ($300 per user per month with annual subscription) allows unlimited customizations, multiple sandboxes, custom apps, 24/7 toll-free support, and unlimited training. If you need Service Cloud, you can get it with the Unlimited edition.

Setup and User Experience

Salesforce offers a free 30-day trial of its software, which we think should be the industry standard. Sales processes can be complicated enough that you want sufficient time to step through all phases to be sure you are comfortable with how the software works. As with Insightly CRM, you don't need a credit card to sign up for the trial; if you don't buy a plan at trial's end, make sure you export your data. Salesforce has a robust import/export tool to simplify this process. To cancel your account, you need to contact your account manager over the phone. The good thing is that there are no cancellation fees, and you get a refund of the unused portion. After signing up for the trial, a prompt asks what your role in the organization is: sales representative, company owner, IT professional, sales manager, and so on. Answering this question helps Salesforce customize the product tour to show applicable features, which is a simple but powerful way to get users started. On the left-hand side of the screen is a tray marked Walkthrough, which lists tasks you should perform. These helpful pathways for new users include creating a custom dashboard, integrating with other apps, and managing your pipeline. The Getting Started tab also takes you to a video tutorial and a PDF of the user guide, as well as the links to download the mobile app from the App Store or Google Play. The Lightning dashboard is well organized, with menu options at the top in a tabbed interface. The Home tab displays the news feed, with updates and notes from other users as well as lists of tasks and scheduled activities. The bottom half of the screen shows a dashboard that you can customize via drag-and-drop. By default, you can see graphs showing your pipeline, number of open activities, and closed sales.

The bottom section of the page shows your tasks and calendar with scheduled events. You can customize this page completely, and move objects or add widgets to create a self-contained sales experience. The interface makes Salesforce easier to navigate and puts every aspect of the contact, lead, sales, and deal process in one place for business users. The rest of the menu is fairly standard: Contacts, Accounts, Leads, Opportunities, Reports, Dashboards, Chatter, Files, Products, and Forecasts. You can create new tabs to bubble up specific tasks to the top level, which is helpful if there are pages you go to regularly. A universal search bar is at the top of the screen. It's unobtrusive, so it doesn't feel like it's taking up valuable real estate.

Users and Contacts

As the administrator, you create new users under Setup. To do so, you need to provide the name, an email address, a username, and the user's role. Salesforce makes it easy to track the number of users you are allowed to have under your license. Admins can create users who use only Chatter and don't count toward the number of paid Salesforce users, which is an excellent cost-saving detail—you can have non-sales and marketing personnel using Chatter without driving up licensing costs. A bulk edit page is handy for creating multiple users at once with basic information. The new user's page notes whether the user can access data offline, use mobile devices, or have access to forecasts. The Color-Blind Palette on Charts checkbox is particularly clever—this is a company thinking about the best way to get data to all its users. You can define roles to restrict what kind of data each user can see and the sort of tasks he or she can perform. The admin also has a simple way to send a mass email to all the users, a useful feature if you need to, say, notify all employees of downtime.

If you integrate your account with Google G Suite or Microsoft Exchange, you will see all your contacts listed under the Contacts tab. There is a simple New Contact button if you want to create a new one manually, or you can import data from other sources via a comma-delimited file.

Salesforce Sales Dashboard

You can see contacts belonging to everyone across the organization in All Contacts, or look at your own list under My Contacts. You can easily click on users and add them to new opportunities. When you click on a contact to view the record, you see the contact information, all open activities, activity history, saved emails, and files attached to the record. The status update box for the news feed can also be used to add notes about the contact. You don't have to scroll to the bottom to see all the open activities; rather, you can hover over the quick links at the top of the record. Like the dashboard and everything else on this platform, this page's look is customizable. SugarCRM is the only other CRM software we've tested with this level of customization, although Zoho CRM comes close.

A big focus for Salesforce is its Einstein AI platform, which includes Einstein Activity Capture, Einstein Email Insights, Einstein Lead Scoring, Einstein Opportunity Scoring, and Einstein Forecasting. Activity Capture automatically pulls customer interactions from a user's email and calendar so entries are up to date. It also has a calendar manager for easy scheduling without switching between software. Email Insights uses natural language processing to surface emails, recommend responses, and bring reps to "inbox zero" much faster. Likewise, the Lead and Opportunity Scoring tools use machine learning to prioritize the user's time. Finally, Forecasting mines your Salesforce data to help your company see what's on the horizon. You can track accounts, leads, and opportunities under each tab. Salesforce provides a consistent interface for creating accounts, leads, and opportunities, making it easy to use the platform after the initial learning curve. Each tab points you to detailed reports so you can see status at a glance, which is a nice touch.

Lead Management

Salesforce also offers quality lead management. Creating a lead generates a task by default, but you can create other tasks and activities. You can also automate your workflow so that it always assigns certain leads to the same user or automatically creates tasks when you add new opportunities.

Sales and Lead Generation are two separate apps, although the UI is, as mentioned before, similar enough to make it easy to switch from one to the other. You also have access to the same data—the listing of leads, accounts, and so forth in the Sales app will be reflected in the Lead Generation app. The difference is in some of the tabbed features that are available. For example, the Sales app includes tabs for Notes, Tasks, and other activities, while the more narrowly focused Lead Generation app has one for Campaigns. Being able to filter your view to prioritize leads is essential. You can also see your list of leads either as a traditional list table or as a Kanban table, making it easy to move leads along your pipeline. A significant source of analytics is Sales Cloud Einstein Lead Scoring, which uses the Salesforce Einstein Analytics Platform to score each lead. It uses historical data from your company to discern success patterns. (To use Lead Scoring, you need to be using Sales Cloud Lightning.) Salesforce recommends that, in order for lead scoring to work, the company should have had at least 1,000 leads created in the past six months, with a minimum of 120 conversions. Sales Cadences let businesses create customized activity sequences to guide reps through the prospecting process. Lead scoring is especially useful for large operations, which can have higher-scoring leads (indicating a higher likelihood of conversion) sent automatically to more experienced salespeople. Smaller organizations can use the ratings to sort their lists of leads (available as part of Sales Cloud) and decide whom to contact first. Similarly, Einstein Opportunity Scoring keeps sales reps on top of low-performing opportunities. Einstein Opportunity Insights gives reps a close look at successful and at-risk opportunities.

Reporting and Third-Party Integration

Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional lets you have multiple dashboards, each assigned to its own data set. The Sales Executive dashboard can display the current pipeline by product family, recent sales activity, the biggest deals on the board right now, and neglected accounts. The Marketing Executive dashboard can focus on unspent marketing dollars and the current pipeline by account type. Users can sort the top three marketing channels by total value opportunities for each and leads driven in by campaign for the current quarter. Here you can create custom reports as summaries, tables, or matrices. In comparison, Pipedrive CRM offers a workflow-based dashboard geared specifically at the sales pipeline, showing a straightforward way to track deals and activities but without as many built-in features or reporting. Zoho CRM also does a good job of customizing the dashboard to display data analytics, but not to the scale that Salesforce does.

Salesforce Pipeline Board

Salesforce has one of the largest third-party app marketplaces. You will likely be able to integrate the CRM with every business app you use, including QuickBooks, RightSignature, and Zendesk. Launched in 2006, the Salesforce AppExchange now offers more than 5,000 available apps and, according to Salesforce, has facilitated more than 6.5 million business app deployments. At the Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited tiers, there is also a wealth of add-ons available to layer additional functionality atop the business CRM experience. The SalesforceIQ Inbox gives users a suite of mobile and desktop productivity apps, including email and calendar integrations with smart reminders of pressing deals and leads. Einstein Analytics adds more business intelligence (BI) to the sales process with natively integrated dashboards showing quarterly and year-over-year performance, risk indicators, and forecast metrics through its pipeline trending functionality. Another useful add-on is called Salesforce CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote), an automated quote-to-cash engine for configuring products and pricing for cross-sells, up-sells, contract and proposal generation, and billing processing of invoices and payments. Salesforce Billing enables seamless subscription renewals, contract renewals, and flexible invoicing. The list of add-ons goes on and on, and they all cost somewhere between $25 and $75 each for the basic functionality. These costs can add up quickly on top of the premium you're already paying for Salesforce, but for specific use cases, the add-ons can make a valuable addition to your CRM capabilities. For social media, Salesforce has Chatter, its social networking platform. Chatter lets you set up a profile and update your colleagues on your status; a Share button sits at the top right side of the main page. You use Chatter to update project status or give other users notes on a lead, opportunity, or account. Nearly everything you can do on the website can be done on Salesforce's mobile apps for iOS and Android, which puts it head and shoulders above the competition. Insightly, for example, only lets you look up contact details on its mobile app. Salesforce's support options are stellar as well. You can fill out a form on the site, call the toll-free phone number, or look at the help tips dispersed throughout the software. You also have the option to log into Salesforce Success, a support portal that gives you access to training videos, webcasts, knowledgebase articles, and user forums.

Powerful for Small Teams

Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional may be more expensive than most other CRMs, but it creates a productive, collaborative CRM environment. Because it is so flexible, businesses can modify Salesforce to suit their needs and workflows, instead of having to adjust to an existing interface. Operating the service feels remarkably smooth, given the massive amount of power beneath the surface. It's not as modern-looking as some of its smaller competitors, but its top-notch features prove why Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional remains an Editors' Choice. If the price tag is holding you back, however, consider our other Editors' Choice, Zoho CRM, which offers many of the same features at a lower price. Read the full article

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nicholasmesngr · 7 years ago

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15 Best CRM Software for Your Business 2018

Best CRM Software for Your Business – 15-best-crm-software-for-your-business-2018

Are you looking for better ways to grow & manage your business? CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software can make all the difference. Whether you are searching for a highly robust CRM solution or a simple version of it designed for your small business enterprise, there is always a perfect CRM software choice for you.

When it comes to managing your business, keeping up-to-date with your potential as well as existing customers, leads, and prospects turns out to be a vital task for any business out there. In such a scenario, reliable CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems can help you in managing your business effectively through tracking all the tasks related to your customers –right from handling emails to calls, visits, deals, the progress of the sales, and so more.

If you are looking out for the best CRM software tools out there, we have compiled a list of the top CRM software solutions that you can consider making use of in your operations. Here are some:

Apptivo:

This turns out to be a comprehensive CRM offering an easy way of managing your schedules, contacts, communications, tasks, notes, and much more. In addition to this, if you go forward with availing the free account of the software, then also you will receive proper project management tools along with invoicing, basic order tracking, estimates, a help desk, and field service management. The premium version of the software comes for $8 and provides ample storage (3 GB per user) along with additional benefits including e-commerce integration, bulk emails, Google Drive, business apps, Dropbox integration, and so more.

Bitrix24:

Just like Apptivo, this CRM software tool comes with a powerful suite of useful business tools including the ease of instant messaging, collaboration, project management, employee management, document handling, document scheduling, and so more. The immensely generous free account setup of the Bitrix24 CRM software tool allows support for around 12 users and offers 5GB of storage. In case you require more storage, the special Plus account by Bitrix24 offers support for 24 users along with 24GB of storage for $39.

Batchbook:

If you are looking for some great communication system with the help of a robust CRM solution, then the Batchbook CRM software is the ideal solution for your business. With the help of this software solution, you can create a customized contacts database and extend with the necessary details that you like, perform effective tracking, emails, tweets from customers, and so more. The mobile view offered by the software ensures that your site appears appealing on any device. Moreover, the SMS & Email notifications make sure that you never forget anything important related to your business.

Nimble:

Referred to as the “social butterfly of small-scale enterprises”, the Nimble CRM software tool allows you to manage teams, customers, and social contacts on a single screen. With the help of the lightweight platform offered by Nimble, all the online conversations from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and email become easily visible. The CRM platform is easy to use as well. Nimble can help you go online automatically for collecting useful data from the contacts. The Nimble CRM software also comes with smart search tools that help in locating the necessary data along with filtering & sorting of your contact list for your overall ease.

HubSpot:

This is probably one of the best CRM tools that you will come across out there. The HubSpot CRM software stands out from the rest with respect to its unique pricing model. The software offers no exceptional “free” plans & no array of other additional accounts to configure. On the other hand, this software tool comes entirely free of cost and you are required to pay only for extra marketing or sales modules. This turns out to be the ideal solution if you are running strictly on budget. With this tool, you are able to create companies & contacts database effectively with unlimited storage space –as much as you need (up to 1 million companies & contacts).

Capsule CRM:

Capsule CRM stands out from the other CRM tools as it is aimed at focusing on the basics –collaboration, contact management, scheduling, task management, and sales pipeline. All of these tasks are implemented progressively with the help of some additional features offered by the CRM software tool. With this tool, you are able to track the social media of your potential customers, link emails & documents to the respective records, organize the contacts & tag them, view the schedule, create tasks in the calendar, and so more.

InStream:

This CRM software tool is a specialized contact, sales management & relationship automation software tool. The CRM is known for offering detailed customer’s contact management along with additional social media integration features that aid you in staying in touch with the tweets, emails and calls of the customers. The tool is relatively easier to use owing to the ease of integrations offered by the CRM system. The specific Business plan is one of the best-value plans and offers around 10GB of storage with up to 25000 contacts, full support, and daily reports.

Insightly:

This is an impressive CRM software tool that focuses on effective project management for your business. In addition to managing the sales pipeline productively, you are also able to set dedicated milestones along with assigning tasks & schedules, attaching notes & files, defining a proper task schedule, producing reports, and so more. Insightly is known to be offering enhanced contacts management along with mass email support & social media integration to help with your business management.

Streak:

This is a lightweight CRM software tool. It is simpler than most of the competition around. As such, small-scale business enterprises and startups can learn the operation of this software tool easily and with no hassles. With the help of a single or two clicks, you can view or group related emails, track & add customer status, include notes, and much more. The specialized “Boxes” feature of the tool can help you in defining where you stand in sales & other pipelines –making it easy for everyone involved in your business to stay updated about the overall progress.

Zoho CRM:

Offering a flexible solution, the Zoho CRM software tool comes with a lengthy list of features including contact & leads management, social media integration, sales & marketing automation, task scheduling, web forms management, and so more. In addition to this, the CRM system can also be integrated with several other Zoho products including web forms, project management, and customer support. The mobile apps by Zoho CRM allow you to gain access to the data in an effective manner.

Pipedrive:

This is another excellent CRM software solution that helps in organizing your leads & customers in an organized manner. Moreover, it also offers a clear overview of the overall sales process and encourages you to focus on other vital tasks of your business. You can make use of the CRM software solution to manage the sales pipeline of your business efficiently. Some of the key features of this software tool include simplified data importing & exporting, productive timeline viewing, sales reporting, email integration, viewing & managing contact history, and much more.

Nutshell CRM:

This CRM application is easy to set up & use. The application also offers exceptional onboard assistance along with professional customer support services. One of the primary features that make this CRM software tool stand out from the others is its attractive & user-friendly dashboard wherein you can view & manage the upcoming tasks, contact history, activities, and meetings in a comprehensive manner. Some of the key features of this tool include seamless lead relationship management, collaborative environment, customized sales processes, calendar syncing, and creation of bulk email templates.

Velocity 365:

If you are in search for a citizen engagement system for streamlining several government processes towards ensuring quicker & efficient rendering of specialized services to the end customers, then Velocity 365 CRM software tool turns out to be the ideal option. Right from offering the citizens with customized self-service for reaching out to different departments to specialized integrations, pre-configured tools, and so more –the Velocity 365 software tool can help you remain at the notch of your business at all times.

Bpm’online CRM:

This serves to be a unique CRM tool as it is able to combine customer data with specific business process management solutions & tools. With the help of this tool, you can coordinate the diverse activities of different departments including sales, customer support, and marketing teams. Some of the primary features of this tool are administrative tools, customizable reports, document management, and so more.

Salesforce CRM:

This software tool allows you to record & track all the customer details at a single platform towards nurturing more leads in an effective manner. The mobile apps for this tool allow obtaining real-time data from customer reports & user-friendly dashboard.

Make use of these leading CRM software tools for your business! For more lead generation tools and reviews please visit http://citlyleadspro.com.

The post 15 Best CRM Software for Your Business 2018 appeared first on City Leads Pro.

source https://cityleadspro.com/15-best-crm-software-for-your-business-2018/ from City Leads Pro https://cityleadsprofl.blogspot.com/2018/07/15-best-crm-software-for-your-business.html from Ellie Connely https://ellieconly.tumblr.com/post/176167534997

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ellieconly · 7 years ago

Text

15 Best CRM Software for Your Business 2018

Best CRM Software for Your Business – 15-best-crm-software-for-your-business-2018

If you are looking out for the best CRM software tools out there, we have compiled a list of the top CRM software solutions that you can consider making use of in your operations. Here are some:

Apptivo:

Bitrix24:

Batchbook:

Nimble:

HubSpot:

Capsule CRM:

InStream:

Insightly:

Streak:

Zoho CRM:

Pipedrive:

Nutshell CRM:

Velocity 365:

Bpm’online CRM:

Salesforce CRM:

Make use of these leading CRM software tools for your business! For more lead generation tools and reviews please visit http://citlyleadspro.com.

The post 15 Best CRM Software for Your Business 2018 appeared first on City Leads Pro.

source https://cityleadspro.com/15-best-crm-software-for-your-business-2018/ from City Leads Pro https://cityleadsprofl.blogspot.com/2018/07/15-best-crm-software-for-your-business.html

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jasmineprston · 7 years ago

Text

15 Best CRM Software for Your Business 2018

Best CRM Software for Your Business – 15-best-crm-software-for-your-business-2018

If you are looking out for the best CRM software tools out there, we have compiled a list of the top CRM software solutions that you can consider making use of in your operations. Here are some:

Apptivo:

Bitrix24:

Batchbook:

Nimble:

HubSpot:

Capsule CRM:

InStream:

Insightly:

Streak:

Zoho CRM:

Pipedrive:

Nutshell CRM:

Velocity 365:

Bpm’online CRM:

Salesforce CRM:

Make use of these leading CRM software tools for your business! For more lead generation tools and reviews please visit http://citlyleadspro.com.

The post 15 Best CRM Software for Your Business 2018 appeared first on City Leads Pro.

Source: https://cityleadspro.com/15-best-crm-software-for-your-business-2018/

from City Leads Pro https://cityleadspro.wordpress.com/2018/07/22/15-best-crm-software-for-your-business-2018/

0 notes

cityleadspro · 7 years ago

Text

15 Best CRM Software for Your Business 2018

Best CRM Software for Your Business – 15-best-crm-software-for-your-business-2018

If you are looking out for the best CRM software tools out there, we have compiled a list of the top CRM software solutions that you can consider making use of in your operations. Here are some:

Apptivo:

Bitrix24:

Batchbook:

Nimble:

HubSpot:

Capsule CRM:

InStream:

Insightly:

Streak:

Zoho CRM:

Pipedrive:

Nutshell CRM:

Velocity 365:

Bpm’online CRM:

Salesforce CRM:

Make use of these leading CRM software tools for your business! For more lead generation tools and reviews please visit http://citlyleadspro.com.

The post 15 Best CRM Software for Your Business 2018 appeared first on City Leads Pro.

from City Leads Pro https://cityleadspro.com/15-best-crm-software-for-your-business-2018/

0 notes

omcik-blog · 8 years ago

Text

New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/essential-tech-tools-for-advisors-in-2017/

Essential tech tools for advisors in 2017

Advisors and consultants agree that customer relationship software (CRM) is the essential tool to manage and grow an advisory business. (Photo: iStock)

Artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, virtual reality, voice-controlled assistants — the pace of technological change is breathtaking.

From a financial advisory business perspective, though, many of the headline-grabbing tech developments aren’t that useful — at least not yet.

While some advisors like to adopt cutting edge tools, most industry sources seem cautious and want proof that a technology will help their business before they try it. The advisors and consultants interviewed for this article only suggested using a particular tech tool after they determined that it really works, not simply because it’s deemed the latest, greatest innovation.

Related: Priorities for innovation, automation and transformation

CRM: The essential hub

Advisors and consultants agree that customer relationship software (CRM) is the essential tool to manage and grow an advisory business. Current software goes well beyond serving as a digital Rolodex™ for contact information, says Joel Bruckenstein, who produces the Technology Tools for Today website and conference. Earlier CRM offerings often required advisors to do their own analysis by exporting CRM data to a program like Microsoft Excel. But the leading developers are building more powerful analytic capabilities into their CRMs, making the programs more robust and indispensable for marketing and practice management. These programs can track client preferences and demographics; they also track an advisor’s work flows and provide valuable management insights through easy-to-use analytic dashboards. “You need to know how much revenue you’re making per client, what your client trends are as far as age,” says Bruckenstein. “If every year your book is aging, for example, you have a dying business.”

Bruckenstein mentions Ebix, Junxure, Redtail and Salesforce as examples of programs widely used in financial services.

Bill Winterberg, CFP, a technology consultant for financial advisors and publisher of the FPPad.com tech news site, says that some CRMs are adding more collaboration and social networking capacities. These features won’t benefit solo advisors, but they do appeal to firms with larger staffs, he says.

“There are CRMs that have timelines, if you will, where just like you check the Facebook feed to see what your friends and family are doing, you can actually check what employees and other advisors are doing in the office and stay informed on what’s going on, what might be falling through the cracks, or things that might be aging a little bit. It helps any advisor or agent stay in tune on what’s going on.”

Related: Accelerating change through innovation

Those collaboration features appeal to Aaron Clarke, CFP, financial planner with Acorn Financial Services in Reston, Virginia, who says a desire to save time motivated his firm’s search for a new CRM. The office work flow had several inefficiencies and he wanted to automate the steps needed to complete routine tasks as much as possible. His search led him to WealthBox, which he describes as having an easy-to-use interface that is like working with Facebook. In addition to providing a familiar user interface, the program allows the firm to automate internal tasks and workflows. It takes some time and effort to build the automation templates, but once those automated procedures are in place, the cumulative time savings are significant, says Clarke.

How much time have you and your staff wasted looking for documents and files stored somewhere on your computer network? (Photo: iStock)

Where’s that document?

The need for robust document and content management is another opportunity to boost productivity growth, Winterberg says. The software now goes beyond scanning into PDF files, he explains. “The content management (software) allows you to ascribe the date of a document; you can identify what kind of form it is, if it’s a tax form or if it’s a property casualty application or if it’s a will,” he says. “And based on what type of document it is, you can put in additional information like the date it was drafted or other types of descriptions.”

Faster document retrievals save time and, even if the time saved per search is small, over the course of a year or years the savings can add up to many hours, Winterberg says. Speedier retrievals also improve client service by allowing for faster responses. That benefit might not be measurable from a dollar perspective, he adds, but it increases client satisfaction. Winterberg mentions Cabinet Paperless, Laserfiche, NetDocuments, Worldox and Microsoft SharePoint as well-regarded programs.

Related: 10 ways to be more productive

Cybersecurity

Effective cybersecurity practices are no longer optional. Regulators are ramping up their focus on advisory firm’s practices and widespread reporting of cyber incidents means clients are paying attention, too. At the same time, many clients are relying more on email instead of the phone for communications with their advisors. Those trends led James Dowd, CFA, managing director at North Capital in San Francisco, to start working with GreatHorn, a cloud-based cyber threat monitoring service that integrates with North Capital’s G-Suite business email service from Google.

Related: How to protect your client and business data

GreatHorn flags or quarantines emails that could be potential fraud attempts, Dowd explains. “We realized that although we believed that we had reasonable precautions in place to prevent malicious email-based activity, we needed to go even further,” he says. “GreatHorn has continued to improve its scope of services since we became a customer, tackling an increasing range of potential threats. We evaluated several alternative systems but decided on GreatHorn because they met our key criteria of being cloud-based, operating outside of our email system, and specifically addressing human-empowered threats.”

Effective cybersecurity practices are no longer optional. (Photo: iStock)

Living with the robos

Advisors managing client investments face a choice: Ignore the robo-advisors and their potential impact, especially on the younger and mass affluent market segments, or figure out how to work with them. North Capital chose the second option and decided to incorporate digital advice in its services, which it views as a “multifaceted business opportunity.”

The firm uses AdvisorEngine for client engagement, risk profiling, financial planning, and implementation of risk- and asset class-based model portfolios, Dowd explains. (A disclosure: North Capital made a small equity investment in AdvisorEngine several years ago after learning about the software’s features.) The program enables the firm to employ the same approach and processes it uses with “offline” client relationships to create a sophisticated online engagement and digital advice delivery process, he says. “TD Ameritrade, who we use for custody of our digital advisory assets, is tightly integrated with the AdvisorEngine platform, so we are able to take advantage of the TD rebalancing platform, iRebal, to allocate and update client portfolios.”

Related: State regulators eye life accelerated underwriting programs

Mobile apps? Not so fast

We’re all wedded to our smartphones, but industry surveys show that first-time downloads of apps have declined substantially, apart from smash hits like Pokémon GO. Social and chat app usage continues to grow, but overall, many users have settled into a routine with their favorite apps. Winterberg reports a similar shift among advisors and their desire for mobile applications. Five or six years ago, advisors uniformly wanted a phone app version (or tablet, for early iPad adopters) of their desktop software. That interest has peaked, says Winterberg, largely mirroring the trend among consumers.

Nonetheless, apps work well in the right circumstances. Clarke says that while the WealthBox mobile app has limited value for him personally, it’s proved very useful for his firm’s owner, who uses it to add contacts and manage his calendar, which syncs back to his Google calendar. Other sources cited cross-platform information-sharing apps like Evernote and Microsoft OneNote as indispensable. Brian Kuhn, CFP, CLU, with PSG Clarity in Fulton, Maryland, cites Microsoft OneNote as his choice. “It’s not specific to financial services or insurance but it’s functionality to store other Office documents, record audio and update instantaneously are great,” he says. “It is helpful for note taking, storing to-do lists and so on that can then later be accessed on either the computer program, the Web or your phone.”

Boston-headquartered research and consulting firm Celent has surveyed insurers’ development of producer-focused apps. Colleen Risk, FMLI, senior analyst life, annuity, health says that in the summer of 2016, Celent interviewed 10 top-tier insurance carriers about their producer-focused technology. Seventy percent of the insurers provide an app but the functionality in the applications vary widely. The apps are used mainly for marketing, closely followed by information (education materials and policy information), with the fewest providing transactional (new business, claims) functionality, she explains.

Insurers also acknowledged the need to focus on and improve user in their current apps, Risk says. As far as she knows, there are no third-party developers launching apps for insurance producers. Nonetheless, the segment continues to evolve and 80 percent of the insurers plan to enhance or replace their producer-facing technology in the next three years.

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