Q: You don’t sound like you were born in London, where are you from?

I was born in New Zealand and brought up in a City called Dunedin in the South Island. I came to the UK six years ago 12 months after finishing my degree and after a brief spell working for SONY.

Q: You work for Resource Partners now, tell me about your role there.

I started at Resource Partners as the marketing coordinator. At the end of 2004, we finally realized that the aging on-premise CRM system no-longer supported the expanding role of marketing, and it hadn’t kept pace with the rest of our technology. With the help of an independent consultant we started to evaluate different systems and after looking around we decided to take up Salesforce.com’s offer of a free trial. I knew the old system and project-managed the implementation of the new system. Because of the success of the project I was received a promotion and am now the CRM Manager.

Q: What advice would you give prospective purchasers of the system?

Go for the free trial! Get some data in, learn how to customise the system. It’s so easy to do this and very easy to learn how to use it. If at the end of the 30 days you find it’s you - then you just carry on and go live with the test system.

Q: Have you used AppExchange? What do you think of that?

We use it extensively here, but we have come up with an issue. It’s buried deep in the terms and conditions and it says that we can only have 10 applications in the Enterprise Edition of Salesforce.com. We were unaware of this, and as we are trying to incorporate the system in all aspects of our business from IT, Finance, Sales, Support and HR, it’s a bit of a drawback. It looks like we will now have to move to the Unlimited version, which we had not planned for.

Q: What would you change about the AppExchange?

There are so many applications there now, it’s hard to know what’s available. A better search system would be good, and breaking the categories into two - those from Salesforce.com vs. those from partners would be excellent as well.

Q: Which applications have worked the best for you?

We create a lot of our own applications. One we found particularly important and that every company in the UK should use is for telephone preference service checking – that’s a legal requirement now, and even the local political party, the SNP, were fined for calling banned numbers - it’s being taken very seriously now in the UK. We have really benefited from the project management application from DreamTeam, which helps us manage the execution of our campaigns, which we then analyse with a third one called Campaign Analyser, which your company developed on our behalf. We are currently looking for an application to help us deduplicate data and we intend to download the CRMFusion product from Canada to do that, as it has been recommended by other members of the User Group. We also use the open-source version of DBAmp which means we can connect Salesforce.com to our inhouse SQLServer system.

Q: Right, I am glad you brought up the User Group, how many members do you have now?

We have 58 members representing 54 companies. They include huge multinationals like Schroders, Quintiles, Symantec and Xerox; mid market companies like ourselves and right down to single user PR companies. My favourite is a racing car manufacturer - though they haven’t offered me a free car yet. The companies are using many different features but common themes are mobilising the salesforce, implementing service and case management. Some of the companies have implemented the Web-2-Case and Web-2-Lead functionality. We have just completed a web interface that allows companies to register on our website, receive more information and have their details passed directly into our database for follow up.

Q: Is there anything that you didn’t expect?

Yes, I’ve had quite a few phone calls from other companies’ users. Normally with questions like “I’ve forgotten my password, how do I get in”. I guess they search the Internet and find London Salesforce.com User Group and think that’s what I do. Of course it’s not - and no I can’t reset your password, before you ask!

Q: How are Salesforce.com helping with the User Group?

Salesforce.com have been very supportive. They came along to our first meeting, and they always provide me with updates about local events and any feedback from new and existing customers. They recently sent me all the information about the Salesforce Regatta that Isobel Kelly and Peter Grant are organising for the Salesforce.com Foundation (last year Resource Partners won that!). They are also very good because the CSM’s like James Turrell tell their clients about the group and always give us a mention at the Road Shows.

Q: How could they help more?

It would be good to know more about the upcoming features. For instance, when we were implementing we spent a lot of money uploading data. That was a week before the free DataLoader tool became available. It would have been good to know about that then, I see the user group as being a great way to disseminate such information without making it public.

Q: What would you do to change the User Group format?

I would like to see the User Group opened to prospective customers. The reason I say that is that I have had an email from a company that is considering using the system. They have been to the Salesforce.com road show but find the information a bit bland - all about AppExchange and the increase in the number of users. If they could come along and hear 54 satisfied companies telling them how they had implemented the system, what issues they would face and how they can overcome them - I think that would be very powerful.

Q: A year from now, how do see the group evolving?

A year from now I would like to see more than one group and more meetings. The meetings would cluster around specific topics - such as marketing, sales, support, integration, end-user adoption. Things like that. At the moment everyone’s very new to the system so it’s too early - but that’s where I would like to see it head.

Q: What plans do you have for sharing the success of the group with others in different countries?

All the feedback is in the blog (dreamforce.blogs.com/london) but perhaps it’d be nice to actually go and visit other groups, to really share information. Perhaps we could have a Global user-group administrators meeting at Dreamforce?

Q: Dreamforce, that’s interesting. You went last year - are you going again?

The tickets are already booked.

Q: It’s a long way to go from Europe - the tickets and with airfares over $1000 its fairly expensive. What would you say to others?

It’s well worth the traveling. It’s 4 days of fun but more than that you learn a great deal. It’s not just about Salesforce talking. They make it pretty clear that it is the customers that make the company. They are really passionate about the product and they let you see what’s coming in the next 12-18 months. There are great events like “birds of a feather” and there are many, many partners.

Q: Thanks Sam, that was great. Good luck with the User Group

My pleasure.