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Monday 21 December 2015

Friday 6 November 2015

Are you getting the most out of Siebel Open UI ?

Are you getting the most out of Siebel Open UI ?


Sure, you can upgrade to Siebel Open UI, activate it and let your users pick their browser of choice to access Siebel (and for some clients this in itself is one major roadblock that has been successfully removed!)…but now that you have Open UI, take a moment to think about what else it can do and the benefits it can bring.

By utilising the Siebel Open UI infrastructure we have been able to make huge improvements to the User Experience for Internal users, Channel Partners and Self-Service Consumers alike.

Since we first got our hands on Siebel OpenUI in 2012, we have been finding new and inventive ways to help customers dramatically improve their Siebel deployments.  If you’d like to know more about our unique approach to a Siebel Open UI project take a look here at CADD

With the release of Siebel Open UI we took the opportunity to fill the gap that had always existed in Siebel – namely a process-centric user experience.  We have always found the lack of processes to be the #1 reason behind poor usability of Siebel.

By defining and ‘baking in’ these processes we have seen major improvements in,
·      User Adoption
·      Reduced training needs
·      Increased productivity
·      And user happiness !!

As well as
·      Total Cost of Ownership reduced as old technology (ActiveX) is removed and alternative browsers deployed.
·      Lower development costs by using industry standard JavaScript libraries to rapidly develop new functionality, as well as HTML5 and CSS – Skills that are readily available in the market.
·      Easily use the new UI across browsers and devices (Mac, Windows, Android, Linux, iOS)

To help us fast track these projects we have built a library of Processes and Templates that are ready to be used, adapted and deployed – there is now no need to start from a blank page !!

We have seen how consolidating the right information on one page can have a major positive impact on productivity – no more jumping around Siebel to find that important piece of information.  Fewer clicks, means less time wasted, means a more productive user !



InterACT Dynamic Screen Framework (DSF)


With InterACT DSF we have taken Siebel Open UI and made it even better.  One common request we had from our clients was to be able to have a finer level of control over the UI, to allow them to dramatically reduce field ‘clutter’ and improve usability.

We took on that challenge and designed InterACT Dynamic Screen Framework.  It allows rules to be defined that determine which fields and applets are shown to which users or user-groups.  It means that one common, “global” page can be created and fields managed by exception, without the need to create dozens of slightly different pages that have to be maintained individually and assigned to different users.

Other typical issues and our solutions are :-  



UI Issue
Our Open UI Improvements
Hard to find important info
Information displayed on hover-over
Excessive Scrolling
Expand views on click and mouse wheel scrolling
Only common views, but diverse users
InterACT Dynamic Screen Framework
Complex flows with no process
Process-based UI (For Example InterACT CPQ)
No 360° view
Dynamic 360° views


Now is the perfect time to grasp the UX bull by the horns and start to make some huge improvements for your users – you have the tools !

Take a look out our website for more info - Siebel Open UI

If you want to know more get in touch,
david.moorman@crmantra.com





Tuesday 13 October 2015

CRMantra is hiring Salesforce consultants for multiple positions at our Offshore Delivery Center.

CRMantra is hiring Salesforce consultants for multiple positions at our Offshore Delivery Center.

Job Description

Position : Salesforce Consultants

Experience : 2 to 8 years (minimum 2 years of development experience in Salesforce)

Work Location : Kochi, India.

Required Skills:
  • At least 2 years of hands on experience on Sales force configuration areas (Formulae, Workflows, Validation Rules, Roles and Profiles, Security, Process Builder, Approval Processes etc.) 
  • At least 2 years of hands on experience on Salesforce development areas (Apex Classes, Visual Force, Apex Trigger, Test classes, Components, SOQL, SOSL, etc.) 
  • Able to deploy code using change set and Force.com IDE
  • Good analytical and problem solving skills.
  • Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
  • Personal accountability for actions and deliverables, Pro-active and Conscientious.
Additional desirable Skills:
  • Knowledge of any of the CPQ Managed Packages
  • Knowledge of different APIs(REST, SOAP etc.)
  • Dev 401/501 certification is preferred 
  • ADM 201
  • Knowledge of Data Loader or Jitterbit
  • Experience in basic web technologies including HTML, CSS, JavaScript (or a JS framework)
  • Experience in WebMethods

About CRMantra

CRMantra is a leading technology and services organization specializing in state-of-the-art Customer Relationship Management solutions serving clients world-wide. Delivering the depth of technology expertise and business-process insight our clients need to execute their strategies for competing more responsively and profitability. 

Our goal is to enable customer-centric business transformations to help clients get results. That means hitting sales and profit goals in a competitive marketplace. From Sales and Service Management to Master Data Management to Pricing and Order Management, CRMantra’s proven ability to align business strategy with enabling technology delivers superior value to our clients.

Our Mantra: “Solving Your Toughest CRM Challenges

We are headquartered at San Francisco, CA, with operations across geographies. 
Our other US offices are in Emeryville, CA & Cleveland, OH.

Our Europe offices are at London & Amsterdam and our offshore delivery center is in Kochi, India.

Please visit us at www.crmantra.com


If your profile fits our requirements and you are interested in this opportunity, please send us your resume to employment@CRMantra.com - Please put 'SFDC-IND' in the Subject line.



Friday 26 June 2015

Cloud Control – When More than One could be a Crowd!

Cloud Control – When More than One could be a Crowd!


Too many cloud applications can quickly lead us to the same level of complexity as managing multiple On-Premise applications.  Adding more cloud apps to your enterprise IT ecosystem may be too much of a good thing.


The CRM cloud application (It could be Salesforce, Oracle Sales Cloud, or MS Dynamics, etc) is normally at the centre of your solution. Typical challenges we see in maintaining these alongside multiple ‘edge’ cloud apps:

1.     Integrations and Data Migrations:  Many ‘edge’ cloud apps use a custom object for the same CRM entity (for example, a custom object to hold Account or Customer Information, Product Data, etc.. which are also present in the base CRM application.) 

There is a common need to “integrate” between the CRM object definition and the cloud app’s customer object definitions.  This approach increases integration and data migration costs and results in unnecessary replication of data.

2.     Upgrades:  Many cloud app vendors tout their frequent release cycles as a testament to their pace of innovation.  As a result,  there is the rising cost of incessant cycles of testing, releases, and user training.

3.     Environment cloning and migrations:  Each cloud app comes with its unique installation and migration procedures.  A strong system admin team is required to clone environments for Development, QA, UAT and Production.  Each application could have a different set of code and processes to be installed.

4.     Technology Stack to build the Cloud App:  Is it native force.com, java, .Net, or another custom language?  Does the Cloud app include components (such as configurator or pricing engines) that are built using different languages or residing in a separate cloud?

5.     Process-related Data Migration: ‘Lead-to-Contract’ is one of the processes where data mapping needs to occur between many objects such as Lead to Opportunity, Opportunity to Quote, Quote to Order, Order to Contract, Asset to Quote, etc.  Custom workflows to enable the mappings and flows result in high implementation and maintenance costs.

Many of the cloud vendors have ignored these challenges, whilst a few are addressing these issues (and rightly so!).  So when you’re looking for a cloud solution ask the vendor if they have done the following:

1. Pre-built end-to-end, industry-specific CRM apps reducing the need to manage and maintain multiple cloud apps.

2. Focused at the outset on the integrations and data migrations, building adapters for most common on-premise applications.

3. Offer a ‘CRM’ object-first guarantee.  As a result, they would not replicate any objects released by the CRM vendor, either pre-existing or in the future.  In addition, their apps guarantee compatibility with the CRM native objects.

4. Provide tools to facilitate Process-centric data migration through declarative mapping between any objects in the CRM instance.

Takeaways:

1. The marginal benefit of installing a new cloud app vis-à-vis the existing on-premise app requires careful consideration.  Keeping the on-premise application may not be a bad decision after all!.

2. Just because the edge app is built natively on the same platform as the CRM application doesn't mean there is no integration and data migration effort. 

3. Detailed understanding of the integrations involved.  The existence of some APIs is just table stakes; use of those APIs to integrate and load data is where heavy lifting is necessary.  Check for existence of tools and solutions to address these.

4. Check on the excessive use of custom objects to store data that is already stored in the CRM native object.

If you’d like to know more about which cloud vendors we think are taking the right approach then please get in touch

Read the full article here on our website  - Cloud Control


Visit us at: www.crmantra.com