As many of you are now responsible for keeping work-from-home environments secure, here are some important steps you can take to protect yourself, your data, and your work.

Beware of COVID-19 phishing emails

Hackers are taking advantage of the heightened emotions during this time. Cybercriminals are targeting individuals and organizations throughout the globe. To help protect yourself, take time to review the details of your received emails, such as:

• Subject line: Is something off? For example, if you receive an email with a notice about a delivery you weren’t expecting, it could be a phishing attempt.

• Unrecognized email addresses: Do you know this person? Were you expecting anything from this person? If not, be wary.

• Attachments: Anything suspicious about the attachment? The name? The format? Do not click on these suspicious attachments.

• Credential requests: Is an email asking you to log in to something? Are they asking for your username, password, or other sensitive information? Do not give this information away unless you are sure the email is from a trusted sender.

• Content integrity: How does the message read? Is it poorly written? If so, it may be up to no good.

• Calls to action: Is the message requesting immediate, urgent attention? Are they asking for money? These types of emails are suspicious.

If you notice any of the above, do not reply or click the links within the email. Instead, forward the suspect email to your organization’s security team, mark it as suspicious through your email provider (if possible), and then delete it.

Enable multi-factor authentication (MFA)

You may be more familiar with the concept of two-factor authentication, or 2FA. MFA and 2FA both protect against unauthorized access by requiring a user to provide multiple authentication factors to prove their identity. This second layer of security may come in the form of a hardware security key or temporary tokens, Touch ID (which requires you to use your fingerprint to authenticate your identity), or authentication apps like Salesforce Authenticator. Always check the security settings of the programs you use and enable MFA when it’s available.

Use a strong password

A different password on all your apps and devices — work, social, and personal — is a simple measure you can take to protect your account,especially if MFA is not available. Ensure each password includes a mix of letters, numbers, special characters, and contains at least eight to ten characters. Do not share your password with anyone. Use a password manager, like LastPass, to securely store all your passwords and make it easier to create and use unique passwords across apps and services.

Ensure a secure connection

Devices that connect to the internet, such as computers and phones, have varying levels of security controls. If your organization provides a VPN (Virtual Private Network), use it consistently to make your internet connection more secure. You can also help keep foreign devices off your network by using the router’s administrator console to enable encryption (use WPA2 or WPA3) and updating your firmware when it’s necessary.

Secure your virtual meetings

The use of video conference platforms is at an all-time high. Take a moment to review your web conference platform’s security settings (Google Meet, Cisco WebEx) to help prevent gatecrashers from joining your meetings. Use the platform’s built-in security features, such as waiting rooms, screen sharing permissions, and participant notifications to manage activity to prevent unauthorized attendees. Be sure to create new meeting access codes and links for each meeting. Also, disable features on the platform that you don’t need — such as file transfer and recordings — to prevent unsolicited content and unauthorized sharing.

Secure your calls

Whether you are on the computer or on the phone, be aware of your surroundings and use headphones for work calls to minimize what others can hear. When using a landline, make sure others can not pick up the line on a different phone.

Secure your physical workspace

Prevent accidentally sending a sensitive email from your device by remembering to lock your screen when you walk away from your computer. If available, use a privacy screen for additional security.

Secure your data

Working from home can be a little chaotic at times, but especially in a pandemic. Be sure to store online work-related data like important files and emails in a secure location that is approved and accessible by your company. Also, be sure to back up your data in the cloud so you can alway retain it, even if your son spills his morning orange juice on your MacBook. If you have sensitive information in hard copy, keep it stored in a locked file. When you no longer need it, shred it immediately.

Keep devices patched

Your day-to-day schedule isn’t the only thing that needs a reboot — so do your devices. Reboot at least once a week and stay up-to-date with the latest versions of software and browsers. Through patching, aka version updates, your device automatically adds necessary new features, removes old ones, fixes performance issues, and removes bugs, all of which helps keep hackers out.

Check out some additional Salesforce security resources here:

• Updates on Salesforce Safety and Wellbeing Actions

• Measures in place in response to Coronavirus (COVID-19)

• Salesforce Security Best Practices

• Salesforce Help: Protect Your Salesforce Organization

To get more tips on navigating through COVID-19, check out our Leading Through Change series, where you’ll find thought leadership, tips, and resources to help business leaders manage through crisis.

• Here are five ways we’re helping our employees navigate work

• Ways to maintain customer relationships when you can’t meet in person

• You need to have a crisis communications plan in place

The post Is Your Remote Environment Secure? Here’s How to Keep It Safe appeared first on Salesforce.

1. Stand up a COVID-19 help center fast

As companies determine how to respond and navigate through this pandemic, it’s crucial they share relevant information with their customers. Customers will often have more questions than one mass email can answer. To address their concerns, consider creating a resource center or FAQ page.

How to get started:

Salesforce can help you stand up a central resource center fast. We provide businesses with free access to Community Cloud so they can quickly build a self-service help center portal for COVID-19 response. You can sign up to get more info, and don’t forget to review the Quick Start Guide.

2. Expand the capacity for self-service

Right now, customer service teams are overwhelmed by the large volume of customers reaching out for help. To ease the burden, businesses can empower customers with self-service apps that have knowledge articles and FAQs. They can also enhance digital channels with chat bots, live chat, or SMS. This will give customers an integrated and personalized experience wherever they go.

How to get started:

If you use Service Cloud, it’s easy to add on new digital channels like Chat and Einstein Bots. Both of these can be offered to your customers through portals powered by Community Cloud and External Apps. You may also use the Service SDK to surface these channels in your customer-facing apps built on any other platform.

3. Deliver a mobile-optimized experience

With the rapid shift to working from home, your customer’s day is likely filled with homeschooling children or doing chores. This means interactions happen on their mobile phone. Now is the time to optimize your mobile experience through either responsive web pages or native mobile apps.

How to get started:

Good news, if you’ve already set up a portal through Customer Community or External Apps, it is already mobile responsive. If the time is right for you to shift from a mobile responsive portal to a native mobile app experience, consider using Mobile Publisher to publish your portal as a mobile app to the App Store and Google Play. Perhaps your needs call for you to build a bespoke customer-facing application at scale? In that case, consider using a platform as a service like Heroku. Heroku allows you to build your app faster by leveraging previous work done by the broader developer community in the Heroku Elements Marketplace. Learn more about how to build apps on Heroku.

4. Make it easy for customers to access their relevant data

One of the best ways to help your customers is to give them easier access to important data like order history, case history, and profile data. Customers want to access this data online without the extra steps of calling support or logging a ticket.

How to get started:

Your CRM can push this customer data into your customer-facing applications. If you have built customer-facing apps on Heroku, you can extend your CRM data into these apps within a matter of minutes with Heroku Connect. If you’ve built customer-facing apps on another platform, you can share your CRM data by using MuleSoft or by setting up point-to-point integrations through Salesforce APIs.

5. Remove friction around authentication

During times of high stress, customers have less patience when they have to authenticate multiple times or frequently reset passwords. It’s best to remove any friction customers may experience when accessing your apps.

How to get started:

If you have a Community or External Apps portal, you can configure Salesforce Identity to enable single sign-on, social sign-on, or passwordless login with a few clicks. Salesforce Identity can also remove this friction for your customer-facing apps not built on Salesforce.

These are some of the ways your technology teams can take advantage of your existing Salesforce investment to improve customer experience and retain customers in today’s climate.

To get more tips on navigating change, read other articles in our Leading Through Change series. Find thought leadership, tips, and resources to help business leaders manage through crisis.

The post 5 Ways Technology Teams Can Deliver A Better Customer Experience Now appeared first on Salesforce.

That’s why it’s vital that we continue to deliver the highest levels of performance, availability, and security — as Marc Benioff mentioned in his mid-March letter. My teams are responsible for making that commitment a reality. With this in mind, I’m outlining the results of a recent audit of our Business Continuity Plan for you here.

Our Business Continuity Plan

Salesforce was built to handle challenging moments like this. Our Business Continuity Plan (BCP) reflects that. We designed our infrastructure architecture to ensure the availability, resilience and continuity of our business at a massive scale. Our operational teams are set up to handle incidents whenever they may occur.

Infrastructure Architecture

Because our teams are highly distributed and our cloud-based platform can be scaled without technical limitations, it allows us to rebalance load in response to our customers increased use of digital experiences. The design of our architecture also allows quick disaster recovery with site switching to different regions when necessary.

In addition to these benefits, we’ve spent the past few years:

• Ensuring we have ample capacity for your continued growth.

• Establishing advanced machine learning and other AI-based capacity planning tools which allow us to predict where capacity is needed and take action well in advance.

As such, we determined that we don’t need to make material changes to how we operate and deliver Salesforce services. That said, should customers’ business needs change, we will update this architecture to ensure our high standard for resilience and availability.

Operations

Our geographically diverse teams have always ensured resilient operations, yet we recently updated our operations approach throughout our business — including relationships to vendors and other third-party service providers — specifically to ensure that our services will remain up and running in a climate where the health of our employees is less predictable.

We identified critical processes and teams within each of our business functions and created a contingency plan for each. The new plans include a staffing backup plan for each of our geographic locations, including primary, secondary, and tertiary contacts for the team.

Our Site Reliability Engineering team recently ran a drill to test our staffing continuity plan. We instructed our Singapore team to disable, and the US team was able to restore site reliability operations within minutes, proving our global team’s resiliency.

Summer 2020 Release

Many customers have asked us to reduce the level of technology change that they’re dealing with during this time. To that end, we have decided to postpone the Summer ’20 release. The sandbox preview was scheduled for May 8, 2020. The staggered production rollouts were scheduled for May 15, June 5, and June 12, 2020. The new dates are as follows: Sandbox preview: May 29-30, 2020. Production staggered rollouts: June 12, July 10, July 17-18, 2020.

If you have any further questions about the postponement, you can contact Support via Salesforce Help.

I’d like to end by applauding our customers, who continue to offer a high level of empathy and change leadership to their employees and customers. Take Stephen Brown, a Vice President at Dell Commerce Services, for example. He recently told us that he continues to ensure his team members’ health and well-being are a priority. Dell wants its staff to know they are supported as they navigate their new normal.

“We’re asking for meetings to end five to ten minutes early, to allow time to check in with family,” said Brown. “We’re also encouraging regular, informal check-ins via video. By keeping our teams supported and connected, we know we’ll come out of this stronger in the future.”

Similarly, Paolo Juvara, CIO at Google Cloud, knows customers rely on Google Cloud to stay connected and get work done, now more than ever. “We’ve enabled our support team members to work remotely where appropriate so they can continue to securely support our customers while working from home,” he said.

If you want to learn more about Salesforce’s business continuity plans, read this FAQ, contact your account team or join the conversation on ourTrailblazer Community. You can also follow the Leading Through Change series on our corporate blog to learn more about our customers’ initiatives to navigate these challenging times.

Be safe, stay healthy.

The post Our Business Continuity Plan Throughout the Pandemic appeared first on Salesforce.

Yet, it’s awe-inspiring to see individuals and teams, all across the world, finding and building solutions to common challenges. Many are taking their business offerings and turning them into solutions for social good. For example, companies like Unilever announced they’d be giving away free sanitizer, soap, bleach, and food. AstraZeneca donated 9 million face masks to support healthcare workers worldwide. Audible announced they’d make hundreds of audiobooks available for free.

Businesses are finding ways to help everyone make it through this situation posed by COVID-19. We’re doing the same, with our focus on Salesforce Care. Salesforce Care gives teams the resources to create solutions that can be deployed quickly and at no charge for at least 90 days. As part of that effort, our employees have also created a free AppExchange app to help with business continuity.

The Salesforce Labs Crisis Response app gives customers a central hub to manage crisis situations. It helps companies ensure employees are healthy and taken care of, while reducing workplace anxiety by mitigating workforce and business impact during times of crisis. A cross-functional team of Salesforce employees — from solution engineering, emerging tech, customer success, product marketing, Salesforce Labs, and creative — recognized the importance of a centralized crisis hub and took the challenge head-on to create a solution that can be deployed to do the following:

• Address the workforce impact. Track employees’ health and safety status and monitoring locations, all in one centralized hub

• Respond quickly to employees’ needs. Institute outreach and assistance programs to address the well-being of the workforce and provide the best possible care

• Keep employees in the loop effectively. Deploy a crisis-centric employee portal to disseminate news and information and collect updated employee status.

• Ensure business continuity. Activate continuity plans and measure overall business impact to manage future business operations

• Optional: For those in healthcare, shorten patient wait time by implementing an intelligent solution that transforms images of state-issued IDs into text within Salesforce. This reduces manual data entry and provides an accurate data trail, especially for services working with drive-up care. Additionally, use artificial intelligence to understand how employees are feeling based on communication channels to respond with empathy and direct them to the appropriate resources.

Get access to the free crisis response app here. For more resources, check out the AppExchange COVID-19 page, a dedicated resource center with solutions and content to help respond to the needs of your employees, customers, and community during this time.

For more tips on navigating change, read other articles in our Leading Through Change series.

• Here are five ways we help our employees navigate work now

• See how you can maintain customer relationships when you can’t meet in person

• Learn why you need a crisis comms plan

The post Deploy a Crisis Response App to Support Your Workforce and Business Continuity appeared first on Salesforce.

App development seems to have become almost an art form.

And unfortunately, not all of us consider ourselves artists.

When you’re trying to grow a relatively young business, for example, your mind is probably focused primarily on how best to market yourself and attract customers, or how to close deals once they’ve shown some interest.

Creative work like app development might feel like a luxury, and something beyond your skill set anyway.

No matter the industry in which you operate, however, you’re bound to run into more examples of competitors, partners and even customers who are using apps to accomplish a wide range of tasks.

Not having any apps of your own may start to feel like an area of weakness.

This becomes even more challenging when you finally begin to figure out the next best step. Do you hire an outside firm, even if you’re not sure how best to evaluate them, or do you bring on internal developers?

What kind of budget can you afford? What’s a reasonable timeline and what scope of functionality is essential?

Making things even more confusing is the variety of approaches that are now available. Tools describing themselves as “all-code,” “low-code” and even”no-code” are now everywhere, but parsing such jargon probably feels as time-consuming as learning to program yourself.

Rather than give up, use the next few minutes to read this primer on low-code app development, which may be the quickest, easiest and best way to overcome traditional barriers to creating outstanding software.

What is low-code app development?

You may know little about computer programming, but you’ve probably cut and pasted text from one document to another, or dragged some numbers between rows in a spreadsheet.

Low-code tools were designed in recognition of the fact that, even if someone isn’t a professional developer, they might have a good idea for an app and how it should be put together. To execute on those ideas, though, it needs to be as easy as word-processing or managing an Excel file.

Imagine an online portal or console where you see the features and functions you want in an app represented in little blocks on one side. Adding to the app involves literally clicking on the boxes you want and moving them over to another area of the page.

All the underlying elements, like the code a developer would write manually, are still there. They’ve just been abstracted into visual elements that a non-technical person can easily manipulate.

How does the low-code app development process work?

Low-code is different than “no code” in that some technical work will still be involved. This could include ensuring your app integrates properly with back-end systems —like connecting an HR app to your payroll system, for instance.

Besides easing the process of creating an app for a business professional, low-code tools help whomever manages your IT infrastructure, too.

The underlying “plumbing” that would normally take a lot of time and effort from those with a developer’s skills is minimized, so that they can focus on releasing and continually improving the app. Or simply focus on more critical IT issues.

How should I evaluate low-code development tools?

Even if this is your first time seriously considering a mobile app to support your business, you can spot the kind of low-code development platform or tools you need by making sure they meet the following criteria:

• Extensible and open: Ask if the technology you’re considering supports any form factor, and if dedicated logic or code needs to be maintained (it shouldn’t).
• QA-oriented: Quality assurance is everything in an app development project. Look for automated testing features, real-time performance management and quality monitoring.
• Rapid deployment: What will it take to not only develop an app but connect it to the cloud, whether it’s private or public?
• Continuous integration: This is kind of like making sure everyone is always referring to the latest version of a document. You should be able to make changes to an app easily without having to redo everything.
• Reusable: Some of the elements that went into making your first app could apply well to the next one. Verify you won’t be starting from scratch with each project.

What kind of apps can I make via low-code development?

Brainstorming is often the fun part. Your first projects may be a case of trying to catch up to the rest of the industry or stay competitive with what rival firms offer.

In other cases inspiration could strike unexpectedly as you identify processes that could be improved via automation, or where apps could close the gaps in terms of communicating information to employees or customers.

Try this: as you learn more about the low-code development resources available to you, group your ideas into a few key categories. This could start with “legacy apps,” that let you build mobile capabilities to free you up from things that chained you to a desktop environment.

Next might come apps to streamline operations, such as getting an alert when stock needs to be replenished or a part needs to be repaired.

And don’t overlook apps that help make your customers more engaged, whether it’s an app that lets them sign up to hear about your latest products, browse your catalogue, place orders or self-service tools to relieve the burden on your customer service team.

These are by no means the only kinds of apps low-code tools support, of course. Use your imagination, or tap into that of your team, your partners and customers.

You might be surprised at the range of creative ideas you’ll come up with. And before long, you might even start to feel like you’re getting closer to the art of outstanding software development.

The post An Introduction To Low-Code App Development appeared first on Salesforce.

Technology is an integral part of every business, which makes the IT department central to your business’s success. Today’s most successful companies recognize that the IT team can be a proactive rather than a reactive force within a company, and supporting it helps build a strong and secure technology support system that increases company productivity and efficiency.

What Does Your IT Department Do?

“Every business is a tech company,” says Nathan Turner, a Lead System Engineer who works for ClearBalance®, a company that works with healthcare organizations to provide financing patients can use to cover their out-of-pocket medical costs. “If your business has a phone system, a website, an online store,” he continues, “heck, if your employees use email, then you’re a tech company, and you need an IT department to keep everything running.”

Most company leaders recognize the need for an IT team, but they seldom understand exactly what their IT professionals do all day. In part, this confusion is the mark of a successful IT department. In explaining the value of IT, Jobs.net explains, “It’s apparent that not all the IT department does is apparent — it creates and maintains so many systems that go unseen or unrecognized by employees.”

The fact that your computer has been running without a problem all year or that the company website continues processing orders without a hitch means your IT department is doing its job. However, it can be difficult for non-technologically minded managers to fully recognize this effort, which can lead to an IT department being undervalued.

Another reason why so many company leaders aren’t exactly sure what their IT team does is because information technology is a huge umbrella that encompasses a wide array of positions, responsibilities, and job titles. From customer service to software programming, website development, network administration, and, yes, fixing the printer, your IT team does a lot of different things for your company.

Without getting too lost in the technological weeds, here are some of the primary responsibilities and services your IT team handles.

Hardware Setup and Maintenance

Perhaps the most visible responsibility of the IT department is to monitor and maintain all of the equipment that helps your business run, including its computers, laptops, phone systems, servers, printers, and more.

If something breaks, IT is called in to fix it. Additionally, your IT team can recommend the right equipment to your company, set up systems for your new employees, and update and maintain equipment so that it lasts as long as possible.

Technical Support

If your product or service includes a technology component, you’ll need to hire a team of tech support specialists who help your customers set up their systems and can fix any problems that pop up along the way. Your customers will inevitably vary in their comfort levels with technology, so your tech support team needs to be patient, thorough, and able to address a wide array of potential problems.

IT Security

Even as the importance of your technological infrastructure grows, so do the risks. In just one year, 2019, we saw data breaches at Toyota (3.1 million records affected), Evite (10 million records affected), and Facebook (540 million records affected). Additionally, a wave of ransomware attacks has crippled companies, institutions, and cities across the U.S. and Canada, including taking down the computer systems of three hospitals in Ontario in October of 2019.

All signs indicate that these threats and breaches will continue to grow and happen, which is why it is critical for companies of every size to take cybersecurity seriously. Arguably, one of the most important jobs for your IT team is to keep your network and all of its components safe. This can mean anything from ensuring that your company’s equipment has the latest updates to educating employees not to open suspicious attachments or links.

Website Design and Maintenance

Your website is a critical business asset. Even if you don’t sell products or services directly on your website, it is still your primary online real estate where you can educate potential customers and capture valuable leads. For brands that do sell online with an ecommerce store, your website is a profit-creating machine.

Your website design team can build a customized site from scratch and then grow and adapt your site as needed. Want to add a new product to your online store? Your web team can handle it. Need to promote a seasonal sale? Your web team can work with your marketing team to create a big banner for your home page. Your website designer and SEO team, working with your IT department, can assist in optimizing your website, making it easy for customers to find you online and navigate your site.

Program Design

It may seem obvious that traditional technology companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon need a large team of programmers to constantly work on, update, and innovate their services and products, but traditional companies also benefit from having programmers on their team. Programmers can develop customized applications for internal and external use or modify your existing programs to better serve your unique needs. For example, if you invested in a Salesforce platform, a dedicated programmer on your staff can easily create tailored reports, applications, and project flows within the system.

How to Optimize Your IT Department

These are just some of the important responsibilities your IT department handles in your company. With them in mind, how can you make sure you’re using your team’s full capabilities?

Meet Your Team

If you’ve never really thought about what your IT department does, make the effort to find out. Sit down with your IT manager and get to know the different people on the IT team and what roles the play in your company. By understanding the team, you can determine new and exciting ways they can support your company — and how your company can better support them.

Fill Any IT Holes

IT encapsulates a wide array of roles and responsibilities. Small businesses may be able to get away with having a single IT person on staff, but as your company grows, so will your technology needs. Make sure you bring in the right amount of support for your IT infrastructure. If you’re not sure which IT roles you need filled in your company, then it may be time to hire a dedicated IT manager, VP of technology, or CTO (chief technology officer).

Encourage Your IT Department to Interface with Other Departments

Your IT department shouldn’t be sequestered from the rest of your company. Instead, invite team members to work with and alongside your other departments and promote the cross-pollination of ideas and capabilities. When you reduce silos and your IT team understands the goals and operational needs of different departments, they may be able to offer unique technological solutions that your other teams would have never imagined.

Consider encouraging your IT manager to sit in on department meetings to offer advice and feedback from a technological perspective. Their input may be invaluable to the capabilities and growth of your company.

Ask for Ideas

IT professionals are problem solvers by nature. They likely have tons of ideas when it comes to improving systems and efficiencies in your company. All you have to do is ask.

Sit down with your managers and IT team and invite them to share ideas for improving the company. Your programmers, software engineers, support personnel, and network engineers are “on the ground” every day interacting with your networks, website, and customers. They may provide a number of great suggestions to help your company work better.

Trust Your IT Department

The best way to support your IT department is to trust them. Your IT employees know which systems your company needs, what equipment you’re missing, and the security measures you should invest in. Too often, management doesn’t spend the money to follow through on suggestions from IT, which can be a costly mistake in the long run. For example, investing in a security audit may cost money in the short term, but if it prevents a ransomware attack, it could help save your business.

If your computers are humming along, your network is secure, and your website is working well, then that means your IT team is hard at work, even if most everyone else doesn’t notice. Your IT department is an incredible and crucial resource for your company. Tap into that resource and give your IT department the tools and support they need to help your company thrive.

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It’s funny because there’s some truth in how hard small and medium-sized business owners tend to drive themselves, but also because we all know what comes with the standard 40-hour work week in a so-called “regular job.” You’re expected to show up in the same office every day. You’re expected to listen and follow orders from someone else. You may not even like some of your colleagues, and to some extent you may feel you’re simply helping to contribute to someone else’s success.

With all those trade-offs, it’s no wonder many people think of starting their own business. But as they get mired in day-to-day challenges, inevitably , they discover some new trade-offs like angry customers, limited resources, an endless to-do list and so on. At its worst, some entrepreneurs may even wonder if they made a mistake.

Before you get that far, it’s worth taking a second look at some of the technology tools available today that make some of the initial reasons for being your own boss worthwhile again. Whereas SMB owners might have been put off in the past by the idea of having to buy software and run it on premises, the emergence of cloud computing makes choosing and using everything that follows as streamlined as turning the lights on:

Work Your Own Hours

Some people who found it difficult to arrive at work on time when they were an employee may find themselves first to arrive and last to leave when they’re an entrepreneur. That’s probably because running your own business is such a big responsibility. And while being your own boss usually means being a jack of all trades to some extent, there’s a real risk of burnout if you’re doing nearly everything yourself and failing to balance it all.

Take marketing, for example: many small business owners know it’s important but it may come second to selling or dealing with customer service issues. That doesn’t mean it should always happen after hours, or when entrepreneurs should be getting some rest. There wasn’t much of a choice before the introduction of marketing automation solutions such as Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud. Now, however, email marketing campaigns can be scheduled in advance, for instance, while the data to inform the marketing strategy can be accessed more quickly and easily through CRM and related tools.

Build Something From Nothing

Some entrepreneurs start out with a great idea for a product. Others almost stumble into creating a small business by offering a service that suddenly has a strong market around it. Contrast that with working as an employee where you’re most likely in a role of making, marketing or selling someone else’s product or service. Pretty appealing, right?

SMBs don’t grow just by having a great product or service, though. They need to generate revenue, and one of the biggest hurdles for entrepreneurs to jump is developing a healthy client list that makes everything else about their company sustainable. By all means keep being laser-focused on selling, but recognize that tools such as Salesforce’s Sales Cloud can help you do so much more quickly by being better armed about how customers buy, when they buy and why they buy. Use CRM effectively and you’ll be able to focus much more on building a viable business that wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

Work With People You Like

You can’t always choose your co-workers — or your boss — until you get to be the boss. Even at that point, though, entrepreneurs realize they have to train staff effectively to deal with all the little issues that come up within a small business. The same goes for customers — you don’t have to sell to just anyone when you’re an entrepreneur, but you have to make sure the clients you do have stay happy and satisfied.

When pleasing people takes up too much time and effort, of course, small business owners may begin to get discouraged and occasionally overwhelmed. The technologies in solutions like Salesforce’s Service Cloud, though, are designed to ease these burdens by arming everyone on the team with the best information to resolve complaints or queries. Or, better yet, allow customers to self-service their needs. It’s also a way to continuously learn about how customers use your products and services after the sale — deepening relationships with the kind of clients you want to be around.

Work From Anywhere

When entrepreneurs strike out on their own, they typically love being free to choose their headquarters — until workload pressures become so demanding they’re chained to a desk as they were in their previous life as an employee..

Many people may still not realize that your smartphone can do much more than make or receive calls. In fact, mobile apps have evolved to a point where you can effectively do most of the key things to keep various sales, marketing and service operations with your fingertips. You still might not work from “anywhere,” but you’re more likely to be in those places where your physical presence can have the greatest impact. This could be team meetings, a new business pitch or an industry event where you can learn and build new connections.

Sometimes launching and running a small business is described as a dream, but it’s important that the process of turning that dream into reality doesn’t turn into a nightmare.Technology doesn’t solve every problem, but it can get you closer to the future you first imagined.

Learn more about the benefits of Salesforce’s CRM solutions—and how they can help your company succeed—with our ebook, “How a CRM Helps Your Business Grow.”

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The changing customer

Businesses are already realizing that customers, both business and consumer, are becoming more difficult to attract, influence, and retain. Why is that?

• The purchasing journey is becoming complex, and sales teams are responding by gaining a deeper understanding of the customer journey. Constantly connected to colleagues and cohorts, today’s buyers validate views, invite opinions, and share thoughts. Bombarded by marketing information, they are filtering out noise, and focusing only on relevance and sales organizations that truly understand their pain points.
• The purchasing journey is now fully multi-channel, as buyers explore and compare online, on mobile, in stores, at home and work. Smart companies work to engage them earlier, create seamless experiences and build enduring, trusted relationships.
• Personalized experiences are creating better customer connections. Customers respond to one-to-one experiences that go beyond product customization and spans their entire customer journey. Bespoke manufacturing is common at an industrial level, but personalization must go further. Customization via product options has long been a part of luxury car marketing, but Jaguar Land Rover has put personalization at the heart of sales at its Westfield store. It embraced the multi-channel purchasing journey, enabling the purchasing process to be continued and concluded online.
• Customers increasingly seek outcomes and experiences rather than products and features. They want a brighter office, not lightbulbs, and a cozy bedroom instead of a heater. Consumers are welcoming brands that exceed their expectations and immerse them in delightful experiences.

The implications may seem more relevant to retailers – but they aren’t. Understanding customer motivations and values can inform every aspect of sales and marketing, inform product development and spark manufacturing innovation. And with the growth of direct-to-consumer as a business model, these changing customer demands are becoming absolutely fundamental to achieving success.

If customers are so central, where do you start?

To adapt to an increasingly connected, customer-centric world, manufacturers must recognize:

1. Customer visibility and understanding have become critical

Customers are always seeking a a way to solve their own problems – so to develop and sell well means understanding those needs. To enable value for someone, you must know what value means to them, understand their motivations, and how they identify their needs. Unfortunately, some manufacturers have no direct customer relationships, particularly if their customers buy via channels like dealers and distributors. Even those that sell directly often keep customer data siloed from other business areas – whether because they don’t have the right technology in place or because it hasn’t historically been part of the company culture to share this information. IT systems usually become complex over time with data spread across different databases as well as production and warehousing systems never designed to interact with back office software. It is tough to see customers clearly, make that knowledge accessible to business users throughout the business, or build on it to drive better engagement. Uniting your customer data, whether internally or in collaboration with partners, must be a business priority for manufacturers who want to sell more directly, or engage more directly, with their customers. It requires flexible systems of intelligent engagement to complement your systems of record and functional IT, that enable you to engage customers in the right way, on the right channels, at exactly the right times to gain their attention.

2. Connected customers need great experiences

Improving the overall customer experience can be seen as the retailer’s domain – but the benefits that will explode from IoT-connected products will form a fundamental part of the customer’s experience. Putting customer experience and service at the forefront of your thinking should become the manufacturer’s responsibility too – even if service is devolved to others. “A consistent focus on customer service is a crucial ingredient for sustainable performance, especially in challenging times” insists the Institute of Customer Service. So, when a customer has a problem, even if a partner manages support for that customer, you need to be fully confident in the quality of service. Each customer experience influences not only their future decisions but those of others, as customers now share experiences freely – especially bad ones. Creating seamless, valuable, enjoyable experiences and service excellence for customers, whether they deal with you or partners, is a vital ingredient of success in a competitive world. It means creating transparent platforms which allow you and partners to deliver experiences collaboratively.

Securing your future

Manufacturers can secure their future by delivering products that customers want and consistently delighting them across all customer touch points – from the sales process, to customer service, to upsell and cross-sell – all with the goal of delighting that customer so that, when the time is right, they are excited to do business with you again. The future rests on redefining the goal of manufacturing around customer success, not product sales – something Forbes cited as a top ten customer service trend for 2017. Connected products, supported by predictive customer service that anticipates customer needs, will require the right systems in place that can simplify mountains of complex, siloed data. Having a single view of the customer that is available to all employees will enhance those employees’ ability to deliver great customer experiences, as well as enable you to plan differently and innovate around customer needs. Having this complete customer view requires implementing seamless ways to manage customer interaction and engagement, as well as having access to the tools to analyze business and customer data to drive smarter decisions. The manufacturing sector is in the midst of a rapid change. For some this will present the opportunity to innovate and create new value – but, for those who fail to adapt or recognize the fundamental changes, it will present significant risks. Taking a whole-company approach to create customer centricity means connecting employees to each other, as well as to customers, linking back and front offices, and eliminating data silos. It means embracing your complex partner ecosystem and providing them with platforms that enable collaboration around the customer so that they too can deliver amazing customer service and experiences. Adapting for the future of manufacturing is about creating agility and insight to drive success for everyone – and Salesforce has been enabling customer success since its inception. We have already helped thousands of companies connect to their own customers in a whole new way and drive more customer success. A great place for manufacturers to begin their transformation is with their sales organisation. Download our e-book to read more about how Salesforce solutions can help manufacturing companies to success in the Age of the Customer and deliver personalized customer engagement at scale.

This post was originally published on the Salesforce U.K. Blog.

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Whether you made the conscious choice to work from home or it’s just the nature of your job, there are plenty of apps and other forms of technology that can help make your day a little easier and a lot more productive. Read below to learn some tips and tricks to ensure you’re productive and satisfied with your work at the end of every day.

Set a schedule and take regular breaks

It can be really tempting to sleep in every morning when there’s no need to look presentable and commute to an office. Setting an alarm to wake up early may be right for some people, but if you do some of your best work at night, sleeping in may not be a bad thing. It’s all about finding what works best for you. Figure out when you are most productive then carve out a chunk of time during those hours every day to complete the bulk of your work. It’s important to set a schedule, even if it is flexible so you don’t get distracted with laundry, cooking, or other household tasks when you’re supposed to work.

Despite the distractions working from home can pose, it’s important to take scheduled breaks throughout the day; powering through several hours of work without a break can be draining. Take breaks to eat, stretch, and move around, then get back to work feeling a little more refreshed. You can enter your daily schedule into your phone or computer’s digital calendar so you can access it throughout the day. Toggl is a helpful app that allows you to track how much time you spend on various tasks. You can track from your browser, smartphone, or computer to see exactly how much time you spend working on a small task, a big project, or time-wasters (like browsing Instagram). It also allows you to create timesheets you can send to your employer if necessary.

Use cloud-based file sharing

While it’s smart to have a dedicated computer and office to work from, it’s not always realistic. But for many people, working remotely offers the chance to change the scenery. Some people prefer to work a local coffee shop or library. Remote work may also allow more travel opportunities. To make yourself more mobile, consider a cloud-based system to store all of your files. Dropbox and Quip help organize and store everything you need so you can access it anywhere you work. Plus, both programs allow users to share documents with others so they can collaborate with colleagues and turn in projects without ever having to be in the same room with them. If you need a change of pace, or can’t quite handle day after day of isolation, a cloud sharing system will allow to maintain momentum on important tasks no matter where you work from.

Stay connected to colleagues

Working from home doesn’t necessarily mean working alone; in fact there are few jobs that allow you to work completely independently. But if you constantly run into the office for meetings or to collaborate with colleagues on a project, you’re not technically working from home—and you’re probably wasting a lot of valuable time commuting. That’s why programs like Chatter, Skype, Google Hangouts, and Slack are incredibly useful for remote workers.

Chatter allows employees to connect with files, data, and experts—anywhere, anytime. Skype facilitates virtual meetings on desktop and mobile. While phone calls can be better than email, sometimes you need to see a person’s facial expressions when you pitch an idea. Have a quick question for a colleague? Use Google Hangouts. It allows users to send e-messages, video, and voice calls. Slack does a little bit of everything; direct messaging, file sharing, pre-built integrations, private channels, and more. If you want a high tech way to multitask, Slack is the program for you.

A mobile CRM will also help you stay connected to customers and updated in real-time whether you’re in the office, at your home office, or on the go.

Use plugins to reduce distractions

If you’re in the middle of a project and can’t stop typing Facebook into your browser, there are plugins to help. LeechBlock for Firefox, WasteNoTime for Safari, and StayFocusd for Chrome block distracting websites so you aren’t as tempted to stray during work hours. In addition, you have the option to program times into them. For example, you can allow yourself 5 minutes on a blocked site after completing 45 minutes of work. It’s up to you to set the schedule and stick to it, but these tools help keep you in line.

Conclusion

There are plenty of other digital tools to help you be your most productive work-from-home self. Evernote, Teuxdeux, Remember the Milk, Goals on Track, and Do it Tomorrow are a few others you may want to check out. To learn more, give this article a read.

What do you use in order to be successful when working from home? Let us know in the comment section below.

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According to market research firm IDC, the momentum for using software or hardware that is hosted online has become so strong that it recently forecast an 11 per cent shift of budget dollars in Canada toward cloud technologies by 2016. As the Financial Post reported recently, firms in Canada have evolved from using cloud computing as a necessary cost-cutting measure to taking a “cloud-first” approach to technology projects in some cases. The bottom line: Cloud computing has become an accepted approach to solving a wide range of business problems and helping with the many opportunities.

All Clouds Big and Small

The ongoing challenge for some business owners, large and small, is that “cloud computing” can still seem like a relative term with an endless number of variations.

Here’s what you need to know to clear the fog around cloud computing:

• Software-as-a-service (SaaS) offers many firms the option of paying for applications as they need them, rather than spending on a package they have to install, maintain and upgrade. IDC forecasts SaaS to grow to a $1.3 billion business in Canada by next year, with Salesforce as the top vendor.

• Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) means businesses can have third-party organizations manage the servers and other equipment that runs software in a similar fashion. There has been an explosion of service providers bringing this locally to Canadian companies of all sizes in the past three years.

• Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) allows organizations to get a mix of both software and hardware cloud computing services in a single package or via one provider. It means a business can hand off configuration, maintenance and a number of other chores. Along with SaaS and IaaS, Technavio has said cloud computing in Canada will grow by 17 per cent a year between now and 2018.

Signs of Maturity

Beyond all the money Canadian companies are spending on cloud computing, there is also a significant impact on the skills and opportunities for the Canadian labour force. In a report prepared by the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), more than 57,000 people are expected to be employed in Canada via what it calls the “cloud economy.”

Many of those people are beginning to collaborate well outside their office walls, forming local industry groups such as the Canadian Cloud Council, which hosts the Cloud Factory conference, and the Canadian Cloud Network, which offers similar opportunities to share best practices and build a professional network to support cloud efforts. All this points to greater understanding of what cloud computing can do for businesses and maturity in the right approaches.

The bottom line for cloud computing in Canada is the way it can free up businesses to focus on what they do best, rather than struggle with technology issues. For more on how cloud computing can help take your business to new heights, download the free eBook, The Salesforce Advantage.

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