On Salesforce.com Ideas

Everyone has a good idea somewhere

When considering any type of social networking/conversation tool in a professional environment, the first prerequisite is a firm foundation of Executive support. It takes a very bold flavor of leadership to open up communication throughout an organization. I know there are many companies that give lip service to this by using words like synergy and collaboration but what most of the C-Level execs want is to be left alone to pursue their pet projects. Most CEOs and CIOs aren't really interested in hearing what Janice in accounting thinks of the field placement of the Salutation on the contact page is or whether they should use the word "spread" instead of "revenue" on the opportunity.

But these are just the little tweaks that need to be made to drive user adoption and faith in the system, like Giuliani's banning of the homeless window washers, it's a small thing that breaks the broken windows bedlam that leads to dirty or missing data and a general apathy on the part of the majority of system users.

So once you have executive leadership with vision and, pardon me for saying it, the balls to implement a machine to generate and prioritize user feedback and then (imagine this) actually listen to the feedback and plan system improvements directly from the results; you are ready to find the engine to do this.

I am a Salesforce.com Developer so I naturally go there first. But you know what? There's no need to go anywhere else. I say this because from my experience, if the software used to facilitate the exchange of that conversation isn't built directly into the platform that users are primarily working inside (so not an intranet site, not a separate web site, not an email suggestion box, etc.) then user adoption will suffer and you won't get feedback from the users you really need it from. Salesforce.com Ideas can be a tab within your general user Applications, an application unto itself or both of these. Ideas lets you build out communities, put experts in groups to manage the communities and users can then submit, promote or demote, and discuss openly and transparently without having to hold one meeting.

What this means is that for the large and medium enterprise companies who must employ a rigid development structure, whether Waterfall, Agile or any other flavor, once you have executive support pushing the engine of Idea generation and processing through virtual conversation with all areas of the business, your development focus and scope is essentially built out for you. Take the top 5% of your most heavily promoted ideas, pour your resources into developing them with each release, and give your users what they really want, not just what your CIO or Project Managers think is cool but which may have no practicality or ROI behind it.

A successful implementation of Salesforce.com Ideas means creating a positive feedback loop and results in ever improving system functionality and business processes. When there is real synergy and real collaboration the snake doesn't eat its tail, it keeps growing a longer and stronger one.