Sep 25, 2014 By Rebecca Brown

10 Apps That Helped a CEO Achieve His Vision at Lightning-Fast Speed

in AppExchange, Apps, Customer Service, Mobile

Bob Mather, CEO of Pre-employ.com, wanted to change his business. With the help of Salesforce and AppExchange, he ended up changing the notion of how a background check should work.

Bob had a vision for Pre-employ.com, one of the largest background check companies in the U.S., and he wanted to execute it with lightning-fast speed. But the tools he needed to support it—and the people developing those tools—were moving too slow for him. So he turned to Salesforce and AppExchange to start moving things faster.

The Vision

Bob’s vision was simple and it remains the same today: do whatever it takes to make sure his customers’ lives are easier while delivering proactive service. Part of that proactive service vision included increasing and improving communication during the entire process, collaborating more with applicants to help speed up the process and ease their minds during a stressful time.

But the background check process can be slow. Getting information is tedious and takes time, and Bob knew there were companies like Salesforce offering app solutions that could improve the process, so he approached his developers to discuss how to implement them.

The overall response was not favorable. Says Bob, “It felt very similar to 10 or 15 years ago, trying to convince the Accounting department that QuickBooks was going to be important. Basically, the developers were convinced I was crazy.”

But Bob and Joe McKenna, President of Pre-employ.com, forged ahead anyway. And right away, they began to see big changes—for the better.

The Apps

As they began implementing business-app solutions from AppExchange, they began delivering the proactive customer service they’d been aiming for. “Suddenly we could see real-time problems that needed to be solved and we could solve them—fast,” Joe says.

Today, Pre-employ.com uses over 40 apps from AppExchange. While all of them help move their business faster in some way, Bob and Joe agree that these 10 are some of the most critical. For specific details on each app, check out the entire Pre-employ.com collection on AppExchange.

Round Robin Record Assignment: Create groups of users and assign ownership to the records based on defined criteria. (Free, Agent Productivity)
DupeCatcher: Block and dedupe leads, accounts, and contacts in real-time. (Free, Data Cleansing)
FormAssembly for AppExchange: Custom Web forms that collect and send data from within Salesforce. (Websites)
Google Maps for Salesforce: Create map views of your Salesforce objects. (Geolocation)
Sales History Advanced Dashboard: Powerful analytics dashboard to help understand the sales cycle. (Free, Dashboards & Reports)
Email-to-Anything: Create custom emails from within Salesforce. (Admin & Developer Tools)
DocuSign: Get a signature anytime, anywhere, on any device. (Salesforce1 Contract Management)
PowerDialer: One-touch calling that improves contact ratios and increases call volume. (Productivity)
SimpleImport Free: Easily import spreadsheets into Salesforce. (Free, Integration)
SkyVisualEditor: Drag-and-drop page creation with no coding. (Admin & Developer Tools)

The Results

The company's average turnaround for a background check used to be 2.9 days. Now, it’s almost one full day less. And in the fast-moving world of HR, hiring, and CEOs, one day is a lifetime.

But the numbers are only part of the story, according to Bob. “We’ve received tremendous positive feedback and referrals because of our improved responsiveness, speed, and accuracy. And all three of those things improved using apps from AppExchange. They’ve largely eliminated human error.”

Bob and Joe both agree that the biggest response internally is, “I can’t believe we used to do it the other way.”

The Video that Will Convince You: Why Bob Uses Salesforce and AppExchange

How strong is Bob’s conviction that Salesforce and the AppExchange work? He made this video about it on his own time, not at the request of Salesforce or AppExchange. Just because he wanted to.