Our platform was made for speed and agility, which means you can build something awesome and get it live, fast. But why build when you can just install? The AppExchange has more than 2,600 apps for everything from data management, to training, to analytics. And with more than 44% of the apps available free of charge, there’s no excuse not to check it out. 

This is part two of a five-part blog series where we’re highlighting apps for admins. In this series, we’re digging into some of the key challenges admins face and the AppExchange apps, mostly free (and a few paid), that have made some of my customers more successful. If you haven’t read last week’s blog yet we recommend starting with Clean Up Your Data the Expert Way with Data Management Apps.

Show Me the Data

Let me tell you a cautionary tale. Once upon a time, there was a project manager who didn’t fully document reporting requirements prior to starting development on a key company project. After months of work, she brought all stakeholders together to demonstrate the solution that had been built. Halfway through the demo, she discovered that not only had they not built all of the necessary reports, but the solution they designed wouldn’t actually support all reports needed to run the business.

Take this opportunity to learn from my … I mean her … mistake. When your users say, “Show me the data,” ask the right questions to be sure you deliver the right report. Here are some good questions to ask:

• Who is the audience for this report?
• How will you use the report to support your business?
• How often will you reference the data?
• How would you like the data grouped? Summarized? Calculated?
• What columns would you like to see on the report?
• Do you want the report to run as a particular user, or as the logged in user?
• Do you need to snapshot the data on a schedule, to analyze trends over time?
• Do you need automated delivery of the report to users?
• Do you have a sample report you’re using today?

The answers to these questions will help you determine the overall strategy for the solution. For example, if the audience is an executive, a visually appealing dashboard may be a better solution than a lengthy report. If the data will be referenced frequently, performance will be a high priority. If automated delivery is needed, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got enough scheduled report slots available, or the right app installed.

When you’re planning your overall strategy, check out the Salesforce Analytics Cloud, specifically designed for business users to be able to visualize data and gain insights quickly and easily. In addition, the AppExchange can be your ally, from free sample report and dashboard packages from Salesforce Labs to apps for report deliveries, predictive analytics, and business intelligence. Check out the apps below and you might be surprised how far you can go.

Together Forever — Sales and Marketing

If the audience for your report is either sales or marketing, odds are they’re interested in the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns, the quality of their leads, visibility into their pipeline, and ultimately, revenue generated. There are a number of free and paid apps to support all of these needs.

• Lead Scoring is a basic free app that allows you to score leads based on who they are (lead criteria) and what they do (campaign member criteria). Use up to 200 lead rules and 450 campaign member rules as criteria.
• FunnelSource is a super-charged sales forecasting and pipeline analytics tool with data in real time, custom forecasting, multi-currency support, and cross-object filtering. Paid app.
• C9 Predictive Sales and Insight Squared are also paid apps that provide sales forecasting and pipeline analytics features.
• Marketing Analytics is a free app that provides insight into customer segmentation, conversion ratios, channel effectiveness, and campaign ROI, visualized through a compelling set of dashboards.
• Bizable and Daddy Analytics are paid apps that integrate marketing channel and source with your Salesforce leads, providing you with insight into your marketing ROI and customer information.

Dude, Where’s My Report?

Do your users need automated delivery? Look no further!

• Conga Courier is a paid app that allows you to send reports to users who don’t have a Salesforce license and attach the report in different formats (including Excel and CSV). There are no hourly limits on sending deliveries, plus you can do nifty things like choose “the 23^rd day of the month” or “the last Monday” as your delivery date.
• Scheduled Reports functionality in Salesforce allows you to schedule delivery of reports to users in Salesforce. Please note this functionality is subject to set limits and availability by edition.

Tips for Newbies

If you’re new to reports and dashboards, it’s time to get trained. Enroll in a paid class through the Salesforce University, or take advantage of the reports and dashboards classes available on help.salesforce.com for Standard and Premier customers.

Another great option is to download free sample report and dashboard packages from the AppExchange and customize to your needs. Check out this sampling of the free packages available:

• Salesforce CRM Dashboards: These are free sample CRM dashboards for sales, service, and marketing, to give you a starting point for building and customizing your own reports. Included in this set are reports for cases, open opportunities, opportunity pipeline, and executive dashboards.
• Knowledge Base Dashboards & Reports: This free package includes reports and dashboards to monitor your knowledge base, including article ratings and views, recent activity by authors, and which articles are being used to solve the most cases.
• Chatter Usage Dashboards: Want to track how well your users are adopting Chatter? Download this free package and get 20 dashboard components, 25 reports, and seven custom report types.
• Service & Support Dashboards: These are free sample service dashboards to give you a starting point for building and customizing your own reports. Included in this set are reports for cases and executive dashboards.
• Salesforce Adoption Dashboards: This free package includes 42 reports, six custom fields, three dashboards, one dashboard folder, and one report folder. Key areas of insight include login history and adoption of key features such as opportunities and accounts.
• Salesforce Communities Dashboards 2.0 (for Communities with Chatter): Download this free dashboard pack to see the overall state of your community at a glance. Drill into activity, groups, membership, license usage, content engagement, and topics. See questions asked and best answers posted, and access self-service metrics.

Dig Deeper

If your users are looking for trends over time, Analytic Snapshots and Historical Trending could be worth exploring. And as mentioned before, you should also check out the Salesforce Analytics Cloud, providing insights for business users, analysts, admins, and developers, all through a beautiful, simple interface.

You can also consider using custom report types to bring fields from related objects together in a single report, or explore joined reports to visualize data side by side. If you’re looking for more granular data, check out the Event Monitoring feature coming in Spring ’15.

Quality over Quantity

More isn’t always better. Focus on the reports that you know answer key questions for the business. If you have too many reports and need to clean things up, use a report on the Last Run date to determine usage, and use the Mass Delete Wizard to delete reports no longer in use.

Conclusion

Asking the right questions can help you determine the best solution needed. Remember that the best reports help your company get insight into the business in order to make decisions and take action. Dashboards are especially valuable to executives with summarized, at-a-glance graphical displays, plus the ability to drill into the details by clicking (or tapping, from the Salesforce1 Mobile App) on the chart to get to the underlying report.

Stay tuned for the next installment in our series as we continue with Apps for Admins. Up next, Productivity!

Check out the AppExchange and all the apps mentioned here: Apps for Admins