Peeking under the covers of Salesforce’s new Idea(Exchange)
We’re very excited to about announcement of Salesforce’s new idea exchange site, announced during Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote speech at the Dreamforce 06 conference this week. Not just because we power the site, but because with this offering, salesforce has taken the lead once again by redefining what Customer Relationship Management means for enterprise software companies. Although we’ve been using CrispyNews in a similar fashion, Salesforce is the first major enterprise company to take the bold step forward. Others will soon follow.
IdeaExchange allows customers and development teams working on the product an avenue for a dialogue about upcoming features. This is an amazing increase in visibility for both sides, and as an ex-product manager at an enterprise company, I know first-hand how hard it is to get good visibility into your customer’s problems.
Yes, its your job to understand the issues, and yes, you spend alot of time with your customers. However, when coming up with new features for the next release, it has always been a black art. Come feature planning time, you sit down with your list of bugs, second-hand feedback from sales and the anecdotes from the few customers you’ve interacted with to come up w/ the perfect set of features. Its an impossible task, and mostly you’re saved by the fact that your competitors aren’t much better at it.
If you are a customer, suggestions seem to drop into a black hole. “We want this” is usually answered by “I’ll put in an enhancement request”, and that is the last you hear about that.
By turning what used to be a one-way street (’file an enhancement request!’) into a two-way dialogue between the product team (what do you guys think of this feature?) and the customer (its overkill and we won’t use it), Salesforce is experimenting with a new level of interactivity in the traditional product development cycle. By allowing customers to vote on the features they like the best and discuss–among themselves–what features they like or how it should be different, product teams get a much better understanding of what ranks high in their customer’s priorities.
Perhaps this is how the community-driven concepts popularized by del.icio.us, digg and others on the consumer side will trickle into the enterprise space. As an ex-enterprise product manager I’ll raise my glass to that.
October 17, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Hey guys, long time no see. I just took a look at IdeaExchange and it looks pretty sweet. The integration with crispynews is pretty much perfect…it’s nice that the whole crispynews look didn’t just melt away into their website. Great job
October 18, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Are you planning to have a “private audience” version of IdeaExchange?
I would love to use it to rank ideas for some internal projects at the company I work for.
October 19, 2006 at 11:22 am
Hey Vishal,
Thanks for the heads up! We definitely worked hard to put that one together for Salesforce. We’ve gotten alot of positive feedback from customers, partners and employees of Salesforce, so we’re very excited that it has been such a success. It already has over 5 thousand votes and its only been a week or so.
We’re looking forward to doing as much as we can with them to support their efforts in continually building a great product and a great community.
For those of you who are readers, Vishal is an awesome Berkeley student who interned at our company this summer. He is single-handedly responsible for some of the features you see on the sites, such as the Abuse Reporting mechanism for community moderation.
Thanks again for dropping a note Vishal.
Nori
October 19, 2006 at 11:30 am
Luis,
In fact, we do have private versions for that very reason. Here’s an example:
http://kenlet.crispynews.com/
We use it as an internal tool to keep track of news, developments, and other items that are of interest to our business, as well as commentary on ideas and strategies that are sensitive. Alot of other stuff, we post up onto our admins site,
http://admins.crispynews.com/
shoot me an email through the contact us link on crispynews, and I’ll help you get one up!
http://www.crispynews.com/global/feedback
October 25, 2006 at 7:49 pm
Hey CrispyNews team, I can’t thank you enough for making the IdeaExchange happen in record time.
The IdeaExchange has seen very enthusiastic uptake from our customer community, and I’m sure it’ll make our product design process that much better.
November 21, 2006 at 2:18 pm
Crispylog » Blog Archive » Peeking under the covers of Salesforce’s new Idea(Exchange)
Article on the SalesForce IdeaExchange.
November 22, 2006 at 4:15 pm
CrispyNews, not PutVote, powers ideas.salesforce.com
Bastards
December 18, 2006 at 5:48 am
Peeking under the covers of Salesforce’s new Idea(Exchange)
We’re very excited to about announcement of Salesforce’s new idea exchange site, announced during Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote speech at the Dreamforce 06 conference this week. Not just because we power the site, but because wi
March 28, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Hello,
I am interested in learning more about the Idea Exchange software being used by Saleforce.com. From the cripsynews article, I believe your company developed this web app. I think this application would be useful at my company as well and would love to learn more about it. Can you please tell me who to contact to learn more about Idea Exchange?
Charelle Sanford
GlaxoSmithKline - ITDP
Charelle.H.Sanford@gsk.com
(919) 483-3390
August 10, 2007 at 1:57 am
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November 2, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Another digg ideasite
http://www.cisco.com/iprize/
It says “Powered by WebStorm”
April 11, 2008 at 6:12 am
You have to revise your opinion. Repeating this nuttery misses your point. Give us proofs. Not just with words, but with deeds.