Dubai Higher Colleges of Technology Bachelor Program Business Information Technology

Technology Research

Prepared by: Amna Saleh Al Dhaheri ID: H00020067 Email: amna.aldhahri@hotmail.com

Table of Content
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3 Chatter Enterprise Collaboration .................................................................................................................. 4 Cost/Benefit Analysis .................................................................................................................................... 6 Problems & Disadvantages ........................................................................................................................... 8 Domain of Use............................................................................................................................................... 9 Impact of Technology on Organization, Individual ..................................................................................... 10 Future Development ................................................................................................................................... 11 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 13 References .................................................................................................................................................. 14

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INTRODUCTION
This report is written for the course ITEC N453 IT Practices. The report purpose is to write about a new technology that can be used in organizations. The salesforce chatter is selected because of several reasons. 1) I found this technology is interesting and I believe difference in the organization 2) This technology is so reliable and secured which will be perfect for the organizations 3) Having such social tools in salesforce.com and force.com platforms for free, it will make it be used in thousands of organizations 4) Social networking became a part of almost every person so it will not be difficult for the employees to figure out how to use such tools 5) Chatter is a new era of social CRM 6) It keeps employees to stay connected with coworkers, deals, projects and more its features will make a huge

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CHATTER ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION

Chatter innovated a new world of collaboration for organizations in a secured environment. It helps the employees and the senior management to be always up to date about the important projects and deals so it can be easily make efficient decisions. With chatter, the collaboration will be much easier and faster. With real time feeds and updates on people, groups and documents, it will assist the organization to win more business, satisfy the customers and make better decisions. Chatter Features:

Profiles The profiles information helps the employees to know each other better. It also makes

them expanding their networks with experts and others which will increase productivity [1].

Status Updates

Updating statuses will inform others and Keep them up to date in what your current tasks are and to share the important news. Add to that, it will decrease the effort duplication and will prevent from the unneeded email traffic[1].

Groups Employees can create groups to have better performances. In these groups, they can share information with the teammates, working together on the same documents, and

also to collaborate on main tasks [1]. Salesforce implemented a Groups tool for users. This allows users to create public or private groups for sharing information and to communicate about projects[8]

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Document Sharing

Work together on documents and they are easily found and searched after months or years later on in a secured way [1].

App Updates

If you already registered to salesforce.com and force.com platforms, they can be integrated with them which will enhance it and make it more productive[1].

Feeds

The employee can monitor people, groups, documents and application data which are very essential for the employee in one place [1].

Security and Sharing Model

The specific employees can share the information and the confidential information can be shared privately and safe [1].

Social

It brings approaches from Facebook and Twitter so the employee can monitor his all communities in one place [1].

Analytics

With so many activities on the chatter, some analytics are needed. The chatter analytics can generate real time reports about user adoption and how to develop the collaboration [1].

Mobile and desktop

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The chatter will also be available with usable interface in several devices such as blackberry, iPhone, iPad and Android[1].

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COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS

Chatter will be immediately available for free for the users of Salesforce.com and force.com platforms which consist of more than 160,000 applications [8]

The employee can follow other coworkers up-to-date activities, group events, updated

documents and other important feeds for the employee duty[2]

It will be much easier for the sales managers and other departments managers

to

monitor the employees performance, concern on the important deals and prevent the firm from potential dangers[3]

Chatter provides security and privacy which will be convenient for the firms and make

it trustworthy[3]

Chatter is much convenient for the employees who used previously emails or instant

messenger. This means that, chatter is easier than emails to collaborate and the conversations will be saved and retrieved which will be better than IM [6]

It will enable users to keep in touch when they are not in offices using the chatter app

on the mobile phones [5]such as BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, iPod and others [9]

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From the technical point, the developers can retrieve data from any native application

they use into the chatter feeds[7]

Developers can also build new apps or extensions that depend on the chatter app

which can be used on their firms or to sell them to other customers[8]

Making the chatter integrated with the existing systems (salesforce and force

platforms) will make it easy for the end users to accept it better than providing it as a new service or product[8]

Chatter is free for all salesforce.com and force.com platforms users. However, a

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standalone chatter only license is available for $15 per user monthly[2]

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PROBLEMS & DISADVANTAGES

The chatter is limited to some formats such as pdf documents, spreadsheets and

presentations that can be shared in the system. This means that other multimedia formats are not available yet [7]

Chatter can also filter the Facebook and twitter feeds which might be destructing

for the coworkers and wasting time for the company[7]

The chatter mobile is not released yet and will be released in late 2010. It will also

be available for the Android devices in the first half of 2011[9]

There is no link between the Mobile CRM which is used for the salesforce and force

platforms with the chatter mobile application yet [10]

Too many feeds, services activities, customers and workers updates might be for

some employees so confusing [10]

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DOMAIN OF USE
Chatter can be used in any firm which needs to be interacted with the customers, clients and sales. As mentioned previously, the chatter is also provided for the users of the salesforce and force platforms. There are different industries which will be able to interact using the chatter. Below it can be seen the industries and some organizations that can use chatters from each industry [11].
Industry Business Services Organizations AlliedBarton Security Services, Anoit, Barcom, Business Bioscience Communications & Media Distribution & Retail Energy & Chemicals Financial Services Healthcare Hi-Tech Hardware Hi-Tech Software & Service Insurance Manufacturing Travel & Transportation Pharmaceuticals & Life Science Nonprofit, Education, & Public Sector AAPT, ADTRAN, ASCAP, Bella Pictures, Bandwidth.com, Associated Newspapers Ltd Boots, Cosine, Distrilogie, Neff Rental, Ryder Ashland, SunEdison BOK Financial Corporation, CPP, CoreLogic in the Community, Cambridge

Credco, Daiwa Securities, E*TRADE FINANCIAL Care Rehab, Dako, Astra Tech, Jobscience EFI, Analog Devices, Dell, Captor, Barco Acceleration, Arieso, Astaro, Borland, BakBone Allianz Commercial, American Home Shield, Aon, Standard Life, Phoenix Companies Alava Ingenieros, Carglass, JLG, Kerry Ingredients and Flavours American Medical Response, Egencia, an Expedia Inc. Company, Greyhound Canada, Hotwire FFF Enterprises, Innovex, PerkinElmer, Solvay, Sanofi Pasteur MSD Arlington Economic Development, Chicago Housing Authority, Freeplay Foundation

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IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON ORGANIZATION, INDIVIDUAL

Increasing the Power of Connections: Using chatter makes the connections more collaborative and efficient. If one employee has a problem and updates his status about that, many employees can resolve the problem for him in the real-time [12].

Ability to Track Deals Instantly:

For those interested employees can follow deals status on chatter. In hence, when a deal is updated or closed, they can know instantly. [12]

Figure Out Competitors' Weaknesses: Using such applications, it will help the employees to perform better than other

competitors and discover their weaknesses so they have a chance to provide unique and different products and services with high quality. [12]

Allocating Content for Customer Meetings: Sales reps can distribute presentations before meetings so they can get faster feedback from the customers and exploit time as a result of non-limited file size. Furthermore, it will help them to collect data to refine their products and services which make them better and stronger in the field. [12]

Engage Executives with Everyone: Senior management can follow and interact with the middle management and other

employees in real time. For example, the manger can get the answer for his sales queries even if the employee is not in the office or waiting till the sales meetings. [12]

Integration with Salesforce.com CRM: Making each deal has its own chatter feed, it increases the collaboration and customer

communications. It is stated that chatter increased 25% in collaboration, 10% in productivity and reduced about 15 20% email communications. [12]

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Explore Hidden Connection If any employee needs to connect with other organizations to make deals, he can ask in a status 7 and others might help them to find correct people to ask. This means that the deals are likely to succeed due to the recommendations and friends connections.[2]

Tighten the Coworkers' Connections Employees can work better and know each other which make the work environment more positive 8 with good morale. In addition, it will make new connections with coworkers which tighten the work relationships.[3]

A Way for the New Employees to Get Involved 9 It the best way for them to know more about other employees and their skills and duties. For other employees, they can know about the new employees and their skills.

Employees' Better Performances 10 When the employee can get all information he needs organized and updated, his performance will get noticeably better and can finish more tasks than before.[3]

A Way for the Developers to Build more Efficient Apps Developers can create more apps that are depended on the chatter features and the new 11 applications can be followed from the chatter and their updates can appear in the home feeds which make it easy for the interested employees.[7]

Mobiles Apps Make a Difference With mobiles applications, the employees are more connected than before, and there is no need 12 to be in the office or using the desktop application to stay tuned. In hence, this will make them more collaborated and active.[5]

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FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
Chatter 2 has been released last month which added several new social features to the chatter. The new features are elaborated below. First of all it includes filters which the user can filter their feeds by people, groups

and other records to find related posts. Chatters Topics will allow the employees to link their feeds with other posts and comments which are about the same topic by using the hashtag character (#).[13] Chatter recommendations give the employees suggestions to add coworkers and join groups. It uses criteria for these recommendations entail mutual connections,

followers' numbers and management hierarchy. As for the groups, it depends on the popularity and if it is related to the job title. [13] With chatter search feature, employees are able to search across all chatter feeds,

profiles and updates. In addition, the employees can receive a daily or weekly email of the latest posts from the feeds and the groups'. [13] Chatter is also available by using Adobe AIR desktop application which has the

same functionality of a web application. The advantage of this is to be notified instantly in a pop-up alerts in a side on the screen. [13] Admins can also create analytics reports and dashboards on chatter across the employees and their followers, feeds, comments, groups, members and their comments. Employees can also share and store multiple types of media using the chatter file app. Add to that, employees can follow and receive reports and their updates on their home feeds. [13] Dashboard chatter enables employees to get more information about sales and

close rates in real-time. Employees will also be able to track on calendar and meetings agendas. [13]

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CONCLUSION
To sum up, I believe the salesforce chatter will change the meaning of the enterprise and will make the CRM social and will increase the collaboration. I believe chatter is very curial for big organizations because it will increase the productivity and efficiency. Add to that, this will affect their products and services to make them better and different. Using chatter leads them to make better deals and keep the interested followers updated in real-time. From my point of view, chatter will be adopted by end users because they are likely used to it due to social networking such as Facebook and Twitter.

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REFERENCES
[1] Salesforce Chatter.salesforce. N.p., n.d. Web.20 Nov. 2010.<http://www.salesforce.com/assets/pdf/datasheets/DS_Chatter.pdf>. [2] Kanaracus, Chris.Salesforce.com releases Chatter social collaboration.infoworld. N.p., n.d. Web.21 Nov. 2010.<http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/salesforcecom-releaseschatter-social-collaboration-006>. [3] Salesforce Chatter The True Benefits.shamrockcrm. N.p., n.d. Web.22 Nov. 2010.<http://www.shamrockcrm.com/chatter/salesforce-chatter-the-true-benefits/>. [4] Bradley, Tony.Salesforce.Com Chatter is Social Media with a Business Twist.cio. N.p., n.d. Web.22 Nov. 2010.<http://www.cio.com/article/597548/Salesforce.Com_Chatter_is_Social_Media_with_ a_Business_Twist>. [5] Herrick, Chloe.Salesforce launches Chatter Mobile as social media grows in enterprise.techworld. N.p., n.d. Web.21 Nov. 2010.<http://www.techworld.com.au/article/360087/salesforce_launches_chatter_mobile_s ocial_media_grows_enterprise/>. [6] Breikss, Chris.Salesforce Chatter Spells the Death of the Intra.6smarketing. N.p., n.d. Web.25 Nov. 2010.<http://www.6smarketing.com/salesforce-chatter-spells-the-death-ofthe-intranet/>. [7] Garber, Adrienne.EdLab Review- Salesforce.com Chatter.edlab. N.p., n.d. Web.25 Nov. 2010.<http://edlab.tc.columbia.edu/index.php?q=node/4116>. [8] Warren, Christina.Salesforce Chatter Now Available to the Public.mashable. N.p., n.d. Web.24 Nov. 2010.<http://mashable.com/2010/06/22/salesforce-chatter-released/>. [9] Shread, Paul.Salesforce.com Chatter Goes Mobile.ecrmguide. N.p., n.d. Web.23 Nov. 2010.<http://www.ecrmguide.com/article.php/3902611/Salesforcecom-Chatter-GoesMobile.htm>. [10] Henschen, Doug.Facebook Wannabe Salesforce.com Intros Chatter Mobile .informationweek. N.p., n.d. Web.24 Nov. 2010.<http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/crm/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=2 27300380>. [11]Success Stories.salesforce. N.p., n.d. Web.22 Nov. 2010.<http://www.salesforce.com/eu/customers/>. [12] Shread, Paul.Six Ways That Salesforce.com Uses Chatter.ecrmguide. N.p., n.d. Web.22 Nov. 2010.<http://www.ecrmguide.com/article.php/3906436/Six-Ways-ThatSalesforcecom-Uses-Chatter.htm>.

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[13] Rao, Leena.Salesforce Debuts Chatter 2; Adds Filters, Hashtags, Desktop App, Search And More.techcrunchit. N.p., n.d. Web.22 Nov. 2010.<http://www.techcrunchit.com/2010/09/22/salesforce-debuts-chatter-2-adds-filtershashtags-desktop-app-search-and-more/>.

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