The Chicago User Group will host the last meeting of 2009 on the afternoon of Thursday, December 3rd, 2009.  We'll recap highlights from DreamForce, breakout for some "Group Therapy" and discuss our roadmap for 2010!

Additional meeting details will posted here in the upcoming weeks. An email invitation will be sent to members. If you would like to become a member of the Chicago User Group, and be included on our distribution list, please click here: http://usergroups.salesforce.com/chicago/

Over at the Force.com blog, Rasmus Mencke of Salesforce addresses an issue that has always frustrated many SF users – the default task type when sending an email.

The system sets the task type to the default task type of the user sending the email. Rasmus created a long overdue trigger that overwrites the default Task Type and sets it to “Email” when sending an email from Salesforce.

Nice work, Rasmus!

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trigger SetTaskType on Task (before insert) {
 For (Task nc:Trigger.new) {
  String subject = nc.Subject;
  String description = nc.Description;
  
  if ( subject != null && subject.startsWith('Email:') && description.startsWith('Additional To:')) {
  nc.Type = 'Email';
  }
 }
}

Late last week, online file storage and collaboration provider Box.net launched integration with Salesforce.com.

TechCrunch explains:

“… businesses will be able to add a Box.net app to their Salesforce accounts, allowing them to quickly access their documents, media, and other files from directly within their CRM … businesses need to sign up for Box.net’s enterprise plan, which includes free access to the Salesforce app. As an added bonus, any businesses using the new Salesforce integration will be eligible for unlimited storage on Box.net …”

I think we'll continue to see Salesforce integrate with other cloud computing players as they work to expand functionality.

A recent article from ComputerWorld discusses 5 relevant business benefits of CRM. They are:

Business Payoff #1: Increased sales productivity, improved profitability A properly implemented SaaS CRM system can mean measurable improvements in deal win rates, number of deals completed per sales rep, and higher average sale prices (ASPs).

Business Payoff #2: Better visibility and control

Business Payoff #3: Less waste in marketing, sales John Wannamaker's famous quote, "only half my advertising works I just don't know which half," seems to apply to all marketing activities. But a well-configured CRM system can provide pretty solid measurement of marketing effectiveness, with ROI metrics down to the individual campaign level.

Business Payoff #4: Business agility, competitive responsiveness The CRM system will provide you with the metrics and visibility to identify competitive problems and test solutions for best results. While this applies to any modern CRM system, there's another level of agility that applies more to SaaS systems that support Agile methods in IT.

Business Payoff #5: Make your priciest business process more reliable Typically, the highest paid people in the company will be in sales. Yet the company's most unreliable business process is revenue generation.

David Taber of SalesLogistix notes, "Nothing comes for free - Salesforce.com, like any CRM system, is no "point and shoot" miracle. You need to do a lot of work in data cleanup, system integration, and process improvements to enable the business impacts described above."

Over at the Salesforce.com blog, Peter Coffee urges us to “start thinking in term of the cloud as a first resort.” He goes on to say, “The cloud should not be the mere connective tissue between pockets of local capability. It should not be the last thing that you use, after you've done everything else that you can possibly do with local facilities. The cloud should not be at the edge of your IT map.”

Read the full post at the Salesforce.com blog.

Did you know that Salesforce provides a feature called Divisions that lets you partition your records into logical sections. It's a really nice feature that may be of great value to your business.

Nick Simha over at the force.com blog provides the following example.

"You can divide your customer records based on their geographical location by creating divisions called US, EMEA and APAC. The users in these regions can then be enabled to use these division. One of the benefits of doing so would be that division specific searches and division specific list views will provide them with data that is most relevant to them. The other potential benefit is performance. I was recently working with a customer with very large data volumes and partitioning the records into divisions significantly improved reporting performance."

Divisions have to be explicitly enabled for your organization by Salesforce, so give support a call for additional information.

A recent article from Computerworld discusses the important of having a trained data steward to ensure the integrity of your CRM system (and data!).

As the article notes, users often "have no idea what kind of damage they can do with seemingly insignificant changes. They don't understand the security model, or the object model, or the external integrations, or the workflows. Even if all they're trying to do is move a field around on the screen, doing it wrong can wreck havoc on users and business processes they didn't even know existed."

Read the full article here.

FREE Workshop sponsored by Kadient

What if there was a better way to equip your salespeople to have better conversations and close more deals?

Attend a free Creating Killer Sales Playbooks Workshop and you’ll discover how to combine your company’s best practices, content and tools to create powerful sales playbooks that will guide your salespeople through the stages of the deals they work—giving them what they need, just when they need it.

October 6, 2009
8:30 AM - 9:00 AM - Registration, breakfast, networking
9:00 AM - 11:30 AM - Workshop

Hyatt Regency Chicago
151 E Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60601

Why you can’t miss this…
• You will learn the best practices for creating successful sales playbooks from experts
• You will create your own sales playbook for a specific selling situation in your company
• You will meet and network with your peers—other sales enablement professionals, like you

Who should attend?
• VP of Sales and/or Marketing
• Sales & Marketing Operations Professionals
• Sales Enablement / Effectiveness / Process Professionals

Link to Chicago Workshop Overview/Registration:
http://www.kadient.com/form.aspx?id=791

Link to download sales playbook white paper:
http://www.kadient.com/form.aspx?id=621

Andrew Albert over at the Force.com blog reminds us...

"For those that missed last week's Winter '10 Release Preview webinars, the recordings have been posted, including the slides. There are two presentations available. The first one previews all of the Winter '10 Force.com platform features. And the other recording covers all the Salesforce CRM Cloud Apps.

To find the official release schedule for Winter '10, it's posted on trust.salesforce.com."