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Chitika

Monday, October 25, 2010

Salesforce.com and its Competitors

Every company wants to have a part of SAAS Pie. Salesforce.com is a clear leader at this point of time but faces stiff competition from some of the prominent well established or very Niche Players.

Some of the key one's are:

Microsoft Dynamics:- A company which charges 25% of what SFDC charges per license and even do not charge for initial 6 months. I am sure they are giving Sleepless nights to Salesforce.com.

Sugar CRM:- This is a CRM which is available Free of cost and that's the only thing which goes against It.

Siebal On Demand / Oracle on Demand, Sage Software, Right Now Technologies

Net Weaver and Business By Design are always seen as the next big thing. Net Weaver has started to prove the point where as people have still big expectations from SAP BByD.

And Be aware about the GOOGLE, They have started looking at the application business very seriously and that's not a good sign for Salesforce.com

*Please add any other key player which I have missed :-)

SFDC Unique fields Limitation

Salesforce.com has put some silly restrictions and one of those is limit on No. of Unique fields per object. It allows only 3 External ID fields per object and considers Unique fields as type of external Id's only.

So, you can create maximum 3 Unique fields per object but can get this limit extended by requesting the salesforce via raising a Case.

ADM 201 Question:- Only 3 External ID Fields can be created on an Object.
ADM 201 Question:- Only Text, Email, Number fields can be made External Id fields.

Note:- You can not make a field unique if it contains data which is not unique.

Sunday, October 10, 2010

SFDC Reports Explained (Diff b/w Tabualr, Summary, Matrix Reports)

There are 3 kinds of reports in salesforce.com

1) Tabular Reports
2) Summary Reports
3) Matrix Reports

Each Report has a specific use and I am listing down the scenario's in which each type of Reports will be used :-

Tabular Reports:- These kind of reports are used when the requirement is just to view the data.
Some of the examples are:-
  • Show me all Open Opportunities
  • Show me List of all Accounts which do not have any closed opportunity
  • Show me top 10 Opportunities by revenue
Dashboards can not be created on Tabular Reports :- Salesforce ADM 201 certification question

Summary Reports:- These reports are used when the requirement is to summarize only X Axis. In short if you need to do the sum or calculate the average on even one parameter then summary report is the answer.
Some of the examples are:-
  • Show sum of all Open Opportunities
  • Show opportunities sub total bu my Team
Matrix Reports:- These reports are used when the requirement is to summarize both the Axis i.e. when requirement is to group both Rows as well as Columns.
Some of the examples are:-
  • Show Accounts grouped as Customer or Prospect depending on the opportunity stage
  • Show monthly performance of salesteam on closing opportunity by Geography for current year
Note:- Charts can not be made on Tabular Reports as no grouping of data is available