Mobile Technology, Techno Music and Green In Your Pocket
Every November since 2002, Salesforce.com has put on its infamous DreamForce event where it releases new technology and showcases cutting edge applications of its technology. In fact, some of these methods are really cool. Not just your standard, “oh wow a new gadget cool,” but the, “this could make or save me 7 figures if implemented,” kind of cool. That’s the kind of cool that makes me get excited about the rats nest that can sometimes be “good ideas” with technology.
Backing up, Peter Diamandis talks about the 6-Ds, whereby exponential technology will disrupt, digitize, dematerialize and demonetize industries. (Yes there are 2 more, but we’re not talking about them right now.) That’s a pretty powerful statement- one that might seem too pie in the sky. How does an industry become demonetized, one might ask. It happens because the free line of technology enables it. One example is GPS, once extremely expensive, which is now available on almost every smart phone on the planet.
Humans are good at taking things for granted and only thinking in local and linear methods– which is why most of us, “didn’t see this coming.”
So enough with the framing.
Two not-so-secret agents of Tech Guys headed out to Dreamforce this year to experience the event and its cutting-edginess, while I stayed back and watched from the sidelines. And apparently they were even favored on Twitter by Dreamforce and they didn’t have to pay anyone off for it…supposedly.
The mobile technology Salesforce rolled at Dreamforce this year puts a new spin on application building. A very unique spin. A spin I’ve been waiting for, well for awhile. With the advent of something they call Chatter Communities from a year or so back and the new mobile framework; I can, without a mobile app developer, build a mobile app experience which I can deploy to my customer base or my internal team.
The key thing to note here is, “without a mobile app developer.”
Salesforce created a framework that enables normal salesforce.com administrators to do this type of work. While salesforce.com has continued to empower the Administrator by way of reducing the NEED of the developer, they’ve also provided a beautiful playground for the developer.
This type of thinking—that simplifies processes to a degree where a “simple administrator” can do what only “really advanced and expense developers” could do in the past— is nothing short of awesome. And its a case of demonetization. Salesforce, by the nature of its platform is removing revenue, some of the “programmer” market for businesses. Which is what continues to happen as programming technology and platforms advance. You don’t see too many people peddling Fortran 77 programming services these days.
What all this means to you is more dollars to the bottom line by embracing the right type of technology. And if you’ve been saying things like, “if we had a mobile app to do x, y, z internally we’d be so much more productive,” then it might be time to check out salesforce. And if you’ve been thinking a mobile application for your customers that can scale and seamlessly integrate with your business processes, it might be worth a look as well.
The world is headed into the mobile space at the speed of light—and in very interesting ways—its high time to figure out how you can take advantage of it, effectively, efficiently and profitably.
One application case we’re in the process of building is for a business in which I’m a minor partner. It’s a business that does large scale seminar events, 3000+ people. We’ve been noodling on the various way to allow for bi-directional interaction with the entire crowd during the event. The answer lies in mobile, and with the salesfore.com mobile platform- we’re putting together what will be one of the most kick-butt event customer experiences ever for the vertical; miles above what our competition in that business is doing or even thinking about.
So with that. /end rant
To note: We unfortunately did NOT receive any payment for the blatant plug for salesforce. There are times I can’t quit talking about it because they’re so forward thinking.