Archive for the ‘Productivity’ Category

Ribbit for Salesforce Featured in SellingPower.com

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | located in Articles and Media Mentions, Productivity | No Comments »

Ribbit just received a nice little nod in the SellingPower.com Salesforce Newsletter that highlighted how our service     transforms voice mail into a power tool for sales professionals.

From their newsletter:

After you get the service activated, voice messages from you, and calls from customers to your existing mobile number are routed through Ribbit’s servers, where they are converted into readable text. That text then flows directly into your salesforce.com system. The textual representation is stored in a “Messages” custom object (stored in your salesforce account) along with a link to the actual audio files, which are maintained on Ribbit’s servers.

You can dial into the main Ribbit number to easily listen to and navigate through all your messages. If you’re tracking all your customer-facing activities, the call is automatically logged, saving you an extra CRM step. You can also use the system to record your own meeting notes while you’re on the road. Then, when you’re working on that customer account, you’ve already got a reasonably good textual transcription in your salesforce.com database without having to manually transcribe your notes.

More importantly, you get all your voice information collected in one place. When you are back in the office, your transcribed notes and messages are already in your salesforce.com database. You can search, track, and manage voice notes, voice mails, and calls – right alongside the customer data in salesforce. That means an end to the scribbled notes, lost voice mails, and endless email archives that are such a big a part of many sales environments.

To read the entire article, please visit SellingPower.com. If you are not currently subscribed to their service, they will ask you to register (free) before taking you to the article.

Customer Reality, Not Technology, to Shape Business Mobility

Thursday, June 11th, 2009 | located in Productivity, SME Trends | No Comments »

As we kick off the Business Mobility Blog, I wanted to explain its intent, and share a few observations from our recent conversations with customers and prospects.

We started this blog as a resource for those of us who are interested in trends (or at least notable threads) shaping the world of mobile business today. While some of our posts will reflect our Ribbit perspectives, the Business Mobility Blog is not meant to be Ribbit-centric. My team and I will post as much (if not more) on noteworthy or cool things we see happening in the broader market as we will post on Ribbit. As always, your feedback is valuable to us, so please chime in.

Fresh from the Road
I’ve spent the last few months talking with customers across the country and across the world, from Silicon Valley to Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston, Houston, and London. Here are a few of the themes I picked up during my travels:

1) There’s been an explosion of technology services — online communities, mobile phone apps, and Web-based software — but how many of these new technology services are proving to be a ”must have” versus a distraction?

Technology is increasingly out pacing corporate customers’ (and human) ability to adopt it. The majority of customers we spoke with are entrenched in ramping adoption of baseline capabilities of services they’ve already purchased.  Notably, a new app adoption program seems to span 6-9 months, while application providers commonly offer major new feature releases every quarter.  Another Case in point: There has been massive trial of free web & mobile applications such as Facebook and Twitter, but arguably little “stickiness” in terms of usage. According to a recent Nielsen study, more than 60% of new Twitter users don’t return to the site a month later. The same can be said for iPhone apps — their numbers grow faster than anyone can count, but only about 1% of downloads result in regular use (even though the majority of these apps are free).

So what does it take for a new app or service to go from “cool” to “critical?” Could it boil down to enabling businesses to do more with the apps and services already in use?

2) The trend toward a distributed workforce continues to blur the lines between work and home life, and drive the business imperative for pervasive mobile access. Consumerization of enterprise technology is particularly relevant to meeting the needs of a mobile workforce, since the same tools people use for business are the same tools they use for their personal communications. Mobile phones are a great example. While 10% to 15% of people in the US have more than one mobile phone, the vast majority of us have just one phone for both business and personal calls. This suggests a big change in how companies will design apps for mobile professionals in the future.

3) Given the acceptance of cloud computing on the desktop, customers increasingly expect simplified solutions and instant productivity benefits. Expectations for PC technology are starting to shape expectations for mobile devices. If I don’t need to manage desktop software for PCs, why should I have to do so for mobile devices? The fact that there is no operating system consistency across mobile phones makes the case for simplification even stronger. As mobile Internet speeds and browser capabilities advance, the next wave of innovation is likely to be all about mobile cloud computing.

Have your own ideas about where these trends are headed? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below, or send a tweet to @ribbitcrm.

Ribbit delivers…my news.

Monday, June 8th, 2009 | located in Productivity, Salesforce | No Comments »

Ribbit for Salesforce offers some amazing sales productivity tools where you can dictate your activities from the field, and have them flow through salesforce.com just by using your mobile phone. It is the most obvious feature with the most value.

Until yesterday, I overlooked what I now consider Ribbit’s unsung hero; the Mobile Backup within salesforce.com.

For 42 weeks, my wife and I have been expecting our first baby boy. It is something you dream about for years and plan carefully with your partner. You prep for EVERYTHING around the house and the car. You prepare your pets for a new arrival. You get everyone ready for the news that there is a new addition to your family.

On the big day, you charge your camera and cell phones and make sure that you have AC plugs at the ready. If you are like me and bring your laptop everywhere, you have that bag ready to go. Everyone waits with baited breath. It is a time for high anxiety and overwhelming joy. You drive to the hospital and in between checks on your wife in the front seat and looking for hospital parking, you’re on your Bluetooth talking to your mother-in-law and close friends giving them the scoop. The last thing you hear them say is, “call us as soon as you know something”. Easy enough right?

THEN……you get to the hospital and see the dreaded sign that forbids mobile phones.  Wait, what? What do you mean no mobile phones? How can that be? Everyone has a phone. Some people have 2 or 3. That is nonsense! What is a father-to-be to do? How do you continue to make and take your calls and share the best news of your life to your family and friends?

Ribbit for Salesforce to the rescue.

Once I logged on to the hospital wi-fi (a service they offer for free if you can believe that), I opened up Salesforce and was immediately able to start making calls via the Ribbit Flash Phone to my family and friends with the news that I am now the proud father of a baby boy!

Now, if only Ribbit could change diapers, I would be set.

Selling Power Webinar: Technologies that Improve Sales Performance

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 | located in Events, Productivity, Salesforce | No Comments »

On June 9th, Selling Power will be hosting a webinar for sales professionals looking to improve their sales performance.  This will feature various Sales 2.0 technologies which help sales organizations accelerate the sales process, improve sales effectiveness, decrease costs, and enhance the customer experience.

The technologies being featured are:

1. Hoovers (increases volume and quality of sales leads)
2. Birst (increases visibility into sales pipeline)
3. Ribbit for Salesforce (connects your mobile phone to email and Salesforce.com)
4. Xactly (sales performance management tools)

This webinar is free to attend, we just need you to register beforehand.

Active lifestyle? Take Ribbit with you.

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 | located in Productivity | No Comments »

I lead a very active lifestyle—mountain biking, snow boarding, and soccer are my passions.

Between work, my 9-year-old daughter, and outdoor activities, I’m always on the go. And a lot of the time, I’m in areas where mobile reception is spotty, or taking a phone call just doesn’t make sense (ever try taking a phone call at soccer game?).

Ribbit helps me stay connected, so I can do my job well AND enjoy my outdoor lifestyle. I can receive voicemail messages as text messages—even in poor coverage areas—on my mobile phone. After I read the message I can decide to reply via text or forward the message on to someone else on my team to assist. This allows me to respond to questions and situations quickly so that I don’t slow things down or become a bottleneck.

We’re constantly improving the Ribbit platform, and everyone on the apps development team tends to work slightly different hours. So it’s important that we’re all available during the week. With Ribbit, I can bike through a rural canyon in the early evening and not worry about whether the apps team working late at the office will be able to reach me.

Speak, Copy, Paste, Format, Send

Thursday, May 7th, 2009 | located in Productivity, Salesforce | 1 Comment »

Have you ever been driving to work or a meeting and realized you forgot to send someone a follow-up email?

Maybe you had a new thought or strategy that you wanted to share with someone but had to wait a bit before you could log into your computer to whip up an email. How frustrating is that? How many emails never get written because you either forgot or told yourself you would “do it later”?

One of the things I find myself doing on a daily basis is giving myself a list of emails to “write” as I commute to our HQ in Mt. View, CA. Since my daily commute is just over an hour each way, you can imagine how many emails I could send. This could be an email to one of my customers saying “thanks” or perhaps I need to write a new prospect that just test drove Ribbit from the AppExchange. It could be that I want to say “Thanks for your time today” after a demo or sales pitch?

I don’t drive a special car by the way nor do I use my iPhone to type while driving (hello $300 ticket). How do I do this? Simple! I use Ribbit!!

Since Ribbit allows voice messages up to 3 minutes (that can be left by myself using * + ‘5’ in the Ribbit Voice Menu), I can dictate an email right from the drivers seat while speaking into my mobile phone via Bluetooth headset. Once I complete the message, Ribbit transcribes the call to text and then delivers the message to my email (and puts a copy in salesforce.com).

When I get to my office, fire open my email, I can see all the new messages I have left myself. At this point, all I have to do is Copy, Paste, Format & Send! Simple.

Here is an email I dictated to my friend (and Partner) at Model Metrics, Sachin Saste.

(Image 1: Email copy of the transcripted voicemail)

(Image 2: Highlight the transcription and copy it to the clipboard)

(Image 3: Paste the transcripted text into a new email.)

(Image 4: Format the email & clean up any language or punctuation. Then click send. Done.)

Ribbit Provides ‘Freedom in the Field’

Monday, May 4th, 2009 | located in Articles and Media Mentions, Productivity | No Comments »

Adam Boretz from Speech Technology Magazine just penned a really nice article entitled “Freedom in the Field” that highlights the benefits of integrating speech solutions into the workflow of employees out in the field and gives Ribbit for Salesforce a nice shout in this piece:

——–

Ribbit for Salesforce revolves around three fundamental challenges to productivity:

1. enabling salespeople to be more responsive to customers and therefore more competitive;
2. facilitating information sharing and accelerating collaboration between workers in the office and workers in the field;
3. facilitating higher visibility of customer interactions when disparate devices, software, and technology are being used.

Ribbit for Salesforce brings together day-to-day sales tools like mobile phones, email, Salesforce.com, and text messaging and ties these different information portals together via voice-to-text technology.

It works like this:

• If a saleswoman is in a meeting, all her voicemail is converted to text and sent to her mobile device so she can address pressing matters and improve responsiveness.
• Once the meeting is over, she can hop into her car, access her mobile device, and speak her meeting notes.
• The content gets converted to text and entered into the company’s CRM system.
• When this is finished, the saleswoman can continue to drive while she uses her mobile device to call in and dictate a draft of an email.
• Upon returning to her office, she can sit down at her desk and open up Ribbit for Salesforce on her computer.
• Now, she can edit and send the email, look at customer records, and check messages—the system stores them as both text and voice files—that partners or customers may have left.

——–

Read the whole article as it provides several good arguments for adapting technology to help solve these workflow ‘pains’ and provides some solid use cases as well.

SME Trends for 2009, Part I

Monday, April 20th, 2009 | located in Productivity, SME Trends | No Comments »

BT Tradespace recently released a survey that revealed a growing trend among small and medium businesses based in the United Kingdom.

• One in ten people (8%) are putting in 100 hours a week or over - the equivalent of 14 hours of work a day.
• Most business owners participating in the survey (21%) work 50-60 hours a week.

Mick Hegarty, head of BT Tradespace, nails it when he said companies such as BT (and I’ll include Ribbit here) need to enable SMEs “to do things quicker, more efficiently and more flexibly”.

I know this trend is not unique to the United Kingdom, and it doesn’t just affect SMEs, but businesses of all sizes. Everyone is expected to do more with less (time), so the key will be to focus on increasing productivity by expanding our use of technology in as many places as we can - both in our professional and personal lives.

If using certain technologies could save you 2.5 hours a week, what would you do with that time?

Disclosure:  BT Tradespace is a division of our parent company, BT.

Ribbit Webinar: Maximize Your Sales Teams Productivity

Thursday, April 16th, 2009 | located in Events, Productivity, Salesforce | 1 Comment »

On May 14th, Ribbit will host a free webinar with THINKstrategies Founder and SaaS/cloud computing guru, Jeff Kaplan, and Ribbit customer, Will Stacy from Santander Consumer USA (Drive Financial), to share their experiences on how Ribbit for Salesforce can maximize sales efficiency.

There will be a live demo of Ribbit for Salesforce and a Q&A session following. We are also happy to take your questions beforehand, so feel free to leave a comment here or email sia [at] ribbit [dot] com and we will do our best to get that into the queue beforehand.

Jeff and Will are sure to bring out some nuggets of wisdom here, so be sure to register now.

Use Ribbit to make calls from 36,000 feet.

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 | located in Productivity, Salesforce | No Comments »

I’m writing this post from 36,000 feet above the earth on a Virgin America flight from San Francisco to New York. Very comfortable seats with TV, radio, video games and Internet Access. Oh wait - NOPE. I picked a flight that hasn’t been turned on yet! Argh!

In sales, I find myself on planes quite a bit. I have an iPhone and a Macbook, but neither are connected to the outside world up  here. I wonder what’s going on. There is no radio, no satellite TV and no Internet connection.

For the last 9 or 10 years, I have brought a laptop with me on flights. For the first 3 or so years, I would watch a DVD and maybe edit a PowerPoint deck. After that, I would download a show to iTunes and watch a few episodes and maybe edit a PowerPoint deck.

Well, its 2009 and things have changed.

Most of the major airlines are now offering wireless Internet on their cross country flights!! It just turns out that this one doesn’t. Missed the boat big time on this one!

However, this is great news as I want to know what’s going on when I travel and sometimes, being offline for 4-5 hours is near impossible. I want to jump on Facebook and update my status. I want to read if anyone has Twittered about Ribbit. I want to send/receive my latest email (both business and personal) AND, I have a few calls to make. Yes, that’s right, calls.

Ribbit could help me do that if I was connected.

I would like to call my mom and sister to see if we can have a family dinner tonight. I would like to call my tennis buddy to see if we can play this afternoon. I would like to call my friend Chad and say goodbye before he moves to Denver.

Ribbit (and in my case, Ribbit for Salesforce) allows me to make and take all my mobile calls right in the browser. If I was connected, I could turn on my Motorola bluetooth thingymajig and call all the people I just mentioned right through salesforce.com!

Now, think of this in the context of the business world!! You have vendors, partners, prospects, customers and boss’ all trying to reach you. How much more business could you close if you could answer every call and take an order?

The possiblities are endless.