General | PK4 Tech

Guest Blogging on the Salesforce AppExchange

by Surekha Shetty | Feb 1, 2023 | General

We are a Salesforce ISV with a time tracking and project management app on the AppExchange. We’ve had leads flowing in from the AppExchange and prospects are evaluating our app and purchasing it. Now comes the hard slog. How do we ensure that more prospects hear about our app and the wonderful things that it can do for them. And with so many apps listed on the AppExchange for each category, how do we stand out?

We’ve tried several methods in the past. Ranging from Google Adwords to Linkedin Ads to promoted content on Twiter. We’ve tried email marketing and Salesforce’s AMP program too. A lot of these are fairly expensive options. But there are several free ways to market your AppExchange app too. Amanda Nelson’s article has some great ideas on marketing your app for free. You should definitely check it out.

Like several ISVs that we’ve spoken to, our marketing budget is finite and restricted :). So in looking out for simple but effective marketing options, we figured that guest blogging would be a good option for us to check out. And the Salesforce AppExchange is a great place to start publishing great content. It’s a fantastic place to build brand awareness among your target audience.

My first article Slack + Salesforce = More Productivity appeared on the AppExchange blog on January 26th 2022. I thought my experience would be useful for other AppExchange Partners

Here are some guidelines on how to get published as a guest blogger on the AppExchange.

Your first step is to check out the Salesforce guest blogging guidelines. Once you’ve done that, figure out a topic that will be of interest to your customers.
Submit an application to the AppExchange Social Media Marketing Content team with details of your AppExchange blog post idea.
If the Content Marketing team likes your idea, they will email you asking for a draft of your blog post. You need to set this up as a shared Google doc or as a Quip doc. This way the Content Marketing team can easily share any feedback and/or edits with you.
Once you share the draft with the Content Marketing team, they will review it and get back to you with their edits and suggestions.
You then use those suggestions and flesh out your complete blog post. Use relevant statistics, images and other visual aids to make your post more interesting.
There’s a section at the end of the blog for an author bio. That’s a great place to include a listing to your AppExchange App.
Once you are done with all of your writing work, submit the post back to the Content Marketing team. They will queue it up to be published. On average, they share two blog posts a week. So you should have your blog post published within a month, except during holiday periods.
The Content Marketing team also does some social media marketing of the blog posts. I haven’t seen that yet for my blog post. But I’m hoping that will happen soon. 🙂

I hope you found these guidelines helpful. Go ahead and give guest blogging a shot and share your feedback. Meanwhile, I would love to hear your comments on Slack + Salesforce = More Productivity.

Best Practices for Implementing Time Tracking

by Surekha Shetty | Oct 12, 2022 | General, Software, Time Tracking

The transition from paper or Excel-based timesheets to an automated system can seem overwhelming and confusing at times. But the benefits of an automated time tracking system are undeniable. It can simplify procedures, eliminate errors, make your invoicing and payroll much more accurate and provide savings, overall.

But like with anything new, you need to plan and prepare your transition carefully. Here are some best practices to help make the transition smooth.

Decide why you want to track time

Start by asking yourself why you want to set up time tracking. Perhaps, you spend too much time on payroll and the process is error-prone. Maybe, your customers need more accurate and transparent hours with your billing. Perhaps your estimates on projects is going out of whack and you are losing money. Maybe you want to balance employee workloads better. Whatever your reasons, make sure that you can articulate them clearly.

Get your team on-board

It’s critical that you get all stake-holders on board with time tracking. New processes only work when there is buy-in at all levels. Make sure that you get your team leads and influencers on board and explain why you are moving to a time tracking system. Get them to see the benefits to them and their teams. Choose a couple of champions from the teams that need to track time. This way, people will have someone to turn to when they have questions.

Start with a pilot program

It makes sense to start with a small group of people to make sure that the time tracking software fits all your requirements and that it can be used easily. This will help you work out any kinks in the system before rolling it out to a large group. Select the pilot group carefully; get motivated people as well as someone who’s not a fan of time tracking. Get feedback from them and make sure that their issues are properly dealt with.

Decide what you want to track time to

Make sure that the time tracking software gives you the flexibility to track time to whatever makes sense for your company. Get the time tracking system setup to track time to those objects. If you have multiple teams of users, decide what each team is going to track time to. E.g. your sales team works with Accounts all the time and should track their time to Accounts. Whereas, your Support team that works with customer Cases should track their time to Cases. Identify each of your groups and make sure that select the right elements

Automatic Vs Manual Vs Live Tracking

There are multiple ways in which you can track your team’s time. You should decide what method makes sense for your team. Manual and Live tracking mean that your users would need to put in their time physically or use Start/Pause/Stop buttons. With an automatic time tracker, the system automatically starts tracking time as soon as the user clicks on a specific page and continues to track time without the user having to click on anything. Depending on the type of work that you users do, you should select the appropriate method of time tracking. E.g we suggest that agents is a call center would normally use the automatic time tracker on Cases. That would get the time tracked without the agents having to put in any extra effort. But if you were tracking time for a group of consultants that worked on multiple different projects for longer lengths of time, then they may prefer a single page, where they could enter times for multiple projects that they worked on during the day.

Avoid too much monitoring

If you can’t trust your team to do the right thing, you may have bigger issues than can be solved with time tracking. Software that tracks screenshots and keystrokes are generally too intrusive. This level of monitoring does not make sense for stable and productive teams. You may end up creating more distractions and stress within the teams.

Limit access to timesheet data

Make sure that your system is set up to show only the projects / jobs that each user is working on. Your time tracking system should allow you to filter the right data like this. Unnecessary data can clutter up the screens, making it difficult for users to find the right projects / jobs. It could also cause performance issues within your system. We normally recommend showing only Active projects. Whenever a project completes, make it a point to change the status of the project, so it no longer appears on the active lists.

Enable automatic reminders about incomplete timesheets

Make sure that your time tracking software can send out reminder emails to users to remind them to complete their timesheets. It’s a given that some users will forget to enter their timesheets and a responsible manager would need to remind them about this. Especially in the early stages of implementation. If the system can do this automatically, that’s time and effort saved.

Create a document that explains the requirements

Create a document that defines why you are implementing the system. Make sure that it includes benefits for the users and for the company. Include an FAQ section that answers common questions. Include examples where possible. You should be able to get general fAQs from your time tracking vendor’s knowledge base. But things that are specific to you company, you will need to write up.

Consider binding time entries to a project plan

Well-structured data is better for reporting and analysis. Consider building a project plan in advance and breaking it down to tasks and task assignments to your team. Ensure that your team is tracking time to their task assignments. This way you’ll have a real-time view of how well your team is working against the plan. This is a great way to monitor how accurate your project estimates are.

Have someone check timesheets and reports regularly

Regardless of the automatic reports that you may receive from the time tracking system, make sure that someone responsible is checking the reports regularly. She should review the reports for completeness and compliance with company policies. This will automatically throw up any trouble spots and also highlight employee workloads, adherence to project schedules. Analysing timesheet data can become so fascinating that managers enjoy it, rather than looking at it as a boring duty.

Lead by example

All managers should track their own time, even if it is un-billable. Employees are much more likely to be accurate in their own time tracking, if they see their managers following the same policies.

Don’t insist on logging 8 hours per day

Reporting less than eight hours a day is OK. It’s more important that users give an accurate accounting of their time and for you to make sure that the time was spent productively. If you try to force eight hours per day, you may find users taking more time to complete tasks or logging in more hours than they actually worked.

Don’t use timesheet data for criticism

It’s hard to assess productivity just from the time worked on the timesheets. A longer duration on a task may not mean lower productivity. It may mean that the user is more detail-oriented and has better results. Combine your knowledge of the employee with the data from the time tracking system to get a better overall view of productivity and efficiency.

Summary

We hope this gives you a good starting board for your time tracking implementation. If you have other points that you can add to this list, please let us know in the comments.

Photo by Jessica Lewis on Unsplash

Is there a Recession coming?

by Kishore Mandyam | Jul 27, 2022 | General, Software, Time Tracking

I’m not an economist, let me say that upfront. But I do watch people, like most of us. And that’s what this blog is about – what people will do and how that could affect the economy. The more economists say that there’s a recession coming, the more worried we’ll all be. And the more worried we are, the more risk-averse we will be, the less decisions we’ll make, the less new initiatives will roll out, the less stuff will get bought. On the supply side, companies will make less money, so banks will tighten credit, there’ll be less money circulating and the GDP will decline. And so, we’ll ring in the recession all together, like it or not.

All that’s well and good, you’re thinking, but what can I do to make things better? Well, let’s look at two “fundamentals”:

– Are you as a person making enough money to pay your bills and then (even a little) some? If so, you’re going to be OK in the short term. If not, cut out that shiny new phone you wanted to buy. And focus on those new skills you wanted to develop. Whether you’re thinking transferable skills or company-specific, now’s the time to get that going and up your game.

– Is your company OK? You may not know the details, but the indicators will be everywhere. The toilet paper goes from 3-ply to 2-ply, for example – yes, I’m not kidding. And regardless of how the company is doing, you can do better. For example, you can talk to your manager about focusing on projects that deliver value in the short term. That’s not to say long-term projects must be dropped – in fact, with enough money in the bank, some companies choose to weather a coming Recession with longer-term initiatives. The point it, talk about it with your peers and managers about the “R word” of Economics.

Whatever you decide to do, do one thing for sure: Make the most of your time. How, you’re thinking. You want me to work on new skills, you want me to focus on stuff at work, there’s stuff to do at home – hello, how do I do all this? Well, track your time (you knew that was coming, didn’t you?):

– At a professional level, use a good time-tracking tool to track what you do and then analyse where those hours went (we have a good one here, if you’re in the market). Something that works specifically for your business and operating culture (oh yes, time-tracking can be seriously against general belief in some companies). Something that isn’t intrusive but is detailed enough so you can tell what you were focusing on. So you can decide what you should be focusing on.

– At a personal level, look at what you’re spending your time on. Start with a simple digital-health analysis (Android Digital Wellbeing or iOS Screen Time). If you spent 3 hours every day last week on Instagram and/or WhatsApp, you may want to think of other things you can do with that time. I’m not saying either of them are complete time-wasters. That’s for you to decide. But to decide that, you need to first know where your time goes. And that’s what these apps will tell you.

With focus, time-tracking and a little bit of luck, let’s beat the Recession. Then we can worry about Inflation.😊

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