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TOUCH ME: FirstRain is bringing touch-powered Customer Intelligence to the enterprise!

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As we saw last year, there’s been a massive wave of Fortune 500 companies adopting touch-based tablets and devices. One result of that has been the proliferation of a whole range of B2B iPad and smartphone apps from companies like us and salesforce.com to enable those mobile, touch-powered professionals with the intelligence and data they need to understand and engage their customers, as well as open up new opportunities.

However, there’s a second big enterprise trend that’s picking up momentum as well: that of large companies who are developing internal enterprise apps for touch-based tablets and devices, for use by their own enterprise sales and marketing teams.

And because it’s a need that more and more of our customers are requesting every day, we’re very excited to announce this morning the launch of FirstRain for Touch, a new, powerful and yet easy way to drop highly relevant customer intelligence for your sales and marketing teams into your enterprise iPad app—and the first enterprise customer intelligence solution built for the Salesforce Touch Platform.

Last fall, at their annual Dreamforce ‘12 conference, along with their high profile launch of Salesforce Touch, salesforce.com also announced the launch of the similarly named (but very different) “Salesforce Touch Platform.” And unlike Salesforce Touch—which is a downloadable app for iPad, iPhone and Android created for their users to easily access salesforce.com data and capabilities on their devices—the Salesforce Touch Platform is a Software Developer’s Kit that developers within a large enterprise can use to create their own, internal touch-device apps for their sales and marketing teams.

Our new FirstRain for Touch solution is an elegant and personalized set of components that have been optimized for use on touch-based devices, and can be easily dropped into enterprise apps created by companies, just like those developed using the Salesforce Touch Platform SDK. And the demand has been notable. For example, we have at least 3 large, current customers (all in the Fortune 500) who are each planning or have already created and deployed their own iPad apps for use by their own enterprise sales and marketing teams.

But perhaps one of the nicest aspects of this launch has been the opportunity to work with the great folks at salesforce.com. We have lots of clients in common and solutions that have always been highly symbiotic, and so this area is just one more place where we find common opportunity to help each other succeed. Our thanks to Clarence So, their Executive Vice President of Mobile Strategy, for his kind comments about our release: “It is exciting to see the rapid innovation that partners such as FirstRain are delivering on our trusted mobile platform, FirstRain for Touch will provide customers with the right intelligence to help them connect with their customers in entirely new ways and accelerate business success.”

If you’re interested in more information about FirstRain for Touch, let us know!

Customer Annual Sales Kick-off: A Perfect Time to Hear How FirstRain is Helping Sales Win

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Last week I had the pleasure to head down to Boca Raton, Florida for my first cross-country business trip. Since I earned my demo stripes at this year’s FirstRain Dreamforce booth, I am now part of our team that is deployed to customer events—yay for frequent-flyer miles!

One of our customers, Ciena, had their annual sales meeting and invited FirstRain to participate. The meeting took place at what my seasoned FirstRain sales colleagues call a typical sales conference: a “fancy-smancy” hotel with a perfect ocean view, beautiful weather, non-stop great food and one happy sales team!

Attending and participating in sales orientation/training events and annual kick-offs is something that FirstRain offers as part of our customer success program. As one of our customers, Ciena invited us to attend in order to showcase FirstRain as an important new tool for the team within their CRM system. All of their sales users are encouraged to take advantage of FirstRain intelligence within their CRM and it was evident that FirstRain is already acting as their carrot! In fact, for this event our booth was right next to their CRM team’s station, and we were pretty busy giving lots of demos and answering questions for interested reps. We were really delighted by the amount of positive feedback we received during our 4 days on the ground with this great team.

From individual sales reps, to team managers, to the head of sales himself, we had an overwhelming number of people expressing the value FirstRain is bringing to their business. Our own team is certainly aware of the benefits and usefulness of FirstRain for companies like Ciena, but hearing from actual sales users telling us how we are making an impact is extremely cool and rewarding. You can’t ask for anything better than that, can you?

I had a great time talking with people from all over the world, and it was very exciting to hear how different teams are using FirstRain daily. Sure, the “fancy-smancy” hotel and delicious food, we’re a great perk for all, but the best part was coming back to California knowing that FirstRain is delivering the customer intelligence they need, where they need it, and that their sales teams are WINNING with FirstRain!

 

 

Look, Up in the Sky: it’s a Bird! It’s a Plane … it’s FirstRain Performinator!

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The past few weeks have been extremely busy and exciting as we prepare for Dreamforce, which is now only a week away! But today, I have some other exciting news to share, the launch of our new solution—the FirstRain Performinator!

Performinator is our newest solution for delivering strategically tuned customer intelligence for major account sales and marketing teams right into their existing CRM, social enterprise platforms, smartphones and tablets. Performinator helps your entire team of sales and marketing pros understand their customers’ business as well as your superstars do. And for the thousands of early-adopter users who are already getting FirstRain Performinator today, it’s the ‘carrot‘ that gets your people engaged in and drives value from your CRM and platform investments. Don’t YOU want to ‘Be the Carrot‘? ;-)

Most sales and marketing teams don’t have the time to gather the deep knowledge of their customers and end-markets that’s needed to really challenge their customers, uncover opportunity and spot risks. FirstRain already delivers the right intelligence to help solve this challenge, but with Performinator we make it so easy, and so well-tuned to your customer markets that each of your users are transformed (no phone booth required) into your company’s go-to experts on your most significant customers.

In fact, at Dreamforce next week, leaders from GE Capital and FirstRain will be discussing the new solution and how they are embracing the carrot. If you’re interested in attending the session and learning more about Performinator, you can do so here.

Superman may use his super powers to fly, but Performinator uses its powers to transform your sales and marketing teams!

What to Expect, When You Don’t Know What to Expect at Dreamforce 2012

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This is my first year attending Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference and I am very excited. As a first timer, I wanted to make sure I was prepared, so I turned to Twitter and Dreamforce Chatter to find out the scoop on what to expect. Here are the top 10 tips I’ve compiled to help you (and myself!) get ready for Dreamforce 2012.

1. Wear comfortable shoes, this is the most talked about recommendation on social media right now! You spend almost all day on your feet, so take care of them. High heels may look great on Day 1, but your body will regret it on Day 2 if you can barely stand…

2. Bring an extra battery! From session hopping to coordinating meet ups with your iPhone you are bound to battery power. Make sure to bring your charger (there will be charging stations) or buy an extra long battery to ensure you aren’t without power halfway through the conference.

3. Flag that full session! Didn’t get to register in time for a session you are dying to attend? Don’t fret, Salesforce is now allowing you to go to the Agenda Builder and “flag” each full session. If you flag the session in the Agenda Builder, Dreamforce will notify you when they add an additional session. For example, to find out more information on how to flag the hot GE Capital “360° of Excellence” ROI session, do so here.

Another option—just show up! Most likely there will be some “no-shows”. Go early! It’s first come, first serve.

4. Stay out late and meet people! There will be a lot of cool, interesting people at the restaurants and bars around the Moscone Center ready to chit chat. It’s a great way to network and learn about new products.

5. Don’t overload on sessions! There are tons of great sessions you are dying to see (like FirstRain’s, of course!) but scheduling back-to-back sessions will leave you with very little time to explore the expo. Limit yourself and be mindful that sessions are at different buildings.

6. Party time! Interested in checking out the social scene after the Moscone Center closes? Check out this App for up-to-date events happening at Dreamforce.

7. Bring Layers! Never been to San Francisco before? SF is a layering city. September may be one of our warmest months, but depending on the micro-climate on that particular day—or of that exact block—you may experience a whole range of temperatures. Bring a sweater (or two).

8. Take advantage of San Francisco’s coffee and donuts! Blue Bottle Coffee is just a couple blocks away and Philz isn’t too far. SF has a Starbucks on every block, but these coffee houses brew each cup individually. Caffeine is a necessity to keep yourself energized throughout the conference. And If you are planning on staying out late, make sure to visit Bob’s Donuts on Polk street. They are open 24 hours but make donuts fresh at around 10pm. You won’t be disappointed, they are fantastic. I’m a regular!

9. Be organized! Map out all the sessions you are attending and the booths you want to visit. This year, a lot of the sessions are held outside of the Moscone Center at nearby hotels. Familiar yourself with the area prior to the conference.

10. Make sure to check your social media and talk to DF alumni! Stay active with #DF12 and Dreamforce chatter for new recommendations while the conference is happening. As well as reach out and talk to DF alumni! Many of the FirstRain team are Dreamforce veterans and are helping me get #DF12ready.

And for those of you attending Dreamforce12, you can check out the full thread where I compiled all these great ideas, if you want even more great tips (and special thanks to Jeff Grosse for so many terriffic suggestions).

FirstRain Starts off the Summer…

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Lots of exciting things happening at FirstRain lately! With a mixture of some great new customers, fun company events, new FirstRain faces, giving the office a fresh, new look, and a big award announcement— June has been busy and we’re only eight days into the month!

First, we announced this week that FirstRain is a finalist for the 2012 American Business Awards in the new product or service of the year, business-to-business products category. As a finalist, FirstRain will either be the Gold, Silver or Bronze Stevie Award winner in the program. The ABA will present the awards at two award ceremonies, the ABA traditional banquet on June 18th in New York, and a new tech awards event on Monday, September 17th in San Francisco. A fantastic honor for us.

Last week, the FirstRain team held one of our traditional potluck lunches. Jordy brought in a special French dessert, baked by his mother, who is in town visiting from France. Our special guest was Eugene’s new 1 month old daughter. Our potluck lunch turned into a baby shower, welcoming her to the FirstRain team— our youngest and smallest team member yet!

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Along with Eugene’s beautiful new daughter, we are excited to welcome two new additions to FirstRain this summer, Patrick and Sebastian. Patrick is a student at San Jose State and is working with Eugene and Connie in our accounting department. Sebastian (who worked at FirstRain last summer) will be assisting Ryan and the marketing team this summer, before starting college at NYU this Fall. We’re thrilled to have them.

Last night, some of the FirstRain team participated in the annual Splash and Dash race at Stevens Creek Reservoir in Cupertino, CA. We had 9 rainmakers competing in the race, Doug and Aaron finished first for the relay teams, but everyone did a great job and all finished the race strong. Afterwards, everyone went back to Penny’s house for a barbeque. We will partake in the event again in August, when our east coast team is in town to join in on the fun.

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Looks like another FirstRain summer is definitely off to a fun and full-forced start!

Coding is the New Literacy

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Our world is surrounded by software. Every day teenagers spend more than 10 hours a day on line interfacing through a software layer – texting, facebook, tumblr, TV, movies – all are constructed in software and people use a software layer to interact. Even as a CEO, my day is dominated by software – Office apps, Twitter, Skype and even Words with Friends.

Software is changing our world in as profound a way as the book did starting in 1440. The book, following the invention of the printing press, democratized knowledge. Anyone who could read and write could share ideas and change the way other people thought. By 1500 there were 35,000 book titles in print and over 20MM books printed. 60 years after the invention of the computer the influence of software on our world is still growing exponentially.

And it touches everyone. Poor illiterate women in India running micro businesses through a cellphone. CEOs and bankers. Students at a Palo Alto High School. And so when I was invited to give a TEDx talk at Gunn High School two weeks ago I chose to talk about how being able to code – or at least understand enough structured logic to create software apps – is as important now as being able to read and write.

Technology is now where the jobs are, where the growth is, where the source of the major revolution of the next 100 years starts. It’s an exciting place to be and it’s a meritocracy. Everyone can learn it, just like everyone can learn to read and write.

Here’s my talk:

And the most exciting thing for me giving this talk was that at the end I was surrounded by teenage girls thrilled to have their interest in software and technology endorsed and confirmed by my talk.

BAIA Panel: Balancing the Business Use of Our Digital Footprints

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Last Thursday I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on digital privacy in Palo Alto hosted by the Business Association Italy America (BAIA), a network of entrepreneurs, managers and professionals focused on innovation. Personally, an event like this is always a bit of a stretch for an introvert like me, but I’m very glad I was coaxed out of my shell to engage on this important topic.

On the panel with me were two fascinating people, Professor Alessandro Acquisti and Andrea Vaccari. Andrea was a hot commodity that night, as he is co-founder and CEO of Glancee. Glancee had just been acquired by Facebook, and Facebook was going public the next day. Alessandro is a true expert in the field of Information Technology and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon.

As panel moderator Mary Trigiani put it, we were two Digital Immigrants and One Digital Native coming together, representing diverse perspectives. And the difference in perspective on on digital privacy issues between the Digital Natives in the room, who were more comfortable with their persona, behaviors, and lifestyle being out there and accessible on the Web was noticeable that night. The Digital Natives were not necessarily pushing the boundaries, but more were either unaware of the boundaries being pushed or not at all bothered by them, seemingly confident that things would be okay. The Digital Immigrants, on the other hand, expressed much more concern about how acquired data can be used by Companies for great good and great evil.

Alessandro shared his thought-provoking experiment, where he and a team of research analysts constructed a mobile App to generate a person’s social security number from a snapped photo of a stranger’s face. All based on freely available software, online databases, and statistical processing.

Andrea pointed out that we all leave “digital footprints”—data that is left behind, collected, and available for use. As an example, he related a story from Business Insider that told of how Target got into some hot water when they used observed shopping patterns to indicate women that are likely pregnant, and then used this statistically derived information to send coupons to those theoretically pregnant women. The technology proved to be so good that it exposed a teen girl’s pregnancy to her father when he found the coupons that had been sent to her.

In my view, this technology is still way ahead of the law. Living and working in Silicon Valley, every day we see analytics technology being applied relentlessly to redefine business and the way businesses work, online retailers challenging the way states levy sales tax, and online shopping experiences getting more and more targeted. Digital Privacy law requires legislation, and legislation is the purview of governments, regulatory bodies and advocacy groups—in other words, it’s not a speedy process. Structurally, legislative timelines will always lag the incredible pace of technology adoption, with the result being that most of what is technically feasible has not only not been regulated, but probably isn’t even being thought about yet in our legislative bodies.

In this digital privacy environment, many companies simply state they are “in compliance with all federal and state laws…”, but what does this really mean? Given this known lag, companies should be responsible for operating at a higher standard when deciding how to best to manage and protect information from inappropriate use. Setting internal privacy boundaries and codes of behavior proactively mitigates the negative effects of overstepping the mark and the subsequent consumer backlash. At FirstRain two of our core values are “Act with integrity at all times” and “Take ownership for the company’s success”. For us, keeping these values at the forefront helps maintain the balance between ethics and profit.

FirstRain provides our customers (B2B sales and marketing professionals) with relevant customer and industry information to increase revenue and strengthen relationships. Our users are business professionals who want to quickly and efficiently access only the information they require to drive revenue in their businesses. Now, the more we at FirstRain know about each customer, the better an intelligence solution we can then offer. But often they do not have the time or patience to enter a boat-load of personal preference information—and therefore the tension between relevance, business objectives and customer analytics. In this case, I believe the use of a thoughtful combination of “self-declared” information, combined with “observed” behavior (e.g., likes/dislikes, click-throughs, etc.) and “inferred” statistics can make a massive difference. The key is using the information with integrity and only for the intended purpose of delivering an improved customer experience.

I am concerned about digital privacy, and the lack of tools for consumers to access, verify and fix incorrect or inaccurate information out there. I am also sure that in the years ahead we will see businesses continue to push the digital privacy boundaries. There will be some notable scares, subsequent backlashes and regulatory adjustments. However, I am personally also looking forward to a massively improved user experience.

A big thank you goes to our hosts Giorgio Ghersi and Mary Trigiani at BAIA, for being wonderful hosts, and our own Daniela Barbosa, here at FirstRain, for her tireless focus on making sure this introvert turned up and participated.

Delivering Unique Business-Relevant Tweets: Facebook IPO

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Today’s Facebook’s IPO although a more consumer focused interest story then what most of our customers are interested in, brought a huge amount of tweets on the subject as expected. (I would even venture to say that it was more then a ‘consumer interest story’ but rather a ‘human interest story’). None the less, being that FirstRain is a Silicon Valley based company, the buzz is also being felt strongly outside the digital world for those of us that live here and have friends and acquaintances that are being directly impacted by facebook’s IPO. Exciting times.

Yesterday, prior to Facebook’s IPO we ran some stats using our FirstTweets™ technology and then redid the same exercise at the close of the market today. FirstTweets™ uses our patented FirstRain technology to uncover and deliver only high-quality, business-relevant tweets to sales and marketing professionals across the enterprise. Our analysis shows that less than 0.1% of daily tweets contain quality, business-related content, yet this still represents more than 200,000 tweets per day of business-focused intelligence.

The picture painted by the stats that we captured, aren’t surprising but are interesting and illustrative on why our customers are seeing value in our FirstTweets- as YY Lee our COO tweeted this morning allowing them to “cut through the frenzied roar to net out the actual business discussion…”.

On the day before Facebook’s IPO:

At the close of Market on the day of Facebooks IPO:

FirstRain’s FirstTweets Weren’t Built for Me (But I Benefit)

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Note: This post was originally posted on my personal blog “Chitchating about Information Delivery” on April 18th, 2012.

This week’s FirstRain’s announcement of FirstTweets a solution for B2B users delivering “business-quality Twitter intelligence on thousands of global companies, industries and topics relevant to the specific business lines of your customers, industry and competitors”- was an exciting one for our team and our customers.

I have been on a couple of client calls where we previewed this new content stream and across the board the enthusiasm and spark of ideas around FirstTweets from them has been very inspiring. These are companies of all sizes across various industries- some that have been extremely active supporters of using Social Media as part of their strategies (e.g. Customer Care centers, tech support, brand monitoring etc) and others that are just starting out.

For example, some of these companies have tried to use their existing social media monitoring and measuring tools to ‘push’ relevant business content to their sales team, but none have been able to crack the code using their existing systems that are great for monitoring their own brands and customers using keywords- but can not deliver precise business focused content on thousands of companies and industries that their salesforce covers or their market intelligence teams needs to keep track of competitors and new business trends. Some have tried other ‘sales intelligence’ solutions that push social media buzz into their CRM systems- all based on keywords with low hit business relevancy results- turning off most users.

Now i have been an active user of Twitter for a bit over 5 years, just when the little twitter bird began chirping. i use Twitter outbound and to listen quite a bit. I would estimate that i have spent hundreds of hours, curating content, selecting people to follow (and unfollow!) , creating lists, monitoring client issues, company employees and general news. i am one of those 9% of digital news consumers that sees the news Break on Twitter.

I use Twitter effectively and teach others how to at any chance i get- but hundreds of hours of my time has been invested, and will continue to be since Twitter is not a set it and leave it information flow.

Is that the level of time investment that most companies want for their employees that are not responsible for monitoring and measuring social media??? Do companies want staff especially Sales who can benefit greatly from business intelligence found in Twitter- spending the same amount of time i have over the years??

I would venture to say no.

Now, i think that EVERY employee should consider using Twitter to engage with their peers in their industry, their customers and of course their friends and family- but i don’t think the processes that i have developed over the years is sustainable for most sales and marketing people- especially as your markets become more competitive and the budget dollars to spend on the solutions you sell decrease.

And that is where i see the biggest promise for FirstTweets- delivering intelligence to better understand your customers’ end-markets, strengthen relationships and improve overall sales strategy.

The customers i have talked to agree.

Note: Today April 18th is the official launch to existing FirstRain customers, i have been using FirstTweets in our Sandbox environment for about two weeks- and have found many gems that i would never have found using the various tools i use in my Twitter day to day use- so it wasn’t built for “me”- but i sure will benefit from it!

Announcing a Breakthrough in B2B Twitter: FirstTweets™!

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We’ve had an amazing year here at FirstRain. Over the course of just the last year, we’ve launched an intuitive new Web app interface, elegant iPad and mobile apps, and then our powerful new Enterprise Customer Intelligence System for end-to-end, company-wide intelligence integration.

And now today is another big day at FirstRain—but it’s also a big day for the social enterprise platforms like Chatter, Yammer and Jive because now, for the very first time, Twitter is useful for B2B professionals.

For some time now, media and brand monitoring solutions like Radian6 have been tapping into Twitter so that companies can see what their customers are saying. If United Airlines loses your luggage and you gripe about it on Twitter, United can see that. But solutions that provide consumer tweet monitoring are hopeless if you are a B2B professional trying to find useful and breaking industry news in Twitter about specific companies, products or business lines.

We’ve now solved that problem, and are announcing FirstTweets today. This is the world’s first solution for extracting business-relevant Twitter Intelligence. FirstTweets™ is a part of our FirstRain Enterprise Customer Intelligence System. It is a technology breakthrough that solves the Twitter problem for business executives: how to get business value and intelligence out of the 250 million tweets that Twitter produces daily.

Our analysis shows that more than 99.9% of all Twitter is non-relevant to business professionals, making it effectively impossible to get to the still more than 200,000 tweets per day of daily business intelligence buried inside.

Now, by using FirstRain’s patented semantic analytics, our system provides the ability to easily and effectively access the business intelligence hidden within the Twitter stream. FirstTweets™ collects and organizes real time industry and customer-specific information to uncover revenue opportunities, including customer developments, industry trends, news, market analysis, emerging themes and so much more.

This intelligence is then be easily integrated into different workflows, including iPads and other mobile devices, CRM systems,social enterprise platforms like Chatter, Jive, Yammer and SharePoint, or any workflow that works best for sales and marketing teams.

FirstTweets™ will be available to all users this Wednesday and will be included for FirstRain subscribers. It’s another exciting innovation by FirstRain, and I look forward to hearing what you think.

FirstTweets in Chatter FirstTweets from FirstRain