Ready was a concept the FindIt Team created for the 2013 Dreamforce Hackathon, hosted by Salesforce. It was an attempt for us to learn more about the Salesforce platform, which we were looking at either integrating with for FindIt, or pivoting towards a new direction. We were finding many of our power users were utilizing the power of FindIt for meeting preparation, and with data already collected in many Salesforce databases, we could surface the information professionals needed for a meeting. The Hackathon had some strict rules, but we pulled together a slick app for Android in just a few days.
I began planning with the team by designing function, features, and interactions through a whirl of whiteboard sessions and interviews with existing salesforce customers who were on the go and using mobile devices as their main preparation tool. Overwhelmingly we heard the frustrations of trying to find information across several apps, email addresses, and trying to use Salesforce’s then less than idea mobile experience. We quickly narrowed down some minimal viable product ideas to start developing and see what we could accomplish by the hackathon deadline. We ranked our features by importance, and began development based on wireframes and basic designs. As I polished the app visually, I would check in new assets into our repo and work out small tweaks with our developer between main functions being finished. Our end result was pretty impressive, and a great testament to our teams ability to act fast and effectively.
Ready would surface the need to know information for a meeting, such as contacts you are meeting with, notes and task to perform or projects that you may have discussed prior. All information is pulled from Salesforce as well as injecting FindIt’s prior integrations with Email, Dropbox, and Drive to better pull attachment and prior discussions with contacts to more effectively deliver and have a successful meeting.
After the Hackathon, we played more the idea of meeting preparation, and one of the biggest weaknesses of our app was that it relied largely on existing data. Part of the sales process we realized was often people were walking into meetings cold, and that they were the first part of the data gathering system. We began designing a system where we could quickly outsource or automate data gathering, and create a report or dossier for sales professionals to be prepared. I designed and developed our prototype in Twitter’s bootstrap so that it could be viewed on any device without losing important information, a full version of the report is available here.
