Salesforce.com for Rapid Application Development, particularly for non-profits

In these lean times, more and more companies are turning to turnkey solutions. However, many companies – like mine – prefer the ability to customize their implementation. Sometimes turnkey solutions can be limited. However, systems that are built from the ground up not only increase the project timeframe, but they also can become a support nightmare. Each new application has a new user interface, new administrative functions, new support documents, and sometimes the original programmer ends up supporting so many of his homegrown applications that he or she has no time to write new ones.

I speak from experience here. In my present capacity, I inherited over 30 homegrown applications written in ASP.NET.

To me, Remedy was always the perfect solution for these companies. Here you have a workflow system that is extremely customizable, yet offering extremely rapid application development. For support, it is not difficult for a technical person to read and understand remedy 'code', which takes the form of visual elements within the Admin Tool (forms, filters, active links, et al.)

However, through a volunteer project I am engaged in with Common Impact, I have become aware of a new (to me) offering. Salesforce.com. This is software as a service, offered through the web to subscribing customers. For many years, I had known salesforce.com as a CRM product, that, by its name itself, served the sales force of a company. However, Salesforce.com has taken a dramatic step – they offer their product free to non-profit organizations. These non-profit organizations can use it to customize an application. It is perfect for contact management, help desk applications, and simple asset management. Even more advantageous for the struggling non-profit, it does not require an on-site installation – it is hosted.

Currently, my assignment on this project is developing a simple web interface for end-users who wish to create help desk cases or asset requests. At first, I thought I would be building this on my own – until I discovered Salesforce.com offers a 'web-to-case' feature that eliminates most of the need to write custom code. Peter Martin writes more about using the web-to-case feature in his blog, Cloud Clout.

I'll write more about Salesforce.com as I have more thoughts on it.

Also, look forward to a discussion of the new BMC Remedy Action Request System 7.5, with an all new administrative and development interface.